Free donuts

Thanks for all your sympathetic comments on my last post. I do think it helps to know that others struggle, too, which is one reason I've chosen to be so honest about even my ugliest feelings. I recently read a blog about toddler parenting in which the author said sometimes you just want to put them in a box by the curb labeled "free donuts". Ha ha! So true. Anyway, onwards and upwards, huh?

So I had a perfectly horrible episode on Monday where I was walking with a friend and suddenly got extremely nauseated - I was able to barely crawl back to the car and drive home (pulling over and getting out to sit on the street a couple of times), but when I got to the house I had no choice but to leave the kids in their carseats and run out and throw up all over my sidewalk. The rest of the afternoon was just torture - four hours of Bumpus tearing the house apart while I breastfed the baby while repeatedly running to the bathroom, about to throw up. And always with the terror that now the kids, including my (then) three week old baby, were going to get it, too. I finally got B to bed and my friend from the walk brought over some pills called Nux Vomica. I don't know if they worked or the thing had just run its course, but I recovered after that, and nobody's been sick since. Was it food poisoning? Maybe; I had eaten a suspicious coconut curry I'd frozen several months ago for dinner the night before. This immediately went down the garbage disposal, along with everything else a little old in my fridge. But boy, what a horrible episode! I swear I've thrown up more in the past four months than I have in my entire life. 

Anyway, other than that and B's bad morning, it's been a good week. I've really hustled to keep us busy, and have had some nice interactions with other kids. It's gratifying to see them actually remember each other and play together now. Bumpus has "friends"!

Today is going to be interesting. I am going to my babysitter's wedding, which means - no babysitter. Since it takes place in the evening right as B has dinner and bedtime, I decided to take him to the Baby Kennel rather than have a total stranger come over and try to feed him and put him to bed. But this plan is suspect too, since for three weeks now I've taken him there one weekend day a week, and now that he's transitioned to the preschool group...he hates it. Or at least, screams and clings to me when I drop him off, and cries and clings to me when I pick him up. Which he hadn't done in a very long time, and which makes me wonder if I should tough it out and keep taking him, or just stop. But then there's tonight where I really don't have a choice; there's no way I can bring him to this wedding and there's no sitter. And I'm going to this wedding, dammit. So they'll put B to bed and I'll drag him out of bed at 10 PM and take him home, and I have no idea how that'll go, or what he'll be like tomorrow, or how I'm going to balance breast feeding this baby, getting B ready to go, and getting myself dressed up for a wedding, all at once. Trying to keep up with a newborn's feeding schedule and a toddler and everything else you have to do is not easy. I feel like I hardly fed the baby at all yesterday, and feel tremendous guilt about that. It seems like I fed B every couple of hours at this stage; this one sometimes goes 4-5 hours without eating (during the day). But I do feed him a lot during the night, and he is gaining weight and seems content. So...? 

Wish me luck tonight. It's going to be an interesting experiment.