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I’m still feeling a little achy from the Fifth Disease. I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor, and he brushed off the tiredness as “normal” tiredness, and didn’t seem concerned with my aches and pains. I was a little disappointed, but I really don’t want to do any treatments for it– from what I saw on the fifth disease message board, it looks like you could try taking prednisone (orally) or get cortisone shots. I don’t want to do either of those. The weather was very humid and hot the other week, and it was very bad for me, but since fall is coming, I have hope that the change in weather will help me get over this soon.

We watched Darby O’Gill and the Little People the other night (Joe has been telling Lilia stories about “wee people”). I then looked up the Wikipedia entry for it, and read about the actors. According to Wikipedia, the lead actress, Janet Munro, died at age 38 (!), of “myocarditis.” The entry for myocarditis says “Myocarditis is most often due to infection by common viruses, such as parvovirus B19“! The Fifth Disease virus! Woah.

So, even if the arthritis symptoms last as long as nine years (“Chronic joint pain has been known to last up to nine years.“), at least the infection didn’t go to my heart. Geez.

I saw this story on NPR.com about The Top Five Worries of Parents.

Apparently, according to a survey, parents are worrying about the wrong things. They worry about:
1. Kidnapping
2. School snipers
3. Terrorists
4. Dangerous strangers
5. Drugs

But they should be worried about:
1. Car accidents
2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
3. Abuse
4. Suicide
5. Drowning

Now, what struck me about this article is that from the beginning of the article, it wasn’t clear what kind of worrying they meant. My parenting worries don’t generally involve bodily harm or death. I have other worries to keep me occupied from things I don’t have control over, like terrorists or school snipers. I came up with my own list of worries, and only two involve bodily harm:

1. Am I causing psychological damage by being a bad parent?
2. Will she be screwed up if she is an only child?
3. Getting hit by a car when she runs into the street because I didn’t teach her to listen to the word Stop or No.
4. Not finding a decent elementary school
5. Serious illness

And about the list of things we parents should be worried about… I had a car seat check just the other week because I was unsure I had reinstalled the car seat properly. I had. And I really don’t know what to say about the rest.

We visited the Moravian Tile Works last weekend, where the potters showed Lilia how they press the clay to make tiles, and even let her put the signature stamp on the back. They also had a tile mosaic activity where you had to put together this squirrel tile:

The other day, Lilia and I went to the Morris Arboretum, and we noticed the same squirrel tile in the Oak Allee.

And I was reminded that we were here when Lilia was a baby!

I’m not a super mom. There seem to be a lot of super moms out there… especially on my facebook friends list. They are either very busy with work deadlines or they are taking their kids to zoos, parks and museums every day of the week. They are sewing costumes and crafts, or cooking wonderful meals. And some of them are doing all of the above at one time. While raising multiple children.

I spent the day checking facebook, having breakfast and lunch with Lilia (but not doing the dishes afterward), doing a little laundry, watching Lilia’s animals give a music concert, helping Lilia figure out how to make a Lego building that won’t wobble and reworking a turkey feather so Lilia could have her very own quill pen.

I actually wrote this post a few weeks ago when I got a pang of guilt about spending so much time at home this summer due to the various illnesses we’ve suffered. But you know what? That’s not a bad list of things to do in a day. It’s not super mom quality, but it’s alright. The dishes eventually got done too.

I don’t remember when she wrote these, but they are now pulled out of the notebook and floating around, so I don’t want to lose them. And by wrote, I mean “dictated to mommy”.

Butterflies
Butterflies start out as eggs.
They hatch and out comes a caterpillar.
They eat and eat.
More eating.
They eat lots of food. They crawl.
They are tired so they make a home on a branch.
Then out comes a butterfly.

Ladybugs
Ladybugs are so pretty people don’t think they are bugs.
They eat pest bugs. They stay in the grass so much. And
they have wings. And they can fly.