This Polar Vortex isn't making parenting any easier

Terza, like most toddlers, can not abide winter gear. I can speculate as to the reasons why mittens and hats are so anathema to her  - maybe she thinks the mittens delete her hands permanently from existence   -- but I can't know for sure. What I do know is she will not keep them on, not if I sing like Elmo, not if I ply her with cookies. Not for any reason.

For a while I thought if I could only find the right winter gear, the problem would be solved. I tried hats that velcro under the chin and hats with long yarn braids on the sides that you can tie in Houdini-proof knots and I tried hats with bear ears and bunny ears and cat ears and rainbow-colored, fleece jester hats that virtually scream, "THIS IS FUN! THE OPPOSITE OF TORTURE!" You can guess what my success rate was, based on the number of capital letters I just used.

Fail. Total fail.

I think her record time for keeping a hat on was about 30 seconds. Ditto with the mittens. She can't manage to insert a spoonful of yogurt directly into her mouth half the time but man, can she get around knots. I tried collaborative problem-solving, not the easiest feat with a toddler, and offered the option of keeping her hood on instead. That was a non-starter. My daughter has a zero tolerance policy for garments that cover her head and hands.

Now that's all very well and good when it's 40 degrees or 30 degrees, or hell, even 20 degrees. But when a Polar vortex comes my way, and it's 4 degrees, with a wind chill that makes it feel subzero, I can't abide her not abiding winter gear. Not when we have a forty minute walk from her day care to my big kids' school and back again. We do more trekking that the Greely expedition, and if I learned anything  from watching that harrowing documentary, it's: if you don't come prepared to the Arctic, you'll all end up eating each other.

Last week, with the temperature at a record low, I suited up for pick-up with a wool toboggan and leather gloves, and still, my hands and ears went numb, with pain shooting through my digits.

"Surely, she'll keep the hat and gloves on today," I thought. "At least that's what everyone keeps telling me: 'When she gets cold enough, she will wear the hat and gloves.'"

Turns out everyone underestimated my progeny's stubbornness. Not only would the child not wear her mittens, she caused me to shed mine every two blocks so that I could attempt to yank hers back on again.  So we were BOTH freezing.  As soon as I'd put my gloves back on and secure the wind cover onto the stroller, I'd see she'd already pulled off her mittens -- the allegedly "toddler-proof" mittens which zip up the sides and velcro closed at the wrist. After a few rounds of this delightful game, I decided to just give up on the mittens, and attempted to persuade her -- all while standing on the street corner, fighting the gale-force winds -- to please, PLEASE, tuck her hands into the cozy, criminally-fluffy stroller sleeping bag I'd zipped her lower half into. What I got was
her default response: "I no LIKEIT!"

"Let her get frostbite!" you ssy. "Then she'll put on her damn gloves."

But think for a second about what an imposition a case of frostbite would be on my already hectic schedule.

I mean, I get it. There are some things -- many things -- beyond our control as parents. Some behaviors that can not be modified despite bribes, punishments, distraction techniques, and the force of reason. One of the hardest things I've learned to do as a parent is accept this and just let it go, let the natural consequences unfold. And then other times, you override your kid's aversion to winter gear with the use of duct tape.

In a moment of inspiration, I strolled Terza - screaming from the cold as much as from indignation -- right into the nearest hardware store, bought a roll of duct tape and duct-taped those mittens right on to the sleeve of her jacket. Then, when she was helpless to stop me, I yanked the pink sparkly fleece-lined hat with bear ears on her head. Cruel, awful, overbearing me. She was warm, did not require medical attention, and retained the use of all her digits. And yes, I was happy.

This polar vortex is turning me into a ninja

I just realized something. Every week, I am dressing a little more like a ninja. It's the winter's fault.

At first, it was just the skin-tight black thermal base layer bottom. Then it got so damn cold, I added the black base layer top. Neck to toe, I was already full-on ninja. But today, I finally relented and bought a balaclava. And on the balaclava package, which I purchased from the ninety nine cent store, it clearly read: "Ninja Mask." That is, by the way, what I like about buying my stuff from the ninety nine cent store: they tell it like it is. Had I bought it from Land's End, they would have called it "heat-tech micro-fleece balaclava." But a ninja mask by any other name . . .

So, yeah, now, thanks to the Polar Vortex, I'm a head-to-toe ninja girl.

I guess there are worse things.

Its hard with your first

The baby has developed a cold and this threw me into a panic attack. I'm not exaggerating either. When I woke up and saw that she had a snotty nose, I started crying. And praying. It just seemed just too soon for her to be sick - she's not even two months old yet. None of my other kids had colds as newborns. So I called the doctor's office and had the pediatrician on call paged. It was Saturday morning at 9am.

"What's up?" the doctor asked. It was the old-timer doc, perfectly nice and all, just not as alarmist a medical professional as I like to work with.

I explained all her symptoms in detail and he told me that she had a cold. That seemed like a waste of two minutes.

"Yes, but what can I DO about it?" I asked.

"There's nothing you can do really." he said, "Except nurse her more frequently."

"What about steam showers and aspirating her nose and putting her to sleep upright and using a humidifier?" I asked.

"All that sounds good," he said.

"I mean, should I be worried? Does this happen? Do tiny, defenseless little newborns like this get colds and are they still OK after?"

"Yes, they do," he assured me, and then he added, kindly: "It is scary when they get sick for the first time but its completely normal. Its hard with your first."

I didn't correct him. After all, I want the guy to keep calling me back when I emergency page him on weekend mornings.

"Yes it is," I agreed, "It really is."

El sicko, namely, me

Here’s the thing about having kids and being sick. Its tough shit for you. When you don’t have kids and you get sick, you rest. Period. Maybe you take a day off or maybe you have to go in to work, but for most of us blog-readers that means sitting at a desk which is -- come on, let’s face it -- pretty restful and when you get home at night, you order in and watch TV. You take it easy until you feel better. It is a very civilized way to live. I miss it.

When you have children you are bound to be sick all the time because those children go to school or day care and bring back awful, weird germs that cause viruses that sound like STDs. The first time I heard of Cox Sackie, I nearly blushed, it sounds so dirty. So, as a parent, you get sick all the time and when you are sick, your children will likely be sick, or recently-sick and still cranky, and you will have no choice but to care for them, just as if you were perfectly healthy.

Children aren’t understanding, they aren’t sympathetic to your woes. In fact, I’ve found it’s quite the opposite. They prey on your weakness. For instance, now that I’ve been sick, my son has decided to push back his wake-up time to 5:30am. And that’s after my daughter wakes several times in the middle of the night with the lingering cough she shared with me. If I didn’t know better, I would say they were purposely trying to do me in.

Once, when Primo was about four months old, I took him to a Mommy and Me Yoga class and the yoga instructor told this story about how she had just recovered from the stomach flu. She said it was great. When you have two kids, she explained, the only way you get to stay in bed for a day or two is if you’re vomiting while on the toilet bowl.

At the time, I thought this was insane. Now, of course, it seems completely reasonable to secretly wish yourself sicker so that you can justify convalescence.

When you’ve got a high fever and are vomiting uncontrollably, you have no choice but to shut down. You can not bring your children to school, you cannot drag yourself to playground or the grocery store. Family or friends or babysitters will relieve you, or you can let your kids watch TV for eleven hours straight. You can be taken off-duty.

When you have a cold, even a very bad one where your head pounds and your chest aches and can’t hear out of one ear, you must continue to shoulder your normal burden. You can continue like this, making dinner and taking the kids to birthday parties, propping yourself upright Weekend-at-Bernie’s–style for weeks if necessary.

That’s precisely what I’ve been doing for two weeks. Two weeks! Pre-kids I was never sick for that long. I’d get a cold, sleep a lot, eat soup and be up and running in a day or two. Instead, with lack of sleep and bad nutrition, my cold has bested my immune system and developed into a super-cold, perhaps even some kind of sinus infection.

David says he’s sick too but I don’t believe him. Or, I should say, I believe him all right, I just don’t accept it. We can’t both be sick at the same time, and I was sick first. Plus, ever since I had a baby I have regarded him as belonging to the weaker sex and so I feel that when he says he’s suffering its only because he doesn’t know what suffering is.

I am insufferable sicko. Send wishes of speedy recovery.