Have you ever had one of those days….
April 23, 2010Where you haven’t slept in what feels like a month (but really it’s closer to a week). Your husband and 1-year-old are sick with an awful head cold which has caused all three of you to miss work and school a few days. You husband takes a much needed break to visit friends, leaving you home with the boys (and no car, but that’s usually not a big deal). After a lazy dinner, (just tea for you – you’re hoping the caffeine can sustain you through bedtime) you get the boys into their pajamas. There have been no less than 12 melt downs between the two of them since their father left and have I mentioned that you are almost falling asleep on your feet? When getting the 3 year old dressed, you notice a tic on his leg. Tics are icky, gross little blood-sucking creatures and while your first instinct is to say “eewww gross!” and leave the room, that’s not really an option. So you tell your son not to panic, and you try to get it out. You try everything you can think of (short of actually touching the icky bug with your fingers) and nothing works. Your 3-year-old is freaking out at the bug on his leg that won’t come off, and your 1-year-old is crying so that he won’t be left out of the chaos.
So, you rally and call your husband. Only, your cell phone doesn’t get reception upstairs, so you close the door to the bedroom where the boys are (leaving them both screaming behind it) and go downstairs to call. Your husband isn’t certain about proper tic removal either (the first one either of you have had to deal with). He stops to look it up on the internet. While waiting you try calling a few other people to see if they know anything. After a few answering machines, you finally get a family member who tells you to get a match.
At this point, your emotional damn breaks. The exhaustion and screaming children and all aloneness out in the woods feeling and the tic and sick kids and the image of trying to a) light a match (which you have never done because you don’t like your hands that close to fire) and b) get said match anywhere near a 3-year-old who by this point has completely lost his shit and vomited on the carpet seems pretty impossible. You thank them for their suggestions and hang up. A few more failed attempts to reach your husband, and finally you get him on the phone, you’re in tears, the kids are screaming and he decides to come home and rescue the lot of you.
Finally, the tic is out. The kids are calm. Your husband heads back out after everything is under control. A few Phineas and Ferb cartoons later (because you’re really too tired to do much actual interacting or playing with the kids) the 1-year-old goes to sleep without complaint.
A little while later, you put the 3-year-old to bed. He complains that his stomach hurts, but he’s one of those sympathetic illness kids – if anyone in the vicinity is sick, so is he (according to him). You tuck him in and tell him to get some rest, and then collapse on the couch for a few minutes.
As you finally stumble to bed at 10:30, you think, “ok Universe, I’ve had 2 sick family members for almost a week now. I haven’t slept, I’ve lost my appetite, and I’m home alone with the kids tonight, the tic calamity was exhausting. I need one good night, just one good night sleep to get back on track” It’s almost as if you can hear a little evil laugh off in distance as your head hits the pillow.
Literally minutes later, your 3-year-old wakes up and asks you to rub his back. After that is done, you fall back into bed with a sigh, and then moments later, he wakes up again, asking for a paper towel to throw up in. Well, you know this isn’t the best idea ever, and you drag his sleepy butt to the bathroom where he does indeed get sick, but manages to get most of it into the toilet.
You call your husband at 11:30 and say, “Please come home now” to which he responds “should I call the hospital and find out if we need to bring him in since’s he’s vomiting after that tic bite?” Great. Now you’re worrying about a stomach flu and Lyme disease. Awesome. After a late-night call to the pediatrician, you a relieved to learn that the vomiting and tic probably aren’t related, and there isn’t any need to worry about Lyme disease. The pattern of waking up, vomiting on a towel in bed, and then making it to the bathroom to vomit some more proceeds like clockwork every few hours throughout the rest of the night. The Universe has scoffed at your desperate plea for sleep and instead given you the duty of cleaning up pile after pile of vomit. You must have really pissed off the Universe.
Three towels, three t-shirts and one pillow and pillow case later, dawn finally arrives. The 3-year-old manages not to vomit in your bed, but does manage to hit the carpet, the hard wood floor, his shirt and pants as well as your shirt just before you leave for work.
Oh yeah, can’t forget that. After this most recent night of torture, you get to get your sorry butt out of bed and into work where you need to somehow become a productive member of society for 8 hours. Good luck with that. Those days suck, don’t they?
I’m not sure how I became a target, but somehow Xander has decided that spitting up on me is the best place to get sick. It doesn’t matter how vigilant I am with a burp cloth, Xander will save his spit-up for times when I’m not burping him, and have of course forgotten the cloth over my shoulder. In the past 3 weeks I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been on the receiving end of spit-up. One eventful night Xander got my t-shirt – but I was prepared for that, and had a spare t-shirt next to the bed. After I changed my t-shirt, I nursed Xander, and he managed to spit up on my pants. I wasn’t prepared for that, so Zach held the baby while I changed my pajama bottoms. As I took Xander back, he managed to spew spit-up into my hair (I had it pulled back, that kid just has a special knack for getting spit-up everywhere!), so at 4:30 am I found myself in the shower… Yesterday Xander managed to spit up on two sweaters (both dry clean only…), and this weekend he managed to spew what looked like 4 ounces of milk all over the both of us – before I could even get him to the burp cloth on my shoulder! Why is any of this interesting? Because Xander doesn’t spit up on anyone else – just me. Well, to be accurate, he did catch our friend Sandee with some this past weekend, but other than that isolated incident, I think I have caught all of Xander’s spit-up, and I don’t spend as much time with him these days, as Zach is at home with him during the day, and gets up with him at night. Somehow in the 6 hours during the week and the weekends Xander manages to save all of his spit-up time for me – I don’t wear perfume, Zach and I use the same shampoo, laundry detergent, etc., so I’m hoping that it isn’t something about my scent that makes my kid ill, but at this point I’m starting to worry that something about me makes my kid sick…
