Fear and Loathing In The Diaper Pail

Good Lord, those Wiggles are laughing their asses all the way to the bank, aren’t they? Watched it for the first time yesterday and it is literally retarded. One segment was the Wiggles in concert and they had a pirate (Captain Feathersword) and a Santa Claus dancing around and they were all singing a song that went, and I shit you not, “Fruit salad! Yummy, yummy! Fruit salad! Yummy, yummy!” Then it went on about cutting up some apples and throwing in some grapes, but pretty much the entire song was “Fruit salad! Yummy, yummy!” Guess what the name of the song was? That’s right. “Fruit salad”.

And I wasted four years in college.

How cool! So maybe it is weird to have 8 inches of snow on March 21, but it’s so pretty and quiet. Hot chocolate today, perhaps?

Eh. Not much is going on today. Kid’s at the sitter and I’m hanging out, feeling like doing something but not feeling like doing anything. Ever have that feeling? Like you’re bored, but nothing you can think of to do sounds appealing. I want some cookies. We don’t have any in the house. I thought of making some, but then decided I didnt feel like going through the trouble. So no cookies. Oddly, when I’m out of the house, I don’t feel like having any cookies. I was right by the grocery store and decided I didn’t want cookies that bad. But as soon as I got home, I was like, “Dang! I want cookies!”

We can’t seem to get Liam well. He had his follow-up doctor visit for his ear infection, and he still had fluid in his ear, so now he’s on a new antibiotic. Sunday he got sick with a fever, barfing, montezuma’s, the whole nine yards. We got the fever and barfing under control, but apparently the Poo Patrol will be here awhile. He’s still not digesting any food and the nurse said it will probably be that way for a few more days. The antibiotic doesn’t help matters at all. Ergh. But otherwise he feels fine. Acts fine. Has an appetite, but he wont drink any of the danged Pedialyte. Nurse says that now that he’s over 1, he can have Gatorade or Sprite. I wish I’d been told this before I bought a $6 thing of Pedialyte he won’t drink. Otherwise we’re already doing what we can to dry him up. Dry toast, bananas, noodles, mashed potatoes. Anything starchy.

On to other things besides the toilet habits of my little boy, I turn THIRTY on Monday. Criminy. Only a few days left of my 20s to go. Then I’m in my 30s. Won’t be able to trust me anymore. One cool thing is that I have lost 30 pounds i nthe past year. Plus my baby weight, so more like 60 pounds since February 2005. Thirty pounds for my thirtieth birthday. Rock on.

We’re going to go out for dinner on the 25th, hopefully. There’s a place I want to try called Eleven Eleven Mississippi. www.1111-m.com The problem with having kids is that you don’t go out nearly as much as you used to. So when you do get the chance to go out, you have a dilemma … do you go with an old favorite place so you can have something you havent had in a long time and have been hankering for? Or do you finally get to try the new place you’ve wanted to check out, but risk a crummy experience? I’m risking the crummy experience for my birthday.

This post sounds depressed, now that I read it again. I will re-re-read it a few days from now and decide this sounds stupid. It’s from a lack of cookies, I just know it.

We did it! We have gotten our first ear infection!

For any of the 2-3 of you who read this, I know I’ve been gone awhile, but I just havent had the energy. The boy’s been sick for a week or so and between the not sleeping and the not eating and the constant crabbing, I havent felt much like reliving it here.

Until now. Lucky you.

This whole fall and winter has been an endless parade of colds for Liam (and hence, me). Runny noses everywhere. But usually he’s been fine otherwise. Has an appetite, been playful, that sort of thing. Until he caught this new one. Starting Friday he was just this big ball of snot. I mean, really mucusy. And crabby. The slightest infraction against him and he would just flip out. Move him away frm the outlet? Screaming. Facing the wrong way in the high chair? Screaming. Definitely not his usual jovial self. And he would wake up in the middle of the night for awhile. We’ve just switched him to milk, so I expected his appetite to change, and sure enough, a handful of Cheerios and a swig of milk would do the trick and send him back to Sleepyland. Except Friday night (or should I say Saturday morning), he had some Cheerios and water and promptly vomited them up. Luckily I happened to be holding him, so I got puked on too. He’s never thrown up before. Spit up, sure. But never actually BARFED.

We had plans to go out Saturday night and I wasnt sure about leaving him with my mom if he was really sick. Its not fair to her to have him up all night like that. But he seemed generally alright and frankly, when we dropped him off, I was glad to be rid of him for awhile. Plus there was a full night of uninterrupted sleep ahead of me. Awesome.

Well, Sunday was downhill from there. We were supposed to go out with my brother and his girlfriend and we ended up staying in because Liam was just too much of a mess. I think we turned them off to ever having kids. He just deteriorated as the evening went on. Would not eat, whining all. the. time. Whined through his bath even, which is really something, because he LOVES his bath. No matter how bad he’s been all day, bathtime is party time. And he didnt like it, so you knew this kid was sick. His runny nose turned yellow and I had to suction it out a few times an hour. His coughing became uncontrollable and would make him cry. Crying and coughing at the same time … barely possible. He felt warm to me, but the thermometer told me I was hallucinating. But the worst was how he’d wake up with coughing fits and start gagging, nearly choking, on the gunk in his throat. That sounded a little scary. He stayed up and eventually conked out at 4:45 a.m. on the basement floor, where I left him, rather than pick him up and risk starting the whole sordid process all over again. I slept on the couch next to him. We managed to get in 3 hours that way.

So that morning I called the doctor and we got in at the end of the day. He was a terror. Hollered so much, the doctor couldn’t do her exam. She had to bring him a popsicle to shut him up so she could hear his lungs. I had to hold his head still so she could look in his ears. And then she says, “He has an ear infection!”

We walked out with a cherry red tongue for Liam and two prescriptions, one for the phlegm and the other for the ear infection … you guessed it … amoxycillin.

What nasty stuff that is. That sicky, bubblegum smell just has a way of rocketing me back to childhood, like a prescription time machine. But he loves it. So whatever. It turned him around almost instantly. He ate dinner, splashed around in the tub and slept through the entire night without incident. He’s still pretty runny, but he’s in much better spirits. Maybe too good. Practically bouncing off the walls, lots of walking, climbing on things, giving me that “ain’t I a stinker?” look. Back to normal.

So anyway, that’s it. I have a bottle of pink amoxycillin in my fridge. Just further proof that I am, in fact, a parent. Exactly how long does it take for that to fully sink in, I wonder?