are things complicated yet?

Line the margaritas up; we're going to Mexico baby!

With just 72 hours until I wedge my ass into the seat of a 737 bound for Mexico, oddly enough, I am in total denial about it.

This is an accidental vacation.  We booked it just to book SOMETHING, so we'd stop feeling sorry for ourselves about not taking time just for us.  We booked it to Cancun because it was close and because we got a killer deal on the hotel.  We weren't that excited about the destination except for the fact that it's on a beach.

If I'm being really honest?  I like experiencing new places and cultures but my most favorite vacation is in Hawaii because it has gorgeous beaches, great weather and it's in America. 

I love vacationing in America and spending my American dollars and gallivanting around with the knowledge that I am laying on the beach with my Constitutional Rights intact and if anyone jacks with me then I'll sue 'em, because I LOVE AMERICA and that's what we can do when we get jacked with.

WOOT FOR AMERICA!

(I'm arrogant like this.)

Mexico bewilders me because of the widespread graft, drug dealers, homicide and utterly horrific poverty that the government doesn't seem to really care about.  It seems to be so...lawless and wild and crazy.  Whether I'm correct in feeling this way or not, I'm not really loving a gut reaction of "uh-oh" when I step off the plane. 

In Mexico (and I have been recently to Mexico City, Acapulco and Veracruz, I'm not just basing this on headlines) I always feel like I'm about to be the victim of a crime worthy of a Harrison Ford movie where Special Forces are going to have to rescue me.  I don't like that feeling so much.

Also?

Chris took French in high school and I think my 11th grade Spanish teacher pity-passed me that last semester because after three years in his classroom, Senor Fleming figured out that I was never going pick up much of anything beyond basic vocabulary.  Being somewhere that I'm not fluent makes me feel like I'm already in a compromised position.

All this to say that we're flying a few thousand mile south with the intention of spending 4 days within the confines of the hotel.  No Mayan pyramids for us!  We're staying in the infinity pool with a swim up bar and eating nachos all week.  This is SO unlike me; normally I'd like to venture out to explore and soak up some local flavor.  Make the most of being there.  Be the sort of traveler that gets her hands dirty.

But in Mexico?  I think not.  Seems safer to stay on a lounge chair with a margarita.  Several margaritas.

***
My parents are fetching Claire on Wednesday morning.  It was supposed to be Wednesday night.  When I found out that I'd have to say goodbye 8 hours sooner I kind of freaked out and then I realized that Chris and I could go to the movies on Wednesday evening and that might be positively THRILLING to go to the movies.

This is indicative of how I feel about the whole trip.  I get sad and mopey about leaving Claire and then I remember that leaving Claire means FREEDOM SWEET FREEDOM.  I get excited and consider packing high heels since I won't be toting around a 20 lb free weight on my arm that throws off my balance.

(I mean SERIOUSLY.  My 20's were full of awesome shoe purchases that have been languishing in my closet.  It PAINS me to look at them now and know that I can't bear to even wear them out to the freaking car.)

We're leaving in two days and I've got lists to make and things to pack.  (I haven't even practice packed yet, which is highly, highly unusual for me.)  And what am I doing right now?  Watching Season 4 of Weeds and drinking a Dos Equis while my daughter slumbers peacefully.

Ah, the good life.  It would appear I've got it this week.

I know it's the doctor stories that keep you coming back, so HERE YOU GO

Gah! There is no better way to kill an entire morning than by visiting the pediatrician.  Or a doctor of any sort really.  Doctors!  They have no respect for other people's time!  Just because you're a doctor doesn't mean you're like, GOD or something and everything revolves around you.  It just means you have a lot of student loans and that's not a very good reason for wasting EVERYONE IN AMERICA'S time.

***

We showed up at 910 for our 915 appointment and were promptly shown to an exam room....where we proceeded to wait for ALMOST A FREAKING HOUR before the doctor deigned to make an appearance.

How in the world do you get an hour behind schedule when I show up for THE FIRST APPOINTMENT OF THE DAY?  How is that even possible?!  And why isn't there an appointment at 8?  Or even 830?  Past 9 is rather late for us working girls to be taking kids in and you refuse to make afternoon appointments for sick kids so really, you are not very working-parent friendly which I am taking personally.

So we wait for an hour and we see the doc.  Claire open-mouth kisses me, drools all over my shirt, throws toys on the ground, watches me run the faucet for her amusement, dispense paper towels one after the other, show her the translucent biohazard box with syringes in it, etc.  We run out of things to do in that sparse room after about 20 minutes.

(I should note here that I really, REALLY like Dr. H.  She is very nice, knowledgeable and listens to me talk about what I found last night on the internet without making a face.  Which, HUGE PLUS in the world of Doctors.  They also have electronic patient records and the nurses are super organized and awesome.  This hour late crap is, thus far, an isolated incident.) 

I brought her in for a hacky cough she'd developed over the weekend.  As I described the cough in great detail, Dr. H fished a surprising amount of wax from her right ear and said, "Ohhhhh, this ear is pretty infected."  Surprise! 

(This is one of the tricky things about Claire - when she has an ear infection she doesn't give you any hints.  No fever lasting more than a few hours, no pulling on the ear, no cranky.)

Last night I was doing a wee bit of Googling and the only thing her combination of cough symptoms (which, really, it was QUITE the cough) was adding up to was...Pertussis. 

Yes, WHOOPING COUGH OMG.  (This is why I should not be allowed to Google past 10 pm.) 

I figured there was NO WAY she has pertussis, since she is vaccinated, so I went to bed.  *It's just a cough!* 

I mean, we were just there at the doc's office on Friday for her 9 month well-baby exam and she checked her ears and chest and she was FINE. 

This morning when Dr. H was all, "Hmm, describe the cough to me?  And does she do this?  And that?  What about something like this?" I started to wonder what the heck was going on.  This was the same detailed sort of questioning I got when she had bronchiolitis.  (Otherwise known as That Time I Think I Waited Too Long To Take My Baby To The Doctor And I'm Still Blaming Myself.)  What she said next made my jaw drop:

"Well, we are seeing some pertussis going around, but I've only seen it in a baby this young ONCE before and that 9-month old girl had NO vaccinations!  And Claire is vaccinated!  So even though her symptoms are pointing to pertussis, I just don't think it is and the timing is also off.  But if she still has this cough on Friday you'll have to take her to Big Children's Hospital Downtown For Actually Sick Kids for a test to rule it out.  Because even though it's really remote, it could happen."

WTF?!  WTF?!

We left with a prescription for antobiotics and an Albuterol refill.  (Since we own that fancy-ass nebulizer we might as well use it.)  Because we have blown through our deductible for the year this trip to the pharmacy (at least our TENTH in 2009) only set me back $20.  She has not been coughing tonight like she has for the past few nights, which I am so happy about.  I'm hopeful that it's just a particularly nasty ear infection that cost us nothing more than a few hours.

And that is how I spent my morning.  The end.

I would like to purchase some anti-blinking medication now. There's a pill for that, right?

I swear that all I do is blink and two weeks pass me by.

One day I'm straightening up for the housecleaner and then just as soon as I inhale the scent of Clorox in the bathrooms and take a relaxing "Damn it feels good to know I didn't have to be the one to clean that" breath, I sit down, blink, and it's time to straighten up the house again two weeks later.

Where does the time go?  How is my life passing by so quickly?

For example, I bought Chris a Father's Day card.  I was buying a card for HIS father at the Wal-Mart and I saw this one and my heart kind of went pitter patter and I thought, "YES!  This is the kind of father he is!"  So I had to buy it. 

I'm not really a card person.  I much prefer to write something in my own words but it's indicative of how time-crunched I'm feeling these days.  Too busy with gathering groceries and sentiments for other people, I couldn't take five minutes to formulate 35 words of thanks and love to my husband on his first Father's Day.  I paid Hallmark $3 to do it for me.

And then?  Even though it was a great card?  I FORGOT TO GIVE HIM THE CARD UNTIL FOUR WEEKS LATER.  I saw it in my purse a few days ago and rolled my eyes at myself.  I gave him the card.  He liked it.  He pointed out that it wasn't even signed - did I want to sign it now?  After he'd read it?  Maybe write Claire's name too?

Sometimes, I really suck.

This is what I gave my mom for Mother's Day. (Don't worry, I'm taking her to the spa too.)

Dear Mom,

Happy Mother's Day!  I had grand plans for you this year.  Really, I did.  I had plans for more than a wimpy EMAIL to send to my mom on this year, this special Mother's Day when I became a mother and I finally understood both sides of the coin: having a mother and BEING a mother. 

I dreamt of a spa day - just you and me - or maybe some sort of Meaningful Gift that would sum up my feelings of Thank You For Being There For Me This Year and Thank You For Being An Amazing Grammie and even Thank You For Being Just An Awesome Mom To ME.  But the more I thought about it the more quickly time seemed to pass and here I am, it's Saturday and Mother's Day is tomorrow and it's far too late to even overnight a bouquet.

Clearly, I have some lessons to learn about time management as a mother.

Like so many of my grand and ambitious plans this year, I just didn't get to finding the Big Something Special for you because I was busy attending to someone else's very insistent and persistent needs.  Because that's the thing about being a mother - it's always about someone else, isn't it?  

After 7 months of mothering Claire I see now that you are a tough act to follow.  You are such an incredible mother and I can only hope and try my best to mimic what you did for me.  Holding my tiny baby girl in my arms last fall I was overcome with a sense of "Don't screw this up!" 

But how?  HOW does one not screw up a child and (consequently) turn them into a screwed up adult?  There seem to be so many people who don't get it right - seemingly normal people even.

And yet, you did a beautiful job.  (I turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself.) You didn't even have The Internet.  (My go-to parenting resource for questions about things like "How to disinfect toys.")

I can now see the sacrifices you made for me.  If there's one thing about being a mother that is shocking in its magnitude, it's the sacrifices....Small and big, every day is just one long string of sacrifices that you make for your child.  Thirty years of choices you must have had to make, both simple and difficult, boggle my mind.  They are everyday things that singularly don't seem like much, but added up over the years make a huge difference.  These are the things that I am so very thankful for. 

I look back on my childhood and there are certain things that are clear to me now - things that as a child I was totally naive about and didn't realize that they were happening (or not happening).  These are things I want to do for Claire.  Thank you for being such an incredible example and giving me a plan of sorts to try and follow.

• Thank you for making me sit at the table until everyone was finished eating and making me try different things to eat.  Thank you for teaching me table manners and making me stick to them even when it was "just us" at home.  Adults without table manners are just really gross.

• Thank you for showing me how to properly clean a bathroom and kitchen.  There is no other mark of someone who knows how to clean than this.

• Thank you for letting us have a drawer in the kitchen dedicated to candy and snacks.  It was AWESOME and a lot of the time Rollin and I stuffed our faces with multiple servings of sweets before you got home.  It was great.

• Thank you for supporting me in whatever I wanted to try.  Soccer, writing, swimming, wearing my hair in a side pony-tail (actually, maybe you should have nixed that one), contact lenses in 7th grade, baking peanut butter cookies, putting photos of 80's heartthrobs on the outside of my bedroom door where you must have winced at seeing Kirk Cameron every day, experimenting with Sun-In in high school and going to bars in a third world country with my high school buddies.  (Just thinking about that last one with Claire makes me hyperventilate.  HOW?  HOW DID YOU ALLOW THAT AND NOT DIE INSIDE?)

•  Thank you for giving me an allowance and giving it to me on payday.  Thank you for letting me blow my allowance on licorice and poorly considered wardrobe items if I wanted to.

• Thank you for being so generous with your time.  For coming to every single boring sporting event and for making so much happen "behind the scenes" to create memories and smiles.

• Thank you for letting me turn into an adult at my own pace and learn my own hard lessons about life.  There's nothing like learning it the hard way to really make it stick.  (See also: What Happens When You Don't Pay Your Tuition Bill On Time, Unpaid Parking Tickets and Subsequent Warrant For Arrest That They Will Issue and Surprise! Finding a Job After College Isn't Always Easy.)

• Thank you for not killing me when I rear-ended someone in my car for the first time mere MONTHS after getting my driver's license.  Thank you for reacting in a wholly "These things happen, did you learn a lesson? Very good then, case closed," sort of way.  It was the first time I felt like I'd been treated like an actual person-becoming-an-adult and I remember it being a bit shocking that I hadn't been grounded or something similar.

• Thank you for trusting me as a teenager.  Knowing that my parents trusted me to make good decisions sort of produced the good behavior.  I knew what was expected of me and I behaved to that expectation and beyond.  Being a "bad" kid never even occurred to me as a possibility.

• Thank you for not forcing religion on me, but consistently exposing me to it at an early age. 

• Thank you for instilling in me a deep sense of family, loyalty and history.  There is no better story to me than one about my great-grandparents on the farm.  Knowing where I came from and the difficulties my ancestors went through, gives me a tacit sense of place in the world.

• Thank you for telling me that I have good common sense.

• Thank you for buying me new clothes at the start of every school year, even though I think sometimes it might have been a budgetary stretch.

• Thank you for being awesome with the whole Marine Corps Wife thing.  I know that it can't have been fun all the time.  (Such as, the time Dad went to war.  That sucked.)  More than anything, I have always thought that the experience of moving around a lot as a child made me a better person as an adult.  I feel like it made me more adaptable and open to change.  It made me fiercely independent and even by the time I was in ninth grade I knew that I didn't need a whole lot of people to get things done...Doing things on my own was fine and often turned out better for me.  I knew that if I could rely on myself then pretty much anything would be okay.  When I got to college, with my parents on the other side of the globe – it didn't even faze me as a big deal.  It was just another move.  I was completely oblivious to the trauma that goes with starting college because, to me, it was just another change in a long-established sequence.

• And, speaking of college, that's when I first realized that my parents were kind of awesome. Seeing everyone else's parents and their sometimes unreasonable and plain strange behavior made me think, “My parents are just...normal.  THANK GOD.”

You've always been a wonderful mom, but this year you were just above and beyond. 

I was so thankful to have you here after Claire was born.  I was so apprehensive of loads of people at the house and how was I going to play hostess but really, once she was here and once I was hopped up on painkillers I was so, so, so, GLAD that I had my mommy here to help me, no questions asked.   The cooking and cleaning and laundry were just incredible.  They are such small tasks but to me they meant so much.  Thank you.

I can tell that you are going to be the best Grammie ever.  Of course, your skills as a seamstress will ensure that she's the most stylish baby on the block, but I love how you read to her and say new words to her clearly while you point at objects and show her how to crawl and roll over.  (The last two are entertaining for EVERYONE, by the way.)  Your enthusiasm and drive to make sure that she is another successful baby girl in our family is so sweet.

I don't know how we can mess up with someone like you to look after us.  Chris and I are so happy that you live so close and that we can see you so often.  I can't wait to watch her grow up and have you in our lives to play a part in her childhood and help us turn her into the amazing woman I know she will be some day.  (Memo to Claire:  The High Expectations.  We have them for you.)

Hopefully, in 25 or 30 years on Mother's Day she will be just as appreciative of me and I will tell her, “Well, your Grammie sets a good example for me to follow.  She is the best mother ever and I just hope you think I'm half as good as she is.”

I love you Mommy.  Happy Mother's Day.  Claire and I love you so very much.

Love, A'Dell

This photo was taken by my kick-butt baby photographer, Angela Majerus.  She's pretty much the sweetest, nicest, and most overly talented person I've had the pleasure to work with in ages.  LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT HER.  If you live in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and are in need of a photog of any sort, (she does families!  and couples!  and anyone else!) check her out.

This is a really long doctor story. And it has working mom guilt. And a sick baby. Basically, it's totally pathetic.

We dumped our old pediatrician because of a host of issues including, but definitely not limited to:

• Jerky primary doctor who behaved as emotionless robot know-it-all

• Ditzy nurse who forgot to record her 2-month immunizations in her record

• Ditzy nurse who was out of Pentacel not once, but TWICE, and didn't call to tell us even though we were coming in specifically FOR THAT ONE VACCINE.

• Ditzy nurse who promised me that the individual vaccines were "just the same" as the combined, which is so not true.

• A friend had a horrible, wretched, many-tears and malpractice-lawsuit-in-the-works experience with another doctor at the practice, who continues to practice there as if nothing happened. (!!!)

• Icing On The Cake!  When I asked for her records they told me it was illegal to give them to me.  The Guardian of the patient.  HELLO THAT IS ILLEGAL.  YOU ARE SO BUSTED.

One of the lingering wounds from their office is that I was always being made to feel like an over-reactive WASP with too much health insurance and internet access when I asked questions about aluminum exposure or any other Hot Parenting Topics. 

I should have trusted my gut and run away back in November, but you what?  When you have just given birth sometimes you feel like you need to take the easy way out for a while.  This was a mistake. I know better than to jack around with my health and the health of my loved ones.  It's not worth any measure of convenience.

We took Claire there in January when she had a cold.  They totally pooh-poohed us with their, "It's just a cold.  No need to bring her in next time unless she has a fever."  They REALLY emphasized the fever as a true indicator of actual infant sickness.  Even though it was her first cold, and we were glad we were extra cautious, we still left feeling like they thought we were stupid for bringing her in. (I'm sure they were all, "Thanks for the $120 from your insurance company, SUCKAS!")

Last week when Claire developed a cough I didn't think much of it.  "Just a cough!" I thought.

When it got sort of hacky and phleghmy, I continued to shush away my Parent Sense that was getting steadily louder in my head.  "It's just a little drainage.  She's got a cold.  No fever.  She'll be ok."

But when she had trouble breathing, barely slept on Wednesday night and woke up wheezing I knew she needed to go in. 

I described her symptoms and Claire graciously offered up the cough I was trying to describe just as I was trying to find the right words.  The doctor listened to me earnestly, studying Claire as I talked and making sweet faces at her.  I liked this doctor immensely. 

She meticulously examined Claire.  Somewhere in between when she listened to her breathing for a second time and when she spent a full 5 minutes peering into her right ear as Claire lay screaming on the table I thought,

"Oh shit.  This isn't a cold.  She's taking too long to examine her.  Something is wrong.  SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH MY BABY AND I DIDN'T BRING HER IN UNTIL NOW. I AM A HORRIBLE MOTHER."

Sure enough, she had an ear infection and bronchiolitis.  They did a swab for RSV but, thankfully, it came back negative. 

For those not in the know, bronchiolitis is caused by a virus and it's pretty common.  But it's not simple, in that ANY virus with a kid this young can quickly morph into something more serious. 

I thought I'd get a prescription for drugs of some sort.  I was kind of surprised when she said, "We're going give her a breathing treatment with this nebulizer and then dispense one to you to take home that you'll keep.  She'll need these 2 to 3 times a day and I want to see her early next week to check her progress."

A nebulizer?  FOR REALS?  While I was signing the form saying that I would take responsibility for the $189 cost of the machine if my insurance company didn't pay up (HOW does a miniature air compressor cost $189?!), I got really mad.  Furious, actually.

My daughter is sick.  And she picked this up at her day care.  That means that someone else in that room, some other stupid kid had this virus.  And the parent DID NOT DISCLOSE THIS FACT.  And the parent sent their kid to school still!  All because of this high and mighty "Fever is the Ultimate Indicator of Sickness" rule that is floating around.

UGHHHHHH!!! 

But honestly, what do you do about it?  I can't really police her classroom and point out kids that I think are sick and should stay home.  The ugly truth is that kids get sick.  Some parents suck at washing their hands.  (GROSS.)  And even though these ideas are unpalatable, I need to work and Claire needs to be taken care of while I do that. 

It was a chilling reality check:  I'm doing the best I can with what I've got, but in that moment it absolutely felt like it's not enough.

The frustration I was feeling about this boiled over once we got home and she dribbled out almost her entire dosage of pink antibiotics onto her bib with a hacking cough. 

I felt like I had somehow failed her.   Kids that get bronchiolitis are at higher risk of developing asthma.  (Whether it causes asthma is uncertain - it may be that these babies are just more at-risk when it comes to their lungs.)  I felt like I had put her in a situation that would adversely affect her later in life.

What I was wanting in that moment was to stay home and sequester my child from All Bad Things In The Universe.  Because if it's not This, it's Something Else.  I regularly stop reading headlines, fail to click through, turn off the radio and change the channel when I see stories about horrible things happening to children.  I just can't stand to listen to it.  It breaks my heart.  I know that there are bad things that happen to children every day and I don't want Claire to have any part of it. Ever.

I know that is totally unrealistic though.  I don't actually want to have a bubble baby.  I want her to see and experience things and learn and grow and be social - she doesn't need to spend all day with me at home for the rest of her life. 

But when I was giving a wheezy baby an albuterol breathing treatment at 2 am when she'd woken herself up coughing, it was sure hard to think otherwise.  Bubble Baby sounded pretty good.

Losing control of your own health destiny

One of the many (many, many, MANY) things nobody tells you before you have kids is that you will be sick more often.

They tell you that your KID will get sick.  Because of course!  She is building her immune system and she's never been exposed to these germs and you will be there to comfort her through her sniffles as she grows up because you're the Mama and that's what you do.

But they fail to tell you that YOU and the HUSBAND will be sick as dogs.  It will be like a never-ending plague upon your home.

Chris and I have always been the healthy sort.  The last time I was butt-kicking sick was in 2004 when I had the flu.  AND I WENT TO WORK ANYWAY.  (I didn't know I had the flu until I had already been working for two days, so it's not like I was purposefully exposing my co-workers.)

And ever since then, it's been the occasional runny nose but nothing more.  Chris and I are just generally healthy people (which we are SO thankful for) and we are also a little bit OCD about the hand washing.  Those smarmy doctors on the Today Show that show up every fall and smugly implore America to "Just WASH YOUR HANDS ALREADY and you won't get sick," are right.  Washing your hands frequently takes care of most passing germs.  And if you're even moderately conscientious of what you're touching you can sort of control your own destiny and at least be proactive.

However.  When you have a child in day care you lose control of this artificial Bubble of Health. 

To wit:

There are 8 children in her classroom.  Each child has two parents.  That makes 16 people that need to be just as compulsive about hand washing if we are to maintain The Bubble Of Health in her room.

Add in the 3 care providers that are in the room and that's 19 people that need to be using Dial pretty frequently.

What if the kids in her room have siblings?  That are in other rooms?  With more kids who have parents?  That's like another 30 parents per sibling per room, plus all of THOSE KIDS' SIBLINGS and...holy hell this is too much math for me to do hopped up on DayQuil. 

It's a lot of people to expect to maintain The Bubble of Health.  Frankly, I don't trust them.

Just like that, the Bubble of Health is completely IMPOSSIBLE to maintain.  She gets sick and then you get sick and since she keeps going back every week and picking up new things everyone is always sick with a different variety of the same symptoms.

(Hand washing is important, but also?  Unlike an infant, I'm pretty aware of things I should not lick or pick up off the floor and put in my mouth.  That's why expecting babies to not pass things around in the same classroom is unreasonable.  You just can't stop babies from doing these things that naturally result in spit swapping.)

All of this is to say that Chris and I are sick.  Claire was sick last week and this week it's us.  And we are getting whallopped.  With a baby that has yet to sleep through the night, two parents who can't sleep more than an hour without waking up hacking, and two jobs to maintain to, uh, make money....this sucks.

Getting sick more often: one of the hazards of being a working mom that nobody wants to tell you about. 

If I had been warned I could have at least stocked up on DayQuil.