Happy Halloween

My children finally decided earlier this week what they would be for Halloween. Hannah chose to be a cowgirl, Elias picked the Davy Crockett costume and Maya decided on being a witch. We borrowed Elias and Hannah's costumes from my parents. Both of those costumes were my mom's when she was young. Maya borrowed a witch hat from my parents and then we made a trip to Goodwill to find a dress.

While I was perusing the racks of dresses at Goodwill today I noticed a group of college age boys standing near one end of the rack. They were chuckling and pointing and looking around nervously. A couple of them looked my way to see if I was watching. They then quickly left the area. A few minutes later though as I was looking through shirts the boys were back by the dresses. One of them pulled a red flowery dress off the rack and sheepishly put it on over his clothes. The other boys busted out laughing though they too were soon picking dresses off the rack and trying them on over their clothes. I guess they were going to a costume party tonight and needed a last minute costume. Goodwill was a great idea by the way, the dresses were only about $7 each; way cheaper than anything you could buy in a costume shop, plus Maya will wear the dress again. I also bought her a very cute pair of barely-worn dress shoes.

Tis the Season

Apparently the respiratory/flu season is here, it is going to be a long 6 months. This week every single child I cared for, except one, was in the hospital for respiratory reasons. They were having difficulty breathing for one reason or another. Those children with asthma were having a particullary difficult time earlier in the week when it was dry and windy outside. We are already seeing a lot of pneumonia and of course H1N1. It's not that every child that is having respiratory symptoms actually has H1N1 but the doctors are testing for it anyway. The test takes several days to be confirmed. In the meantime every child tested for H1N1 is put under isolation precautions. This means that any time I want or need to enter their room I need to put on the following -
1. Isolation gown - it covers me from neck to calf.
2. Gloves - they need to overlap the cuffs on the gown.
3. Mask - covers the nose and mouth and makes everything I say sound quite muffled.
4. Eye protection - this year the hospital has sprung for reusable "glasses" we each have a pair to use until we loose them or they break. They fog up easily as your breath escapes out of the top of the mask making it that much more difficult to see things in the dark.
No more running into a room when an alarm is going off. In the least I need to throw on a pair of gloves and a mask. This is going to last until at least April. Yay me!