Well, it’s definitely time for an update on the children.
Saturday I finally broke down and took Ethan to the doctor because of his eyes. I’d noticed that they’ve been bloodshot off and on for 3-4 days, looking fine whenever I tried to point it out to James, and they looking vaguely watery and bloodshot whenever james was nowhere in sight. The two items (bad looking eyes, and James) finally coincided and I took Ethan to urgent care. We waited around FOREVER, and then the doctor had the nerve to tell me that yes, it was pink eye, but too mild to be treated. It would clear up in 3-4 days.
“But it’s already been 3-4 days..?!?”
“Yup, that’s normal.”
I was annoyed. We came home and I started giving him some of the drops we still had in the house. (that’s right. I defied the doctor’s orders. Shoot me.)
Saturday night was very nice – James and I got a sitter and went to see a movie, “Rachel Gets Married” – a nice, light hearted jaunt starring Anne Hathaway as a drug addict getting out of rehab for a weekend to attend and participate in her sister’s wedding. There were such light happy go lucky moments as when we learn that Anne’s character was responsible for the death of their younger brother years ago, when she was in charge of him and was high as a kite – there was a car accident, the car went into a lake, and she couldn’t get the brother out. The movie revolved around the family and their disfunction, and how this event changed them further. Yeah, it was pretty much the feel good movie of the year!
I wouldn’t have chosen it if I’d known how heavy it was (as james said, “would you CHOOSE a kick in the balls??) but I can’t say I didn’t like it. Can’t really say I liked it either, but I didn’t DISlike it. It was interesting.
Then we got pizza at a place in Georgetown that has a huge beer selection, talked over the movie, the kids, our life, beer, the kids, work, the kids and then some more about the kids.
That night Jocelyn woke up just as we were about to head to bed, crying about her ear. So Sunday came around and once again, I was at the urgent care center, this time with Jocelyn. We saw a different doctor who confirmed, yup, she has an ear infection, and got a prescription for the super strong good stuff, augmentin es (for extra strength). Unfortunately for us…. the strong stuff is also the awful tasting stuff.
I gave her the first dose as soon as I got it, in Target, anxious for it’s to start working it’s antibiotic mojo, and she compained about it’s awful taste. That night’s dose went down too, with some complaints afterwards, but not too much trouble. Well, this morning… it took me a half hour to cajole her into taking it.
This is really dangerous territory. There are a LOT of things in a child’s life that a parent can just outright control. Child doesn’t agree? Parent can just pick Child up, and deposit her where Parent wants, despite Child’s wishes. However, there are 3 things that Parent Just Simply Cannot Control Or Order Away. Eating, Pooping, and Sleeping. You can’t make them do any of those things, so you should just give up trying.
Now, if I had to characterize our two children, I would say Ethan is the stubborn one (like a MULE) and Jocelyn is the more flexible one. If Ethan doesn’t want to do something, then by god he is going to try everything in his power to not do it. And I mean tooth and claw. Jocelyn however, will protest while she goes along with whatever it is she doesn’t want to do.
So when Parent (that would be me) lines up the treats and the glasses of water for afterward and talks about how the “medicine is going in there to beat up those germs! take that, germ! and THAT! HIIIII-YAH!” for a good 60 minutes and still is getting nowhere with Child (that’d be Jocelyn) and Parent starts to lose their patience/temper and starts to try to just start order Child to “take this medicine already!” with cold hard voiced counting to 3 (after which the child is just supposed to magically open their mouth and take the medicine) — Now this is the child who is “flexible” mind you, and she was having none of it… that should say something about how vile this stuff is.
Tonight, after almost nearly just about forcing her to open her mouth and squirting the medicine inside, she kept her mouth open, letting it drip out all over the place while crying plaintively.
This was only Day 2 of 10 days of medicine people. I waved the white flag and had our pediatrician paged. We’re taking Jocelyn in tomorrow for another looksee at the ears and a new prescription. She said not to worry about the morning dose.
Have I mentioned how much I love our pediatrician?
So that is the medicine drama. The actual The Girl Is In Great Pain! drama is much worse 
Last night she woke up crying just as we were about to go to bed. She did not stop. she clung to me and wouldn’t let go. James helped me get everything situated and we quickly brought her into our bed with me while James went to the guest room. She would quiet down just to start crying again in 30 seconds. After singing and stroking her back and holding her and putting her down and laying next to her and holding her again and nothing helping, finally I decided she really just needed to get her mind off of the pain. So we grabbed our blankies, went downstairs, whispered about how CRAzy it was, sneaking around in the middle of the night, and put on Finding Nemo. I kept telling her that if she wanted to fall asleep, she could, but she stayed awake the entire time, with only a few plaintive, “My ear hurts!” throughout. Afterwards, we went back up to bed and she slept until morning.
Today she cried about her ears (and yes, it was BOTH now, instead of just the one) a few times, but seemed to be much better in the afternoon, not mentioning her ears at all, so hopefully she can sleep through the night tonight.
Ethan has been doing pretty good in school. He has a very good week with a few isolated incidents. But when those incidents happen, ARGH. He seems to just LIKE punching his fist out in front of him. Even when there’s no one there, he just likes doing that. Unfortunately, sometimes he does it AT OTHER PEOPLE. Sometimes you just want to shake him and say, “THIS IS NOT HARD, JUST QUIT HITTING PEOPLE.” Erg.
With Jocelyn home today, I let him ride the bus home from school, something he’s wanted to do for a while. He had a good day at school, but doh – he hit a girl on the bus on the way home. His reason: She was singing a song and he wanted her to stop.
We walked over to her house and he apologized, but jeez, it just totally deflated me.
He is currently in a group class for social achievement once a week and he HATES it. the counselor said that of course he hates it, they’re calling him out on the things he’s doing. I feel OK about it, but I am still melancholy about a specific doctor that was highly recommended but is not in our insurance. One of the comments one of the recommenders said was that it was eye-opening for her. For her. It would be nice to know if James and I are handling things well, and get advice and help for anything we may be inadvertently doing to reinforce bad behavior.
There are 3 things he seems to be constantly doing around the house – throwing things, swinging things around and around and around, and punching his fist out in front of hime (whether someone is there or not, it’s not acceptable). Today after the bus incident, he seemed to be doing all three more and more and more. We finally decided (we probably should have done this a while ago) that any TV shows with fighting in it is hereby not acceptable. The kids favorite show is Avatar, which james and I both reall like as well, it’s won awards and shit — but the fact is, there’s fighting in it, in EVery episode, and that can’t be helping, so, no more Avatar. Ethan didn’t take it well. I told him that maybe after there’s no more reports of hitting or punching, we would consider putting it back on the tivo.
I don’t know if this is just me, but Ethan seems to have gone a bit backwards in his communication skills. He used to be able to relate things to me that were understandable and mostly, in full. But it seems like he hasn’t been doing that for a while now. For example, say there’s something he’s thinking, or remembering that spans 1 through 10. Well, he will start talking, and only say the parts 3-5, and I’ll have to try to figure out or ask enough questions to get the 1, 2, and 6-10 (did that make sense??) If it’s something that is home related or that we talked about before, I can do that fairly easily, but if it’s something I’m not familiar with, like something at school, then I’m totally in the dark. I’m pretty sure this is normal behavior, but it makes me wonder sometimes too.
Ethan is having his testing done next week, which is another source of some anxiety. Well, it is when I think about it, but truly, I don’t think about it very often, so I’m OK. when I do though, I worry about what the results will be and what those results will mean. James talked me down from the cliff on our date though with the simple truth – we’ll deal with it when we know what it is we’re dealing with and whether it even is something that needs dealing with.
I realize that was long — if you’ve stuck in here this long, I hereby award you a gold star for fortitude. If not, that’s ok too – I think mostly this post was for me, getting all this off my chest out out of my head is always good.
-amy skims the goo… OF HER BRAIN!
Everyone was very excited to have cake and see the balloons and sing happy birthday. It was very low key, lower than I had anticipated, really. We sang, served cake, popped party hats on everyone, and after the cake was consumed, everyone went out to play outside. Jocelyn and Ethan went out and ran around on the playground a bit, and then we came home to open presents. We got her a new scooter, a little pink bin of legos, a Barbie mermaid, fairy, and (of course!) a strawberry shortcake doll (Rainbow Sherbet!) 
