Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The Key Jar: 48 Questions To Ask Your Child

Recently I ran across something on social media; something called 'The Key Jar.'  I opened it and skimmed it.  I would post the link but now I can't find it.  Just google 'the key jar 48 questions' and do your own digging.  I think you're supposed to pull one question out of the jar daily to ask your child/children, but I decided to hit my 6 year old daughter with all of them at once.  Here are the questions with 6 year old answers:

1.  What was your first thought when you woke up today?
A:  I thought I had to go to school and then I remembered it's Saturday.

2.  What are you most afraid of?
A:  falling into lava

3.  What do you want to accomplish by your next birthday?
A:  Mine Craft

4.  If you could be famous for one thing what would it be?
A:  making the world's largest pizza

5.  What's your favorite word right now?
A:  Doink.  That's what daddy calls me.

6.  What do you love about yourself?
A:  my heart

7.  What's something that is hard for you?
A:  Standing on one foot.  Seriously, watch me [gives dramatic demonstration]

8.  Describe your perfect day:
A:  Laying on the couch playing Mine Craft all day.

9.  Who in your class is lonely?
A:  nobody

10.  Who in your class is a leader?
A:  Ruby and Meghan

11.  When is it hard being a friend?
A:  when kids are mean

12.  Who is somebody you'd like to be friends with who isn't yet your friend?
A:  Aurora (as in Sleeping Beauty)

13.  If you could switch places with one friend for a day, who would it be?
A:  Meghan

14.  How were you helper today?
A:  I put makeup on my brother.

15.  What's the smartest thing you heard somebody say today?
A:  Don't hit anybody with a bat.

16.  Who in your class makes you smile?
A:  Anybody funny

17.  What's the best thing about living here?
A:  my friends

18.  How can you change the world?
A  By taking over the world.

19.  What's the biggest challenge facing our world today?
A:  Being a kid in other countries.  I don't think they have pizza.  Or Mine Craft.

20.  If somebody from another planet came to Earth, what would he or she think of our world?
A:  It's dirty [school recently had Earth Day activities]

21.  What is something you use every day that you don't need?
A:  my iPod

22.  What would be the hardest thing about being blind?
A:  Not being able to see!!!  DUH!

23.  If you could give everybody in the world one piece of advice, what would you say?
A:  I would show them the best way to eat pizza.

24.  If you could time travel, where would you go?  What would you change?
A:  I would go back to the dinosaurs and tell them they are all going to die.

25.  What is something you know how to do that you could teach others?
A:  Teach grownups how to play hide and seek; you guys are terrible at it.

26.  What will you be doing in 10 years?
A:  Drinking coffee

27.  What's the most important decision you will have to make in your life?
A:  Where to live; there's so many houses.

28.  If you could only eat one food for an entire year, what would you choose?
A:  pizza

29.  If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
A:  flying

30.  What is the best thing that's ever happened to you?  What is the worst?
A:  The best is being a sister.  The worst is having to pee so bad when I get off the bus because I don't pee at school!  The bathrooms are disgusting!  Nobody flushes!

31.  If you had 3 wishes, what would they be?
A:  Having a mine for diamonds and gold, to go to Disney, and that nobody ever gets sick

32.  What are you the most proud of?
A:  being friendly

33.  Who in your class seems sad?
A:  [not sharing her answer]

34.  Who do you admire?  Why?
A:  Meghan, because she's always so good.

35.  What is something you've always wanted to ask me?
A:  about true love

36.  If you could switch places with one family member for a day who would it be?
A:  Jack [2 year old brother]

37.  What are the 3 most important qualities in a friend?
A:  nice, funny, playful

38.  What's the funniest thing somebody did or said today?
A:  A girl at t-ball gave me a rock from her pocket.

39.  Besides your teacher, who is somebody in class you could learn from?
A:  Ruby

40.  Who in your class is special?
A:  Max [her crush]

41.  What is the most important job in the world?
A:  daddy's job

42.  If you could create one law that everybody on Earth had to follow, what would it be?
A:  have more fun

43.  If you could go anywhere in the world to complete a good deed where would you go and what would you do?
A:  everywhere, to clean up the trash

44.  What will the world be like in 10 years?  What would be the same?  What would be different?
A:  I have no idea; I'm just a kid.

45.  Is it possible to help somebody you've never met?
A:  yes, I give my dollars to church

46.  If you could live in another country for 1 years, where would you live?
A:  paradise; somewhere hot with a beach

47.  Is it better to have too much of something or not enough of something?
A:  seriously mom?

48:  Who is the most important person in the world?
A:  my mommy!!

Sunday, April 19, 2015

the coughing hex

"I've never known ANYBODY to cough until they puke..." says Michael.
"...until you met me" I finish (because I'm always finishing sentences; I'm impatient).

Apparently Mother Nature is totally ticked off at my family this year (so sorry about all those banana peels I threw out the car window...and for hexing you for all of the snow...and for using too many plastic water bottles...) so she dropped a pollen/mold/animal dander bomb RIGHT ON OUR HOUSE several weeks ago.  Seriously; we've never been so sick from allergies.  Allergies turned into ear and sinus infections...treatment turned into Morgan having a severe penicillin allergy (surprise!)...and now the kids and I have this AMAZINGLY FUN cough.  Michael doesn't have it, because he 'doesn't believe in allergies.'  I tried that method but it appears allergies believe in me.

So we've been to the doctor 4 times in the past 2 weeks, gone through several prescriptions, drained countless bottles of OTC cough syrup, and I take the honor of finishing off a bottle of whiskey alone(what?! the kids can't help, it's apparently illegal to give whiskey to underage children).

We've spent so many sleepless nights trying various methods to get the kids to stop coughing.  Vicks on the feet with socks, Vicks on their chests and backs, sniffing eucalyptus essential oil from the bottle, sucking on ice, using saline nasal spray, and as a last resort; giving cough medicine.  Why is this a last resort?  Because they ALWAYS PUKE IT UP!!!  I don't blame them.  We need a petition going to send to Robitussin about their flavoring.  'Nuclear power plant runoff' doesn't quite cut it. 

Every fall and spring since I was a child I've had this cough.  It's post nasal drip, allergy induced asthma, growing up in chemical valley, somebody has a voodoo doll with my face on it, can't sleep until I'm sitting up with a cough drop in my mouth praying I don't wake with it in my hair after I've had a combo of syrups with dextromethorphan and codeine, WORST COUGH EVER.  I remember sitting up in bed fighting the urge to cough, because I knew just ONE MORE cough would make me throw up.  I remember my mom stomping down the hallway exhausted because she needed her sleep and couldn't rest with me barking like an asthmatic seal all night, hissing at me 'for the LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY is there NOTHING you can do to stop it?!'

Well it appears I've passed the coughing hex on to our children.

My bad. 

Michael has to sleep with 3 asthmatic dying seals in the house.  What's really fun is having to treat my own cough and then try to wake myself up from a codeine dextromethorphan whiskey haze to take care of a coughing child.  I've literally walked into a wall on my way into their bedroom. 

So we've been dealing with a lot of what I call 'coughing fits' where something triggers our lungs to try to escape out our esophagus.  After years of practice I can keep a fit under control and not throw up, but my kids have yet to reach mastery level. 

Let me share the highlights of recent events:

Several nights ago I was trying to pee.  All you moms out there know there's no point in closing a bathroom door.  If you lock them out, something terrible will happen, like they will end up in the car on their way to McDonald's for those 20 nuggets for $5 and then you'll get arrested for letting them drive at age 2 and 6 ('but officer I swear I was trying to pee...yes...I locked the door...I know...bad choice').  So the door was wide open for all children and cats (and several stinkbugs) to run in and out.  Jack ran in, whipped off his diaper, shrieked "bath time!!" and threw all his bath toys into the tub.  Half second after this, Morgan runs in coughing with her hand over her mouth, sees me on the toilet, turns and vomits in the tub.  All over the bath toys.  And then naked Jack tinkles in the floor a little.  All of this happened in a matter of like 2 minutes.  I sank to my knees and cried to the heavens "can I NOT EVEN PEE?!!!'  Actually I didn't because I was too busy trying to clean up vomit and pee.

This evening I bathed both kids and was ready to chill out with a crochet project for the rest of the night (ya know, for the whole extra hour I'm awake after the kids go to sleep).  Michael got Jack out of the tub (because I got distracted by laundry that needed hung up) and during the dry off Jack started a coughing fit.  I shut my eyes and prayed...and then I hurt Michael scream "HE JUST THREW UP EVERYWHERE!!!!"  So I ran to the living room where Michael always dries Jack off and Jack is sitting in the floor with his towel around him, wringing his hands flinging vomit everywhere and Michael has his hands cupped under Jack's mouth filled with brown liquid and chunks of everything Jack has eaten today.  Michael takes off for the kitchen sink to empty his hands (dripping the entire way) and I grabbed Jack and ran back to the bathroom (dripping all the way) and dumped him, towel and all, back into the tub.  I scrubbed him down.  It was in every crack of that boy's body.  I got him out and as I was drying him off I found more vomit so I had to put him back in the tub and scrub some more.  I quarantined the kids in Jack's room (because Morgan said he wasn't allowed in her room while there's a high change of vomiting) and found Michael scrubbing the carpet.  I grabbed some cleaner and started working on all the drippings...which were hard to see since our living room is dark...most of them were found because I stepped in them.  Cold, wet, squishy vomit drippings.  And then I had to clean the sink where Michael emptied his hands.  And then I had to rinse out the bath towel that was covered in vomit and still hanging out in the tub.  And then I had to clean the bath tub.

As one of my friends once posted about being a parent dealing with vomit:  goal achieved; new level unlocked.

That's how it feels in this whole parenting thing; you learn as you go and get better with time.  Michael and I do not enjoy dealing with vomit one little bit, but we CAN deal with it; we KNOW what to do.  Goal achieved indeed. 

And now it's time for my nightcap of cough syrup and whiskey.  I told our doctor I was taking Robitussin DM, half a narcotic I had left over from Jack's C-section, and a shot of whiskey every night to get 4-5 hours of sleep without any cough interruptions.  He howled with laughter, clapped me on the shoulder and said "Can I come to your house?!"