by way of update

Oh what a time we have had! Our darling dictator got really, really sick last weekend. Saturday night was a total nightmare. Baby J had been refusing to nurse for most of the day and was well on his way to getting dehydrated. He screamed for HOURS (I caught up on Iron Chef while rocking him) during the night. By early morning he was having trouble breathing so Sunday morning I whipped him into the clinic (along with his older brother who had also developed a bad cough and sore throat). As I suspected, he had developed a nasty chest infection and a throat infection to boot. Ditto for big brother (just not as badly). No wonder the poor little guy didn’t want to swallow anything. We got a puffer for Baby J and some antibiotics for both boys and were on our way. After a few doses of the meds, both of them were notably better. Such a relief that children recover as quickly as they deteriorate (at least when it comes to illness… not so much for attitudes!). Other than a brief set back on Tuesday evening that left T and I soaked in vomit at least twice each, things have continued to improve.

One good thing about all of this sickness is that it pushed T and I to the brink of what we can handle. I’m pretty sure my brain split right in half at some point this week. While that might not seem like a good thing, we needed to get to the point where we stood up and yelled, “ENOUGH ALREADY!”. Last night we had a parental meeting where we reminded ourselves of the rules we want our kids to live by and the atmosphere we are trying to foster in our home. Not to mention the fact that we still need to be um, PARENTS even when we are so tired we forget that we are no longer in junior high and use words like “dickface” in front of our children. There would be no more tolerating all of the eye rolling, foot stomping, yelling stupid, pooh or bum-bum-brain, looking at your Mommy and saying “no” when asked to do something or making the gist of every conversation something to do with a toilet. Manners and obedience please! Recently, I mentioned our little dictator. We also planned a coup to overthrow his reign. Basically, Mommy and Daddy have had it with the constant chaos and tired or not we are going to restore some sense of normalcy (whatever the heck that looks like) to this family.

This morning Baby J was enrolled in sleep school with Mommy as Principal. He will go down for regular naps, sleep for a reasonable amount of time and learn to sleep though the night. I’ve been reticent until now to let him cry but frankly, nothing else is working. When he cries, I remind myself that teaching him to sleep (however hard the lesson) is a kindness that extends to our entire family. We will all be happier when Baby J learns to sleep well. I feel badly when he cries but truly, it is an act of love. Just as it was hard to take away G’s soother or teach N to stop sucking his thumb, it is something that needs to be done. We’ve tried the gentle approaches and he simply scoffs at them. Hopefully, I will be writing about his graduation from Sleep School and the funny valedictorian speech he gave very soon!

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