The Zany Zukowski Weblog

Theo went 8 hours between feeding the other night. Wa HOOOO! Too bad it started at 630 in the evening. I still got up at 230. Still the sleep felt good. I’d have panicked anyway and woken up with heart palpitations. It won’t be long and we’ll be sleeping through the night, until then I’ll be up around 2AM!

So we sent the two big boys to my parents house to spend a Saturday night  over night. We attended the annual Fire Banquet. One of my sensitive boys is allergic to or sensitive to something in their home. Freddy came home with a red rash all over the trunk of his body, and this is the 3 rd time this has happened. We gave him antihistimeans and rubbed lotion on the rash, and by Monday it looked much better. We let him go to swim class, big mistake. As Monday evening progressed he got redder and redder and itchier and itchier. We continually told Fred not to scratch, but a three year old doesn’t understand and even for an adult it would be pretty hard. And the mored you scratch, the more it itched. We tried to have him go to sleep, but to no avail. After an hour and a  half of fruitless remedies, I suggested to the paramedic, that we take Fred into the ER. Michael insisted it wasn’t a life threatening emergency, which given the skeleton night crew of most hospitals, also makes sense. I must say my mom alarms were buzzing out of control, but I deferred to the expert medical personnel. 

Through out the night I’d doze off in my bed then I’d hear Fred cry or hear Mike and Fred up and about and being the control freak that I am, I had to check on them. One time Michael was giving Fred another dose of benedryl, another time it was a sponge bath and many times Freddy was crying from itching so badly. Assured everything was fine I’d head back to bed only to have Theo wake and want to eat or have his diaper changed. By 4 am my strong men caved to the pressure of this skin condition and headed into the ER for some help. 

Let me stop and explain that Atopic dermatitis is the worst case of poison oak, poison ivy, and chicken pox all rolled into one miserable condition. This red itchy, sand papery skin covered his chest, back, arms, and the tops of his legs. Not just spots, but all over coverage. We’ve been through this before with our older son on vacation, and it was miserable then too. The condition has some relationship to allergies and sensitive skin, which we seem to have a lot of around here. 

The docs at the ER presecribed some meds and a narcotic to let Freddy get some rest. He did sleep, for only 4 hours and was back up again, and still itching! Michael said we should take him into the pediatricians, and I thought, ‘no we’ve just got to get through this, what more is the pediatrician going to do?’ Michael wisely took him into see our pediatrician, who gave us different medications. Things got a bit better, but still lots of itching. The thing that finally made the difference and helped us turn the corner was to have Freddy change into a plain t-shirt without any decals or soaked in lotions or creams (by this time the poor kid had a medicine chest full of creams soaked into his shirt, clean clothes were the least of our worries). The decal was just enough weight to touch the skin and set it to itching. Finally finally more than 24 hours later, Freddy was better and only occasionally having bouts of itching. And finally on Tuesday evening, we slept blissfully, gratefully, and restfully for a full night.

Its a sign of the times when one of my pumpkins hands me an etch-a-sketch, the compact kind that are about 5 inches by 7 inches. He says “Niece, on, Niece on” as if an Etch- a -sketch needs to be turned on. 

A few months back Freddy and Stephen were playing with some plastic cards, that looked like a credit card. They would walk around  the living room and then stop by the couch and ’swipe’ their card in between the couch cushions. What can you say this is the world they live in, my friends and I used to pretend to write checks and have play money.

Recently Freddy told me he’s 4. I told him no he’s only 3, his response “I’m 3 and 4″ So I asked how old he would be on his next birthday and he said spiderman! “No no” I said what age, “I’ll be F”. Well how fun is that! Freddy also told me to catch the cars, and I asked how, he said I should drive fast, so I can only assume he meant catch up to the other cars.  

Theo doesn’t say too much but he has little laughing fits in the middle of the night, and pees on me regularly. (he maybe planning his next attack and laughing) In fact I recently had to take him in for a check up. He did great, and while the nurse was out of the room I thought I’d quick change his diaper, which was of course poopy. I wiped him up and grabbed a fresh diaper, and heard a funny noise. I looked around and realized Theo was peeing and it was arching over him, over the table, and puddling on the floor. Well you’d think I’d know how to prevent this with my THIRD boy! I thought ‘no big deal I’ll wipe up the puddle, but first lets get a clean diaper on this kid.’ I was trying to get the diaper oinment out and realized I needed to unscrew the cap and take off the seal. Ok now I can diaper this kid and clean up the puddle. But wait, as I squeeze, there’s an air bubble and a glop of goop shoots into my hair a la “There’s something about Mary”. Now I am beyond giggling and just laughing, loud belly shaking laughing. I furiously try to blindly get goop out of my hair, finish diapering now squirming baby, when the male nurse walks back in and just about steps in the aforementioned puddle. I kindly tell him to stop, not take another step, I am so sorry but my boy has peed on the floor. The male nurse laughed and said it’s not the first time, won’t be the last and wipes up the puddle for me. When I got to the van I was very relieved to see that I had managed to get all the goop out of my hair, and thankfully it wasn’t sticking out at any obviously strange angles. 

I mentioned this is my third boy and I guess I am just used to changing the older kids, nearly potty trained, with good control, because Theo pees on me at least 3 times a week. I could’ve saved myself some trouble and gotten 30 minutes more sleep last night if I could ‘ve remembered to throw a washcloth over the boy before he peed all over his jammies, blanket and me at 4am! But no we got an outfit change at 4am. This being the most challenging part of having a newborn around, is really pretty easy. He’s great!

For Christmas my husband asked the family for gift cards towards an iphone. He had checked out a friend’s iphone and was hooked on the idea. His sister and brother in law gave him a gift card and my parents also gave him a gift card. He had enough to purchase the 16GB phone, or 2 8 GB phones, he opted to get us both phones, so we can both be  technologically savy. The iphones capabilities are pretty amazing, and as my dad put it some of it’s unnecessary.  (Do I really need an application to tell me the time in Paris, France? I can add and understand time differences) But it does save some paper since I can input my shopping list on the notes function or the shopping list application and never use a piece of paper or remember to recycle said paper in my recyclables (since I am now aware that I can recycle office paper). I hope that this is a better use of my carbon footprint, since I do need electricity to charge the battery and will eventually need to recycle the iphone itself when I move on to the next technology, I am sure somewhere here in cyberspace there is a carbon calculator I can use, but for now I will assume all the papers I am saving is less stress on our ecology. 

I should mention that getting iphones is a little intimidating for us, as my friend put it, given our past history of flushing pagers down a public toilet, loosing phones in airports, job-sites, and diaper bags not to mention the fact that Michael recently backed over his former phone. We did purchase all possible insurance and Michael is forbidden from taking his iphone out of his vehicle on a jobsite. As Jen put it “do they have insurance just for being you?”  Yeah I think so…

As always there’s a learning curve. I love the applications, cow tipping, tic tac toe, accu weather, and of course it has email and camera functions, but, there’s always a but. I miss my old phone for the one touch dialing, and I knew where all the buttons were, now I bleep and click and have no idea what I’m doing. I’m really good a memory, but that’s time I really should be spending on learning how to use other functions. Michael and I are now synching our calendars, so hopefully we’ll stop scheduling 3 things to do at the same time. We’ll see. 

And speaking of technology, I’ve been on Myspace for ages and have in the last week joined facebook, and for the first time in my life I feel popular. Everytime I open my email I have people asking or confirming me to be their friend. It seems to me that Facebook moves way faster that Myspace and I even have Aunts and Uncles on the thing. I only wish my friends had invited me sooner!

We recently received our updated calendars from our trash company as to when they pick up our recycleables. (We’re the green week of pick ups) On the back of the calendar is a list of recycleable items and I am so glad they published the list. I’ve surfed their website in the past, and could not find a comprehensive list. Since I teach a home preschool program in my childcare business, I find myself with lots of bits of paper and plastic baggies, not to mention paper board letters and numbers. (Paperboard is the material of cereal boxes) And all of this can be recycled! Much to Michael’s chagrin, I am recycling everything. We have recycle bins in the kitchen, the boys are trained to toss stuff in our recycle tubs in the garage, and we even had to buy a larger recycle rolling container! I am recycling queen! I am aware that I am putting baby diapers in to the land fill, I am now much better at recycling and hope this helps my carbon foot print! My green friends can direct me to the carbon calculators. Next on my list of green things is to take up composting.

We were driving to a superbowl party at our friend Cyrilla’s house. Stephen was looking awefully sleepy on the short 10 minute drive over. Michael suggested that he could stay in the van and nap for a short while before the party. Stephen’s immediate response was: ‘me stay in the van, while you go in to the party? DUH! Thats boring!’ It was said with the attitude of a teenager, but spoken by a 5 year old, we could only laugh! 

Freddy too has his moments… We were getting ready to read a book before bed and Freddy’s voice took on a tone different than his own and he kept repeating: “ay hearties, ay hearties” after listening to this for several minutes I asked if he was a pirate and he said that yes he was, and I realized ‘ay hearties’ was his version of “Ahoy there me hearties!” I gave him these words and then continued to hear them repeated for the next several minutes. Now if only it had been the official talk like a pirate day.  

I must also point out that the 3 and 5 year old can be handy reminders too. If I am not holding Theo then I am grilled on where is our baby? Mom where’s the baby? as if I’ve lost him or something. Sometimes Theo actually naps in his crib upstairs, and sometimes he right behind the boys in his swing, but obviously not in their line of sight. So now I have to answer to the little guys as well. 

Warning, really honest information: 

At the superbowl party, I took Theo into another room to change his diaper and a gaggle of little girls followed me. One little girl (who shall remain nameless) asked if my baby had a penis. I replied that yes he does. Said little girl went on to inform me that her daddy has a penis too, and it is so huge! I was so glad to know such information!

It seems Theo has a schedule of sorts. He wakes up to eat between 1230 and 100 am, and then again between 330 and 400 am. Which is great, but I wish I could fall asleep at 8 pm every night so I didn’t need that nap randomly during the week. I was remembering, recently, that Freddy got on a schedule pretty early on where he would eat around 9 or 10 pm and then not again until 4 or 5 am. I remember feeling really good and like  I had a full night of sleep. In conversation with a friend we were trying to pin point Freddy’s age and I was thinking he was 8 weeks, but my friend pointed out he was more like 12 weeks when he figured out the schedule. Oh Darn! Oh well soon enough Theo will give us longer stretches.He’s a happy guy and his brothers love him!