Today was one of the few days that the H1N1 vaccine was available in our county. They were going with high risk populations first - pregnant women and very small children, health care workers, people 6-24, and teachers/day care workers. Three out of four of us fit those categories, so we left Dad at home and headed off to one of the clinics offering the shots.
I went early, because in the only other shot day I'd heard about, my cousin waited for 1 1/2 hours to get his daughter the vaccine, and they ran out of shots by the time their turn came (luckily they had flu mist left, so his daughter got that). But apparently, not early enough!
I should have realized when I couldn't get through the intersection without waiting through several lights that we needed to get up a lot earlier, but I thought maybe there was an accident. when we passed the clinic, we could see that the line was very long, but it wasn't until we parked quite a ways away and hiked over that I realized that the line was many, many lines that snaked and doubled back and twisted all around the building. They'd used yellow "caution" tape to create the Disney rollercoaster type paths to keep everyone in order. There were hundreds of people.
Three hours and 45 minutes later (!) the three of us got through the doors and then soon after were rubbing our sore arms/thighs.
Next plaue scare, I come more prepared - lawn chairs, a lot more toys than the wimpy two I had, the stroller for napping and a food cooler. We were lucky that the woman in front of us had family to call to bring snacks and she shared the goldfish with us. Then Joey found left-over grapes from yesterday's lunch in my bag, which kept us from full meltdown.
The kids did really well for a very long time, and it wasn't until the last hour that I had to threaten to take away Halloween or switch carrying them on a five minute rotation. And we were even luckier that it didn't rain until we were coming out of the building!
And now we won't die, so that's good too.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The dream of sleep
A full eight hours of sleep has become rather mythological around here. Something like the golden age of Greece, with stories of how it used to be in that long ago time. The Greeks had their minotaurs and sun chariots, we had sleeping until 10:00 on Saturdays and ear-plug free ears. It is all lost in the hazy, distant past.
I don't know when I last had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep - or even eight hours of interrupted sleep - but it wasn't recently, and the people around me are starting to suffer because of it.
There was a brief stretch of time - about four nights in a row until I ruined it by saying out loud how great it was - when younger son slept much of the night. However, older son makes up for it by waking up each morning at 5:00-5:30 and insisting that it is time to go downstairs. Attempts to use logic - "It is still dark, everyone else is asleep, therefore it is still night and you don't get cornflakes now" - were worthless, as were threats, bribes, begging, and tears (mine). When J is awake, he's awake and that isn't going to change. And no, he doesn't want to watch cartoons downstairs by himself, or play with blocks, or get a yogurt or anything else that lets us sleep. He will stand by the bed and stare at me in a really loud way (until I had J, I didn't know staring could be loud) and if I manage to persist in my stubbornness after that, the poking and pleading starts until his dad drags out of bed and down the stairs where they are really loud and perky directly under our room, so I am awake anyway.
Not that I'm bitter.
When J is asleep, he sleeps very soundly! Which is a good thing, because he insists on sleeping in the hall outside our room and we make a lot of trips past his little sleep cocoon - he's always been a floor sleeper, but the hall is new since bringing home D. A couple of times we've almost stepped on him, but now we're used to keeping strictly away from the closet side of the hall as we come and go. When I come up for bed I find him contorted like a pretzel, twisted around a pile of things he accumulated from various rooms as he was settling in after his stories and good-night kisses: extra pillows and books and bears and motorcycles. For a while he was putting on a sweater of Roni's over his pjs but lately he's switched to clutching a scarf of mine or a pair of my big woolen socks over his footie pajamas. He just likes to have something of ours with him.
On the rare days that older son sleeps until 6:00, or the heaven that is 6:15, younger son has been up three, four, eight times during the night. He sleeps very well from 8:00 to about 10-11:00 and then usually wakes up crying about every 45 (or 15) minutes for a couple hours. On lucky nights it is enough to go in and turn him on his side, retrieve his hand towel and panda from where ever they have landed, and he'll settle back to sleep for awhile. On unlucky nights, the only thing that soothes him is if I climb in bed with him and he can sleep plastered on top of me. Which is great for his bonding and his sleep, but I can't sleep that way. He squirms and likes to have his head jammed up against my chin and I'm a side-sleeper anyway. So I doze on and off, my thoughts drifting randomly between absolute warm fuzzies that this amazing, adorable little boy is actually mine, and counting exactly how many minutes of sleep I'm losing with every fifteen minute chime of the clock downstairs.
Sometimes bringing him into bed with us helps him sleep, but then there is still the squirming and kicking and plastering, so both Roni and I aren't getting sleep, so it is better to keep it to one awake adult in his room.
Roni does his share, but D often wants nothing to do with him at night so takes longer to go back to sleep, and I can't sleep through the crying, so then we're just both awake. (Another aside: much as I love him, it just makes me crazy with jealousy that Roni can fall back asleep again in about 4.3 seconds after getting up while it takes me 15-20 minutes to get back to sleep.) Lately, a few nights I've resorted to earplugs which gives me sore ears the next day but works really well! On Saturdays, Roni will often take the boys to the pool in the morning and I crawl back in bed. (Have I mentioned what a great husband he is!)
I know this is just a stage in our lives, but I am a sleeper by nature. Nine hours is about what I need to be a happy, patient, organized person. Right now, I'm a bit . . . we'll say short tempered and weepy and leave it at that.
I don't know when I last had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep - or even eight hours of interrupted sleep - but it wasn't recently, and the people around me are starting to suffer because of it.
There was a brief stretch of time - about four nights in a row until I ruined it by saying out loud how great it was - when younger son slept much of the night. However, older son makes up for it by waking up each morning at 5:00-5:30 and insisting that it is time to go downstairs. Attempts to use logic - "It is still dark, everyone else is asleep, therefore it is still night and you don't get cornflakes now" - were worthless, as were threats, bribes, begging, and tears (mine). When J is awake, he's awake and that isn't going to change. And no, he doesn't want to watch cartoons downstairs by himself, or play with blocks, or get a yogurt or anything else that lets us sleep. He will stand by the bed and stare at me in a really loud way (until I had J, I didn't know staring could be loud) and if I manage to persist in my stubbornness after that, the poking and pleading starts until his dad drags out of bed and down the stairs where they are really loud and perky directly under our room, so I am awake anyway.
Not that I'm bitter.
When J is asleep, he sleeps very soundly! Which is a good thing, because he insists on sleeping in the hall outside our room and we make a lot of trips past his little sleep cocoon - he's always been a floor sleeper, but the hall is new since bringing home D. A couple of times we've almost stepped on him, but now we're used to keeping strictly away from the closet side of the hall as we come and go. When I come up for bed I find him contorted like a pretzel, twisted around a pile of things he accumulated from various rooms as he was settling in after his stories and good-night kisses: extra pillows and books and bears and motorcycles. For a while he was putting on a sweater of Roni's over his pjs but lately he's switched to clutching a scarf of mine or a pair of my big woolen socks over his footie pajamas. He just likes to have something of ours with him.
On the rare days that older son sleeps until 6:00, or the heaven that is 6:15, younger son has been up three, four, eight times during the night. He sleeps very well from 8:00 to about 10-11:00 and then usually wakes up crying about every 45 (or 15) minutes for a couple hours. On lucky nights it is enough to go in and turn him on his side, retrieve his hand towel and panda from where ever they have landed, and he'll settle back to sleep for awhile. On unlucky nights, the only thing that soothes him is if I climb in bed with him and he can sleep plastered on top of me. Which is great for his bonding and his sleep, but I can't sleep that way. He squirms and likes to have his head jammed up against my chin and I'm a side-sleeper anyway. So I doze on and off, my thoughts drifting randomly between absolute warm fuzzies that this amazing, adorable little boy is actually mine, and counting exactly how many minutes of sleep I'm losing with every fifteen minute chime of the clock downstairs.
Sometimes bringing him into bed with us helps him sleep, but then there is still the squirming and kicking and plastering, so both Roni and I aren't getting sleep, so it is better to keep it to one awake adult in his room.
Roni does his share, but D often wants nothing to do with him at night so takes longer to go back to sleep, and I can't sleep through the crying, so then we're just both awake. (Another aside: much as I love him, it just makes me crazy with jealousy that Roni can fall back asleep again in about 4.3 seconds after getting up while it takes me 15-20 minutes to get back to sleep.) Lately, a few nights I've resorted to earplugs which gives me sore ears the next day but works really well! On Saturdays, Roni will often take the boys to the pool in the morning and I crawl back in bed. (Have I mentioned what a great husband he is!)
I know this is just a stage in our lives, but I am a sleeper by nature. Nine hours is about what I need to be a happy, patient, organized person. Right now, I'm a bit . . . we'll say short tempered and weepy and leave it at that.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Halloween was only one day when I was a kid
So, in the important question, "Am I the kind of parent who steals Halloween candy from her own children?" the answer has come down to a resounding Yes. In fact, I will even steal the best candies - the Reese's cups and the peanut M&Ms and the Almond Joys. I figure I have to steal now before they get old enough that they are counting, categorizing, rating, and hiding the candy and all that they offer poor Mom is the awful black licorice.Why do they even have candy, this far from Halloween is the other question. Roni decided to take them to the Zoo's Pumpkin Prowl Sunday night, which turned out to be a preview of the real event for little kids - I guess to have the practice wearing costume without screaming, which D definitely needs. They got a bag full of andy, some beanie-baby bears, and little LED flashlights amoung other loot. D was slow to catch on that if he got out of the stroller, people would give him candy for that minimal amount of effort, but he did figure it out eventually. J, on the other hand, remembers last year, so he had Roni and I help him practice saying trick-or-treat before they left so he wouldn't mess up and risk losing any candy.
D was a caterpillar (cause we have the costume from last year) and J was a fireman - just don't look inside the reflective yellow jacket because I don't think real firemen's coats have floral linings. 
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Getting into the Halloween spirit
We went out this afternoon to meet up with cousins to explore the corn maze and pick out pumpkins, which is becoming an annual tradition, complete with picture taking on giant pumpkins.
My favorite part is always the corn maze, which is designed to be the state of Washington. We entered on the Idaho border and had to find our way out at Neah Bay. Cousin Todd wanted to hit I-90 and hightail it west, but we let the kids pick the directions at each intersection and ended up spending a lot of time exploring the rural parts of Eastern and Central Washington. 
We spent some time in the barn maze as well. Less muddy and with a slide that they thought was so great they had to go around twice.
Then we began the great pumpkin search. I have strict pumpkin criteria - they must be round, smallish, and deserving of the label "cute." Also, J must be able to lift them. J participated enthusiastically, but D was more interested in his apple and rather angry that the pumpkins got to ride in the stroller instead of him.
It was a grand adventure until we somehow lost Todd and A and then J face planted into a major puddle. He recovered well, after the screaming died down, and we explained that he couldn't strip off for the remainder of the maze. Mud from toes to his hair. It was a very dramatic splash.
We spent some time in the barn maze as well. Less muddy and with a slide that they thought was so great they had to go around twice.Then we began the great pumpkin search. I have strict pumpkin criteria - they must be round, smallish, and deserving of the label "cute." Also, J must be able to lift them. J participated enthusiastically, but D was more interested in his apple and rather angry that the pumpkins got to ride in the stroller instead of him.Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A little natural beauty
Amazingly glorious weather took us out camping this weekend, near Northwest Trek and Mt. Rainier.
We were the only people staying in the campground tent area the second night, which was both wonderful for privacy and a little bit horror-movie-spooky while walking to the bathrooms in the dark.
We also learned that if you are going to take a little boy who hates covers camping in October, he is going to be a little boy popsicle by morning, despite your best efforts to keep him covered.
I'm not sure if I've been to Northwest Trek before - certainly not as an adult. It is a wonderful place to take kids!
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