My adventures at the Minute Clinic

After I wrapped up a long day of calls and wrangled a very tired and cranky daughter my left ear started really hurting. As in, holy crap, I think I have an ear infection. I've been sick off and on for several weeks. It's starting to effect my attitude towards work, my general energy levels and the snoring is driving DH nuts.

After putting Cameron down for bed I decided to look up the Minute Clinic. My sister, A., recommended it as an alternative to making a usually inconvenient appointment with my primary care physician. I found one a few miles from my house and resolved to head out to be there for its 8:30 AM open.

I woke up at 12 AM coughing my fool head off and quickly downed some NyQuil in the hopes that I could return to sleep fairly quickly. For a change, and probably because I am so run down, it worked and I woke up fairly refreshed but still sick.

In accordance with my plan I made it to the Minute Clinic at 8:20 AM. And there was already one person in line ahead of me. I had a 9 AM call that I had to be on but I was hopeful that the 15 minute appointment guidelines would apply. And it totally did!

Super easy check in process although I was annoyed to see that Cameron has to be 18 months old to receive care. When I was called back into the room and started listing my symptoms everything was noted down electronically. A quick swipe of my insurance and FSA and I had two recommendations for over the counter drugs and a prescription sent over to my regular pharmacy. The nurse practitioner was very friendly and asked relevant questions. Total time? 15 minutes in and out. I'm sure that wait times vary depending on the time or day but when I left there were 3 people on the list behind me.

I loved that I could go on my time and didn't have to deal with the hassles of paperwork. Diagnosis? Sinus infection. Hopefully I'll be well on my way to recovery by this weekend. Have you ever been to a Minute Clinic? How does it compare to an Urgent Care?

Nobody does it better

DH is traveling this week. It's the first time in many, many months where he has hopped on a plane and I am left to juggle work and Cameron solo. Usually it is the opposite as I have been the one with more business travel. When DH is home alone he tells me how easy it is to manage the juggle. I am not quite so sanguine.

This morning was a bit of a blur and I felt rushed every step of the way. Granted, I probably slept a bit longer than I should have but hey, I'm sick so I cut myself some slack. A quick shower, throw on some clothes and off to wake up Cameron to start her morning routine. It was already 7 AM so I was running about 15 minutes behind schedule. 15 minutes became 20 when I realized the outfit I had picked out was too small and also had to administer a dose of antibiotics.

I whisked Cameron off to the car and strapped her in, Cameron protesting the entire time. For some reason Cameron has not wanted to go in her car seat lately. Called the dog back inside, dumped some food in his bowl and started our commute to daycare. Even though I am working from home and didn't have to doll myself up per usual I felt rushed through the whole morning process.

Coming home since I was later than normal I ran into a lot more traffic. Via cell phone I commiserated with Mommy, Esq. on her crappy work schedule, parked, got myself some caffeine and settled into email. And it was only 8 AM. Thank goodness DH is home tomorrow afternoon! I am extremely impressed with his ability to juggle the morning routine while I'm away.

A spring weekend

We had a wonderful weekend aside from me catching whatever felled Cameron last week. Aches, the sniffles and a slight soar throat are not a good accompaniment to a beautiful Spring weekend. Cameron decided to nap really, really well so I got to nap in the afternoons while DH toiled away doing yard clean up and a myriad of other tasks.

Cameron discovers the Tupperware cabinet. Mommy and Daddy discover that Cameron now screeches if she doesn't get her way. We quickly learned when we packed up the cabinet and tried to make Cameron move on to other games. Epic fail.

One of the tasks this weekend was to get rid of these ants that have invaded our pantry. They have come and gone for the last year and we've tried spraying and ant traps with little success. DH picked up some liquid bait that attracted the ants like, well, like ants to food. After a day of them congregating in our pantry they disappeared. Upon inspection DH decided to caulk every interior edge of the pantry to eliminate future migrations. Smart man!

Cameron dries off after a swim lesson. She is up to 4 seconds under the water!
Cameron plays before we head into swim lessons.

American Idol: Top 10 guys perform

This is going to be a super fast recap. I didn't even take notes because I've been feeling burnt out on AI. Like somehow the 9 months between last season and this season didn't recharge my batteries. I blame the 4 judge format. I hate hearing each of them provide feedback on every contestant. It's beyond annoying and stretches a show that should be one hour into two.

So the guys are up because Chrystal Bowersox is in the hospital. Real illness or teeth whitening? The were very few good performances with a couple of notable exceptions.

• Big Mike: Really, really good and found his vibe with a James Brown song. Easily safe.
• John Park: YAWN. Totally in danger of going home with another boring performance.
• Casey: Picks a good Gavin DeGraw song and goes all karaoke. A major step back from last week but he's still totally safe.
• Alex Lambert: Totally rocked the house and made me really route for him. Based on this performance he should go really far.
• Todrick: I have never liked Todrick. It's like I have this inability to route for him in any way because he is so annoying. The way he dresses, his back flips, his mediocre voice, everything. He decides to tackle Tina Turner and it goes about as well as you would expect. I finally pinpoint his problem. Todrick is trying to script a win. He is trying to add in whatever components he thinks the judges and audiences want to hear and totally missing the boat. I am hopeful that he will be gone after this week but pity might keep him around.
• Jermaine is a white woman trapped in a black man's body. Close your eyes and listen. It's scary. He does terrible and is most likely one of the two going home.
• Andrew Garcia tries to change things up but the judges are still stuck on his Paula Abdul audition from 3 freaking weeks ago. Hopefully he will hold off on performing it until the Top 12. Despite a not-so-good performance he'll be fine.
• Aaron Kelly is so young. And lacks the David Archuleta charm. He picks "My Girl" and it's as awkward and terrible as you would think. The teeny bopper vote will put him through though.
• Tim Urban seems like he is still growing into his limbs. He goes with "Come on Get Higher" and does much, much better than last week but it's still not very good. But given his improvement I think he'll be safe for another week.
• In the money spot is Lee who totally rocks it out vocally with a Hinder song. He does look a little uncomfortable without his guitar but he does a really great job and totally jumps up in my estimation.

So who is out? John Park is toast. Jermaine or Todrick is my other pick.

SJ out.

The post where I wonder how WAHM can also be SAHM

In case some of my readers aren't up on the lingo WAHM stands for Work at Home Mom (not to be confuse with WOHM "Work out of Home Mom") and SAHM means Stay At Home Mom. I prefer to be known as awesome.

Yesterday Cameron was home from daycare with a double ear infection. Yup, DH and I thought it might be pink eye but lo and behold it was really the ear infection. My sister was incredulous that we had no idea. "You mean she didn't wake up during the night multiple times?" Nope. That's not how Cameron rolls. But we did know something was wrong so off to the doctor's DH went with Cameron. Diagnosis in hand we decided to keep her home for the day so she would nap better and recover more quickly.

Unfortunately neither of us could take the day off of work. DH's calendar was a bit more flexible than mine but I had about 5 hours of conference calls where I was an integral component. So not only did I have to have my headset on for most of the day, multitasking was absolutely out. It worked out OK but I was pretty stressed for most of the day even with DH shouldering the heavier load with childcare. And Cameron napped for about 5.5 hours total. All in all it should have been a piece of cake but it was still stressful. I could never really concentrate on Cameron when it was my time to care for her or work when I was supposed to be herding cats on my conference calls.

As I lay on the couch in exhaustion catching up on the 8 (!) episodes of Fringe we have saved I wondered, how do the women who work full time jobs also juggle being the primary care giver during the day for their kids? I don't mean freelance work which can technically be managed in "off" hours (although talk about tiring!) but a 9-5 job. I met one woman at BigFinance who told me proudly that she was going to be working at home while watching her 6 month and 5 year old sons. Really? I'm sure that worked out fabulously.

I have an exceptionally happy, long napping baby and there is no way in hell I could do it for more than a day. And that was with DH. I worry that technology has allowed us to juggle too many things. I appreciate the flexibility from BigFinance and the technological tools that allow me to work from home at least once a week. But when I work from home, I work from home. Sure, I might throw in some laundry or run an errand or blog but my time and attention is focused on work.

What do the rest of you think? Totally possible to juggle a full time day job and caring for kids? I assume that it would get easier as the kids get older but I would think that 0-6 is the hardest.

PS - Cameron is doing totally great today and didn't even glance at me as I waved goodbye after dropping her off at daycare. And I am happily ensconced at my desk slogging through email.

By request

Yes, Mimi...I'm looking at you! I have been somewhat remiss in posting photos regularly so here are some to get your day started.

Post-bath it's easy to see the curls and the massive amount of hair that Cameron has.

A new favorite pastime is to hold on to the railings while Daddy makes funny faces from the landing below.

Mimi, now I get it! You always told me to get my hair off my face. And as you can see, Cameron looks much better with her hair corralled.
Because she is too cute.

Daycare put Cameron's hair up in a ponytail. As you can see, it left quite an impression. Also impressive? Those blueberry eyes!

Monday Mommy Musings

Cameron has her first case of pink eye. I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping we could have avoided this milestone for many more years. DH is bringing her to the doctor this morning and he'll be on baby duty until I get home tonight. I think this is the first time he's had her alone for an entire day (vs. in the mornings and evenings when I'm traveling) so please wish him luck. I'm more concerned about having to put drops in Cameron's eyes. This is a baby who refused to take sugary sweet Tylenol or Motrin. I can't imagine how bad it will be to keep her eye pried open while squeezing drops into it. Fun times, I'm sure.

Probably the worst part? I didn't know Cameron had pink eye so we went to Holden's birthday party and interact with 3 other babies. Sorry, moms! I did the responsible thing and emailed them and I hope that there wasn't too much cross-contamination of germs. Update: Cameron looked fine this morning except for a scratch underneath her eye. So we dropped her off at daycare per usual with the hope that we don't get the dreaded pick up call.

We're slowly introducing milk in Cameron's bottles. 2 ounces milk, 4 of formula. After a week I'll go to 50%, and so on. She should be close to 100% whole milk by the time we go for her 12 month well appointment. In other fun eating news, Cameron is now refusing to eat anything that is jarred food related (yogurt is out, for example). It looks like the 8-10 jars we have left are going to get donated. We'll also probably end up with at least 1/2 of a tub of formula too. I hate throwing out that stuff...it's so expensive.

Standing...always standing. That is Cameron's new mantra. Cuddling with mommy? No way. And let's not forget - she can do it by herself. No help necessary or wanted. It has resulted in quite a few head bumps and bruises but that's why they make skulls so hard, right? Last night was the first where Cameron decided she wanted to stand in the tub while taking a bath. Aside from some initial nervousness about slipping and whacking her head I actually kind of preferred it. It was so much easier to soap her up in all the right spots. Bath toys have become a must and the little squirters are the best.

Finger nail clipping has become a pain in the ass. Cameron has a couple of scratches on her face because it's a battle for me to clip even one nail at a time. I miss those days of clipping away while she was breastfeeding. Does anyone have any advice on how to make the nail clipping process a little easier?

Another challenge for us is hair. Cameron has the mullet going but because her back hair is curly you can't tell. But I'm more concerned about the hair falling down into her eyes. Daycare sent her home with a Pebbles ponytail (with a rubber band!) and I took it as a message. The only problem is that I can't find good hair fasteners that will stay put and not interfere with napping or be a choking hazard for the other kids when it eventually falls out. I'm adamant about not cutting her hair. Not because I want to be like Celine Dion or Kate Hudson but more because once you start cutting bangs you either need to keep doing it or deal with the pain of growing it out later. Goddess In Progress wrote about this in January and I'm hoping once Cameron's hair gets longer things will be easier. Anyone else have advice?