Dave and I had planned to split childcare since Katrina's preschool was closed, but I ended up staying home the morning I was supposed to go to work. Partly, I'd had a horrible night being woken up out of sound sleep by a painful crampy tummy and sprints to the bathroom, and partly my windpipe was tightening up with the rumblings of my usual bronchitis.
So I stayed home in the morning, with Dave and Katrina there as planned, but I still had to work, including an intense conference call that drained me. Dave and I were both able to get substantial work done with our delightful little girl around -- she's amazingly easy when there are no brothers around. She plays and sings to herself happily for a long, long time, and cooperative if we ask her to do something. I found it a little distracting on my conference call because I wanted to just listen to her talk out her little stories to herself.
Dave went to work when I was done with the call, but instead of resting (and I could have with Katrina there), I ended up working some more. After giving Katrina lunch, I took her with me into work, to "plug in an orange string" as I explained to Katrina (move a fiber-optic cable from one port to another on a piece of test equipment). On the way home, she and I checked out another play-structure company, and I found another option that could work in our grownup yard. I'm having a hard time parting with the numerous 0s this will take though.
But I was really wiped out. Headache, losing my voice, very unstable intestines. As soon as Dave got home from work, I did the bare minimum to make the appearances of caring for my family, found some pharmaceuticals, and went right upstairs to lie down for the rest of the evening.
First, I intercepted Dave reading to Katrina...or rather, Katrina's "KittyKat" reading to Dave. Hard to tell in this video, it's a little easier in the 2nd half, but Katrina is doing some combination of recognizing the word (this is a book she knows, but not well), and remembering it after she sees the first letter. She knows about sounding out words and does that sometimes too, though not here.
She's on her way!
And lucky me, we'd just gotten The Bourne Identity from Netflix. Not usually my kind of movie, but I'd caught a snippet of it on TV and wanted to see the whole thing. I'm finding myself hooked on a series of new TV shows on the USA network: Burn Notice, Royal Pains, White Collar and Covert Affairs. Except for Royal Pains (which is mostly cute and funny), the others are all spy-sort of mystery shows.
So The Bourne Identity is right up my new alley. I like seeing how resourceful and clever these spy-like characters are, and I like Matt Damon. So, I mostly lay flat in bed all evening and watched the movie. Dave wasn't watching it at first, but he can't resist a car-chase scene that involves a Mini!
This morning wasn't much better. First, I had to jump-start my voice; it was blocked to a whisper until it was warmed up enough. The headache persisted, and I was really really tired from my super-duper cough medicine. I got up the latest possible that I could and still get all 3 kids to a birthday party on time, which I didn't, we were late, but we were there.
This was a fun swim party. Chilly at 10am, but the water was warm and once the kids were in, they had a great time.
I'm happy to say that I didn't have to stay RIGHT next to Katrina the whole time. Arguably I was negligent by standing at the sidelines and watching her from a distance, but now she won't just dunk herself and not know enough to stand up, as was the case just a few months ago. She was very cautious and stuck to the sides. I was in a swimsuit and ready to dive in after her if need be, but I didn't feel the need to sit at the poolside and watch her like a hawk.
In fact, all the parents hung around on the side at a distance, and no one was wearing swimsuits (one Dad went in to play though) -- a far cry from the old days when we all had to be in suits and sit in the pool ourselves and hang onto our toddlers. This is definitely better.
After the swimming, we went to a small play structure next to the pool, more a younger-kid thing, but with enough slides and steps and things to climb on to interest this group of mostly 5-6-year-olds. I was chatting with some friends with my back to the play structure when I heard a collective gasp, and turned around to see a child crumpled on the ground.
It took a few moments to realize it was one of mine, and that he was yelling. My friends who'd seen it said Julian had gone right over a slide and landed headfirst on the bouncy plastic covering, but he was complaining about his arm. He never cried exactly, but said his arm really hurt. He could move it and bend it and wiggle his fingers, so I didn't really think anything was wrong. He said it really hurt though.
On the drive home, he complained again and again about his arm, saying that if anyone touched it, it hurt. Gabriel was surprisingly concerned, giving me updates every few seconds. When we got home, I brought Julian upstairs, gave him some ibuprofen, and got him to lie down in bed. I noticed a very natural arm swing, an unconscious nose scratch, and general normal motion, so I wasn't worried. I told him to rest for a while, let his body figure out what it needed, and then we'd take care of it. Gabriel kept asking about Urgent Care, but I told him we'd wait.
Sure enough, half an hour later, Julian was up and shouting at Gabriel about some or other offense related to a toy. When I got up from a cold dead nap myself, he was fine and it was all forgotten. He'd gotten a big jolt going headfirst over the top of a slide, and falling about 5 feet, but nothing major.
Me on the other hand...I never got going today. I did absolutely nothing except shuffle around and consider my woes. Headache. Super sleepy feeling. Tightness in my windpipe that causes my voice to go in and out. No energy. No desire to exercise. Just a complete, hopeless, useless slug.
8/28/2010
