The Down Side

As my favorite blogger, Glennon said to me in our one email exchange, "my kids whooped my ass today."  That pretty much sums up my day.  There's really just no other way to put it.

One moment Douglas was using his almond butter-caked fork from breakfast to paint a beautiful picture all over the newly cleaned kitchen window.  The one that spent months looking like we had sprayed fake snow on it to be festive when really it was just that dirty...until I finally made the time (2 minutes) to clean it a few days ago.  I had a hard time finding the artsy beauty in Douglas' almond butter drawing.  In those moments, I always think to myself, "See?  Why do I even try to clean?!"  Later, Douglas decided to spend his naptime screaming "Mommy hold you" from his bed - over and over and over again for no apparent reason.  (He really means "mommy hold me" btw - we're still working on object pronouns.)

He so looks like he's up to something

Tag-teaming with all of this specialness was little brother who seemed to know when Douglas was done causing a ruckus and would instinctively start his own.  Timon has recently decided to start teething.  Just when we seemed to be over the worst of his digestive issues, BAM!  Teething. 

There were actually four days in there, over Christmas, when he went down for naps like I wanted him to - without endless bouncing up and down and shhhhing and rocking and every manner of trickery to get him down.  I would take him upstairs to his room at my parents' house, cuddle and bounce him for about a minute, and lay him down.  And he slept.  His smiley, laughing side has been coming out more and more, so for those five days, I thought, "Wow!!  This is it!  He was just going through a rough spell, but he's going to be this pleasant, easy, cheesy grinning, cheerful little version of himself now!  Easy peasy!" 

Five days.  Then the drool came.  And the crying.

For the record, I do think that he will be a cheerful, fun little guy - when he's not teething.

On our way home from Texas after Christmas, we made it 10 minutes into our 6-hour drive before Timon started crying.  Crying turned into wailing before we could pull the car off on the side of an exit ramp.  I spent ten minutes bouncing him and shhing him and trying every other trick in my book to get him to calm down.  We were just past a gas station and directly in front of a tiny storage unit place where I'm sure the worker was getting a real kick out of the show.  And by the way, when I say bouncing, I really mean squatting repeatedly.  It's this trick I learned in Baby Yoga.  They're called Divine Drops and they basically involve holding the baby close and secure at your chest, and then doing squats.  The harder the baby is crying, the faster you do them.  They typically calm an unhappy baby almost instantly.  We did it a ton with Douglas. I've done it with various babies, and it works! 

Well, not this day.  There I was, on the side of the road, manically bouncing up and down in and out of  squats with a screaming baby in my arms.  This scream was unlike any I'd ever heard him use before.  It was like he was either in excruciating pain or terrified.  Or probably both.  It finally stopped after we gave him a couple homeopathic remedies, teething gel, and Micah stuck his finger in his mouth for chewing.  Then he passed out. 

Micah looked at me a few minutes later and said, "what if this is what teething is like for him?!"  Our eyes both widened in terror and dismay.  Say it isn't so.

With teething apparently comes naps no longer than 30 minutes for Timon. And lots of crying and yelling. I was a hot mess by the time Micah came home.  I'm slowly recovering.  I almost went to bed at 7:30 but instead decided to try a candlelit bath and some creative outlet therapy.  So I'm sitting in bed with all the lights out, candles glowing, and spa music playing.  And the small Christmas tree in our room is lit - because we both love it so much we decided to keep it in here for a while longer even though I was actually ready this year to take down the rest of the decorations.  (This, by the way, I attribute to the advent calendar.  It really worked!  I sucked the marrow out of Christmas so much that, for perhaps the first time ever, I was willing to let it go when December 26 came around.  Even a little bit excited I dare say.  Much more enjoyable than feeling full-on depressed.)

Hopefully tonight I won't dream of screaming babies or whining toddlers.  Crossing my fingers I'll dream of nothing but fluffy white clouds and warm sunshine and, I don't know, frolicking in a meadow or something.