The picture of the day

I don't know that I really need to even say anything. There's nothing sweeter than having a baby sleeping against you, all warm and wrapped up.

And more sick kids

Oliver seems to be suffering from some kind of mysterious and very annoying illness. A moderate to high fever, a barking cough that only emerges at night, and a general increase in his usual level of toddler angst. He'll be going to the pediatrician if we have another bad night, so fingers crossed that he manages to sleep (his fever broke, leaving him thoroughly saturated, and though he had to wear ducky pyjamas instead of fire trucks or dinosaurs, he went back to sleep after being changed).

Tuesday he just seemed kind of feverish, so I kept him home from preschool. Wednesday, he was actually whiney and ill-seeming, as well as feverish, so again he stayed home. And I learned just how hard it is to have two kids demanding your physical attention at the same time. Elliot's been chewing on everything he can get his pudgy little hands on and generally been clingy, but we lucked on and he slept a bit later than usual. So Oliver and I watch PBS shows while he dances around the living room, then runs back saying "want mommy to sit with me?" All well and good until Elliot wakes up, in his usual good humor, thankfully, but with that look on his face that meant he'd be spending the morning trying to chew his way across the living room and wouldn't be content to be put down for long. All is well for like a half hour, until Oliver begins demanding "Want me to hold you?" and Elliot starts demanding the same. And obviously, holding both of them is not a reasonable solution for Oliver, since Elliot keeps trying to grab handfuls of his hair and put them in his mouth, and in his overly-angsty state, Oliver just couldn't deal with the rapturous smiles Elliot kept throwing his way. So I bowed to begging and put on yet another movie ("A penguin movie! Want to watch a penguin movie? Awwww, it's a baby penguin! He's so cute!"), and as I'm standing in the kitchen, trying to decide if I can manage to clean the counters in the 5 minutes of quiet that the new movie has bought me, I smelled the unmistakable smell of cat poop and knew my day had gone from challenging to certifiably crappy, pardon the pun.

Back into the exersaucer Elliot went as I rounded on Inky, the assumed culprit. And I was right. I took Inky into the kitchen, mostly so I could swear at him without having to worry about Oliver repeating me at preschool, and realized that mere paper towels were not going to do the job. Inky needed a bath. I cursed Haakan under my breath (and over my breath, once I got upstairs), ignored the demands of my children (Oliver's "Want some MIIIIIIILK!" and Elliot's general displeasure at both me having walked out of his line of sight and running out of things to chew on), and locked myself and Inky in the bathroom. And as I'm leaning over the tub, washing poop off my cat's ass with baby shampoo, I had one of those "what has happened to my life" kind of moments. But I managed to get Inky clean, though it was a struggle and I had to change clothes by the time we were done, and rejoing my no longer fussing children. Oliver had handed Elliot a bunch of new toys (all of which were, luckily, actually Elliot's toys) and greeted me with a happy "We're wathing a penguin movie!"

Sick kids

Oliver's home sick from preschool today, though you'd never know he was sick to look at him. Weird random fever this morning, like over 100, and he was cranky and miserable and whiney (moreso than usual). But now he's watching TV and jumping up and down giving me a running commentary on what's going on, silly child.

Yesterday I got to take both kid with me to take Inky to the vet. Oliver had been a normal 2 year old all morning and I had been a normal tired mom, so when we got to the vet he kept saying, "WHY are you doing that? STOP doing that!" The nurse was perplexed and I had to tell her that he wasn't really talking to her, just repeating what he'd heard that morning. Nothing like admitting that you have virtually NO patience to relative strangers to make you feel like you're up for mother of the year. We all made it home with most of our sanity intact, and despite his best efforts, Oliver did NOT manage to crawl inside Inky's "kitty cage".

On Friday we had to take Elliot to Children's Hospital for his renal ultrasound and VCUG to make sure there's nothing serious going on in there, since he had a urinary tract infection about a month and a half ago. It makes me realize just how lucky we are to have two such healthy kids. I saw two baby girls in hip braces, one little boy with some fairly significant problems, kids in beds and on oxygen being wheeled around. I don't know how the parents of seriously ill children do it, just holding Elliot's hands during the VCUG while he screamed was about enough to reduce me to a sobbing pile of maternal fear and sorrow. I know, in real life and online, more and more parents who have children with severe problems, it makes me not want to push my luck with a third child. I had such easy pregnancies and have such healthy kids, I feel like I'm playing Russian Roulette or something, like my number's going to come up eventually and we might not be so insanely lucky the next time. When you think about all the things that have to happen in order to have healthy child, and all the things that can go wrong in the process, it's kind of amazing that ANYONE has a healthy child. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now I've got my hands full with the two we already have!