I'M B-A-A-A-A-CK!

It's been quite a while.  We have been battling one illness after the next here in the Crazy Lane.  First, we all got colds.  That turned into RSV.  After we recovered from that, we were hit with Strep.  As the girls got better, I actually got ... are you ready for it?  Shingles!  Shingles?!  I'm not 80, for goodness sake! 

At any rate, the shingles have just about cleared up, right in time for ... PINK-EYE!  Cakes, Peanut, and I have all been stricken with goopy, itchy eyes.  Are you ready for my treatment?  BREASTMILK!!!  I learned from a friend of mine that breastmilk works wonders when it comes to ear infections and pink-eye. 

As soon as Peanut woke up with her eyes fused shut, I immediately took aim and fired with my organic home remedy.  However, as you can imagine, the "guns" were not designed for accuracy.  The result was 15 minutes of screaming and spraying before I achieved the desired result.  After that, I wised up.  I now collect the homemade antibiotic in a cup, line up the children, dump it into their eyes, and have them blink to flush their eyes out.  I even added Bean to the assembly line, as a pre-emptive strike.

It's working!!!!  Peanut's in much better spirits and is losing that goopy, glassy-eyed look that accompanies pink-eye.  Cakes' pink-eye has been contained to one eye, which is clearing up nicely.  And Bean has yet to be stricken.  My eyes are also clearing up nicely.

And so Mommy, the human pharmacy, carries on and is trying to catch up on the blogging.

THE MYSTERY SHINER

Bean hasn't been feeling well.  She's had a fever and swollen glands.  Then, this morning, she woke up with a black eye.

(That would be Bean's supermodel face).  At first, I thought it was just bags under her eyes from being tired and sick.  Then, the bags went away and the shiner stayed.

I asked Bean what happened.

"To my eye?"

"Yes."

"I don't know.  Cakes hit me in the eye with her hand."

"She did?"

"No."

"Well, what happened?"

"I was crying and I rubbed my eye and now it hurts."

"It looks more like you bumped it or got hit."

"Nope.  I just rubbed it.  Now it hurts."

Well, that must've been some vigorous rubbing!  No further information was forthcoming, so the mystery remains.

JUST IN TIME FOR PICTURES

Ah, sweet little Cakes.

The baby of the family for almost three years.

Well, that sweet little princess bit her big sister in the face.

Just in time for soccer pictures. A nice, big bitemark under her left eye is preserved for posterity. Nice.

DOCTOR BEAN?

I used to think Bean would grow up to be a doctor (or get into some sort of nurturing/healing job). She loves to put bandages on people, and take their temperature, and put blankets on them when they feel sick.

But, I'm noticing a trend lately. Very strange. It all started when we were watching "Go, Diego, Go!" Diego was rescuing a couple of kinkajous from some kind of prickly bush. Each of the kinkajous had an injury on its hand. Now, if you've ever watched Diego, you know that nothing is drawn with a great deal of detail. But, Bean was very upset about the boo-boos on the kinkajous, and she covered her eyes so she wouldn't have to see all the ... um ... "gore(?)". She reacts the same way if she gets hurt. She doesn't want to see her boo-boos, and she doesn't want anyone else to see her boo-boos. I can eventually get them bandaged by promising not to look at the boo-boo while I put on the bandage (I'm hoping she outgrows this before she realizes how impossible that is).

Then, we had a trip to the pediatrician. Where Bean had to get her shots in preparation for school (I'm homeschooling, but I still need to provide proof of inoculations to the state). That meant four shots. On most kids Bean's age, those shots would be in the arm. But, I don't think Bean has one ounce of body fat on her little frame, and I was concerned about those big needles going into her little upper arms; so, we opted for the butt shots. It took two people to hold her down while the nurse administered the injections to my screaming cherub, who clenched her little cheeks together so tightly that (as the nurse put it) it was like trying to give an inoculation to a brick wall. I assumed things would get better once the shots were over. I was wrong.

For the rest of the day and the next day, Bean adamantly refused to use the toilet for her business, claiming that it would "hurt my bottom." I could kind of see the logic, but I eventually had to place her, screaming, on the toilet and supervise until she eventually expelled her waste.

Yesterday, she was playing outside with Aunt Tracy and scraped her knee on the sidewalk. She wouldn't let anyone get her pants off to bandage it, because she didn't want to see it. Okay. I was amenable to letting her sleep with her pants on for a night. But that was followed with, "I can't go pee-pee on the potty because I hurt my knee." Huh? Not getting it.

I guess in kids' minds there is a logic to all these kinds of things ... In the meantime, my poor child has not peed on the potty voluntarily in over 24 hours.

SINCERELY 'FRO ME TO YOU - CAN YOU TELL WHICH EYE GOT POKED?

After about a week, my eye recovered from the poking. A day after the incident, I decided to document it for posterity (but not for any photo albums or scrapbooks). See if you can guess which eye got poked?

I must say, I especially love the glassy-eyed effect caused by the antibiotic ointment.

For more fun photos, check out We Are THAT Family.

MOTHERHOOD REQUIRES SAFETY GOGGLES

Let me start at the beginning. Two weeks ago, one of my girly-girls was enthusiastically brushing my hair with a hair clip. Said hair clip spiraled out of control and ended up in my right eye. Excruciatingly painful? Yes. But this is not the first or worst eye injury I've ever had.

Back in 1997, I was at my third college. My roomie, Tanya, her younger brother, and I commuted to school every day, and we spent our time between classes hanging out at the campus bookstore where Tanya and I both worked. One morning in the beginning of the semester, I was pulling my syllabus out of my work folder to see how many papers I would be writing throughout the next three months. Anyway, I pulled out the syllabus and promptly stuck it right into my left eye. Fortunately, the school's athletic trainer was in the bookstore at the time. He took me back to his office, flushed my eye out, and patched me up until I could see a doctor. So, I spent the day with a patch on my eye. It only took about an hour for me to tire of explaining why I had a patch on my eye. So, I got a Post-it, wrote "papercut on eyeball" on the Post-it, and taped it to my eye patch. Various people would walk up to me, read my Post-it, and carry on with their lives.

The pain was pretty bad by the time we had finished classes for the day, so we headed straight to the emergency room after we left school. Where I got a shot in my rear end. And Tanya got asked out on a date. By the male nurse who gave me a shot in my rear end. They gave me a fresh eye patch and some Codeine, and sent me on my way.

Since I only had one functioning eye, Tanya drove to school the next day. Since I only had one functioning eye, I didn't bother reading the label on the Codeine that said it should be taken with food. Soon after taking my pain pill, I realized that I should've eaten something and hurriedly scarfed down a Twinkie. It was too late, though. My nausea began to increase steadily, as Tanya's brother sang loudly and off-key in the back seat of the car. For some reason, that made my nausea worse. By the time we reached the school parking lot, I yelled to Tanya's brother to stop singing. Then I opened the car door, threw up in the parking lot, and we continued on to find a parking space.

Since I only had one functioning eye, I also didn't read on the label that Codeine caused marked drowsiness. So, I spent the day asleep on the couch in the student body president's office.

To this day, when I rub my left eye, it squeaks. Loudly. This makes my husband nauseous. I think it's a pretty cool parlor trick, like my double-jointed elbows and clover tongue.

But, I digress. Today, I was putting shoes on Cakes so she could play outside with Bean. Cakes was excitedly grabbing at my head for balance while I wrestled her squirmy feet into the sandals. Then, I felt Cakes' thumb in my right eye. Yes, the same eye that was injured two weeks ago. This time, my mother took me to the emergency room. No shots in my rear end this time, and no one got asked out on a date. They did put a patch on my eye. I was going to take a picture of myself all patched up for the blog today, but I was walking like a drunken sailor at the pharmacy and still had vivid memories of vomiting in the parking lot at college, so I took the eye patch off. And called Tanya to reminisce.