Not tied up in a chair somewhere

My absence the past few days was not because I was being held hostage by a four year old, no worries! Sabrina gets to go to her dad's every weekend ("I don't have two daddies! I'm going to my Daddy house") and this week he 1. picked her up from school on Friday and 2. kept her through mid-day yesterday (no school) so there just wasn't much to report. But now she's back and WOAH. I haven't decided if it is good for me that she is at her dad's every weekend so I get a break, or if it would be better for me if she had consistency. It is clearly better for her to get to see her family, though, so I guess it doesn't matter which is better for me.

Anyway.

We went straight to urgent care from the hand off yesterday. Dad and I had spoken about Sabrina having an asthma attack and while I wasn't pleased with the three hour delay between that conversation and her getting treatment, I'm the one who knows her most recent medical history and was able to pick up her prescription and such. As soon as we were in the car she told me not to talk to her; I expected that so limited what I said. Getting out of the car at the clinic she wouldn't hold my hand in the crowded parking garage. Signing in she wouldn't stand with me, then we went in the wrong door (seriously, there are signs: check IN, and check OUT. You'd think that we should have gone in the door marked "check IN." But you'd be wrong) and Sabrina wouldn't move away from the toy she had started playing with. That's when some other moms started "reminding" me that I am the adult and saying that "if that was MY child, she..." Deep breaths. Those moms don't know our story.

Thankfully the asthma attack wasn't as bad as the previous one that took us to the hospital, so she only needed one nebulizer treatment and we weren't there the entire day. She slept for most of the time we were there, and then when we were done, she said she would rather stay in the hospital forever than come home with me. (Cute.) Finally I managed to get her off the treatment table and we left.

On the way home she was telling me that she doesn't want Santa to come to my house because I'm mean and Santa is nice, which means that I don't like Santa. And since I don't like Santa, I am going to smack him in the face. So she doesn't want him to come. (This morning she repeated that she doesn't want Santa to come to my house and she doesn't want me to put up Christmas decorations.)

She talked to her mom and her auntie and ate 2 slices of apple before she fell asleep on the sofa. I managed to get three of four inhaler puffs in her before she fought me, then a friend came over so I could go to the pharmacy for her new prescription.

I went to bed and she woke me up four times. The last was only 20 minutes before my alarm was to go off, but I went back to bed anyway. And woke up an hour and 20 minutes later. Oops.

Here is how this morning was supposed to go:
6:00-6:30 Foster Ima gets up, showers, picks out clothes for Sabrina
6:30-6:35 Sabrina gets a 5 minute snooze and wakes up at 6:35
6:35-7:45 --

• inhalers
• take medicine
• brush teeth and wash face
• undress
• prescription cream for eczema and moisturizing lotion
• get dressed for school
• put shoes on correct feet
  
• eat breakfast

7:45-8:15 in car on the way to school (school starts at 8:45; breakfast at 8:15. Even if she eats at home, we need the half hour cushion to make sure we get to school on time if she refuses to go to the car.)

Here's how this morning DID go:
7:00 Foster Ima wakes up and curses herself for oversleeping
7:02 Foster Ima wakes Sabrina up and apologizes for oversleeping, "but we need to get ready quickly this morning."
7:04 "Sabrina, we need to get up."
7:04-7:20 won't take inhalers, won't take medicine, won't get up off sofa where she slept
7:20-7:30 finally gets up, agrees to take her medicine but won't let me watch her. Some hitting is involved. (Of me, by her. Obviously.) We eventually end up in her bedroom where she takes almost all of it. I praise her. She shoots the remaining bit out of the syringe across the floor. I tell her she needs to clean it up.
7:30-7:45 I very calmly repeat over and over "Sabrina, you need to clean up the mess on the floor." At one point she leaves the room and throws away the paper towel I had given her. "Sorry, I don't have the towel anymore." So I get another towel and come back and repeat the process. She tells me she doesn't want to hear me, I continue to repeat the same thing very calmly. Finally she starts wiping the floor, but not where she squirted the medicine. (This means she has finally stopped hitting me. Hooray.) Eventually, I won. She cleaned it up.
[There is something very wrong about that fact that I am viewing this as a "victory" over a four year old.]
7:45-8:15 at some point during this half hour, she got dressed (she put her school shirt on over the shirt she wore yesterday and last night) and even asked me for help with her zipper, she put her shoes on the wrong feet, she half-heartedly brushed her teeth (I am supposed to help her with her back teeth, but have had zero success so far, so let her do it without me being there this morning--I was exhausted and needed to save my strength for her inhalers), she let me give her her inhalers, and she ate an applesauce. She let me put her prescription cream on her forehead, but nowhere else. Since she was fully clothed, we didn't get lotion on.
8:15-8:25 She put her coat on, wouldn't let me zip it, tried to snap it herself unsuccessfully, and finally let me zip it. Then she was just a bit stubborn on the way to the car but we got in with a minimum of hassle and she let me buckle her in. We ended up only 5 minutes late to school, where the teacher's aide had brought cereal and milk from the cafeteria for Sabrina so she wouldn't be hungry. (I gave her cheese crackers in the car and took a bag of cereal and a chocolate milk for her since I knew she hadn't eaten enough.)

She will want to watch Diego this afternoon, but I keep repeating that television is a privilege she has to earn and she didn't earn it this morning. She has homework from the weekend (really! in pre-k!) and we're going to read some books. (She wanted to read at one of the times that she woke me up last night, maybe around 3 am? I said no.) We're going to have turkey sandwiches for dinner and then take medicine and go to bed. I think I need to budget in a lot of extra time for these things.