Trouble

Oh Boy!  We are in for it.  Four years into this adventure we call "parenting", we are hitting bumps that I didn't think we'd encounter for at least another five years....... On Sunday we invited Cally's classmates and teacher over for an informal gathering.  This was something another mom had talked about doing earlier in the year, but it never happened, so John and I decided to host cocktails and sledding.  Because there was no snow, the sledding didn't happen, and perhaps that was the problem with our plan.  Whatever is the case, our daughter behaved in ways that we had never seen...... Soon after her girl buddies arrived, she was bubbling with excitement.  The warning bells should have gone off when, ten minutes into this "party", Cally said that she and Addie were going to draw on each others faces with her markers.  I mean, I guess, it's good that she told me before it happened..... I reminded her what happened the last time she did that with Hazen and asked if she was prepared to lose her marker for a week this time (for the first infraction it was just 24 hours).  She immediately declared that, no, she didn't want that to happen, but snuck upstairs with a few markers without me seeing.

Ten minutes after that, the rest of her classmates had arrived, and they immediately became a pack and headed upstairs.  Cally had spent some time cleaning up her room and in the past she'd shown her friends her room, maybe tried on dress ups or played with stuffed animals, but we never had any reason not to trust her up there.  We even sent her buddy Isaac's older sister upstairs to make sure nothing really bad happened (in retrospect, I'm not sure why we thought a 7 year old would or could wield the authority we needed).  Soon after they went up there, Cally came running downstairs, hardly able to contain the giggles-- she had used markers to write on her trash can.  I then moved the markers and said they wouldn't be able to be used for a week and went back to making sure the adults in the house were fed and hydrated.  Ten minutes after that, she came running down in a diaper and her bathrobe/towel on.  When I asked her what was going on and why she was acting so funny, she exclaimed that they were "playing babies" and she was the baby.  John then got her to get dressed and had a conversation about her silly behavior and why she was acting so differently that she does at school. The final straw came when the girls decided to sneak salsa and bean dip up to Cally's room for a "picnic".  I was alerted to a spill just as I was serving my homemade mac and cheese for the kids.  I ran upstairs to find two vomit sized spots on her oatmeal colored berber carpet.  Addie's mom was doing her best to clean it up, but it was clear that this was going to be a tough mess to clean up.

Through all of this, I was trying to be a "mellow" hostess, but at this point, I was ready to blow a gasket.  Our party was winding down and both John and I were scratching our heads as to why our cute and thoughtful daughter had behaved as she did.  We knew that she did not work alone and she was likely to be doing this because her friends were around.  We wondered if having had few playdates was a part of the problem..... she was so excited to have friends over that she got carried away and disregarded all established norms in our house.  Or maybe our norms or standards weren't clear?  Or maybe she's just too young to be trusted to be unattended?  I think it's a combination of it all, but we were so bummed out by her odd behavior.

But that didn't last long, because it's hard to be bummed out about a girl like this.  Someone who decides that we need to all go out and sled on a Monday afternoon because it finally snowed and Zephy needs some exercise or a that girl who randomly throws out "I love you's" just when you need them the most and tells us that we are beautiful on a whim.  She's that kid who gives random hugs to her brother and is learning how to share even though it doesn't come naturally, but she knows it is the right thing to do.  But, most importantly, she already gets the importance of saying "I'm sorry".
 

Don't get me wrong..... the gathering wasn't all bad.  The other parents had a ball and thanked us for hosting such a great event.  And at the end of the night, the boys had a little dance party-- during which Hazen was proud to learn a few new moves:

 

Sick and Proud

Our house has been full of a lot of sickness.  Everyone has had something...... Cally was the first to go down, but she seemed to get right back up from a rogue fever with only a lingering cough.  John is still coughing from his close encounter of the flu variety, Hazen has had a fever here and there, and I succumbed to a sinus and ear infection in the beginning of the week.

Everything was looking up by the middle of last week.  I was on antibiotics and feeling better, John and Cally were both sleeping through the night again, and all seemed great..... until the middle of my third period class on Thursday when I got the dreaded call.  It was Tammy calling to say that Cally had thrown up at daycare.  My stomach instantly lurched and my deep seeded dread about these situations was upon me.  As I've mentioned before, John and I were both eager to have children.  I told him I'd pull my weight with the sleepless nights, the midnight and early feedings, nasty diapers, middle of the night steam showers for coughs, spit up, whatever.  I just wanted him to promise me that he'd deal with the real throw up.  He eagerly agreed, but as it turns out, it never really works out that I can duck away and let him deal with these situations alone-- one of us usually needs to deal with the kid while the other cleans up the mess.  And this case was no exception.  Because I work five minutes away from Tammy and John had evening obligations that night, there was no option but for me to deal with this one on my own.

When I arrived at Tammy's, she'd already cleaned up the mess and Cally was curled up on a chair in her snow pants (she'd gotten barf on her shoes, pants, and socks), she was pale as a ghost, and she smelled like vomit because it was in her hair and on her necklace.  I gave her a big hug, loaded her in the car (thankful that she wasn't likely to get sick in the seven minute drive home), and bathed her as soon as we were home.  I then lined the family room couch with towels, talked her through the feelings she had before getting sick at Tammy's so she could tell me if she was feeling that way again, and set her in front of the television while I deep cleaned the house in a way that I haven't in some time.  I'd recently heard an NPR story about how virulent and nasty this new strain of the norovirus is and I didn't want to take any chances with it.  As Cally slept and zoned out to children's shows on PBS, I swept, vacuumed, mopped, and sprayed 7th Generation disinfectant over any non fabric surface in the house.

By 4 pm, I realized that I was going to have to load her into the car to pick up Hazen.  This time I covered as many surfaces of my car as I could with spare towels and had Cally sit with a bucket in her carseat.  I gave her the pep talk about how much easier it is to clean up barf in a bucket or toilet and crossed my fingers that this dam would not crack.  We made that trip without a hitch, but then she told me she was hungry.  I was tempted not to let her eat, but figured I couldn't let her go hungry so I made her some toast with butter and had her drink a bunch of water.  She asked me to bring her to the bathroom about five times throughout the afternoon and early evening and nothing ever happened, but by 6pm, she had that "familiar feeling".  She managed to sit on the toilet and barf in the bucket.  I was able to rub her back and help her through something that I've always thought myself a failure.  This was a milestone for both of us!

Friday morning, school was cancelled because of what was thought to be the next big storm (but really wasn't) and Cal was feeling better in the belly, but complained of an ear ache.  She'd been complaining briefly about this for the past week, so I decided to get in to see her doctor.  She did have some fluid in her ears, but her doctor wasn't very worried about that.  He did take a moment to listen to her lungs and found that she has walking pneumonia!  This presented itself so differently that last year-- no fever and acting pretty darn perky.  So, while John dropped Hazey off with Tammy and John headed up to the mountain, Cal and I went to our favorite lunch soup spot and picked up her antibiotics. 

By Saturday morning she was feeling well enough to join her friends for a Valentine's Luncheon at Annie's house while Hazen hung out with Henry and a babysitter and the parents got out to enjoy a morning of skiing together in the new snow.

On Sunday, it was below zero when we woke up, so we decided against bringing the family to Sugarbush and decided to haul the kids up to Underhill State Park in the Chariot.  At the last minute, I asked Cal if she wanted to ski down the road when we got to the top.  She seemed eager.  We didn't want to push it, but stuck Cally's skies, boots, and helmet into the Chariot just in case.  A two mile, 1000 vertical skin up brought us to CCC Road/Sunset Ridge Trail intersection. Hazen had napped the whole way up, and Cal was all excited to ski down.  And so she did..... the entire way with only a little Daddy's assist on the flats.

She had a ball:

And even wanted to hit the highland lift at Smuggs with her friend Lottie for some laps in the sunshine.  They looked like racing starfish:

And after that, she still had the energy/mental capacity to read, yes read, her first book from cover to cover:  Hot Soup (it's six pages long)!  But after such a crazy week and weekend, we were really happy to be able to get everyone's health back (for the time being) and do what we love to do with our kids.

A Great Day for a Skate

On Saturday, we skied at Cochran's, watched some cross-country ski races at Trapps, hit the Swimming Hole in Stowe, and had dinner at Frida's.  So today we had a lazy morning (with Donuts from Poorhouse Pies, again!) and then headed to this scene for a few hours of skating.  Chez Ganzenmuller!

They say it's hard to learn to skate on hockey skis b/c they are curved on the bottom..... but Cally went for it.  She used the double decker crate and managed to skate by herself from one end of the pond to the other.

But what Cally liked best, was being pulled around in the sled by anyone willing to do it:

Hazen snoozed through much of our visit, but when he did get up, he was keen to just "check it out":

Checking out the scene post nap

Chillaxing with Dad!

We are a little nervous, because he really seems to like flicking a puck around the house with his new hockey stick..... Not sure we want to join the youth hockey cult, but it's pretty cute to hear him talk about hockey.