Computers were supposed to free us from the paper pile-up. Instead, we print out more than ever, generating huge stacks of files and investing record amounts of money to store our paper. We buy paper, file folders, labels, and file cabinets; and still the paper stacks overwhelm us. Home organizing is big business, and TV shows showing you how to clean up your act abound. But you can free yourself from the paper trap by using your computer to get organized.

GO DIGITAL
Let your computer be your filing cabinet. Larger hard drives, cheaper scanners, and digital cameras give you the tools you need to convert your paper messes into digital order. Take a look at the piles on your desk and the overstuffed filing cabinet. You probably have financial documents, letters, hobby papers, magazines, old college research papers, and the like. Most of these can be converted to digital files, leaving you with more physical space in your home.

You can scan copies of bills, social security statements, bank statements, check stubs, old tax returns, magazine articles, letters, children’s artwork, equipment manuals; in short, anything on paper.

GO PAPERLESS
Don’t stop there! Once you have your paper files scanned into the computer, get rid of them. But don’t toss them into the trashcan and make yourself vulnerable to identity thieves; shred them instead. Paper shredders are available at all price points at office supply stores. Then put the shredded paper outside in your compost pile.

Stop using scraps of paper to write notes: Windows Vista comes with a notepad right on the desktop. It looks like and functions like sticky notes. Or buy yourself a small notebook to keep at your desktop and use it to jot down notes and catch all the pieces of paper that enter your life.

A great way to unstuff your files and your mailbox at the same time is to sign up for paperless billing with your utility companies and paperless statements with your bank and investment companies. A notice that your statement is ready will be delivered to your email inbox. Then you access the company’s website and download your data to your hard drive.

ORGANIZING YOUR FILES
Sort your files into folders on your computer. Make folders for Finances, Photos, Children, Genealogy, Current Projects, or whatever fits your circumstance. Then make subfolders in each with subcategories like Quicken Files, Bank Statements, Utility Statements, Home Inventory, etc. Don’t be too specific or too general – you want to have a reasonable number of files in each folder.

PHOTOS
Make use of those boxes of photos you have saved up over the years by scanning them and putting them on your computer. Once digitized, you can create personalized greeting cards, calendars, or memory books at sites like Shutterfly, Snapfish, My Publisher, or Kodak Gallery. Then use your hard copy photos for scrapbooking or simply throw them away. Save your negatives, however, and store them in a cool, dry location away from photographs. And never toss out old family photos – these should be scanned and the originals kept in archival sleeves and boxes. Too many photos to scan? Use an online service like digmypics.com or scancafe.com. If you still regularly use print film, ask your photo developer to give you a disk of your photos as well as your hard copy prints.

Organize your photos on your computer using software like Adobe Photoshop Album Starter – it’s free. (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopalbum/starter.html) If you are comfortable with databases, you can use Microsoft Access or another database software system to organize and retrieve photos. Your scanner or camera may come with software, as well.

Sort your photos into folders by subject and date. Organize new digital photos by the date taken: 2008-03-24-a, 2008-03-24-b, and so on, and place them into subject folders like Pets, Vacations, Family, etc. Name your files by date in this format: 2008-03-31. This way they will be easy to find and will be arranged in chronological order, which is usually the way by which you want to retrieve them.

BACKING UP IS EASY TO DO
Now that you have worked so hard to digitize your paper files, be sure to keep them safe. Back them up manually onto CD’s, DVD’s or other media, and keep a copy in a safety deposit box, at the office, or at a friend’s house. You can also buy one of the new media hubs. These are external hard drives which store your music, photos, and video files. Or you can back up files online using any number of online backup packages. Two good ones are box.net (especially useful for file sharing) and mozy.com. The latter is inexpensive, safe, easy, and best of all, it’s automatic. Once set up, it completes backups on a regular schedule.

PROTECT YOURSELF
Be sure to protect your valuable files from viruses and hackers. Activate your computer’s firewall and install and run virus software. Hint: if you use Comcast for Internet access, you are eligible for free virus scan software from McAfee (http://security.comcast.net). Download the free Spybot from spybot.com to search for spyware on your computer and remove it.

Now that you are organized, change your habits! Think twice before using reams of paper to print articles and other info from the web. Instead, use a PDF utility to capture text from any website. One that is free and easy to use is Cute PDF Writer at cutepdf.com. Be on the lookout for other ways to cut down on paper.

Getting yourself out of the paper trap will take time and effort, but once your systems are set up, you will reap the benefits of more space in your filing cabinet and a cleaner, neater desktop.

Around 11:40 AM on any given Saturday I start to get antsy.

I pace around the house and hover around the back door, hoping to catch a glimpse of his car pulling into the driveway.

The dog becomes aware of my sheer excitement and starts to follow me around, tail wagging.

The girls sense that they are about to have Daddy to themselves for 36 solid hours and are giddy with laughter.

It’s my favorite time of the week. I listen for one sound only, the chime on the security system to alert me that Superman has entered the building …..

It’s a special time folks.

And there it is: “CHIME!”

It’s amazing how such a sound can make my heart leap with joy.

We all dash to Dad. Everything is better now. It’s not as if it was awful prior to his arrival but I’ll admit that not only are things more fun when Dear Husband is around but everything is easier.
To prepare for his arrival I have made sure that the laundry is done, lunch is almost ready, the house is tidy and all of the errands and shopping are done so the only thing left to do is enjoy each other’s company.

I love and appreciate the fact that my husband can come home from a mentally and physically demanding job and jump into parenting 101 with full force and never seems to mind or complain. He needs as much, if not more, down time as I do but here he is, taking on two girls who can’t wait to tackle him with a weekend full of activity.

This is what I live for.

Saturday afternoon is always easy breezy and kids exhausted from play with Dad retire easier than normal. Saturday night evolves into date night.

In the world of “Mom,” this is heaven.

But as usual, Sunday morning comes and low and behold a cosmic shift occurs. No matter how hard I try, we are not easy like Sunday morning in this household. I wouldn’t trade having my husband here for the world but it seems that we cannot work out Sunday morning kinks. Or maybe I just don’t fit into the fun.

I am the official buzz kill.

This particular Sunday, I was given the opportunity to sleep in and I did – my first mistake.

I entered the scene around 8:30 AM and I sensed an immediate sense of alliance. The girls, the dog and dear husband are all sitting around a breakfast feast; the scent of bacon is in the air and everything looks picture perfect. I should be able to fit right into the situation but it becomes fiercely obvious to me that I should have never gotten out of bed at all.

They are all snuggled in on the couch watching cartoons and eating. We all muster our hellos and I inspect the surrounding areas. The house I spent the entire week cleaning has been destroyed. I have only been upstairs without my family for an hour. There are crumbs on the floor, there is food smashed into the rug. There are blueberry stains on pillows. I see the love and happiness between my husband and children so I ignore the mess and I escape to the kitchen for my caffeine. I then stumble upon dishes and pots and pans. They are greasy, they are warm and they need to be washed.

SIGH.

I have gone from well rested to tense and irritated in 2 seconds flat. The little voice inside of my head talks me down and I remember that this day isn’t about cleaning and it isn’t about sticking to my regimented routine. It is about relaxing and being together as a family. I try to breathe.

My eldest daughter has declared Sunday, “My favorite day of the week because Daddy is here and I can finally have FUN!” Grrr…..

My sidekick, my compadre, my numero uno, my youngest daughter who never lets me put her down, will suddenly only allow Daddy to pick her up and do things with her.

I can feel my skin start to crawl.

This is what I want…this is what I crave….hello!? It’s the coveted “alone time.” Take it woman – run with it.

Nope…. I am starting to stew.

One day with “Daddy full of fun” and I am last weeks old meat. Hmpfh.

I try to shake it off but its getting harder. I want to fit into this scene. I want to be fun, I want to have fun. Why is the blueberry stain on my new red and white pillow calling me louder than the lunch picnic going on inside the fort that they built?

What happened to me? Why am I not fun anymore. Why do I care if the pillows are now looking like the American Flag?

I used to be the girl who danced in the bar until last call. I could let dishes sit in my sink for a week and I certainly didn’t wake up immediately remembering I needed to vacuum up crumbs from the night before.

What has happened to me? And WHY hasn’t it happened to my husband?

Maybe this is just part of the dynamics of marriage and parenthood. Part of the inevitable roles that we embrace (or get shoved in our face). One ushers in balance and demands that order reign above anarchy. The other remembers what its like to be a kid and can evolve into the free spirit when needed, able to ignore the chaos and just have fun.

Was I given a vote in which role would become mine? Somehow I did this to myself….

I do suppose that it’s only fair that for one day a week Daddy should get to reign supreme and know what it feels like to be the center of their universe, especially if there is a chance that he spends the rest of the week feeling half as uncessary as I do just once a week. Everyone should know how good it feels to be that important.

Besides, come Monday morning, this mom knows she will retake her throne and spend another week as best friend, boo-boo kisser, fort builder, play dough shaper, and yes, rule maker. At least until next Sunday morning…

Last week, a fact really hit home for me – I’m about to have another baby. Of course, I’ve known this for quite some time – roughly seven months now, but the reality of it hit me like a ton of bricks as I lay in a hospital bed hooked up to a fetal monitor with a cell phone pressed to my ear.

The day had started pleasantly enough. I was getting some work done in the morning when I received a call at noon from my son’s preschool that he had a fever and can his teacher give him some Tylenol. I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for later in the afternoon. I called to see if I could move up my appointment so I could get to my son quicker. It was almost naptime at school so he would be sleeping anyway while I was at my appointment.

Ok…everything was under control.

At my appointment, I talked to my doctor about how the Braxton Hicks contractions that I’ve been experiencing over the past few weeks seemed to be getting more frequent and a bit more intense. This led to an internal exam as well as a culture to determine if there was a chance of pre-term labor. My doctor also wanted me to get hooked up to a fetal monitor for observation. I asked her how long that might take, as I needed to get to my son who was sick. She said probably twenty minutes.

Ok…everything was still under control…I thought to myself as I listened to my son’s heartbeat on the fetal monitor. But then the nurse came in and explained that the doctor didn’t want to release me because I was having uterine irritability brought on by dehydration. “But I don’t feel dehydrated” was all I could say as I started to get a bit upset. They wanted to give me an IV to get my fluids up to normal levels, and given that they hadn’t received the results back yet from the pre-term labor test, and I had already had two contractions in the short time that I had been hooked up – they weren’t letting me go anywhere just yet.

I couldn’t hold it together any longer. The floodgates opened. My son was sick at preschool – my unborn son seemed to be knocking at the door – and I never felt more helpless in my life.

The nurse, a mother too, was extremely sympathetic and gently advised me to make arrangements for someone else to pick up my son. So as she’s sticking me with an IV in one arm, my other hand was clutching my cell phone calling my husband, who I couldn’t seem to reach on his office or cell phone. Over and over again I called to no avail. (I found out later that he was in a 3-hour long meeting that ran over until after 5pm! Needless to say, going forward, my husband will have his cell phone strapped to his person AT ALL TIMES!) The endless ringing only made me more frantic and I dialed my mom who told me that my dad could handle the pick-up.

Ok…but is everything under control yet?

About a half hour later, the nurse returns to tell me that the pre-term labor test came back negative – whew – so they felt comfortable to release me. I headed home where I was soon reunited with my husband, my dad, and my son, who didn’t have a fever for the rest of the night or any other symptoms of being ill for that matter. Go figure.

Thinking about it in bed that night, I felt that my harrowing day had been a test. All I could think about at the hospital was my sick son at preschool. But, hey lady, my uterus called out, there is another boy who needs your attention right now! Making the jump from thinking about one to two was suddenly a lot harder than I ever expected. It was my first attempt at juggling and I realized I don’t know the first thing about juggling. I guess practice makes perfect – or maybe, in this case – progress is a better word, but there’s so much at stake if I drop one or both of these balls.

So…everything under control? Not even close.

A favorite morning ritual of mine is the hot cup of green tea with honey interlude. I usually come home after dropping my son off at school, make myself a cup of tea, and drink it while checking my email. My favorite brand is Yogi Tea, because it tastes good and it comes in a cool box. I like the Green Tea Kombucha kind. Here’s what it says on the back of the box:

Our Green Tea Kombucha is inspired by a remedy dating back to ancient Russia, but updated for today’s lifestyle. This effective blend of green tea and kombucha is designed to enhance your immune system, fight fatigue and detoxify your body. Not to mention that simply saying “kom-boo-chaw” will make you smile. The good feelings continue with the antioxidant benefits inherent in green tea. Savor this distinctive herbal remedy while giving your body the tune-up it deserves.

Green Energy Tea

You can buy this stuff at the grocery store, at Target, or at Amazon.com. Their website is pretty cool, too!

I admit that one of the bigger concerns my husband and I had when deciding to start a family was what our little bundle of joy would do to our social life. Don’t get me wrong; our dance cards were never jam-packed every weekend. What I’m talking about is the simple act of sitting across a table from each other and sharing a yummy meal and some good conversation.

So when we became pregnant with our first, we were hell-bent on making sure this kid loved going out and trying new foods as much as we did, or at the very least, condition him to behave somewhat like a human being at a restaurant. I had seen well-behaved children in restaurants before – I was sure of it – so I knew that it wasn’t a complete anomaly.

After nine months of intense strategizing, our plan was to get him out “early and often”. So at four weeks old, he slept peacefully in his car seat as we enjoyed a delightful dinner, just the “two of us” in a sense, at our favorite Mexican spot. Perhaps the mariachi band was as familiar and comforting to him as my own voice, for as often as we went there while I was pregnant, because this restaurant has always been a foolproof spot for us to have an uninterrupted dinner, even as my son became mobile and vocal, a toddler if you will. He’s even been known to enjoy cheese enchiladas and guacamole when the mood should strike him. But try to get him to eat a peanut butter sandwich, and he resists (even though he likes peanut butter and he likes bread – though separately, NEVER together. Go figure.).

Considering the many different kinds of restaurants he has frequented in his three years, I wouldn’t call him an adventurous eater. In fact, when faced with a new food on his fork, his usual response is, “I don’t like it.” To which ours is, “But how do you know? You haven’t even tried it yet.” To which he repeats, “I don’t like it.” The all-too familiar toddler standoff. Where in the world do you go from there?

Which brings me to the real subject of my post today – getting my kid to try new foods. Lately, I’ve been thinking it’s all about making some kind of connection with the food he eats. Like last July, we went blueberry picking at a local orchard near our house. Before this outing, a blueberry had never graced his lips. But as he was having fun picking the berries from the bushes, he began popping them into his mouth! And he actually liked them! Nothing short of a miracle. Granted, since that day, he hasn’t been enthusiastically popping blueberries into his mouth every chance he can get, but that one time was enough to convince me that the connection was the key.

Building on that small success, we decided it was time to start involving our little one in the food we make at home. Our first undertaking was pizza. He loved spreading the sauce on the dough and sprinkling with cheese. He waited patiently for it to bake – although asking us about a hundred times if it was ready yet. (We turned our interior oven light on so that he could watch it cook, and that helped to reduce the number of questions while delighting him in the process.) The fact that he ate the pizza wasn’t very surprising, since it’s one of his favorite foods. So I guess it kind of felt like cheating. We need to delve into more challenging dishes that he hasn’t ever tried before to see if we can convert him.

To help on that front, my mother-in-law gave us The Children’s Step-by-Step Cookbook by Angela Wilkes. It’s an older book, circa 1997, but I love it for its simple pictures of each ingredient and each step of the recipe (demonstrated, of course, by a child) – a thoroughly engaging and easy to understand format for non-readers. And I love the recipes themselves. Fun and healthful food that’s not only easy to prepare, but interesting to look at and worthy of a 3-year old proudly stating, “I made that!”

Since we just received the book for Christmas, we haven’t had a chance to make any of its creations, but we’ve earmarked a bunch of recipes – stuffed veggie and cheese potatoes, a fun fruit tart, tic-tac-toe toast, star-shaped cinnamon toast, frozen fruit bars, to name a few. Add to that list tacos – another idea we had, though not in the book. We’ll see how it goes – I’m very optimistic.

I’m also curious…I would love to hear about meals that you cook with your little ones or tricks you might have for getting them to try new foods…do tell!

I pretty much suck at making New Year’s resolutions. Well, let me clarify. I’m good at making them but I can’t keep them. Oh, I can keep them for a month or two, but invariably, I degenerate into my nasty old habits. For example, for the past ten years, I’ve resolved to lose weight. Guess what? I’ve gained weight every year. I’ve also resolved to exercise more. That one I’m still working on. I sort of have to renew that one every few weeks after I continually relapse back into my couch potato status. There was one successful resolution: I decided to give up my daily Coca-Cola habit. This one took me an entire 6 months to accomplish but I finally beat it down to one per week. So one success for a score of failures. Not the best record.

This year, however, I have a resolution that I think I can keep. I resolve to be more content with my life circumstances and less envious of others. It’s easy to look at others and think that they have more money, more fun, more love, more whatever. But sometimes the image our friends and neighbors project is very different from what goes on behind the scenes. The person driving that luxury SUV may be behind on the car payments or mortgaged to the hilt. The stylishly dressed woman with the beautiful kids may be trapped in a dissolving marriage.

I started thinking about this resolution last fall while thinking about our close friends. Let’s call them LawyerDad and TennisMom. LawyerDad got a new, high-paying, high-powered job last year with a salary that is considerably more than twice that of my teacher husband’s. My husband and I wallowed in envy over this for some time. Eventually, though, we began to see that the new job was putting a strain on the family. The commute is long: about an hour and fifteen minutes. The hours are long: LawyerDad arrives at work before 9am and doesn’t get home until 8pm or later. As the new guy on the job, he is under tremendous pressure to learn the ropes quickly while performing his job duties with competence. Needless to say, his blood pressure is showing the effects of this stressful situation. Meanwhile, TennisMom stays at home managing the household and the children, essentially acting as a single parent much of the day, and when LawyerDad travels, she’s on her own for days at a time.

I can’t help but contrast this with my own situation. Even though we are barely eking out a living on my husband’s skimpy non-profit salary, and the job can be difficult at times, my husband gets home every day at 5pm, well before dinner, and in plenty of time to interact with our son before bed. We eat dinner together every night, and we discuss the events of our day. My husband reads to our son every night and is there to tuck him in and arrange his bears just so. My husband has summers off, permitting endless hours of play and family time – what a gift for a child to have both parents around all summer! We also have great health insurance and a pension due us upon retirement.

I repeat these facts over and over to myself anytime I feel the great green monster of envy whispering negative thoughts into my brain. No, we aren’t making the big bucks, and you won’t see me in a Lexus anytime soon, but my son knows his daddy and has a strong relationship with him. We spend hours of fun family time together and we enjoy each other and our little world. So I cling to my mantra of Haves and shrug off the Have Nots, just as I shrugged off my Coke-a-day addiction a few years back. This is one resolution I plan to keep.

I’ve never been a big fan of women in general.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Let’s face it – women are usually pretty catty. I do understand that saying that may implicate me to be catty as well.

But if I am being honest, in the past I have found that if you get a room full of women together there is going to be catty gossip, vicious story telling and a general nonsense that just plain irks me.

I have been led to question, however, whether this is true of ALL women, or just of YOUNG women. As I have aged and matured I have discovered a pleasant surprise.

As women mature, marry, divorce, try for and start families, have kids and battle real life situations it seems to me that the cattiness recedes, the story telling evolves into camaraderie, and the nonsense, well it may not disappear in entirety but it certainly lessens.

I find myself suddenly believing what Hilary Clinton said years ago: “It takes a village to raise a child.”
I now count on the women in my life, my village, to help me raise my kids, maintain my family life and to keep me going on a daily basis.

I have a new appreciation for women. And I now have more women in my life than I ever imagined possible.

About five years ago, when I was the only pregnant woman I knew, I stumbled upon a website full of women. I cringed at first when I saw how many female hormones were in one place, but it was women who I needed most right then. I needed women who would understand. I needed women to relate to. I needed women to aide me in dealing with the nausea and to calm my fears about childbirth. I needed to surround myself with women. Taking this little leap for me turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. Five years later I still have that group of women from around the world that I consider to be close and dear friends. I’ve seen these women battle some pretty tough stuff and I’ve seen women, who have never met in person, rally to support each other like I have never seen before. These women restored my faith in female relationships.

As my daughter grew and our family grew, little by little, the women in my life became more and more vital to me. They are all part of who I am as a mother today. My village of course extends to the women outside the World Wide Web – the powerhouses I like to call dear friends. I now have no idea how I would survive without them all.

You know the kind of friends I’m talking about……:

The friend who will make you homemade chicken soup when your entire house is sick with the flu.
The friend that sends you a care package just when you need it most.
The friend who you call when you are in a complete panic over something with the kids or whatever, that will talk you down off the ledge and still be your friend no matter how crazy you sounded and best yet, she won’t judge.
I have women in my village that will look at every mundane picture of my kids and smile and compliment without ever rolling their eyes, even after the third email of pictures that same week.
I even have women in my life that will grab me and shake me when I need it most.

My village of women simply rocks.

As I grow with my kids I meet new women. While at first I thought that I would be resistant to new friendships and additions to my village, I continue to meet some pretty amazing ladies. I have come to find that I never want my village to stop growing. We have so much to learn from each other. It amazes me what I can learn from these women… Simple things, like making sandwiches that look like snowmen from cookie cutters, to pulling off the perfect play date with ease. I am in awe of women. I am proud of the women in my village who juggle full time jobs and are fantastic mothers. I am in awe of what we are all able to do and accomplish.

Yesterday, my daughter had a play date at a friend’s house. Now that she is old enough to go off and play without me I was able to sit and eat lunch and chat with some of my favorite moms. We sipped champagne with strawberries on a Monday at 2PM with the kids running around as we took in adult conversation and friendship.

Who does that? My village does that!

Why are we sipping champagne on a Monday at 2PM? No reason other than the simple fact that we are Moms and we have earned the right to celebrate each other’s company whenever and wherever we choose.

I hope you all get the chance to enjoy the women in your life, to appreciate the village that surrounds you and to be open to the lessons they teach you and the path they lead you down.

Thank you to each member of my village for making every day interesting and worthwhile. Thanks for all you teach me and thanks for sticking around.

“A woman is like a tea bag, you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

Nancy Reagan

I love love love this laptop case. I bought it a month or two ago on etsy.com. If you’ve never visited that site, it’s really a must. They have awesome hand-made stuff of all sorts. This laptop case came from Janine King Designs.

Laptop Case

It’s one of the few laptop cases I was able to find that fits a 17″ widescreen laptop. I really agonized over the fabric – there were so many beautiful ones to choose from! In the end I went with this happy print. My laptop is lime green so it fits really well with this case. Unfortunately, my husband can’t take it anywhere because it’s just way too frou-frou for him. But that’s okay: he shouldn’t be getting his mitts on my computer anyway!!!

One of the best things about being a mom is watching your child grow up.

One of the worst things about being a mom is watching your child grow up.

Every mom grieves a little as her child passes from babyhood to toddlerdom, from preschooler to grade school. For me, the bittersweet feeling of saying goodbye to yet another life stage is strongest in September, not just because my son’s birthday is that month, but because of the start of a new school year. As summer’s heat dissipates and autumn’s chill moves in, I pull out my son’s long-sleeve shirts, pants, and sweaters. Most of last year’s clothes no longer fit him, although he’s still happy to wear them. Just last week he went to school wearing 4T pants and shirt; his ankles and wrists stuck out about three inches, a testament to his summer growth spurt. I’m sure he got a few strange looks for his I-shopped-at-Goodwill-outfit, but whatever.

I cycle the smaller sizes out of his closet, replacing them with the newer, larger sizes. He rarely asks after the missing pieces, although he’s now paying more attention to his clothing than ever before. But then, his interest mostly lies in making sure he gets to wear a “picture shirt” rather than a plain or striped one. No, the angst is all on my part as I fold up those shirts and pants that no longer cover his elongated limbs, gazing at each to imprint it onto my memory. It’s a sad little act of parting, a sartorial mini-death.

I try not to be sentimental, but I mourn each item as I place it lovingly in the plastic coffin—at least the fourth of its number—for interment into the dark bowels of the basement crawl space.

For I lay these pieces to rest only temporarily, hopefully to be resurrected in renewed splendor someday for Baby #2, and a chance to relive the sweet stages of childhood.

I have never been happier for a New Year to usher in.

There is nothing like the gift of a fresh start to help you shake off something like viral pneumonia, RSV and Pink Eye in your household over the holidays.

Cosmic Perspective? Perhaps….

As you know, I had visions of making Christmas morning the most spectacular event ever.   My reality consisted of administering breathing treatments, forcing antibiotics and keeping charts of who got what medication at what time.

I always try to learn from the situations life throws at me.  Seven trips to the pediatrician in two weeks has taught me an important life lesson – I cannot handle a crisis.

Why?

When my kids get sick I immediately go into panic mode. I call in the troops and request all of the home-made chicken soup two grandmothers can muster. I make intimate friends with Google as I research the ailment, the medication and EVERY. SINGLE. side effect there could possibly be. I find every friend (they can attest to this) who has ever dealt with the ailment with their own children and then I pick their brains for every detail they have.

I turn into a complete maniac.

Our circumstances were not helping my state. Not only did she have pneumonia, but she had pneumonia with a deadline.

It was Friday, December 19^th, 6 days before Christmas and the pediatrician told me that if she wasn’t better by Monday, she would have to go to CHOP and spend a few days there. I had one precious weekend to do everything I could possibly do to get her to better or to maintain her status or we were spending Christmas in the hospital.

I bribed my little girl with everything possible to get her to take her foul medication. I threatened her to drink an ungodly amount of fluids to keep her hydrated and I begged her to eat to keep her strength up.

Monday came and the pneumonia didn’t get worse, but it wasn’t better but we were at least spared the hospital. And that is when I stopped caring about the holiday at all and just wanted my daughter to get better. No one slept or really functioned normally for over a week. Christmas came and went and her oxygen levels began to creep back up and color came back to her face and I started to breathe again…and that’s when I saw the other ball start to drop….I saw my seventeen month old start to get pale. I heard her sneeze a few times and then the cough came.

And that’s when I cracked.

My youngest got RSV, I got a cold and pink eye and my husband is just now getting over a version of all of it. Almost three weeks later, we are just starting to shake off the cobwebs and get back to normal.

Now that I can breathe again – and think rationally – I am left wondering why it is that I am so afraid when my kids get sick? Is it the onslaught of information out there? Is it Google taunting me with scary facts and figures? It is my own morbid obsession with knowing every possible bad outcome?

I recently purchased the book “How Not To Die” by Dr. G.

Dr. G is a medical examiner in Florida with her own forensic television show. She has turned her vast knowledge of the causes of preventable death into a book.  The same day I saw her appear on The Rachel Ray show I went out and purchased the book.

Surely, a book on how NOT to die would provide me with the knowledge of how to keep my family safe from premature death.

I read the book in a day. It was an easy read, and while informative, it was common knowledge. I found myself thinking, “This is all common sense. I know this already!” And it’s exactly common sense that I lose when my kids get sick.

I don’t need to buy books and exercise my search engine to find my common sense.

I just need to get a grip.

I need to learn that things like viral pneumonia and RSV are parts of life.

Unavoidable? Maybe…. but they still occur and freaking out isn’t going to teach my kids how to act when they are faced with ailments on their own in the future.

Instead of Googling “Side effects of Biaxin in a preschooler” I needed to google “How to get my ass off the crazy train!” I needed to breathe. I should have remembered that there are mothers out there that deal with FAR, FAR worse than what I have dealt with and if they can get through it and do it with grace, I surely can do the same with something like what we were faced with.

My kids are going to get sick. Everyone’s kids are. It’s a fact of life, but most likely, 9 times out of 10, they are going to recover. Somewhere down deep inside, I know this but I forget it when I am in the midst of the chaos.

I feel bad for moms and caretakers alike these days. There is too much information out there and too many people telling us what is and isn’t good for the kids. I find it impossible to dose out something as simple as Motrin without checking the dose 3 or 4 times to make sure it’s right. It’s almost like the media took my common sense and turned it into chaos.

Whatever the culprit, I almost wish we were in the pre-Internet days and information overload wasn’t an option.  There’s a reason ignorance is called bliss.

This time, in the end the only thing I learned for sure is…

Common sense rules, Google drools.