For Gael

 

Party Girl

She really isn't much of a party girl.  We went to Charlie's birthday party a few weeks ago and we went on a playdate to a park last weekend and both times, she kind of hangs by herself.

Veronica's been doing well, I'd say. She is completely toilet trained, she is getting a little bit better in church, and she never shuts up.  Sometimes I still get a little teary when she is yammering away at me.  I was so worried, for a while, and now she is just perfectly right for her age.  She is still a little hard to understand, but I'll take it.  Maria is a great interpreter, in fact they are really thick as thieves lately.  They're mostly very sweet together but it is all Veronica, really.  She is a Great Compromiser.
 

Almost three

One week from Monday she'll be three years old.  It's hard to believe, because she seems like my baby but also it seems like she's been around for longer than three years, much longer.  My mom sent me an email with some party stuff for sale and said "maybe you'd want this for Veronica's party" and I thought oh, crap!  A party!  I still don't know what we'll do.  Veronica doesn't really have any friends of her own yet.  I mean, she has two friends at school, Brookie and Halie, but I don't really know their moms so I couldn't invite them to a party.  Anyways.  We'll see.  I know she wants a Tinkerbell cake, at least she did a few weeks ago when she saw one in the window at the bakery.

She is doing very well with the potty training.  Not VERY well, I guess.  I guess if she were doing VERY well, she wouldn't have peed on her underwear, "just a little" and taken them off and handed them to me while I was sitting at the table at Chic Fil A today.  BUT she goes in the bathroom on her own most of the time and she did perfectly one out of two days at school this week, so we'll take it.  She wants to be in underwear, which is half the battle.  Ha, we were at a party on Sunday, though, and she had already peed through one outfit so she was in her second.  She came walking up to me and my friend's boyfriend said "I think she has mud on her foot" and I thought no, not mud, and it wasn't.  Sigh.  It's hard at a party, right?  Hard to stop partying?  She's like Lindsay Lohan or something, ha!

She has been driving us insane and I mean INSANE lately.  Maria wakes her up too early and then she is grumpy for most of the day.  She cries and whines a lot, she takes off her clothes in public, and if you speak even the slightest bit sharply to her, she BURSTS into tears and cries for 20 minutes, super loudly.  Her hair will never grow back from where Maria cut it, LORD GOD these girls have some fine hair.  Um, what can I say to end this on a positive note?  She is super sweet with Felicity.  She never wakes up when you move her from the floor to her bed at night.  Um.  Her teacher loves her and she has always done great at school, every single day of this year.  There.

Potty Training

Veronica, who will be three on May 14, has been insisting on wearing underwear to school lately.  It's FINE BY ME but I was worried on Monday that she'd just pee on the floor there like she does here.  Here, she pees on the floor and then looks at it and says, sighing, "I pee".  So poetic!

But she went in underwear on Monday and when I went to pick her up, she was in the *same clothes* as I left her!  Miracle!  Her teacher said she didn't go all morning (she never does here either) but finally right before her nap, around 12:00 (that's nothing from 8:30 until 12:00, whacko), she deigned to pee on the potty.  So.  That's good, right?  Her teacher was worried on Tuesday because there are more kids in there and she was right to be, because naturally she just peed right through her clothes when she had to go.

So today we are trying again.  It's 12:35 - 12:35! and she hasn't gone all morning.  She asked for apple juice and I told her she could have some if she peed on the potty.  We're headed out soon so I am going to have her try before we leave and then I'll have to put a diaper on her, I don't want her to pee on the car seat.  It's a giant pain but I feel like she'll be trained before her birthday and then we'll just have one baby left in diapers, and won't that be nice?  It's all that keeps me going, really.

Friday

It's hard to believe this was Friday, right?  And that hours later, she'd be throwing up all over me?  This was in a rare burst of energy, jeez she is CUTE, right? 

I was looking at this shadow and it reminds me, today I went to get Veronica at school and we walked out together, me and Felicity, Maria in front and Veronica behind us.  LORD, LORD, she is behind us.  Slow!  She reminds me of Prissy in Gone with the Wind, when she is moseying down the street and Scarlett is waiting for her to come help with the birthing of the babies.  "Only three more days to tote the weary loooooooad, she sings, remember?  Anyways, I am always stopping to turn back and remind Veronica that what we are doing is walking to the ding dang car.  Meanwhile, Maria is taking off into the parking lot.  Sheesh. 

Today it was so sunny and beautiful and Veronica was in love with that shadow of hers.  IN LOVE.  She was walking all over the parking lot, saying "my shadow!  Look, mama, my shadow!".  I told her she could walk toward the car and her stupid shadow would be there, too, ha!  She is a sweet thing, I can't believe it but she will be three years old in about a month.  Veronica Lucy Beck!  Three years old! 

 

Sick, in a new and different way

Ugh, I haven't posted since the last time Veronica was sick.  In fairness, it wasn't THAT LONG AGO!  Last night Mike took Anthony up to the bath kind of early, he was driving us mad with the taking the clothes off thing, so I figured he could get a solo bath, which is a plus for him, and he could be in his pajamas, which is a plus for us.  As it's been a long week, and Felicity has another ear infection, I thought the girls would benefit from a nice walk around the block.  As usual and for always, I was wrong.  It took us FOREVER to walk around one block.  When we were almost home, we stopped by my friend and neighbor's house and her husband commented that he had mowed not one but TWO lawns during the time it took me.  It was Veronica, of course, barely walking, that took us so long.  I was pushing the stroller but I carried her for about half of it, just so we could get home before dark.  We stopped by my neighbor's house and she seemed a little sad and she insisted on riding in the stroller on the way home.

After she got out of the tub, she was freezing and crying, miserable.  She didn't feel warm, so like an idiot, I figured she was fine.  I fell asleep after 11:00, the baby woke up at midnight until 12:30, and at 12:35 Veronica woke up screaming and howling and, of course, burning up.  Mike and I took her in our room because she was so loud and I forced some ibuprofen on her which of course, she viciously threw up all over me moments later.  Ugh!  It's so, so frustrating!  I always feel so stupid, I should see it coming, but I never do.  Anyways, we were up until almost 5:00.  I used to think it was the medicine that made her wide awake but NOPE.  It's just how she gets sick, she stays awake as if she's taken speed.  It takes a bad situation and makes it almost unbearable.  I took her downstairs and she threw up a few more times and we watched several episodes of Peppa Pig.  I kept saying to her, let's watch this one and then we'll go to bed and she'd FREAK OUT and yell, NOOOOOO!  Finally around 4:30 I said it and she didn't yell but said okay, so we went up to my bed around 5:00 and she fell asleep.  She had to have been exhausted, she threw up like five times!

She's no better this morning, she couldn't go to the Easter Egg Hunt in our neighborhood, I just took Maria.  She's still warm but hasn't thrown up again today, so we'll see.  The baby is sick and Anthony is impossible and I'm working tonight and hosting Easter tomorrow, soooooo.  I'm going to think of Christ on the Cross and be silent.  It's incredibly challenging but I'm trying.

Ear Infection

Now Maria is the only one who's never had an ear infection, never taken antibiotics.

Here's a pro tip: if it seems like your child is sick, has a fever, and is stuffy, but is also A RAGING LUNATIC, IMPOSSIBLY FUSSY AND UNWILLING TO BE PUT DOWN OR STOP CRYING, chances are very, very VERY good that that child has an ear infection. You're welcome.

I'm editing this to say that she also couldn't get comfortable - she slept with us, in our bed or on the couch, for two nights and she kept shifting and shifting.  Of course I thought she was just being difficult, it was between 11 at night and 3 in the morning, but now that I look back on it, it was a lot like Felicity was acting when she had her ear infections.  I've never had one, but I guess it's just awful.

We went to CVS to the Minute Clinic.  I wanted to go to the IU Urgent Care where I've been taking Felicity but there was a horrible traffic jam and I didn't have much time because Anthony had to get to swimming, so I went to the Minute Clinic.  There was ONE person in front of me and she was in there FOREVER, Lord, Lord, I was getting tense!  Veronica was really taking a turn, lying down on the floor, falling asleep, crying, etc.  It was awful.  I wanted to ask the guy who was the husband of the lady who went in there what she was in there for?  To discuss End of Life issues?  LORD!

Anyway, once we got in there I could see why it took so long, the NP was super, super SUPER slow.  She didn't have a great bedside manner, she couldn't really get that thing into V's ear to see what was going on.  Veronica was screaming and screaming and she didn't stop for NINETY MINUTES.  I had to take her home so Mike could get Anthony to swimming, so I just loaded up the other two girls and we went BACK to the CVS to get the prescription going.  I dropped it off and then drove through Steak and Shake to get them something to eat and went back.  I picked it up, it was only $3.50 with our insurance and you sure get what you pay for, because I got home and that stupid amoxicillin was POWDER that I was supposed to MIX on my OWN.  It called for 67 ml of water.  ?  Who has that measuring capability in their house?  Not ME!  I called and had it out with the jackhole pharmacist and we went round and round, he said they were 'real busy' that day.  It scares the hell out of me to think these people are in charge of anything, particularly dispensing drugs.

BUT he fixed it and Mike picked up the rx on his way home from swimming and she took some and she seems better this morning, already.  We have our last ballet class today and a recital, so I hope she can go.