Poxied Update on “Spot” McPerkyPants
So by Sunday morning, after a 3ayem bath to relieve the itchies, M1 was ridiculously perky. OHHH, my, was she ever perky. Perky McPerkyPants (aka “Spot”). This morning, I got a call from P. Apparently Perky McPerkyPants’s current best friend came down with the c’pox too (despite the vaccination) & was also so ridiculously perky yet unable to go to school so Chipper McPerkyston’s mom called to see if Perky McPerkyPants wanted to come over & play. Perky McPerkypants definitely wanted to go over & play with Chipper McPerkyston, so they had a chipper & perky afternoon this afternoon.
I think Spot’ll be ok to go to Great-Gramma’s memorial on Thursday, but with an incubation of 10-21 days, M2′ll be right on the edge of 10 days. On the one hand, it would be nice to go as a family (for me and my little family), on the other, my cousin has had neither the chicken pox, nor the vaccine (though as we see above with Chipper McPerkyston, that’s no guarantee, though it does tend to lessen severity in some cases). He’s somewhat older than me, so getting the c’pox at this age for him would be an issue. So I’m hemming & hawing & not quite sure what to do, but I suspect, for safety, that M1 & I will make the trip to Yakima as a “girls’ trip” & leave M2 & P at home. Which, for reasons detailed below, will not make M2 happy.
Everything going on has M2 all freaked out. M1 went through a phase at about this age where the big transition was M2. The big mistake there was watching the Lion King. It’s like Bambi, but the father dies. There was a good month of big freaking out at bedtime & worries of abandonment & death. M2 is going through this now. She’s very upset when I go anywhere without her (although it’s alright for her to take her leave of me as long as I’m where she left me when she returns). I think moving plays into this somehow as that’s a very big transition for a kid that was literally born in this living room. She’s very worried about going to “jail”. I have no idea where she picked this up but she says in her sweetest little voice ever, “Mommy, I would *really* miss you if I were in jail.” She was also very worried & concerned about M1 being sick. That one makes sense to me. The most recent other case of sickness was Great-Gramma & she’s gone now. I don’t think M2 really comprehends “died” (hence the abandonment & “jail” issues), but she understands Great-Gramma was sick, so when M1 was really miserable there for a bit, I think she worried M1 was going away too.
All this has culminated in difficult bedtimes where I can’t leave the room because she doesn’t want to be alone. On the upside, having been through this before, I have figured out the trick of “I will come back in and check on you in… how many minutes? Four minutes? Ok. I’ll be back to check on you in four minutes.” Random short amount of time passes, but definitely before she has time to start fretting I go back in and check on her & give her another little kiss & tuck her in again. “Ok, I’ll be back to check on you in five minutes. Can we do five minutes? Ok. I’ll see you in five minutes.” A little bit longer bit of random time passes. Go in and check on her. Thankfully, tonight, she’s asleep. Sometimes it takes more repeats of this little routine, but then, must bear in mind that this was after 45 minutes of snuggles, 10 minutes where I hung out with “Spot” McPerkyPants, a “song” (M1 has played the same bedtime CD since she was, I don’t know 18 months, every night at bedtime), & then a concerned discussion about how she wants me to stay with her. All told it took about an hour & a half to get her asleep.
K. It’s too late to do much exercising, but dammit, I’ve got to get back in that habit because this whole blob of transition has thrown me from my evening routine & I miss it. I so badly want things to get a move on so we can get our move on & then get into the work of settling things back down to normal.