The case of the missing soothers

I think the sickness in our house is finally on the upswing.  The antibiotics seem to have CeCe's ear infection under control and Jorja isn't coughing at all anymore.  Ginny still has a bit of a cough, but not too bad.  Last night was the best night CeCe had in a long time.  She woke up once before we went to bed and I gave her her soother, and then she slept all night.  It was monumental really.  If is wasn't for Ginny falling out of bed once and then me waking up with Jorja beside me once, it would have been a perfect night.  Apparently Jorja had a bad dream and crawled in - I was oblivious to that until my arm was asleep and I woke to find a little head on it.  Crazy.  Anyway, back to CeCe.  We always keep a spare soother on her dresser for when she wakes up in the night.  It's just easier to grab that and plug her rather than fishing around in the dark trying to find the one she lost.  So last night I had given her the spare before we went to bed and not found the other one.  Fast forward to this morning.  I turned my alarm off and went back to sleep.  I woke up to Jorja standing beside me asking if I was going to work.  Well, I shot up and and got dressed, put Jorja back to bed and brushed my teeth.  That's when CeCe started to wail.  Loudly.  I went in there and couldn't find any soothers anywhere.  She was screaming.  I started looking under the crib and still couldn't find any.  Julie was in there by now and rocking CeCe, but without the soother, that was still a pretty noisy affair.  I turned on her night light and still couldn't find them.  I moved the crib away from the wall because that is where they often fall.  Still nothing.  Finally I ran downstairs and got the one we keep clipped to her snowsuit.  Julie got her calmed down and I was out the door.  I still made it on time (pretty much) and CeCe went back to sleep.  It was an interesting way to start the day to say the least.  Later.

Ears, puzzles and potty

It seems that the sickness has not yet worked it's was through the house.  CeCe had a terrible night last night and seemed to be pulling at her ear quite a bit, so I took her in this morning.  It turns out that she does have an ear infection, so now she's on antibiotics.  Jorja's last day of antibiotics is today, so I guess maybe it's time for the next one to start.  Hopefully she's on the mend by Monday.

The girls are both doing puzzles right now.  Jorja has loved puzzles since forever, and Ginny has recently taken an interest in them as well.  She can do a 24 piece puzzle pretty good all by herself.  Jorja is up to the 150 piece count.  As I was listening to them talk while they did their puzzles, Ginny said, "I'm doing awesome!"  It's good to have some self-confidence I guess.

Ginny is doing awesome with the peeing part of the potty training.  She wears panties all day now and pretty much without incident.  She even went to a birthday party this morning at the Fun Factory and had no accidents.  She still refuses to poop though.  So far, we've only been able to get her to go in a pull-up.  I'm not sure how we're going to get over this hurdle - she's pretty stubborn and pretty scared to go in the toilet.  I guess it will come, hopefully sooner than later.  If she would just let that first one go, she would be fine, but she clamps up tight as soon as she sits down there.  You can see her push and then the look of horror when it gets close and then she shuts the door.  Crazy.

I hear CeCe through the monitor now.  I think she slept more this afternoon than she did all last night.  I guess I should go get her out.  Later.

Fevers, snot and kijiji

This has been another week of sick kids.  It started off with Jorja staying home from the sitter and school on Monday and Tuesday.  She was coughing up a lung and had a fever for a few days.  We ended up taking her into walk-in on Sunday and the doc there put her on antibiotics.  She must be the only kid that doesn't like the banana-flavoured stuff.  After the huge fuss she was making, I decided to have a little taste and it was pretty good.  It tasted like a banana pudding cup that you can buy - I love those things.  Anyway, today the other two are sick.  CeCe had a pretty good fever when I picked her up today and Ginny is snotty and coughing.  The old snot cold has reared its ugly head again.

I guess it sort of turned out to be a good week for Jorja to be sick, depending on how you look at it.  I had a week of holidays left over from last year that I had to use up, so I decided to take them this week to get some stuff done around the house.  So I was off anyway, but this was supposed to be my week - the week of Dave.  It turned out I was still able to get a lot of stuff done.  We are going through a major clean/purge.  As soon as CeCe is done with something, it is out the door.  At one point, we thought we would have a big garage sale this coming spring, but I don't think there will be anything left, thanks to kijiji.  We have sold a lot of stuff on kijiji in the last year.  Today I discovered the two extremes of the kijiji shopper.  The first asked if I would take $5 less than the advertised price and could I deliver it.  I thought it was rather bold to ask for a reduction in price and expect it delivered.  Especially today when it was -45 with the wind chill.  I said no.  The other lives in Warman, works in Hague and is going to drive in from Hague after work tomorrow and said she would pay $5 more than the asking price.  I've never seen that before, but I'll take it.

I just spent the last half hour upstairs with CeCe.  It looks as though it may be another long, rest-filled sleep in the rocker.  Poor thing.  If that's the case, I better get 'The Big Bang Theory' watched now while I can.  Later.

Sensory experts

There's a bit of sickness running through our house again - nothing like the last bout thank goodness.  This is just a cold.  Ginny and CeCe have had the worst of it.  I've heard a few different names for colds - chest colds, head colds, night-time achy fever runny-nose colds.  Now, thanks to Jorja, I've heard of another one.  This is apparently the cold that Ginny and CeCe have, and the description is actually quite fitting:  the snot cold.  Yes, according to Dr. Jorja, they are both suffering from the 'snot cold' which occurs when snot runs from your nose and touches your top lip.

A lot of the basic skills I use at work, I learned in school.  There is however one skill that they don't teach at SIAST and that is sensory training (some may call it tasting).  This had to be learned on the job.  Before you laugh, there was a lot of training that went into this.  It is a critical component in the Quality Assurance of the finished product.  You can do all the chemical analysis you want, but if the beer doesn't taste good, what do you have?  To make a long story short, you could call me a beer sensory expert.  Apparently this sensory gene can be passed down, and I think Jorja might have it.  A few days ago we were running low on milk, so I ran out in the evening.  All that were left were 2 litre cartons (no 4 litre plastic jugs).  Not thinking anything of it, I bought the 2 litre carton.  Well, you should have heard the outcry from Jorja when I put that on her cereal in the morning.  "I don't like this milk.  I only like milk from the jug."  I thought she was just being a diva and forced her to keep using the milk until it was gone.  Finally we reached the end one morning and I filled her glass up with the 2 litre carton and her cereal got the new 4 litre jug milk.  She asked if it was new milk and I told her that she should tell me.  She took a sip of her cup and turned up her nose.  Then she had some from her bowl and sighed in relief.  She could tell the difference.  Who knew?  I guess we have a milk sensory expert in the house.  Later.