My baby is SICK! He developed a barky cough on Sunday during the night. Monday he was clearly sick and had a slight fever. Monday night and in the wee hours of this morning he was miserable, struggling to breathe, unable to sleep and crying without making much noise—just a hoarse, pathetic, croaking sound. The doctor’s office couldn’t see him until 3:30 today. His pulse-ox was pretty good—96. I hate the diagnoses where “supportive care” is about all anyone can do. They did give him a single-dose oral steroid, which I don’t much like but I know how awful not breathing feels and I want him to get whatever relief they can give. Otherwise, humid air is about all we can do for him. Poor baby is sad and clearly miserable. They said, “Keep him comfortable and happy.” Crying and agitation will make him feel and breathe worse. He is a far cry from happy.

http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/croup.html
Signs and Symptoms

Croup is characterized by a loud cough that may sound like the barking of a seal and may be accompanied by fast or difficult breathing and sometimes a grunting noise or wheezing while breathing.

At first, a child may have cold symptoms like a stuffy or runny nose for a few days and may also have fever. As the upper airway (the lining of the windpipe and the voice box) becomes progressively inflamed and swollen, the child may become hoarse, with a harsh, barking cough.

If the upper airway becomes swollen to the point where it is partially blocked off, it becomes even more difficult for a child to breathe. This happens with severe croup. With severe croup, there may be a high-pitched or squeaking noise when breathing in (this is called stridor). A child will tend to breathe very fast, and the stomach or the skin between the child's ribs may seem to pull in during breathing. The child may also appear pale or bluish around the mouth because he is not getting enough oxygen.

Symptoms of croup often worsen at night and when the child is upset or crying. In addition to the effects on the upper airway, the infections that cause croup can result in inflammation further down the airway, including the bronchi (breathing tubes) and the lungs.

Contagiousness

Croup tends to occur in outbreaks in the winter and early spring when the viruses that usually cause it peak. Many children who come in contact with the viruses that cause croup will not get croup, but will instead have symptoms of a head cold.

Diagnosis

Doctors can usually diagnose croup by looking for the telltale barking cough and stridor, the squeaking sound on inhaling. They will also check the child for fever, cold symptoms (like a runny nose), or a recent viral illness, and ask questions to find out if the child has a prior history of croup or upper airway problems.

If the child's croup is severe and slow to respond to treatment, a neck X-ray may also be taken to rule out any other reasons for the breathing difficulty, such as a foreign object lodged in the throat or epiglottitis (an inflammation of the epiglottis, the flap of tissue that covers the windpipe). Typical findings on an X-ray if a child has croup includes the top of the airway narrowing to a point, which doctors call a steeple sign.

Treatment

Most, though not all, cases of viral croup are mild. Breathing in moist air seems to relieve many of the symptoms. Doctors will also sometimes treat with steroids, which helps with the airway swelling.

One way to humidify the air is with a cool-mist humidifier. Having your child breathe in the moist air through the mouth will sometimes break a croup attack. Or try running a hot shower to create a steam-filled bathroom where you can sit with your child for 10 minutes. Try cuddling and reading a bedtime story while doing this to help calm your child.

Sometimes, during cooler months, taking your child outside for a few minutes can help break the attack because the cool air can shrink the swollen tissues lining the airway. Parents can also try driving the child in the car with the windows down to bring in cool air.

If your child has croup, consider sleeping overnight in the same room to provide close observation. If you are not able to break your child's fast breathing and croupy cough, call your child's doctor or seek medical attention as soon as possible.

Medical professionals will need to evaluate your child if the croup appears serious or if there's any suspicion of airway blockage or bacterial infection. Medications such as epinephrine or corticosteroids may be given to reduce swelling in the upper airways. Oxygen may also be given, and sometimes a child with croup will remain in the hospital overnight for observation. As with most illnesses, rest and plenty of fluids are recommended.

Duration

The symptoms of croup generally peak 2 to 3 days after the symptoms of infection start. Croup resulting from viral infection usually lasts less than a week.

Complications

The vast majority of children recover from croup with no complications. Rarely, some children will develop complications such as ear infection or pneumonia.

Work at the magazine this week went well. I was brave and gracious. I talked to all my (ex-) coworkers about the changes at the magazine and my services as proofreader being discontinued. At least to my face everyone was sorry about it and regretful. The editor promises me that I’m the one they’ll call back when the economics are better. She referred to having me working on the magazine a “luxury.” Probably what will happen is that the in-house people will be asked to work more and harder. An editorial employee who is my friend also got cut: She still has a job, but they demoted her to receptionist (and canned the receptionist they had) and cut my friend’s pay. A few other people in different departments were affected (i.e., let go). They have also cut their freelance budget by what sounds to me like a big number, but given that I have no idea what the budget was or what it is now, it’s hard for me to say.

So, we’ll see. I guess they gotta do what they gotta do to stay healthy and weather the economic changes in the region. I must say though, it’s kind of ironic (correct word choice?) that I consistently read about all the wonderful, progressive, exciting things that are happening in this town in the pages of this magazine, which is presently reacting to an economic downturn. Anyway, Monday will be my last day there.

I’ve come to find the silver lining in this change: It’s kinda hard on Asher to have me leave him with a sitter or grandma for 3 to 4 days in a row, when the rest of the month he’s with me constantly. He has survived, of course, but by Friday evening, it was clear that he wanted and needed some mama time. Now I won’t have to do that anymore. I will still need babysitting, but I can arrange it on my own terms and hopefully establish a more consistent rhythm for him—one that he can actually get used to—that doesn’t have 27 days between sets of sitter days. As he is coming into The Great Separation Anxiety Stage, this will be easier on him.

Last Thursday, my father turned 62. That is hard to believe. In my mind, he is still 40. He probably will always be that age in my mind. A friend recently lost her father to cancer. He was older than my dad is—a doctor who practiced medicine up until his end. I can see how hard losing her last parent has been on her. Her plight has inspired some morbid thoughts.

I am thoroughly enjoying the drawing classes that Ian and I are taking on Thursday nights. The teacher is teaching in a loose, intuitive way, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. But the true gift of the class is that we 1) leave our home and kids and assorted real-life distractions, 2) go to a studio/gallery where we are surrounded by art and things to draw, and 3) there are two and a half glorious hours with nothing else to do except drink tea. We are hoping to continue the classes for the next couple of months, or for as long as our babysitters are willing to watch our kidlings. Ian has really caught the bug. He’s been practicing at home, which is wonderful to see because while he’s drawing, he’s not worrying. I love this guy so much. I hate to see him worried. It has been very good for us to have this time together and share this artistic pursuit. I can’t wait to paint!

My brother and his girlfriend, Courtney, recently got back from a vacation in Mexico. It sounds like they had a super time. I think this is Jonathan’s first serious vacation in years. I’m happy for them both. I just love seeing them together and it is my sincerest hope that they continue to make each other happy.

We spent a lovely couple of hours with friends last night. It was refreshing and made me so happy to see them.

Asher’s party yesterday was great! I think everyone had a pretty good time, considering there was no pole or booze and my great granny, great aunt, mom, and dad were all there chaperoning.  Actually, I kinda meant to serve champagne, but then I forgot. About 26 people were here, I think, which is a helluva tribute to a little person who can’t even talk yet. Thank you to everyone who took time out of your busy lives to witness the anniversary of my little man and our survival of Kid Two: Year One. It means a lot to me that our community loves our sons. Thank you!

The food we served worked out pretty well, I thought. The punch was a hit with the kiddos. I tried to get all Martha on the birthday cake, which kinda sorta worked out, but kinda sorta failed. I guess it depends on how you look at it. I baked an Apple Hill cake and sprinkled it with powdered sugar. But not before I placed atop the cake paper twigs and leaves that Lucas and I cut out. Then we powdered it, so we had a negative image of the branches when we took the paper off. I decorated the branches with marzipan flowers that I made myself. This is the funny part: It took me three tries to create decent flowers. They caught fire when I went to brown them in the oven on the first try. The wax paper the flowers were sitting on was too close to the broiler, so actually it was the paper that burned. On the second try, I let Lucas distract me in conversation for exactly one minute and the flowers burned again. The third try worked OK, and they went on the cake. Lucas and I had decorated a special beeswax candle with modeling beeswax: It had a yellow star and a little toddler boy holding a single, giant flower. Lucas painstaikingly molded each flower petal for the candle.

Asher was completely distraught when we tried to feed him birthday cake. The vanilla ice cream made him cry. Poor baby, it was a very stimulating day and he didn’t seem to like it much when everyone’s attention turned toward him.

I only took a handful of photos, but I think my dad took some. Also, Tate and Elisa arrived and took some family shots of us, which I am excited to see.

We have a ton of thank you cards to write. Asher received plenty of gifts: some of which will go and live at the grandparents’ houses for when he spends time over there. That’s just fine with me. Some clothes will go into the closet until he grows into them, as will at least one toy rated for 3-year-olds. 

Asher ate stewed onions for dinner tonight. It was the weirdest thing. I put one on his plate just to touch and he picked it up, placed it in his mouth, munched it, and swallowed. He then ate tons of them and was clearly disappointed when there were no more. Then he ate half a slice of bread dipped in beef and onion gravy. 

We just returned from a lovely reunion of the core friends of the Working Moms’ Group that I was a part of and organized for two years when Lucas was a toddler. Deidre hosted it at her place and Kelly and Ambrosia, Karen and Toby, and Crystal and Kayla attended, as well as the four of us. Deidre has a 4-year-old (Alex) and a new baby (Jace) who is 9 months old. It was surprisingly fun to get together again, perhaps it was because of the long hiatus since our last gathering, or perhaps it was because it didn’t have the obligation of being an official Moms’ Group meeting. Or maybe it was because the whole idea of the Sunday supper was Deidre’s and not mine, and I didn’t have to bang a drum to get everybody on board. It just fell together beautifully and effortlessly. 

Today was pretty cool. It started with our cleaning ladies arriving at 10 and thoroughly cleaning my house until about 1:15. They do such an awesome job and I’m thrilled to have this help. Everything in my home is sparkling right now. It won’t be long before we clutter it up again, but for this one day it’s been perfect.

Lucas is feeling better, and I’m no worse. I have a little bit of a sore throat, but it doesn’t seem to be developing into anything major. 

Asher had good naps today. This afternoon I snoozed with him for a little while, which was a rare indulgence. Lovely.

I finished chapter 9 glossary terms. One more chapter’s worth of glossary definitions to go. 

Ian came home from work a little early, which is always a treat. I love him so much and want to spend more time with him, without kids. It’s a problem we are working on. Starting next week we’ll be taking a drawing class together on Thursday nights for a month. If we like it and we can keep swinging the babysitting, we’ll try to continue beyond that. Our goal is to do a painting class soon too. 

Our new wood window blinds arrived today. Ian hopes to install them in our bedroom this weekend. They’ll class up the joint, I think.

We went out for sushi for dinner, which pleases my Atkinsing palate immensely. Asher decided he liked the tofu pieces in the miso soup and gobbled them up. We rounded out our evening’s entertainment with a trip to Barnes and Noble. We picked up a couple of birthday gifts there and I got a new dictionary. Yay!  

Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 12:32 PM
To: editorsforum@yahoogroups.com [Bay Area Editors' Forum]
Subject: RE: [editorsforum] Silence

Hilary Powers, Goddess of Word, wrote: “Your voice is assuredly welcome, and your specialties are fascinating, being different from mine! The relief of attending to someone else’s triumphs and problems (instead of one’s isolated own) is immense. 

“More to the point, are there any BAEF members in Sacramento who would like to get together THERE from time to time?

Asher and I had our first Mommy & Baby class today.

It’s really called Parent Child class, but I suspect it will be all mommies. Only one other pair was there as the class is still forming, but Peggy and Willow seem nice. The teacher is called Teacher Marie. She is intense, warm, strong, experienced, and has a lovely singing voice. I think we are going to enjoy our Tuesday mornings in the class. The babies played. The mommies and teacher chatted. We had a snack. We sang songs. We walked to the farm and visited the sheep and the llama. On the way, we watched the 3rd and 4th graders playing on recess. Asher liked the new toys in the classroom—all wooden and beautiful, many handmade. He liked the rattles and the dollies and the wooden animals and gnomes. He really liked a surprising item: metal disks from the ends of frozen juice tubes. They made a fantastic sound when they crashed into each other. The teacher said, “Yeah. I know. Funny, eh? These are some of the most popular items in the whole classroom.” Which, I gotta tell ya, was full of thousands of dollars worth of heirloom-quality toys. Kids are weird, and yet, I understand completely why these metal disks were so interesting to him.

He really loved Willow, a six-month-old. He wanted to touch her face, especially her nose. Asher can be a bit rough because he doesn’t know better, so I spent a lot of time right next to him trying to keep him from bopping her in the head.  One of the things Asher loves to do at home is look at his books full of pictures of babies. And here was Willow—a real baby in the flesh!

One of the things that mommies do, especially when they get together, is to share tricks of the trade, and figure out where each one stands on the GREAT PARENTING SPECTRUM, which basically goes from Attachment Parenting/EC/Waldorf/Organic/Raw/No TV/Hippy/Drives-a-Horse-and-Buggy on the far left and Traditional/Authoritative/Pro-spanking/TV/Junk Food/Republican/Drives-a-Hummer on the far right. So conversation meanders gradually through all these areas of choice. “If you do organic or all organic …”; “Well, I stay home …”; “He has been using the potty since …”; “We have a family bed …”; “I try to carry my baby …”; “These cloth diapers are so nice because …”; “I really have a problem with soy …”; “Back when I was raising my kids, I nursed ….”; “My poor husband was fed solids so early ….”; “This product is so good because …”; “I sew her clothing myself …”; “My mother made …”; “We avoid plastic …”; “Isn’t silk the most vibrant, warm fabric…”; “The infant and baby woolens are best…”; “Are you aware that you can get this here?” “It’s easy to make it yourself at home…” “We grew spelt…” ect., etc. 

This exercise is tedious because it happens among all moms that I’ve ever met. In one sense, it’s a competition: Who is the Best Mommy? Who is the Best “Natural Parent”? Which is extreme bullshit. But in another sense, it’s a way of feeling each other out so that you don’t say the wrong thing to someone or hurt someone’s feelings and possibly undermine their confidence as a parent. It’s a way to learn about new things that you’ve never tried or never heard of before. It’s also a way of vetting potential friends. Weird.

If we hadn’t done this sort of thing this morning, I might not have learned that the teacher lived on The Farm in Tennessee (and a sister community in Kentucky) during the 1970s and worked as a nurse in the clinic—with Ina May Gaskin. Interesting times, indeed.

We’re finishing eating lunch. 
Asher clearly has to poop. 
He is covered in pesto sauce: oily and dotted with bits of basil leaves.
I clean him up, but just barely.
I rush him to the potty.
We’re in time.
He does his thing.
From the backyard, we hear screams of agony.
It’s Lucas and he’s hurt himself.
I leave Asher on the potty and run outside to Lucas.
He is crying and limping.
He is dressed as a cowboy.
He tripped over a garden hose and fell and hurt his knee.
I pull up his pant leg to survey the damage.
No biggie: no blood.
I tell Lucas that we’ll get the booboo bag (ice-pack thingy).
I hear another scream and crying.
I rush back to Asher.
He has crawled off the potty toward the bed.
He is wedged between my bed and his co-sleeper. 
His bare bottom is hanging down and he's grasping onto the edge of the bed.
The potty is upturned.
I pick up the baby and place him on the changing table pad.
I look over at the co-sleeper.
It has Asher poops all over it.
I clean Asher’s bottom, dress him, and put him down on the floor.
He is fine now.
I clean the co-sleeper.
I clean the potty.
I clean my hands.
I clean up lunch.
I ask Lucas how his knee is now.
He says it is all healed.
I scrub the poop off Asher’s talking teddy bear.
I clean my hands again.
I sit down at the computer to write this.
Asher is chewing on the cord.
Cowboy Lucas is being eaten by a 5-foot-long boa constrictor.
It is a perfectly normal afternoon.
The End. 

Last year, I managed to throw together a tiny Solstice celebration. At the last minute, I invited Theresa and Greg and Phoebe over for dinner. I decorated the table with a gold lamé and served only yellow foods (butternut squash soup, oranges, summer squashes cut into disks and sautéed, chicken with a lemon sauce, sparkling cider, and probably other stuff I don’t remember). We had a lovely, silly time, subtly worshipping the sun and its return.

Today I don’t have any such thing planned, but maybe I’ll go to the grocery store for some oranges or something.

Over the course of this month, we’ve been observing Advent, à la Waldorf schools and Anthroposophists rather than Catholics/Christians. The difference is slight, however. We have an Advent Wreath (a real evergreen wreath) and in the center we placed a Celtic-style candleholder that was a gift from Flonkbob (and Chilipantz?) many years ago. Although the candleholder is not a ring, per se, it features three outer candles with a place for one elevated candle in the center. It’s beautiful and works nicely as the symbolic equivalent of the four weeks leading up to Solstice/Christmas, with the fourth being the prominent one signifying the birth of the Sun/Christ. (The Advent wreath we had when I was growing up was a ring, but in the Catholic tradition, we used 3 purple candles and 1 pink candle signifying the climax. Pink/purple are the traditional colors of Advent in the church.) This year, I’ve stuffed it with golden beeswax candles made by lovely dakini_grl.

Each night, we’ve been reciting the following poem, which I believe is traditional for the Anthroposophists:

The first light of Advent,
It is the light of Stones,
Stones that live in crystals, seashells,
And our bones.

The second light of Advent
It is the light of plants,
Plants that reach up to the sun,
And in the breezes dance.

The third light of Advent,
It is the light of Beasts,
The light of hope that we may see
In greatest and in least

The fourth light of Advent,
It is the light of man,
The light of love, the light of thought,
To give and understand.

I like this verse because it’s earth- and human-centered. It’s pagan-sounding to me. But that pagan stuff isn’t quite so important to me as it used to be. I’ve become like Joseph Campbell in my old age. I’ve been meditating on the meaning of Christmas to me and how well I see the lines that connect this holiday with other, older holidays. My need to step apart and define myself as a pagan, as something entirely other than a Christian, is much diminished. I’m finding that this is making me really happy, and is allowing me to enjoy all the religiosity of the season more. Somehow there’s less of a reason to be uptight.

ASIDE:
At one point last year sometime, Ian’s mother expressed concern that Lucas must be educated about the Christian faith so that he can live in our God-fearing, Christian society.  I hardly fear that Lucas will somehow escape learning a basic knowledge of Christianity, just because we don’t define ourselves as Christians. She worried because we were attending the Unitarian Universalist Society services: “Do they even talk about Christ?!”

Anyway, we have been singing the Advent song that mentions the Christ child along with our candle-lighting ritual. Lucas’s face always lights up when we sing “Then comes the Christ child at the door.” I think that he is really captivated by the image of a child being the inspiration of the season.

The other morning, all by myself, I sat down on the couch in my living room with some Christmas carol sheet music and sang my wondering Christian heart out.