Tales of Lysol, Jofish and Baltimore Mommies

Yes, yes... I know... It's been a couple of weeks. I have a couple of good excuses. First of all, the boys have both been sick. They caught colds right around Valentine's Day. After my great deal on Lysol at Safeway (I think I paid $1.50 a bottle for the antibacterial cleaners), I scrubbed the entire house that was scrubbable. I thought they were getting better. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Squirty is better... Milk Dud is not.

Poor Milk Dud. He was just hanging onto this cough forever. I figured he was just being like Mommy. Thursday morning, he was wheezing so badly that we took our first emergency visit to the doctor. She says he has reactive airway disease. He had a nebulizer treatment in the office and they sent us home with our very own machine. Just what every 6-month old needs, right? Of course, he hates the thing. He's better about tolerating it after 2 days, but he fusses so much when the mask is on him. It's supposed to look like a fish. Well, Squirty picked up on that and started calling him Jofish... I decided to let it stick since every kid needs an alter-ego for their stupid fish mask. Squirty was the most helpful 2-year old ever, though. He makes his brother laugh and totally forget he has on the mask. For that, I'm rather thankful.

This is poor Milk Dud AKA "Jofish" doing his nebulizer.

My fun for the week will be tomorrow. I'm going to a Mom's Night Out for the first time since I had kids. In November 2008, when I was on maternity leave, I found this online group called Baltimore Mommies. They have different activities and stuff throughout the greater Baltimore area. They have an awesome forum with lots of different boards. There are actually groups all throughout the country that are from the same group. In the early days of being a stay-at-home-mom, they were a life saver to me. It was a way to interact with moms, but without having to take my tiny preemie out of the house. I could talk to moms in my specific area. I could talk to moms who were breastfeeding. I could talk to moms with special needs children, like my preemie. I didn't get on the site a lot, but I did get on sometimes. Last spring, I finally got up the guts to go to a play date where I didn't know anyone. I only did two before going anywhere with Squirty and my huge belly was too much work. This fall, I got more involved online. In November, my area was looking for a new moderator, so I applied. On my application, I actually said that I was applying to force myself to get out of the house and do things. Man, they must have thought I was nuts, but I got the position. Last week, I applied to be a co-manager of the user groups... and I got it. I'm enjoying seeing what happens in other subgroups of our area. It's actually helping me learn about things in Westminster, Towson, Dundalk, etc. I am proud to be a member of the group and excited to continue on in my new position. I hope I can encourage other "lurkers" to take a more active role in the community.