Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Be Careful What You Wish For

You remember how I said I was almost jealous of Hubby that day he stayed home to recover from food poisoning? Yeah, it really isn't that fun.

Is it just me, or is the incidence of food poisoning on the rise? Or maybe we're just easy targets right now since we're not getting enough sleep. Or maybe our containment procedures actually work and it is just your average run of the mill tummy bug that my fastidious hand washing and hand sanitizing have kept me from passing on to someone else in the family.

Last night's fun was exacerbated by the continuance of Petunia's sleep freakout, which has now expanded to include her first wake up in the middle of the night. I have found a way to get her to go to sleep without a lot of crying, though- sports. If I hold her sitting on my lap facing out, and gently bounce her while we watch sports on TV, she will eventually put her thumb in her mouth and relax enough that I can get her to go to sleep. She fights it- she'll settle back against my chest, and then sit bolt upright, clearly fighting sleep. But eventually, sleep wins. We stumbled on this on Monday night. We had some friends over to watch the New Zealand-Wales match that Hubby had recorded over the weekend. Petunia did her usual refusal to go to sleep routine, so I brought her out and sat her on my lap while I watched the first part of the game. And damned if she didn't calm down and go to sleep!

So last night, when it was after 8 and Petunia wouldn't go to sleep, I brought her out and told Hubby to start the Australia-England game. And damned if it didn't work again!

It is not just rugby, though. This morning, Petunia was cranky and in need of a nap (probably because she'd been up screaming at us for an hour in the middle of the night). Hubby had the USA-Algeria soccer match on (one of Pumpkin's day care teachers had taught her how to chant "USA! USA!" which was pretty cute. We'll have to work on the "Kiiii-wiiii" chant next). Petunia settled in and fell asleep.

So tonight, we'll break out the South Africa game much earlier.

In other Petunia news, when she isn't screaming in refusal to sleep, she is a lot of fun right now. I have a mole on my chest that is exposed by the necklines of most of my shirts, and when I hold her facing me, she likes to try to pick it up. I find this unbelievably cute, and feel a little sorry for her with her unachievable quest. She's crawling around and exploring everything. Pumpkin is going crazy- "Noooo! I don't want Petunia to touch that!" We're trying to teach her that anything she doesn't want Petunia to touch needs to live in her room or up high. We're making slow progress on that.

At least my stomach feels better and I got to take a 3 hour nap this morning.

4 comments:

  1. OMG, I feel badly for you. Sleep troubles are the pits.

    One of my pet peeves is the lack of a mechanism to support parents going through these tough phases.

    For instance, my (generally progressive) workplace specifies that sick leave is for sick employees. If you are caring for sick family members, you must charge vacation hours. If you are caring for a very sick family member (and can document that), then you can charge no pay under the family leave act w/o loss of your other benefits.

    But, no pay, under CA law, must be taken in increments of 1 day. Most two-career couples taking care of sick children split the day. Thus, we have to burn up vacation time to care for sick kids.

    Then we burn through our vacation time, which we really need b/c we are doing two difficult jobs at once...

    Which leaves us using no pay for vacation, which is solely at the discretion of your manager. A sympathetic manager would let that slide, but there are really nasty ones, too. It shouldn't be so ad hoc and left to chance.

    And what do you mark on your time card when you just need to sleep in b/c you were up till 4AM with a sick kid?

    Childless coworkers have no idea...

    I am not asking for a handout. But there out to be a mechanism for us to take unpaid time off in flexible increments while we are performing an unpaid service to society.

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  2. @badmomgoodmom- all my time off is lumped into "Paid Time Off", so no matter what I do, if I stay home with a sick kid, I eat into my vacation time.

    So yes, I'm at the mercy of my boss approving time off without pay for most actual vacations.

    This is one area where I miss my old consulting job. I charged hours, so on a day like today, I could usually manage to get a couple hours work done, and not burn an entire day.

    The "war" between working parents and some of our colleagues without kids makes me sad. It seems like a lot of the things us working parents want would actually be great for people without kids, too. For instance, I used the extremely flexible work hours I had at my previous employer more before I had kids. I would work extra for 9 of the 10 days in a pay period and take the 10th off (having already charged my 80 hours) and go for a long weekend without touching my PTO.

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  3. I also have Paid Time Off. I had to use all of it for maternity leave, and each month I accrue more days, they get eaten up by sick kids, doctor's appointments, and once an actual vacation. It's so frustrating!

    Sorry you were sick, Cloud! I hope you are feeling better, and I really hope that Petunia gets through the sleep issues quickly.

    Our 3 yo is also very frustrated with the baby getting into "her" toys. She is good about putting the ones he can't play with away in her room or up high. It's the ones that they should be sharing where the real problem lies for us right now. It's constantly, constantly explaining about sharing and "family" toys and taking turns and letting the other one play with this toy or that toy. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

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  4. Glad you're feeling better! I can so sympathize on the sleep freakout thing... Annika has always gone back and forth between being a slightly crappy sleeper, and a REALLY crappy sleeper. She's a couple months past 2, and still wakes up at night.

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