Welcome spring time and the stomach flu!

It's spring here and the weather is simply gorgeous! I have been itching to take off my shoes and walk the beach, feeling the warm sand in between my toes. I had this weekend packed full of fun outdoor activities with Marley, then she got sick.

I need to back track a little. For the last couple of weeks Marley has been defiant about going to bed. Naps on the weekends have been lasting a total of 20 minutes before she would start screaming again. I looked through all my parenting books, checked babycenter.com and even logged into Yahoo Answers to find out what to do. I tried staying with her until she fell asleep but each time she would wake up and find me not there, the whole thing would start over. I tried the crying out method, checking on her every ten minutes. It would take two hours for her to finally settle down. I even broke down and let her fall asleep on the couch while hubby and I went on with our evening. Friday night, I decided we needed to be consistant and I opted for the crying out method. Well, in the midst of the ten minute intervals Marley had thrown up all over her crib, on the carpet and the walls of her room. Boy did I feel GUILTY. When I went in to check on her she was at the opposite end of her crib, screaming. She saw me, then pointed at the vomit and said "oops". That was it, I looked at hubby and said "the crying out method is no longer an option, I'm back at square one". After we gave Marley a bath, cleaned her room, I put her back in her crib and left the door to her room open and she was out in five minutes. Granted she was exhausted but I finally realized that she simply did not want the door to her room closed, she didn't want to feel secluded. Nap time and bed time have been a joy since. I've been slapping my forhead for the last few days saying "duh" to myself. How flippin' simple!

The Friday night episode turned out to be a horrible stomach flu that lasted five days. Poor Marley couldn't keep anything down on Saturday except for Pedialyte. Sunday she would not drink anything and slept all day. This worried me, so we went to the ER. Thankfully her CO2 levels were good but they gave her fluids anyway. It turned out, not surpising of course, she caught this nasty bug at daycare. It wiped out most of the kids at daycare as well as the owner. As the note on the front door said "...thankfully, we are at the tail end of the stomach flu and look at the bright side, at least the kids are sharing". I'm only now starting to see the humor in that statement.

Being home with Marley for five days straight gave me some time to do one of my favorite "time wasters", surfing the internet. I came across a wonderful blog called "A Reluctant Mother". She is a stay at home Mom with two strong willed girls. I am really enjoying the reading. She has fabulous tips, she doesn't sugar coat the trials of being a stay at home Mom either and I find myself bursting with laughter at some of the stories. I had to link her blog to mine.

Happy Thursday!