Batteries included: Childproofing Grandma's house

During the days I served as sole caretaker of Bubby and Baby Mac a few weeks ago, Baby Mac's favorite thing to get into was the television cabinet. He loved nabbing the Wii remotes hidden within and walking around with one in each hand. If he didn't feel like going through the hassle of wrangling the Wii remotes out of the cabinet, he simply grabbed the universal remote for the television, which was usually nearby on the recliner or ottoman.

The kid likes remotes. No big deal.

Turns out it is a big deal, though—a big dangerous deal, thanks to the easily accessible and potentially fatal batteries inside the clickers he covets.

Because of Baby Mac's obsession with remote controls, the following news story struck quite a chord when I happened upon it Monday evening:

Scary, huh!?

Then, the very next day I received an email from the Battery Controlled campaign from Energizer and Safe Kids Worldwide. It offered stats from the American Academy of Pediatrics plus additional information on the dangers of lithium batteries, including a link to this video:

As grandparents who often have little visitors, we've childproofed our homes, just like the parents of our grandchildren have done. We've covered outlets, wrapped up window cords, secured screens on windows, bought baby gates and bathtub mats and hidden our medications and more in cabinets where little ones can't reach them. But did any of us—parents included—consider the dangers of remote controls, key fobs, hearing aids, greeting cards, bathroom scales, iPods, iPads and more?

I sure didn't.

That's no longer the case, though. Not only will I have an eye on every remote and other button battery-operated gadget next time Baby Mac and Bubby visit my house, I've shared the videos with Megan and encouraged her to do the same battery-proofing at her house.

I encourage you to do the same, too: Share the warnings with the parents of your grandchildren, and heed the warnings in your own home.

Today's question:

What's your guesstimate of how many button battery-operated gadgets you might have around your house?

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Long-distance grandma = long-distance mom

Baby Mac is sick. Again. Seems like my youngest grandson has continuously battled bugs of this sort and that ever since he was just a few months old.

This time Baby Mac has an especially nasty bug, of the croup and bronchiolitis sort. Megan called me Tuesday on the drive home from the pediatrician, where Baby Mac and his Mommy had to endure the trauma of Mac's first-ever nebulizer treatment. It was horrific—for both—with Mac screaming from beginning to end.

My poor babies. I imagine it was no fun at all for either. I can only imagine such treachery because as a mother, I never had to do such a thing, never had to administer a breathing treatment for a sick child. In all honesty, my kids were—thankfully!—relatively healthy. Now that Megan's a mom, she realizes that. It's something we've discussed often, as both my grandsons seem to be sick a lot, and Megan thinks there's some magical answer to keeping kids healthy, one she's not yet been privy to.

"Am I just a bad mom?" she pleaded for an answer Tuesday. "What am I supposed to be doing that I'm not?"

Usually when Megan asks that question, my first response—selfish as it may be—is, "You need to move out of that <cuss> desert and back home to the mountains."

Not this time, though. Because Megan was on the verge of tears. Because she was scared. And because she was sitting in the car in the garage having just reached home from the doctor's office and had a sick nine-month-old zonked out in his carseat, exhausted from the traumatic treatment, as well as Bubby sitting quietly beside him, and they all needed to get into the house.

"You're doing everything you're supposed to, Megan," I told her. "You got the baby to the doctor and he's being taken care of. That's what you were supposed to do. There's just a lot of crud going around right now and Mac just keeps getting it, for whatever reason. It's nothing you are doing or not doing."

Jim, who was home for lunch and part of our call, confirmed to Megan that a mom he works with has young kids who are sick far more often than was the norm when our kids were little. It's just the way it is nowadays, he said, for reasons we don't know.

"It'll be okay," I told her. "Just get the kids inside and call me later."

It's exactly such times that the distance from my grandbabies, from my daughter, are the hardest. I couldn't just hop in the car and head over to her place to help her out, to hug my sick grandson or, more importantly, to hug my stressed-out daughter.

The most I could do was text her a few hours later, when I figured things had calmed down a bit: 

Despite the crappy day and a croupy kid, at least my daughter still had her sense of humor. Jamaican or not, Megan is indeed a good mon—just because it sounds so cool.

And perpetually sick kids or not, she is indeed a good mom, too. Just one who needs a hug from her own mom—yet lives too far away to get exactly that.

Today's question:

What are your thoughts on kids being sick more often than they were back in the day—that day being when you were a kid or when your kids were kids?

The healing power of positive thinking...and puppies

Those of you who follow Grandma's Briefs on Facebook and Twitter know that I've been on nurse duty for my youngest daughter, Andrea, who had her tonsils out this week. At 26 years old. Which had her mama—that would be me—pretty concerned.

The surgery went well, and I think much of that can be attributed to Andrea's positive attitude going in.

I've heard distressing stats on how long it takes adults to recover from tonsillectomies, ranging from two weeks of intense pain (and hunger) to it taking three full months to get back on one's feet. Again, I think (and hope) Andrea's positive attitude will make for the best possible outcome.

Despite moments of debilitating pain and frustration immediately following the surgery, Andrea's sense of humor continues to carry her through. To wit: When the nurse summoned Andie's roommate and me from the waiting area to see Andrea in the recovery room, the nurse said Andrea's first words were, "No grape popsicles!" All Andie and a reference to her concerns medical staff would immediately provide purple pops afterward. Seems purple popsicles and the vomiting that accompanied them is Andrea's only memory from her only other surgery, getting tubes in her ears, more than 20 years ago. Her roommate and I couldn't help but laugh (yes, out loud!) as we followed the nurse to Andrea's bedside.

Another example of Andrea's goofiness and how it's helping her deal with the pain is her novel approach to communicating in the first excruciating hours after surgery when talking was virtually impossible. She started off with pen and paper to relay her requests—and, at times, distress—but that soon proved too cumbersome and Andrea turned to her iPhone, typing all she wanted to say into the Notes application then having her text read by the computerized voice...which involved not only a monotone voice—except when a typed question mark meant text was read with a lilting tone at the end of requests—but numerous awkward and incorrect pronunciations of words. Which got Andrea giggling despite the pain. Which made her repeat the humorous text again and again. Typing song lyrics got her roommate and me giggling as well.

That's not to say it's been easy on Andrea. At all. She's in pain, she's hungry, she's worried about coughing and choking and vomiting, and concerned the recuperation might not go as quickly and smoothly as we all hope. When mustering her own comic relief doesn't come easy, though, puppy love steps in, courtesy of Luke (Andrea's dog) and Lennox (her roommate's dog).

With a cute quotient so high, how could these adorable kiddos not make her feel better?

I head home today, leaving Andrea under the care of her roommate—and the pain relieving power of puppies.

I have no doubt she'll be better in no time.

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Today's question:

When you don't feel well, what one thing never fails to help you feel better?