I am gonna make it through this week if it kills me

[metaphortunate]

ETA: and now, possibly mastitis. FML

---------

Last Sunday night. A week ago. Mr. E and I were lying next to each other, in bed, during one of the five minute breaks between Rocket's inexplicable bouts of screaming.

I stared blankly at the ceiling. "Today…has not been a good day."

Long pause.

"No," Mr. E agreed. Long pause. "Too much explosive feces."

At which point I lost it, because, yes. Any day that you can sum up with "Too much explosive feces" is not a good day. We both spent that day repeatedly cleaning shit off the toddler, the floor, the underpants, the trousers, the tub, the bucket…what is clean? You soak the underpants in the bucket, but then you have to wash the bucket, and the gloves, and then you have to clean the floor, but did you get all the floor? Do you need to clean the stairs? Did you accidentally walk through it before noticing, and do you have time to clean your slippers downstairs while the toddler is upstairs with the bleach which is out because you were using it? I asked Mr. E "What counts as clean?" and he said "I don't know, it's been too long since I've seen it."

Also Rocket has been having an enormous developmental spurt. Suddenly he can roll over from his front to his back! In both directions! He has learned to blow a zerbert with no substrate! He has discovered his feet, and grabs them all the time! He grabs rattles with both hands, and can get them in his mouth 9 times out of 10! Today, he threw his rattle - twice! Like two feet away! It's incredibly exciting! This has all happened this week, he wasn't doing any of this ten days ago!

…and, of course, one of the things that happens with developmental spurts is that it really gives them a hard time sleeping. So, inexplicable bouts of screaming. And finally I just gave up and decided to give in to terrorism. The tiny asshole sleeps in our bed now. I give up. My shoulder is stiff in the morning, but fuck it: we have all slept. And he's probably not going to die. At least, less likely than that I would drive us all into a truck if I didn't start getting more sleep than I had been. It would probably even have been accidental.

But, so, luckily no one else got the stomach issue till I did on Friday night. No, really. That is luck. I didn't have to miss any work, and I didn't have to clean up shit while feeling terrible. You really want to trade off, with illnesses.

And the cherry on the top of the whole shit-and-magical-wonder-of-childhood-developmental-miracle sundae that has been this week, was also last Sunday night, when I was making my zombie-like way up the stairs, after a day of cleaning up shit, and turned the corner to find: the Junebug. Standing in front of me. Beaming, and announcing, "Mama, I climbed out of my crib by myself!"

("The curse is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott.")

Seriously, I nearly broke down crying. As I type, he is meant to be napping, and I have put him back in his bed three times. We are meant to be going to a neighborhood get-together in the afternoon, and if he doesn't nap, he's going to be a beast. I guess we'd better go get him a real bed next weekend.

ETA: It's not a sundae, right? It's a parfait. Because it has layers. Layers of shit, amazing miracles of growth and development, work, frustration, adorableness, and stomach pain.

Comments

[spuffyduds]

Oh man. I feel for ya.

[snippy]

BTDT. Good on you for recognizing the good with the bad. And humor can save even a day decorated with exploding feces, as I know from experience.

[metaphortunate]

We will survive, somehow...

[sara]

With our second, who mastered crib-exiting MUCH younger than we were really happy with, we ended up just putting a mattress on the floor...on the principle that fuck if that sort of behavior needs rewarding.

[ironed_orchid]

Your icon could not be more appropriate.

[sara]

...you can essentially track the development of my children over the last decade via my social media icons, yes....;>

[metaphortunate]

Yes, that is what we will do.

[badgerbag]

Wishing you a night of awesome sleep and NO MORE EXPLOSIVE FECES.

<3

It gets better.....

[metaphortunate]

No more!

Mastitis instead! FML...

[badgerbag]

I had a nightmare last night that I had just had a baby named "J.D." , and even though it was a newborn it managed to get out of its crib, stand up and walk around, and we caught it eating some chicken bones out of the garbage can and vomiting everywhere noisily like a cat with a hairball. Then I was like "this has to be a dream, because, thank god, my tubes are tied, plus, JD is not something I would agree to call a baby" and I lucid-dream rewound everything so that there was no baby. WHEW.

I am still glad you have YOUR babies also that they are not eating chicken bones out of the trash.

and I hope you have lots of ice packs, heating pads and painkillers today

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

"Them masticks is proper bugger," as the farmer said to James Herriot.

[kalmn]

Our crib turned into a toddler bed, and then we put a baby gate in the door. Didn't keep him in bed, did keep him in the room. We had a hard time figuring out a bed arrangement that he wouldn't fall out of, but iirc that you guys have working knees, just put the crib mattress on the floor,

[metaphortunate]

We have a baby gate at the top of the stairs now, & we're gonna get him a twin mattress on the floor.

[thistleingrey]

+1 floor. (My daughter's crib wall came down circa 18 months, and when we moved, we switched to floor at 23 mo, then twin bed + stool for climbing onto it two months later. There's no ideal time for learning to stay in bed at bedtime--earlier isn't easier, later isn't easier. It just sucks for a while, then evens out.)

Also, yay, Rocket's rocketing advances.

Best wishes to you for feeling better and getting sleep.

[kate_nepveu]

. . . at least he didn't fall when climbing out? ISTR SteelyKid did on her second time. (I think we still have the crib tent, but it can't be practical to ship.)

Yay good things, boo very very much to the bad, and I hope for cleaniness and good health soonest.

[metaphortunate]

He's very good at climbing out now! ARGH

[kate_nepveu]

ARGH indeed.

[snarp]

Put a tarp and a piece of particle board over the crib. I am confident that this will lead to no developmental issues whatsoever.

[metaphortunate]

Gonna be a problem when he jumps on the bed, is what...

Harimad here

[(Anonymous)]

Surely he's not supposed to jump on the bed, right? So that would be what the child development types call "natural consequences."

[cahn]

No, really. That is luck.

Ugh, I'm very sorry, and yeah, I know what you mean. It's like, it sucked really really badly, and at the same time it could have sucked that much worse.

+1 for mattress on floor as well. We just dumped the crib mattress on the floor, actually. E would probably still be sleeping on it at age 4 (hey, she still fits) except that a friend was shocked by our cavalier disregard for beds gave us a twin bed they weren't using anymore.

[amaebi]

Wow, that's a hard, hard week.

[jrtom]

"zerbert with no substrate"

Oh, the geekitude. Lo me mata. *stands at desk at work, resists the urge to LOL*

Re: climbing out of the crib...don't know if I've told you this story, but: Megan and I took a house-hunting trip with our then-only child when he was about 16 months old. The hotel supplied us with a portable crib. At one point we left him in the room asleep for about 10 minutes (on the grounds that he couldn't get far on foot and lacking both notable language skills and money) and came back to the room...which was still quiet but now featured an empty crib.

Immediate, but suppressed, HOLY SHIT moment followed. Because there was a small part of the room that was out of sight, we went there...to see him with the hotel phone held to his head, looking as guilty as a 16-month-old is capable of. And _then_ he started crying.

I still have no idea what he thought he was doing with that phone. I wish I did.

Good luck.