A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

I think that should be in the running for the strangest blog post title ever! Allow me to tell the story behind it, which I promised to do in my last post.

When Pumpkin and I got back home from the doctor the other day, she was in tears with pain. I got her some ice to put on her hand and went to the medicine cabinet to get her some Advil to take. She only had about three doses of the liquid kind left, so I dug out some Children’s Advil pills that I had bought a few months ago. She hadn’t done very well with them at the time, but I’ve had some luck getting her to take allergy pills that were larger than those recently, so I figured I would try them again.

So I got her two of those and a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and headed back to the living room. She grimaced at first, but agreed to try them. After all, she hates the liquid kind.

She put the first one in her mouth, took a drink of water, and swallowed it on the first try. I praised her for doing so well, then gave her the other one. That’s when the fun began.

She didn’t make it on the first try with that one, but I told her it was okay, to keep trying. I remember how hard it was when I first had to take a pill as a child. She tried several more times, each time taking a bigger drink of water, to no avail. She began to get frustrated, and took a really huge drink of water, tossed her head back, and tried really hard to swallow. Her cheeks were all puffed out because she had so much water in her mouth, and as she tried to swallow the pill, her eyes (which were already as big around as saucers) crossed. She looked like a cross-eyed frog.

I couldn’t help but laugh. And you know how contagious laughter is. I saw a smile creep up on her face, her cheeks still full of water. Before I knew it, the freezing cold water was all over both of us, and we were both laughing so hard that tears were rolling down our cheeks.

The pill didn’t come out of her mouth with the water, and she eventually swallowed it somehow between giggles. We both had to change clothes, and we laughed about it off and on for the rest of the evening.

If that water had been any colder, it would have been ice. But I’m glad that happened, because it took Pumpkin’s mind off of her hand for a while. And it still gives me the giggles thinking about it. Good times.

First off, I know it’s been a while since I posted. But I promised myself I would quit apologizing for it. I’m sure my dear readers realize that life gets in the way sometimes. So I’m just going to say it’s good to be back and leave it at that.

Anyway, on to the headlines. Pumpkin hurt her hand at school on Tuesday. They didn’t call me or anything, she just came home with a melted baggie of ice and told me the story when I asked what it was for. Apparently she was playing in the sandbox when some boy came running by and tripped over her, sending them both hurtling toward the ground. Her hand landed hard on a board, and she went to the school nurse, who checked it out, gave her ice, and told her to come back if it didn’t start feeling better.

I checked it out myself, and it didn’t appear to be broken. It was swollen and looked like it might be bruised on the inside, but nothing to worry about. I gave her more ice and pain meds for the evening, and sent her to bed at her usual time.

She woke us up at 2:00 AM, complaining with her hand and stomach hurting. She has a lot of stomach problems, and they seem to get worse when she’s upset, which I’m sure she was over her hand. She didn’t go back to sleep for 2 hours, so we decided not to send her to school and to take her to the doctor.

To make a long story short, after a trip to the family doctor, a trip to the hospital for x-rays, much sitting around and waiting, and a trip back to the family doctor, we found out that it wasn’t broken or fractured. The doctor recommended wrapping it in an Ace bandage, elevating it as much as possible, and continuing with the other stuff I was doing.

She’s back at school today. I’ve got a funny story to tell about her taking her medicine, but that will have to wait. I’ve got work that isn’t going to do itself.

With the way women are portrayed in the media today, it’s no wonder a lot of girls are growing up with low self esteem. The ideals set forth on movie screens and magazine covers are virtually impossible to measure up to, yet they’re made to seem like the norm.

It’s hitting at younger and younger ages. Pumpkin is six, and she already has a hangup about her “hairy” arms. It didn’t just come out of nowhere, though. Two of her cousins commented on them, and now she keeps saying she wishes they weren’t so hairy. I tell her not to worry about how much hair is on her arms, that she’s beautiful inside and out. But it often seems like it just goes in one ear and out the other.

Dove is making some great strides in dealing with issues like this in young girls. The Dove Self Esteem Fund is holding self esteem workshops for young girls to help them understand how unrealistic the images they see in the media are. They encourage the girls to realize that their uniqueness is beautiful. Here’s a clip that explains what it’s all about better than I can.

Dove has held nearly 2,700 workshops such as this around the world. I think it’s great that they’re putting forth so much effort to get this message out to young girls. It’s something that’s needed to be done for many years.

Today I’m babysitting a troubled child. It’s a girl that a friend of mine who works with troubled kids for a living keeps for a while each summer. Hubby and I watched her a couple of days last week, but today it’s just me, her and Pumpkin.

Things have gone pretty well. She’s really not a bad kid, but I worry about her telling Pumpkin things I would rather her not hear at her age. So I’ve been keeping a close eye (and ear) out. The worst that has happened so far is them pretending that they had been kidnapped. That was one day last week, and Hubby put a stop to that quickly.

This is actually the first time I’ve ever babysat for pay. I’ve watched other people’s kids before, but it’s always been as a favor. I don’t plan on making a career out of babysitting or anything, but the money is helping us out. And it’s not going to be for much longer anyway. So it’s all good.

To all you dads out there, hope you’re having a wonderful day! I lost my dad 4 years ago, so the closest dad in my life is Hubby. I haven’t gotten to spend much time with him today, but I did help Pumpkin make him a card and a piece of artwork.

I’m proud to say that Hubby is an awesome dad. When Pumpkin was a baby, he had no qualms about taking care of her while I worked, or giving me a break when I needed it. He was the only one who she would let rock her to sleep at night. There were times when he would be playing with her, and she would look at him in this certain way that reminded me of those cartoons where the characters’ eyes become heart-shaped. It sounds silly, but you could just see the adoration in her eyes.

She sees me at home a lot more than she does him nowadays, but they still spend quite a bit of time together. Anywhere he goes, she wants to go. They just have a beautiful relationship, and I hope it always stays that way.

Today Pumpkin up and decided that she wanted to do some crafting. I was very happy about that, because I had actually been planning to look for some crafts for her to do over the summer but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. But I had no idea what she could do with our limited craft supplies.

She dug up some construction paper, scissors and a glue stick, and decided to cut out shapes and make animals out of them. Of course she wanted me to make one too, and who am I to say no? So we started snipping and gluing, and what you see above is the result. The frog is mine, and the bunny is hers.

It was a nice little bonding experience, just as I had hoped. I even told her we would do it again tomorrow. Before you know it, we’ll have a whole entire zoo made out of construction paper! Maybe we’ll even get Hubby in on it too.

I’ve been rather frustrated at Pumpkin’s lack of interest in t-ball. That’s because she acted like she wanted to play so badly. When she first started she loved it, but now she doesn’t even want to go to the games. She was the same way with basketball.

I left it totally up to her whether she wanted to play a sport or not. I think it’s good for kids to play something, but I don’t believe in making them do it. But there are a lot of other parents who don’t share my philosophy.

There are two boys that I can think of right off the bat who are on Pumpkin’s team whose parents are totally pushing it on them. One cries the majority of the time he’s out on the field, and the other just goes out there and sits down instead of participating. I don’t get why some parents are like that. I mean, just because they were hitting home runs and using testosterone boosters to bulk up in their younger days doesn’t mean their kids have to do the same thing.

I guess I’m kind of the opposite of them. I never got to play sports when I was young and interested in them, and I want to make sure Pumpkin has the opportunity. And if she says she wants to play and I scrape up the money for her to do so, I expect her to get out there and try. But it’s obvious that these kids have no interest whatsoever, and they’re only out there because their parents want them to be. I just don’t think that’s right.

I probably won’t even offer to pay for sports next year. Mostly because I don’t want to waste my time and money on something that she’s not going to stay interested in. But also because I don’t want her to feel like I’m pushing her.

For the past couple of weeks, Pumpkin has been coming home talking about her watermelon plant. They planted fruits and vegetables at school, and being the watermelon lover that she is, she chose to plant watermelons.

I went out on the porch to meet her as she got off of the bus today, and she looked jubilant. She was grinning ear to ear, and practically bounced up to the house. I saw a small brown object in her hand, and I knew what it must be.

Her watermelon plant is just barely poking up out of the soil. But to her, it is as big as Texas. I’m trying to figure out where will be the best place to plant it (after it gets done frosting, of course). We have plenty of options, but I would like to find out where it would have the best chance of doing well. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears. I’m not very good at the whole planting thing, but I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we get some watermelons from the little bugger. I’m not a huge watermelon fan myself, but as much as it means to her, I hope it sprouts a bunch of them.

I swear I think they could see our house from outer space. It’s the one that’s the hideous mustard yellow color.

On the occasions that I’ve had to give directions to our house, I’ve been telling people that it’s the bright yellow house in the curve. As long as they get on the right road, they don’t drive past it. There aren’t many houses around here (or, I hope, anywhere) that are the same color as ours.

As soon as we get everything else squared away, the yellow has got to go. I don’t mind a light, sunny yellow, but this color is just horrible. I think we’re going to go with nice, sensible white. Normally I’m not that conventional, but I want to leave the exterior shutters and porch railings the shade of green that they are. I love that color, and I can’t think of any other color that I would like better with it than white.

Pumpkin brought home her report card the other day, and I was blown away! At the beginning of the year, she wasn’t doing very well. She was having to bring her classwork home because she wasn’t even trying to do it in class, and she was behind on her reading. For a long time things remained the same, and I was becoming pretty discouraged.

I did my best to help her, but you know how that goes sometimes. It was like she just wasn’t interested. But eventually things started to improve. She quit bringing as much work home, and her reading got better. Last time report cards went out, her grades had improved quite a bit. She even got an award for it.

This report card was awesome. She got all O’s (outstanding) on her behavior and work habits. She also was up to par or above in every single subject. And her reading? She’s on a level that is not expected of them until mid-second grade!

Her teacher this year has made a big difference. Everyone says she’s tough, and I won’t disagree with them. But I think that’s just what Pumpkin needed- someone who wouldn’t just let her slide by.