hippo candy

Sometime in December Maya got hit with a stomach bug. Not the barfing kind, but the other one, you know the ‘D-word’. She was pretty sick. Running to the toilet, having an accident in her pants in a public place (oh what fun!) and not really understanding what was going on. She even put herself to sleep for a nap when she got home… after she basically declared that she would never nap again. She was a bit freaked out by the whole thing. It passed quickly and we were all relieved.

Afterwards, I wanted to help speed her recovery so I purchased some intestinal flora for kids, you know little animal shaped vitamins with probiotics in them. The bottle had little hippos on it and Maya LOVED them. And why wouldn’t she? They taste like candy. She asked me why she was allowed to have these ‘candies’ every day, in fact twice a day without question. Afterall, I ration all her other sweets religiously. Naturally, she was perplexed by the free for all allowed by these magical ‘hippo candies’. So I explained that they would help give her “log poops” and could help prevent diarrhea.

Well somehow she got freaked out that she was going to have diarrhea every time she went to the bathroom unless she had the hippo candy in advance and she was having these anxiety attacks before every bowel movement, holding it in and frantically asking if she was going to have a healthy BM before every bathroom trip and double checking that she had taken her hippo candy. Poor kid,she became obsessed with the consistency of her poops! It was a bit of a scene. We worked hard to convince her that getting a stomach bug is actually rare, it doesn’t happen often.

Finally, after a month of more poo discussion than I ever thought I’d participate in, she is over it and has stopped asking me every day if she is going to have diarrhea and has stopped obsessing over her probiotics.

Convince me we’re normal here, what does your toddler obsess about?

Sick, sick and sick!

I’ve been sick for over two weeks. First it was a head cold, then I was healthy for about two days, and now it’s a lingering chest cold. I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for myself and certainly feeling a bit surrounded by germs being an elementary school teacher by day, and mom to a toddler who is in daycare by night. It’s like a cesspool of viruses are just lurking nearby… waiting to find their way into my body.

All this is pretty awful, but to make matters worse many of my co-workers and students are now battling a flu that involves 6 hours of intense barfing. I just got a call from my principal, whose daughter is in my class, saying that she had to stay home with her daughter who is sick with this latest, most terrible illness. My teaching assistant is home with her son who goes to a totally different school because he spent most of last night vomiting. I even heard someone say that they saw a kid barfing out his car window while driving home. This is more contagious than one of those zombie viruses you’d find in a horror movie. It’s like the whole city is infected! Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. I’m doomed!

silly kids

I am teaching a new class of mostly 9 and 10 year olds at school this year. On the first day of school I gave them a “Getting to Know You” questionnaire asking them things like: What is your favourite colour? What are you allergic to? What is your favourite thing to do? I also asked them to finish the sentence: One day I want to…

The answers were great, many of them unintentionally comical. Here are some samples:

I am allergic to: “poison”

I really don’t like: “TOYS”

One day I want to: “do a back flip on the ground”

I really don’t like: “global warming”

I really don’t like: “poison” (different kid than the one who is ‘allergic’ to poison)

One day I want to: “Be a hairdresser and a real estate agent”

I really don’t like: “getting kicked by horses”

To this I can only respond that it’s going to be a really great and interesting year, as long as we stay away from horses, pollution, toys and, most importantly, poison.

plugged in

There’s this totally luddite part of me that wants to run away and live in the woods in an “off the grid” kind of hermit style (you know, like Thoreau or something). But then there are days like today when I can only properly function when everyone’s plugged in to something. You see, today I’m helping out my neighbour again with the fact that the daycare (where we both send our kids) is closed due to illness. This means I am looking after her two beautiful children (ages 4 and 5) for the whole day. They are fabulous kids. We spent the morning going for a walk in the forest and then making some arts and crafts projects with the stuff we found on our walk. Later, we played outside in the back yard and the kids ran around a bit. It was a busy time and gave me a glimpse into the life of my sister who has three kids who are each 18 months apart–she’s kind of my hero after today. Even with really great kids, it’s a lot to manage and meet the needs of all of them. Kids are demanding. I’m a teacher, I should know this, but I am also in a different role at home when one of the kids is my own and the other two are friends. Not to mention the fighting that goes on between the kids because they each want to follow their own will!

So now it’s nap time for my little one and the other two kids, although too old for a nap, are each in a different TV room in my house watching cartoons, while I’m enjoying the peace and getting my internet fix. It’s times like these that I thank my lucky stars for technology and the fact that it gives us all some down time when we need it most. Is that so terrible?