Sick Days

Every time we travel Toby comes down with a sudden illness and spikes a high fever just when I have no Motrin, thermometer, or sanity. So it was no surprise this Saturday, when visiting my Dad in Oklahoma, that he woke up crying and wet, with only enough energy to barf lethargically into the toilet before slumping into my arms like a steaming heap of misery.

I scrambled to create our usual sick day comfort rituals though not at home: repeating episodes of Thomas and Friends (thank you On Demand), his stuffed Dalmatian Samson tucked under one arm, and his plaid blanket covering only his legs though a barf towel covered his entire body (and the couch) "just in case".

After "in case" happened infinity plus times I was out of towels and patience. Panic set in. If he has a stomach virus how am I going to make a three hour drive back? What if I get it? Will we be the loathed house guests yacking in the bathroom while the disgusted hosts wait in horror for the moment they can hand us our germ-infested luggage and burn the sheets we slept in?

Toby and I shared the couch for a very, very long night of fever, Thomas, and insomnia. I raked my fingers through his sweaty head and hoped his suffering would end quickly. I held a towel to his mouth so he didn't have to miss the freight cars crashing over a bridge while he puked. I felt his head. I checked the clock a thousand times. I got out my Bible and tried to read it over him, but I knew I was really reading it over me. I wondered how many moms were awake with sick kids, and how many moms were awake with really sick kids. I felt his head again.

The sun eventually came up, like it always does, and Toby's stomach settled down long enough to eat a piece of toast and drink some Gatorade. Though my gracious father insisted we could stay, I dosed him up on Motrin, threw our stuff in the car and drove home. He slept the whole way.

This afternoon when his fever was still raging my "wait and see" philosophy was usurped by my hypochondria and I rushed him off to the doctor. We learned Toby has a virus, and that waiting and seeing is never a bad idea.

An hour after our return Toby popped off the couch and yelled at baby Charlie for playing with his trains.

He's cured.

Overseas Plane Ticket Wanted

Can someone please invite me on a long trip to France until Toby turns four?

I can't spend another day skipping smilingly around the house like an imbecilic Pollyanna gently coaxing him to perform the simplest task.

If I don't help him put on his Thomas underwear he gets frustrated. If I do help him he unleashes a rabid burst of independence and takes them back off so he can do it over himself. Then I have to stand in silence while he thrashes around his bedroom yanking and tugging away while my hair grows down to the floor and I have to fight the urge to grab the waistband and jerk it right up to his eyeballs.

But I do something worse. I open my mouth and yell TOBY, just LET ME DO IT. And I can tell by the crestfallen look in his eyes that I have crushed him in the most shameful way because nothing would mean more than showing me that he is capable. That he can put on his clothes or make chocolate milk or push baby Charlie's stroller through the parking lot just like a big boy. Just like I do.

I look at his little buzzed head, face contorted in a wash of unabashed defeat, underwear elastic printed with the silhouette of a train slightly disheveled and twisted around his tummy. Look Toby, you DID it. Mommy didn't even have to help. You did it all by YOURSELF. I hug him and grab his stout shoulders in my hands. I am so proud of you buddy. What a big boy you are.

He looks at me and sniffs while wiping away sweaty tears. I hope he forgives me. I hope I show him how strong he is and how smart he is and how big he is.

That I am so proud of him sometimes that it hurts.

Maybe France can wait one more day.

Friends

Welp, my site got an overhaul. Thanks to the talent of a borrowed Mac Notebook you will now spend the first moment on "Tales from the Running Mama" hoping I remembered to Lysol the high chair tray. At least its a diversion from counting the spider veins on my thigh which is what I spend the first moment doing.



I have a confession. I do not have a computer. Well, I have a "computer" that my mother-in-law gave me two years ago that may be the actual first laptop man ever carved from stone. I think King Tut was clutching his gnarly mummified arms around it when they dug him out of his rickety old tomb. So if all you want to do is play solitaire or move the tiny hourglass cursor around the screen all afternoon while you are waiting for the Internet to connect, then I have the perfect machine for you.



Go ahead and feel sorry for me. I do. I pout every time I sit next to my husband at the kitchen table, tapping my foot, waiting for him to finish checking his e-mail and updating his Facebook status so I can use his own personal laptop that he has to himself all day. That is what I do just before I type up my post that I pre-wrote ON PAPER. In case you were wondering, paper is this white stuff that ancient peoples used to scrawl runes on before there was Microsoft Word.



Every cloud has its silver lining, and mine is this: Sunday afternoon I spent an hour and a half taking "Mac" pictures of my stupid running shoes in front of any baby paraphernalia available while laughing my face off with my best friend. Jen, thank you for everything you have ever done for me. I love sharing my life with you because you make it funnier, sweeter, and deeper than it would ever be alone.

Good Stuff for Week of 4/27...

I thought it would be nice to share some of the best "mom" posts I found this week during my ample time creeping the blogosphere. Enjoy one of these if you...


Need Validation and Inspiration


Have a Strong-Willed Child


Are a Single Mom


Are a Pastor's Wife


Love Your Slow-Cooker

The Demotion of Man's Best Friend

Have you noticed how quickly a dog moves from "beloved family member" to "faintly barking from the crate in the garage" as soon as a new baby is brought home? I used to love my dog. I used to remember to feed her too. Now I am only aware of her presence when I vacuum the hair accumulating on the baseboards.


Actually, I do value her in a practical sense. Like when Toby knocks an entire plate full of spaghetti on the kitchen tile and I can sit back and watch it get cleaned up for me. Then I love having her around.



What I can't stand: seeing her lick the spoon Charlie is dangling over the edge of the high chair. I know dog's mouths are supposedly cleaner than ours, but since our mouths are only slightly less germy than raw sewage it's not really anything for dogs to brag about. (Disclaimer: Any scientifically knowledgeable people... Jen Stokes...reading this, I totally made up my germ analogy and have absolutely no idea how our mouths compare to raw sewage.)



But seriously, here is a list of things I have seen my dog eat: cat poop, throw-up, dirty diapers, dead frogs, trash, raw meat packaging, and blobs of spilled ??? from the sidewalk. And it wasn't like she had to be coerced. She would knock a blind grandma into the road for a lick of the spilled Ensure she was standing beside.



However, there is one compelling reason to keep my dog in the family forever:



So anyone who is about to call the ASPCA on me, just set the Blackberry down. He likes her a lot. And you know I would do anything for him.

Concentration

Sometimes I just want to have a moment to myself to think. A moment where Alec Baldwin is not reading the narrative to Thomas and Friends on t.v. in competition with the dog's incessant barking at the patio door. A moment where baby Charlie is not crawling around my lap like a confused gerbil, slinging snot all over my pant leg and clawing at my face until my skin is just sore. Where Toby is not squalling on the tile in the kitchen in the throes of apocalyptic catastrophe because I forgot to let him open the yogurt container himself. I just want to grab a chai and sip on it slowly, listen to some music sung by a non-cartoon, non-Disney, human and pass a few minutes in a lazy stupor, responsible for no one's immediate welfare.

I try to manufacture this pleasure in the afternoon when both boys magically fall asleep at the same time and leave me a bit of glorious silence, scarce as a bald eagle's feather. Instead I end up flitting around the house in a frantic rage, folding infinity loads of laundry and slathering Italian dressing on the chicken breasts for dinner because it must be done now or our very lives will tumble down around us into a pile of stinking, rotten chaos.

When I was sixteen I remember driving down the highway in my best friend's Blazer, listening to the Reality Bites soundtrack blare "Stay" from the stereo, toes pressed up against the front windshield, windows open, warm summer air swirling my hair into tangled pieces of rope. We had nothing to stop us from driving to the next state if we wanted. It was a sort of wild bliss that only teenagers can embrace. How did it fade so far into distant memory that I have to pull it out from the brittle, time-soaked archives of my life?

It's early evening and Greg has just come home from work to weed eat the back yard and scoop up the piles of dog poop we can no longer justify as fertilizer. Toby is sifting around in his sandbox, his sweaty red-cheeked face covered in gritty, brown splotches. He squishes a stuck-together clump in his fist and watches the grains fall through his fingers. Baby Charlie chatters away on the baby monitor patiently waiting for me to lift his little bean of a body out of the crib.

Maybe we will eat out on the patio tonight. Maybe we will have corn on the cob and ice cold pop and sit around laughing at Toby ask for his own "gwass of Coke" through a mouthful of chicken nuggets. Maybe we won't notice our dog licking the mashed carrots from Charlie's messy face because we are too busy talking to each other.

Maybe I will stare at the faces of my men with a frenzied passion that only a grown woman can feel.

Maybe I will discover a more profound satisfaction than I ever knew possible.

Brevity

Tonight's prayer was unusually succinct.

"Dear God... Amen."

You're three and you already grasp omniscience.