yesterday

Yesterday wasn't the best day ever.  It wasn't the worst either - but it certainly had its challenges.



It started pleasant enough.  Jed slept through the night and didn't wake up until 7:30. Scott changed him and played with him before he headed off to school. I nursed him and played with him too, and he played on his tummy for a little bit (as long as he could stand) and made funny faces.





Around 9:00 he went down for a short nap.  When he woke up we got ready to run our errands for the day.  But when I opened the door, the following sight greeted me:

There are roofers working on our apartment complex, and they had been throwing old shingles and such off the roof into our yard.  The garbage was piling up in front of our door.  As I looked outside the rain of debris continued right in front of my face, and I didn't want to step outside for fear of getting a concussion.  So I adjusted my plans and decided that the errands would get run another time (I hoped that by late afternoon/early evening things would be better and we would be able to venture outside).  I left the door open & opened the blinds for the sunshine, and went back to taking care of Jed.  I fed him shortly after 10, and around 10:30 he was starting to look tired again.  So I started the naptime routine and attempted to put him down.

You'd have thought that Hiroshima was happening all over again.  He screamed.  For the better part of 4 hours he screamed.  Or cried.  Or stared at me with puffy red eyes that seemed to ask what he had done to deserve such torture.  Whatever he did all afternoon, what he didn't do was sleep.  I tried everything - pacifier, blanket, bear (both with supervision).  I nursed him on the couch.  I nursed him in the rocking chair.  I nursed him lying down on the bed.  I read him Goodnight Moon.  I walked him, bounced him, swung him, sang to him.  I nursed him while I did all those things.  I talked to him.  I laid him down on my bed and laid next to him.  I put him on the floor to play with his toys for a few minutes and then tried the nap thing again.  I gave him a bottle in the rocking chair.  I gave him a bottle in the crib.  I thought about taking him for a drive but looked outside and saw that the debris was still raining from the roof and piling up in the yard.  I let him "cry it out" for 10 minutes at a time.  I let him suck on my finger because he wouldn't take the pacifier.  I helped him find his own thumb.  I turned on the vacuum - twice - which made him stop crying for about 5 minutes but didn't put him to sleep (though it had worked like a miracle the day before - after crying for almost an hour, he fell asleep in Scott's arms the instant I turned it on).  I played the piano one-handed while I held him on my lap (that was the happiest he was all afternoon).  After 4 hours of this, I finally gave up.  I put him in what Scott calls his "lawn chair" with a toy and faced him toward the kitchen so he could watch me while I did the dishes (I had to do something productive!).

After a few minutes, I looked over at him to see this very tired face starting at me:

 

"Mama, I'm so tired!
Why are you making me stay awake?"

 












I laughed out loud, walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and went back to the dishes.  After a while he started to fuss, so I went to check if the coast was clear outside.  I hoped that a drive in the car would finally put him to sleep.  Plus, it was just about time to go pick up Scott from school.  It looked like as good a time as any to make a dash for it, so I picked him up and decided to change his diaper before we left - and it was a good thing I did.  He had just barely started to leak poop out of it onto his onesie.  "Okay," I thought, "I'll change his outfit first.  It's covered in spit-up anyway."  After cleaning up the poopy diaper, I went to wash my hands before I put on a clean one - dangerous, I knew - but I needed to get the poop off my fingers before I did anything else.  Unsurprisingly, when I came back he had peed all over himself and was rather pleased (take note of the glistening droplets on his face):

I was going to change his outfit anyway, so this was no big deal.  I wiped the pee off his face with the dry, unpoopy part of the onesie and went to get a new one (after putting a clean diaper on of course).  20 minutes after I had originally started toward the door, we were finally ready to go.  After putting Jed in his carseat, I put on my shoes and picked up my purse.  I turned back around to find a baby who, after 6 hours of naplessness, finally couldn't take it anymore.

Ahhh, sleep.  Now if only Mama had been able to follow suit!