Blow your nose

I have been on my own with the girls for a long ten days thus far.  While we do get into a rhythm that serves us well, I am beat down like a clown tending to absolutely everything in our lives with an insane amount of precision, efficiency, and organization.  That is my proto-OCD at work.  I have but one safe place, and it is just relatively so.  Sleep, night time, my dreams.  Unfortunately, even that has been encroached upon.  First by my obsessive desire to catch up on two seasons of Game of Thrones and Homeland in just a matter of days (Yes, I know, my brain is nearly ready to explode.) and second, by the almost four year old's sniffling and coughing. Again.

There are few things more difficult to teach a child (for me anyway) than how to blow her nose.  I am still not sure to this day how Lily learned how to do it, but she is a pro.  She does take gruesome interest in whatever is in that tissue once she's done it, but that is another matter.  She can blow her nose, clear out the mucus and other gunk, and generally keep herself free of the dreaded ear infections that seem to plague the under six set.  Virginie, not so much.  And when I say not so much, I mean not at all.  Her nose blowing consists entirely of sucking that mucus all the way to the back of her brain and then rubbing a tissue over her dry nose.  Both in Barbados and here in the States, this little person suffers from some sort of reaction to allergens, cold viruses, tickles in the throat, lungs, and nasal passages.  It feels like we get a free week or so and then we're back at it.  But this time around there is no need for her prescribed inhaler.  What she needs is to blow that nose!

I woke up this morning (extremely early for me) to a sniffling, sucking, chattering Virginie sitting upright in my bed (when Papa's away...) picking away at the boogies crusting her little nose.  I tried, in my sleepy stupor, to teach her to blow, threatening her with saline drops and the aspirator.  I acted like a crazy person.  I was desperate to clear her face and steal a few more minutes.  I am sure any relatively astute television viewer or complete idiot could see what I couldn't.  We were never going back to sleep.  She was not going to blow her nose.  I needed to finish the last two episodes of Homeland so that I could go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight...because we were about to be up and ready to start the day.

Poor, little soul.  She is sniffling away as she parades around the house in her "princess coat," a tiny leopard print, swing coat that she is wearing over her princess pajamas.  Lily is sitting in front of her trying to show her how to "smell a flower and blow out the candles" with her nose.  I hear a lot of sniffle sucking and then blowing out the candles with her mouth.  Up early and ready to do things.  We will have to go to bed early anyway.  Perhaps there will be some sort of antihistamine administered to aid in her sleeping.  Plus, the "Easter bunny" is going it alone this time and has to get up to that attic and construct the monster baskets that are popular these days.  LalaLoopsies, Barbies, candy, and maybe a little Jesus in there, you know, for Easter.  God willing, there will be some nose blowing in our future or maybe I will just never sleep again.


(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.