Cabin Fever

I had plans of writing another post, an upbeat one about unexpected gifts and silver linings. But the girls have been sick and it's cold and snowy out and I just feel like venting instead.

Hannah had been feeling out of sorts before Thanksgiving but seemed to be pretty well recovered by the time we hit the road for our trip down to see B's family. Isabelle was fine. But four days of staying up late, not eating well, and hanging out with their 12 cousins did them in.

Last Monday night, Isabelle woke up barking like a hound dog. We give her a few puffs from her inhaler, run the hot shower, go outside in the cold night air. It continued in the morning, along with some wheezing, so off to the pediatrician we went, where she got a steroid shot to reduce swelling in her upper airways. It worked like magic but left in its dust a toddler with major 'roid rage. I kid you not. She was flying around the house hitting everyone and everything in sight, crabby beyond belief, and totally exhauted.

Fast forward two days, and Hannah wakes up in the middle of the night with the same bark. Only she sounds worse. We do the whole routine again: shower steam, cold night air, sit with her in front of the humidifier. She was up for about 3 hours, totally miserable. The next morning we went back to the pediatrician and it was her turn to get the shot. It took longer for it to work on her, but thankfully did the trick (not without another round of 'roid rage, of course).

Both girls have had a lingering cough and bad cold since the croup started, enough that I'm constantly wiping their noses and listening for any sound that the cough is starting to get wheezy or barky again.

And on top of that, they are now both starting up with the teething again. I don't know if it's like this for all kids, or just our girls, but the process of cutting a tooth seems eternal! These are their two year molars and they started teething from them about three months ago. But we seem to go through phases, where for a week or so it's really bad, and then it subsides, and then it starts up again. And all the while, no sign of teeth breaking through.

So now we're in a bad stretch. Hannah is drooling a ton, crabby, and not very interested in doing much in the way of working on motor skills, which is a total bummer. It's so frustrating that we make such great progress on one front, and then we get hit with something like teething or croup and it's back to square one.

And Isabelle is doing what she always does when she teeths: waking up at 5am and not napping. Or maybe napping a little bit, if I lay down with her.

So we're cooped up in the house because they're sick, and because we have at least 6" of snow on the ground and it's 15 degrees out. I haven't seen the other moms I hang out with in weeks. I haven't had more than a 2 minute shower and forget about putting on makeup or blow drying my hair or putting on anything more than old sweats and slippers.

It's a sad state of affairs over here and the winter has only just begun...