mamajoan

OMG, yesterday was the most ridiculous day.

If I had written this post last night, it would have started off with "OMG, today was the worst day." But morning brings clarity (if not refreshment) and a bit of detachment.

My plan for the day was as follows: get up, have caffeine, play, go to

anotherjen's house for breakfast, hang out & play with her and Ilana, go home, nap, get up, eat, play, eat, play, etc. ... bed.

But the day in fact went more like this:

Get up, play, receive call from

anotherjen saying she needs a nap so has to cancel breakfast. Have caffeine, eat, play. At this point I really should have taken Isaac outside (it was a nice day comparatively speaking!) and run him around so he'd be good and tired at naptime. But instead I stayed in and lazed around the house playing, then suddenly went "oh look, naptime." Naturally Isaac was all, "whatchoo talkin' 'bout mama?" and an epic Battle For Nap ensued. (oh, and somewhere in there was the episode that I posted about yesterday where I discovered the bloody diaper rash. More on that below.)

Two hours later he was still up and I was exhausted, frustrated, discouraged, and angry. I was so mad at him that I didn't even really want to nurse him (irrational, yes -- remember I'm sick with a cold and really desperately craving/needing *my* nap as well as knowing that he needs his!), but as a last-ditch effort I took him into my bed and we nursed for a while. I figured that even if we didn't manage to fall asleep, at least I was lying down and resting. Only I wasn't resting because I was so upset and stewing.

So then we got up again and I officially gave up the ghost on napping, because by now it was 3pm and I knew that if he napped at that point he would be up all night. So I called Jen and told her the story and she said we should come over, so we did. I was so angry and upset by this point at the prospect of not getting my desperately-needed nap, that I didn't know how I could handle even being with Isaac. I knew it was wrong to be angry at him, but I couldn't help it. So it was really good to get out of the house and be social with other people for a bit.

We had a nice time with Jen and Ilana and their upstairs neighbor Nezha (age 12). Isaac was visibly tired but still enjoyed playing and being cute and eating Jen's food. I think we stayed about two hours. Eventually we went home, and I felt quite a bit better from the "sanity break" and felt like I could handle the rest of the evening.

I decided to make a stir-fry using the vegetables my mom had given me. She basically cleaned out her fridge of all the stuff that would go bad by the time she got back from her vacation (she left yesterday for ten days). So I had zucchini, yellow squash, cauliflower, and carrots. There were so many veggies I almost didn't need tofu, but of course I put it in anyway because I love the stuff. So I was chopping veggies and putting on water for rice and so forth, and Isaac was running around playing with his toys, and I was starting to think, "okay, the day hasn't been so great, but at least it can end on a nice note." Are you sensing the foreboding? Can you feel it? ;)

I had just put the last of the veggies into the wok and everything was cooking up nicely, and Isaac came over and wanted "up" so he could watch the action. So I pick him up and immediately notice that his pants are wet on his leg just under his butt. Either he sat in something, or his diaper is leaking. I do a quick scan of the apartment, revealing no suspicious puddles. "Okay," I tell him, "this has to be the quickest diaper change on record, 'cause mama's cooking dinner." Are you feeling that foreboding yet?

So I whip him onto the changing table and whip his shoes off and stand him up to pull down his pants. And get ... a handful of poop. Poop everywhere! Poop down his legs, poop up his back, poop oozing out of his diaper and onto my arm where I'm holding him. Ewwww.

Mind you, this kind of poop explosion is common when a baby is very little, like the first four to six months or so (it even has a name -- it's called a "blowout"), but we haven't had one of these with Isaac in well over a year.

So I say a bunch of words that I've been trying really hard not to say around him lately ;) and whip him into the bathtub and strip off his clothes. I turn on the water and start wiping him down. He starts crying because the bathtub faucet scares him. (He likes it fine if he knows it's coming, if I give him lots of preparation, but when it just starts up -- especially after the shock of me suddenly whipping him off the changing table and into the tub and tearing his clothes off -- it freaks him out.)

I suddenly go, "oh crap, the food." I dash into the kitchen and turn off the flames under the rice pot and the wok. Isaac starts screaming even harder because I left him alone and naked and cold and wet in the tub. I go back and resume cleaning him, chanting "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over as he cries. I have to lay him down on his back in the tub so I can spread his legs and clean him up, and this makes him even more upset. I'm trying to wipe him quickly, but also gently because of the bloody rash from earlier -- he's still rashy, but not bleeding any more thankfully. Finally I get the poop cleaned off, stand him up again, tell him that I'm turning on the water, reach very slowly for the faucet while he watches. I turn it on and he remains calm. I wash him down a bit more with a washcloth, turn the water off. Now he suddenly perversely decides he wants to play, reaches for the washcloth (EWWW NO!), starts splashing in the puddles on the tub floor. I wrap a towel around him and haul ass back to the changing table. Now he's whining "water! water!" LOL, my little contrarian.

So I get him dried off, put on a new diaper and some more diaper-rash cream, shove him into a blanket sleeper, put him down and he toodles off to find his toys, totally content. I go back to the kitchen to assess the damage. Well, I had left the wok cover on so the squash had basically quick-steamed and was pretty soggy, but otherwise things were okay. I inhaled a plateful of the stir-fry with rice, tried to get Isaac to eat some -- no luck, although he ate a bit of rice and then I eventually managed to get a hard-boiled egg into him.

And then when I got up to get myself a second plateful, I got hit with that ton of bricks that is the wearing-off of the adrenaline rush. All of a sudden I was bone-tired and didn't know if I could even handle Isaac's usual bedtime routine, let alone any extra sleep struggles if he was going to be as hard to get down as he had been the previous night. Fortunately, though, the lack of nap and all the other excitement did the trick. We zipped through our bedtime routine and he was out like a log within about five minutes of getting the boob in his mouth. I treated myself to a quick shower, spent a few minutes playing computer games to unwind, and fell into bed myself.

I slept pretty poorly again, due to the congestion and all the coughing, but oh well. At least this morning I was able to shove Isaac off on someone else (i.e., daycare) for a bit. ;) He slept late this morning and was totally cheery, his butt was rash-free, he spent the entire commute saying the names of his daycare buddies over and over, and when we got to daycare he didn't even wait for me to take his coat off before he started playing. I guess he was as tired of me as I was of him. ;)

Truly, though, the whole explosive poop incident was well-timed; if it had happened before our outing to Jen's place, I would have seen it as the last straw and handled it really badly, but since I was calmer by the time it happened, I was able to see the humor even while in the moment. I mean, it's just poop, after all.

Whew! What a day. And here I thought the craziness would probably get going toward the end of grandma's ten-day absence!! *falls over*

In other news, happy Pi Day! Also known as two days before my birthday. ;)