This Morning

The baby didn’t go to sleep until 1:00 a.m. so you could say the drama of the morning started then. Poor tot has a head cold and is miserable. I can only think of one thing possibly more miserable than a sick toddler: his parents.

I didn’t even try to make him sleep in his crib, so Donnie and I spent the hours from 11 to 1 taking turns holding, rocking, trying to feed, laying down, ibuprofen — nothing quelled the whining. Jonah finally, blessedly dozed off in my lap while watching Sesame Street. We thought we’d won the battle, at last. So we tiptoed to bed, slipped under the sheets and passed out.

I lost count of how many times Jonah woke in the night. It was a blur of short, fitful naps interspersed with cries, thrashing about, rejected bottles, rejected breast, bitten nipples on both bottle and breast, Donnie pacing, patting, holding, begging, TV on, TV off and every inch of my pillow (and our bodies from the waist up) smeared in baby snot.

A good time was had by all.

And as a side note, HOW did my older two manage to sleep through all that noise? I mean, how? Yet, they did.

Around 8 or so, we awoke to the sound of our cat Max hacking up a hairball. Only, it wasn’t a hairball. It looked like grass and sticks, but the cat never goes outdoors. We finally figured out that Max had been eating the straw sombrero Zach got at the Mexican restaurant over the weekend. Knowing Max’s love affair with all things grass-like, Zach had put the hat on top of his tallest bookshelf so that Max wouldn’t be able to reach it. I still have no idea how that fat cat got up there, but somehow, he did.

Donnie had already planned to have the day off so I could go to a doctor’s appointment, which was great because it’s doubtful he’d have felt up to going in anyway. Shortly after Donnie cleaned up Max’s mess, Jonah woke up, grabbed the remote control and turned on the TV. All by himself. He fell asleep again, tucked into the crook of my arm, while watching Dinosaur Train, so I dozed off again, too.

Next thing I know, icy cold water is pouring over my arm and I bolted upright to find Jonah happily dumping the cup of water from my nightstand all over me and the bed.

If teenagers had to endure one night and morning like the one we’ve had (which was actually the second sleepless night since he got sick), teen pregnancy rates would bottom out. No doubt.