Friday, January 18, 2008

scream


OK, let me preface this post by saying that I love my baby, and I love my 4-year-old, too. But the past 48 hours have been the kind that you read about in the paper after some woman has driven herself off a cliff. And it shows no signs of stopping soon.
Liam came down with a flu on Wednesday, and by Thursday morning, had a fever of 103. So he lay on the couch all day watching a steady stream of videos and sleeping. Matt is also sick, but is a couple days ahead of Liam, so he's doing better, but is still not fully functioning, especially in the evening. Then Thea kicks in. She has stomach trouble of some sort. She's eating so much, I think she fills her belly, then has to work hard to get it all through her new system. The result is crying stints that last as long as a 1/2 hour (not colic, but not easy, either).
And Thea, as I may have mentioned before, doesn't just cry. She screams. (see photo exhibit A above) She screams so loud she kind of gags. She just goes for it. Finally, after two hours of bouncing, nursing, changing, pacifying and the like, I put her in her crib and let her go for it. It took 15 minutes or so, but she finally wore herself out and passed out. Holy smokes. And in the morning, it started afresh. By afternoon, I ventured out of the house, in a desperate attempt at sanity. I got an hour in a local coffee shop reading my book - bliss. Then I went to the grocery store. Thea screamed, choked, and blew her stack for the entire 1/2 hour shopping venture. People everywhere made little supportive comments, and while I am better than the first time around, I still wanted to stick my head in the freezer section and never come out. Hard to believe something so small can make so much noise and create so much drama. All over a little poop.
So now I'm looking at everything I'm eating. I'm not giving up my morning coffee, darn it, but I'm going to try avoiding dairy, chocolate, onions, etc for a couple days and see what happens. I don't need all those extra calories, anyway. It had better work because I'm not sure life without chocolate is worth living.

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