On Friday, Margot had her first day of “school.” We had heard from someone that our school district has a literacy program for children age 0-4. We are always looking for ways to enrich Margot’s growing mind and thought this sounded pretty great. Especially because it is a bilingual program. Ossining has a large Spanish-speaking population and one of the goals of the First Steps program is to help prepare those children from Spanish speaking homes for their entry into school at age 5.
On our way to school… perhaps I should have taken Margot’s reluctance as a sign…
There was singing and signing and reading books and dancing and all of it done in English and Spanish.
It all sounds great, right? And it IS great. But, this is the email I sent to Todd upon our return from school:
When I say the word “pandemonium”… that doesn’t even feel like an accurate description of how First Steps was…
I am really glad we went.
But. Dude. Pandemonium. For real.
Yeah. It was a little bit hectic. I am terrible at counting and prone to exaggeration, but I am pretty sure there were more than 100 people packed into one room, and more than half of those people were children.
Despite this, when Margot and I both woke up with the sniffles the next morning, I blamed the pollen in the air.
By Saturday evening I was starting to suspect my “allergies” were presenting themselves a bit unusually.
Then, when I woke up early Sunday morning, it was clear it was definitely NOT allergies and WAS, in fact, a cold.
And not only was I suffering, but so was my sweet girl.
We very begrudgingly cancelled our plans for the day and set out to kick this cold square in the butt.
Here’s how we did it, with nary a pharmaceutical in sight:
Water
Rest
Soup
Vitamin C
Eucalyptus steam
More water
More rest
Hulu and HBO Go and a laptop computer
Enjoying some steam.
The real key to my recovery, though… Todd Moore. He toted sniffly Miss Margot around with him while retrieving some of the above listed items. He fluffed my pillows and boiled water and served me soup and crackers in bed.
As for our little girl, she was a little boogie monster, but she never seemed to be as sick as her Mama. I credit this 100% to her steady diet of Mama’s Milk.
Not only does breast milk contain antibiotics specific to the germs in your immediate environment, but breast milk is my answer to everything. Stuffed nose? Shoot breast milk up there. Cut? Rub a little breast milk on it. Diaper rash? Breast milk. I even vanquished a pimple with breast milk before it had the opportunity to come to the surface.
But, seriously, breast milk is pretty amazing stuff.
So, how did it all work out? Well as of this morning, Margot and I are not quite ready to go to Storytime at the library, but, we can breathe out of our noses and we have migrated down from the bedroom to the living room.
I am still unbelievably disappointed that we had to cancel plans that I was very much looking forward to… But! We made it through Margot’s first cold! And… honestly… a sunny spring day spent convalescing with this little love hardly makes it onto my list of “Worst Days Ever.”
The Amazing Moores 