Heidi Chronicles

Heidi…

Feb 1st	7:21 AM	didn’t know that the superbowl was on today. Clearly I don’t live in America.
Feb 1st	9:18 PM	is sitting in her bed staring at the computer screen with no real coherent thoughts – oh wait, there is one: I’d prefer not to be sick.
Feb 1st	10:09 PM	loves the beauty of a layer of fluffy white snow. London is pretty this evening.
Feb 2nd	6:59 AM	is feeling like she’s in Kansas with 3+ inches of snow on the ground. Too bad it’s going to take Aaron hours to get home from Heathrow.
Feb 2nd	4:54 PM	wasn’t dreaming of a white birthday, but she LOVES it! Looks like a Kansas winter out there. 6+ inches, I’d say.
Feb 3rd	8:26 AM	is wondering what she’s going to do with the kids all day since they don’t have school.
Feb 3rd	4:40 PM	watching Elena and Macey play fetch with a snowy bucket.
Feb 3rd	7:30 PM	is dreading the next dose of eye drops for Liam’s pink eye. He hates them because they burn. It makes me so sad to have to do it 4x/day.
Feb 4th	7:01 AM	is boring.
Feb 4th	10:41 AM	loves that she had more than 50 happy bdays on FB…in addition to the phone calls, emails, and the appearance of her husband! Thanks all!
Feb 4th	3:05 PM	hopes the kids sleep a little longer. She wants to put groceries away and go back to sleeping on the sofa.
Feb 4th	8:53 PM	is sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Feb 4th	9:18 PM	has 211 drafts in gmail. This is ridiculous.
Feb 5th	8:33 AM	wishes it was snowing instead of raining on mushy snow.
Feb 6th	10:16 AM	is negotiating with schools for Liam. What a hassle.
Feb 6th	11:52 AM	is ready for a nap.
Feb 7th	1:12 PM	is going to make homemade oatcakes…if she can find her pecans.
Feb 7th	7:27 PM	wonders what the babysitter thinks when she comes to our house because it’s always a terrific mess.
Feb 8th	6:18 PM	is tired from a late night out and seems to be working on another cold.
Feb 9th	12:22 PM	is counting the minutes to nap time.
Feb 10th	5:57 AM	is thinking the neti pot totally rocks her sinuses world.
Feb 10th	6:15 PM	is feeling better mentally, but not so much physically.
Feb 11th	7:51 AM	is wondering what the day will bring. I woke up with pink eye and already called poison control for E. (She’s fine.) It’s not even 8!
Feb 11th	7:23 PM	is listening to Liam read to Elena. Too cute. I’m glad he’s doing it; I’m too tired. I guess pink eye wears me out.
Feb 12th	5:58 AM	is taking a sick day.
Feb 12th	9:52 PM	is eating a hot potato before bed. Mmmm…potato.
Feb 13th	8:29 AM	is wondering if she should pick up the house before or after playgroup. I’m not doing both.
Feb 13th	2:34 PM	sees her entire to-do list flying out the window because she feels too crappy to do it today. And I have pink eye in both eyes now. sheesh.
Feb 15th	3:17 PM	is still alive. And the house is quiet. It is blissful.
Feb 15th	5:51 PM	enjoying having Aaron’s mom at the house. Everyone wants *her* to help them! Love it.
Feb 16th	4:54 PM	is on a walk alone. It’s actually a pretty day!
Feb 18th	3:30 PM	is avoiding all the things she should be doing.
Feb 18th	9:29 PM	(hearts) Wednesday nights.
Feb 18th	9:44 PM	kind of wants to “report” the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group just because it would be funny.
Feb 19th	2:14 PM	is trying to sleep in preparation for the dub pistols tonight.
Feb 20th	5:13 PM	is making tortillas.
Feb 20th	10:39 PM	is wondering what she did…well, not wrong really, but not exactly quite right.
Feb 21st	7:03 PM	is looking forward to her day off tomorrow. Yippeeeee!
Feb 22nd	1:43 PM	slept ALL morning and is finally getting her crap done.
Feb 23rd	8:04 AM	is unprepared.
Feb 23rd	7:49 PM	is tired of dubbed Backyardigans. They sound terrible.
Feb 24th	12:12 PM	loves her new Chinese massage therapist.
Feb 24th	10:47 PM	adores her husband because he knew Mr. Ocado’s substitution wouldn’t work. No sugar…NOOO sugar!
Feb 25th	8:59 AM	’s to do list thinks it’s Monday. Never a good thing.
Feb 25th	12:45 PM	is taking Liam for an assessment at ASL to see if he’s socially acceptable.
Feb 25th	8:58 PM	is glad the assessment is over. Tomorrow we’ll know which school Liam will go to. Thank god that’s done. Next I’ll start driving lessons.
Feb 26th	12:10 PM	has decided that Liam will be going to ASL. Decison 2008/2009 DONE.
Feb 26th	12:29 PM	keeps forgetting that not everyone knows what ASL means. It’s American School in London.
Feb 27th	8:13 PM	is going to make lunch for tomorrow now that the kids are finally in bed.
Feb 28th	10:01 PM	had a surprisingly nice Saturday.

This morning Elena woke up and a few minutes later I heard some noise so I sent Liam up to let her out of her room. Instead of their usual leisurely stroll down the stairs together after he opens her door, Liam came tearing down the stairs yelling, “Elena’s doing something she’s not supposed to be doing! She’s drinking MEDICINE, Mama!”

Ummmm…oh SHIT!?!?

I threw the toast I was making on the plate and ran up to find her. She’ had made her way into our bedroom and there she was standing next to a sleeping Aaron holding a bottle of children’s ibuprofen announcing to the world, “I dwink da med-sin, Mama!” just as pleased as she could be with herself and her little pink medicine mustache.

I grabbed the bottle and of course she started screaming because I’d taken it away, and I started trying to figure out a) how in the hell she got the bottle, and b) what to do.

Last time we had an incident Aaron had accidentally given her too much acetaminophen. I knew that she only needed 5x the dose to OD on that. I didn’t know how much liquid was in the bottle, but Aaron and I quickly figured that she’d likely only had about a third of a bottle. So, if that was the amount for ibuprofen, we were likely over the limit.

Shit, shit, shit!

My first thought was call poison control. My second thought was take her to the doctor. Aaron assured me that calling poison control was the way to go.

Meanwhile, Elena is screaming because she’s mad, but also because she’s hungry, and Liam is whining that he doesn’t have his damn toast. This is a serious mom dilemma here peeps: do I continue searching for poison control number and let them scream, or do I stop and make them breakfast so they’ll stop screaming so I can think while I’m looking for poison control number?

Um, I needed them to be quiet so breakfast won out and it was a much more peaceful search for a number that evidently DOESN’T EXIST. Seriously…I think they must have their call center understaffed and don’t really want anyone to call. I did try one number and it was outside of hours. We couldn’t find a 24-hour helpline anywhere!

So, what does this American do when she’s baffled by the UK way of doing things? Well, I’ll tell you what she does: she calls American poison control at 1.30 a.m their time because the number shows up as one of the search results in Google for “UK poison control.”

After 30 minutes of trying to figure out the UK number, I am eternally grateful to the man in Utah who told us that she would have to drink the entire bottle to OD. I KNEW there was less than a full bottle so we were home free! Waa hooo!

So basically, she’s fine – and as a side effect, she suffered no aches or pains this morning. Lovely, right?

I did worry a bit when Liam said to Elena (out of nowhere) that if she didn’t eat her food at breakfast she wouldn’t be alive.

Now that would have been some crappy foreshadowing.

Anyway, when I finally went in her room to figure out what had happened, I realized that she’d turned on her light, noticed the medicine that I’d given her last night, gotten an idea, turned her laundry basket upside down, climbed on top, stretched to reach the top of her (very tall) dresser, grabbed a bottle, opened the child proof lid (WTF?), and enjoyed a nice, sugary swig of her morning berry cocktail to get her fix.

The kid absolutely loves medicine. I wish you could have seen how pissed she was when I took it away. It was like I found her stash.

But, problem solved: med-sin removed from dresser, light bulbs removed from lights, laundry basket removed from room.

As the Brits like to say…well, that’s sorted.

And by the way, just so you know? Not that it really matters in light of everything else this morning, but I woke up with pink eye.

It’s absolutely beautiful, but London is pretty much at a standstill.  Aaron did make it home ok from the airport this morning after being in sunny Thailand.  London traffic isn’t bad when the buses can’t run and everyone stays home!

Go over to Flickr for pics. I’m too tired to put them in over here.

Like Liam’s, there will be more.

1. She sings all the time – and amazingly she sings in tune.  (“in tune” probably isn’t the proper music terminology, but I’m too lazy to look it up right now)  She’s started making up songs to tunes she knows, which I find particularly funny.  “Shoe, shoe, shoe.  Shoe, shoe, shoe.  Let’s go find my shoe.” to the tune of Jingle Bells is one of my faves thus far.
2. She loves anything Liam does.  Forget all of those toys designated for two- or three -year olds – she’s all about the Legos.
3. She is cuddly all. the. time.  Obviously she got it from her father, not her prickly mother!
4. Mimicking Liam is one of her favorite things to do.  (“I hab a penis TOO, Wiam!”  No you don’t, Elena.)
5. She sends Aaron off to work every morning with “Hab a gud day, Daddy!”
6. The phone is her friend.  Her first question is always, “Awr you habing a gud birfday?”
7. She likes to play with her dolls – especially to nurse them or make them go on the potty.
8. She likes to tear things up…the wings off of airplanes, the head off of Spiderman, you name it, she’ll destroy it in the most painful way possible.
9. She says things like, “I fink we shoud haf oatmeuwl wif bananas fow bweakfast…dat sounds wike a GWEAT idea!” and I have to laugh because she sounds just like her mother.
10. She deliberately torments Liam by doing things like grabbing Milo and running away. She took one of the packages he made for the Lego mailboxes today and I thought he’d been murdered.
11. She’s tough.  Any kid who can get hit by a bicycle and stay calm enough to tell everyone at the hospital that she “got bwood up dere” in her sing-songy falsetto voice with a smile on her face would have to be, though.
12. She’s a great pretender.
13. She adores school.  The first day she walked in, walked to the back of the room, gave me a brief look and yelled, “BYE BYE, MAMA!  I see yow wayter!”
14. She is always covered in something.  Paint, water – she LOVES water – snot, milk, butter, makeup, food…it’s just disgusting.
15. If she wants you to come somewhere with her, she grabs your hand and won’t let go.  She tells me to sit on the sofa when we get there because she knows I’ll try to run into the kitchen and do one last thing before I finally sit.  Smart kid.  Way smarter than I am.
16. She draws circles.
17. She loves books – the same five books.
18. She eats for five people and will do anything to get food when she’s hungry.  The other day she brought me corn from the freezer because I’d locked her out of the fridge with a handy IKEA gadget (the duck tape stopped working).  She ate a cup and a half of frozen corn!
19. She draws all over herself when I give her markers – always has.
20. Any cup without a lid given to her will last 20 seconds before she sticks her hand in it or dips some sort of random food into it.  But, she always eats it and declares it “deWIHshus!”
21. She loves her naps and when offered the opportunity, usually runs to get her blanket with a big grin saying, “I go sweep in my bed now!”
22. To her, Liam is Wee-um.
23. She gets bitten by Murphy and Macey at least once a week.  She totally deserves it most of the time.
24. I have caught her in the bathroom with some sort of makeup on her face no less than three times in the past 12 days.  I have caught her in the bathroom with her hand in my makeup bag no less than 10 times in the past 12 days.
25. She sleeps on her floor about three nights a week.
26. She needs at least three blankets on top of her when I tuck her in before she thinks she’s “cuhvuhed up.”  She screams for more covers if we neglect her needs.
27. She hides to poop, but comes and tells me when she’s done.   The other day she went a little bit on the little potty then finished in a diaper later and before I could get to her, she had completely disrobed, taken off her diaper and dumped the poo into the little potty.  I sort of think she thought she might fool me.
28. She ADORES lotion.
29. She thinks hair ornaments are simply placed there to be removed.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like this for the kids, so it will be more than 25, I can’t lie.

1. He holds his junk as often as possible and doesn’t realize he’s doing it.  I’ve been informed that this is very common and every male would do the same if they hadn’t been conditioned through years of practice to overcome the Hand-Penis Magnet Problem.   We have discussed the notion of Private vs. Public place and in the past he has told me he’s “just too tired” to go upstairs to his room.
2. If he’s really hungry, he WILL eat the crust.
3. I’m not sure where he learned to fold laundry, but it certainly wasn’t from me…he does it completely differently than I do.  At least he does it.
4. He calls parmesan “carmesan”,  trigger “trugger”, baby sitter “baving sitter”, nunchuk “nunchunker” and the list goes on.  He knows exactly what he’s doing because he will say, “Mama, you call it [word], but I call it [made up word].
5. He talks to himself a lot and replays entire conversations in whispers.  (I do this too but over time and after lots of strange looks I’ve learned to do it silently.)  If I ask him what he’s saying, he says, “Mooooom…I was talking to mySELF,” as though I should not be able to hear him.
6. He defines his rude actions as he does them.  For example…”Take the ball from Elena” in a shitty tone of voice as he…wait for it…takes the ball from Elena.  He’s going to have to get a little smarter about that one.  Otherwise it’s going to be tough to sneak out of the house.
7. He can read and sound out things to write phonetically.  To Daddy, from Liam becomes “TO DAD (say that last d), FRUM LiAM.”  Not sure where the lowercase “i” in his name came from.  He dots it with a big-ass circle.
8. He knows more geography than I ever will.
9. He thinks people like to eat hot lava.  Aaron has assured him that they don’t eat it more than once.
10. He plays pretend a lot.  Whenever we play Gabe and Sadie, Liam is Gabe, Elena is Sadie, and I am Uncle Elias.
11. He rocks the Wii Sports.
12. He loves sugar and will tell you so.
13. He asks a LOT of questions.  One of the schools I’m looking at for Fall lists Inquiry as one of their top learning tools.  They are so screwed if we send this kid there.
14. He speaks British when he feels like it.
15. He’s afraid of loud noises which is completely reasonable.  But the light on the smoke detector and the digital clock?  A little weird.
16. He’s a very gentle soul and gets his feelings hurt pretty easily…but he’s emotionally gentle with others.  Ladies, if you hurt him I will kick your ass.
17. Physically he’s a madman.  He and Elena wrestle all. the. time.
18. He’s a bit of a literalist, which causes some problems when trying to give him directions.
19. His friends are a hodge podge of nationalities and ages.  It’s fantastic!
20. He rides a scooter like a champ, with a helmet of course.
21. Legos are his favorite thing to play with at the moment.  Today we made mail boxes and packages. Those of you with Lego Wii Indiana Jones will be able to visualize these creations.
22. If Elena does something and I correct or redirect her, he says, “But Mama…*I* [get to stay at the table and eat] because *I* [wasn't putting peas in my milk cup].  I so remember doing that to my sister.
23. He gets bitten by Murphy or Macey at least once a week.  Let’s just say that I don’t blame the dogs.
24. He loathes lotion.
25. He loves anything mechanical and wants to know how it works – like oil wells, printers, light switches, vents, dryers, washers, refrigerators, dishwashers, car brakes, to name just a few.
26. He still needs a nap most days, as is evidenced by him crying and yelling, “I DON’T NEED A NAP!” occasionally. He’s really good about it if we stick to the routine, though.
27. He would eat cottage cheese, toast with butter, and blueberries for breakfast every, single day.
28. Coffee, tea, and sparkling water pretty much kick ass in his mind.
29. He enunciates his words and it’s fun to watch his facial and lip muscles work when he’s talking.
30. His eyes shine when he’s really excited.
31. He *knows* he does good work.
32. He turns off a video after the first episode of anything he’s watching, even though there are two more episodes. A good trait, but frustrating to Elena and to me when I’m trying to cook dinner and keep Elena occupied.
33. If I say that he’s wearing me out, making me tired, draining my energy, not listening, or anything along those lines, he immediately responds, “but that’s because YOU’RE wearing ME out, Mama.”
34. He starts a lot of sentences with “that’s because” and “but that’s because.”