Hello August. It is hard to believe that Lemon's 6th trip around the sun is drawing to a close, but here we are. This weekend featured the kids' joint birthday party, which they have been so excited about all week. So, naturally, Lemon came home from camp (aka germ nexus of the universe) complaining of dizziness. At first, we attributed that to the fact that he'd forgotten his water bottle so he was pretty dehydrated. Also he chose not to eat a single molecule of his lunch. So, we figured that if we got some Gatorade and food into him, matters would improve. Hah.
He went to bed Friday night only to wake up weeping with ear pain and a fever. So, we gave him some ibuprofen and hoped against hope that it would pass. And, on Saturday morning, he still had a bit of a fever but seemed overall not in such bad shape. Saturday night wasn't that much better than Friday night, unfortunately, and he was still in a lot of pain and feverish on Sunday morning, with the party just hours away. I whisked him off to urgent care where, after using a giant syringe of water to flush his ear so she could actually see what was going on, the nurse diagnosed him with another ear infection--possibly a recurrence of the one he had when he had strep throat a few weeks ago, or maybe something new, who knows. In any case, we switched from amoxicillin to cefdinir, gave him the first dose as soon as we got home from the pharmacy, and gave him a dose of ibuprofen right before the party.
Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, the party was a big success. The kids, who generally agree on nothing, were in complete solidarity on their cake choice from Costco: chocolate cake, chocolate filling, unicorn design. Done. Lots of friends showed up, and a splendid time was had by all. No one had the emotional stamina to make it much past 6:30 that night, which is always the sign of a good day.
With the memory of the endless summer camp forms still fresh in my mind, it is now time for school forms, it seems. Lime's school is making vague motions towards joining the rest of the 21st century in that instead of sending a thick envelope with those pre-printed forms that you fill out and then retain the canary copy while returning the white, rose, and periwinkle copies to the school, they now send an email with 71 different attachments. These attachments must then be downloaded, printed, filled out by hand with ink signatures, and then hand delivered to the school office. Progress!
Of particular note is the state immunization form, required by the state of Wisconsin for all children enrolling in preschool. It requires an ink signature from the pediatrician. Fine. I called the pediatrician's office, said that I needed the state form filled out for my kid, and asked when I could pick it up. I was informed that I could print off a copy of this (totally standard, state-issued) form, hand-deliver it to the office, fill out the please-fill-out-my-form form, leave these two documents with the office, and they would call me when I could pick them up. Because in the year of our lord 2019 it is imperative that parents spend an adequate amount of time driving around town delivering pieces of paper that contain only information that is also available through our state's online immunization registry. I mean what else would we do with our time. Maybe look for child care, since camp ends in two weeks? But that is a source of panic for another day.
