January 4, 2002
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It's Saturday, woo.
The LoveGod got up at 4am to go golfing. Someone tell me again why this is fun. He'll be back by 11am, in time to drag his sorry ass through the day. He'll look like a basset hound by 3 pm.
Mouse and I ended up sleeping together last night. I am not a rabid proponent of the whole co-sleeping thing, tho I know it's a trendy thing to do. Frankly, Mouse snores, and squirms and I end up frozen in position, visions of flattened child in my head. I mean if I roll on her - it's no contest. She's 21 mos, I am almost 40. So I don't sleep if she's with me - and if mama ain't rested, ain't nobody rested - believe me. But she's sick and in limpet-mode.
She's booger child lately. Has the appearance and the vitality of a glazed doughnut. I cannot imagine what it must be like to depend on someone else to blow your nose for you. Or not be able to have a good satisfying snork and swallow. I can't find when this developmental milestone is achieved, but I know I will be one happy happy mother when I can take the wads of balled up tissues out from my sleeve and flush them goodbye.
I should compile my own list of milestones:
1. Able to open cupboard doors and get 'bikkies' after been told expressly NO - 10 mos.
2. Able to unroll toilet roll and run naked, shrieking wildly thru the house when Godfearing neighbour has dropped by- 10.25 mos.
3. Able to coerce Dad into giving her the alternate menu choice for dinner when Mum's back is turned - 1 year.
4. Able to call MIL 'Fatty Boombah' after much MUCH repeated coaching by me - 14 mos.
5. Able to walk into a dinner party with a feminine protection product plastered to her forehead a la John Lennon - 18 mos.
But I digress.
Anyway, when Mouse is sick, it brings home to me just how dependent she is. And just how keenly she feels this. I end up with her propped up on one hip for most of the day. And she wants that to continue at night.
So at 11pm, there I am - staggering into her room, hoiking her sweaty body out of the crib and across the hall into the second bed. Where she immediately gets me in a head and neck lock, and goes back to sleep. And I lie there, terrified to move, wondering if this is something I can put in the mama-karma bank to use when she's 15 and thinks I am an unfeeling cow. And I stay there, dozing fitfully, trying to see the clock out of the corner of my eye without moving my head and feeling her drool go down the side of my neck. If you'd told me I'd do this willingly 2 years ago I'd have told you that you were out of your mind.
Sweaty baby, drool and boogers. I'm off today to get my hair cut and maybe hang out in a bookstore or six and eyeball cute intellectual guys. Then hang in the CD store and see what's playing. Enough is enough. Time to regain some ME. before I turn into one of those mothers always featured in Southern Gothic novels who 'lives for her chald' and is secretly barking.
song for today: Everybody Knows This is Nowhere - Neil Young.
Comments (4)
"Snork and swallow".
I think it's safe to say that I have never heard this term before, yet it so perfectly describes the act! Three little words. Bravo!
I like milestones #2 and #5.
Have fun at the bookstores, and eyeballing them cute guys!
Tara and I just happen to have had a living room floor camp out last night, so I am really laughing about you sleeping with your little one. I believe they develop a mechanism that keeps them from being flattened while sleeping with an adult. They must sleep with their head and/or (!) feet firmly in the parent's spine. Thus preventing any untoward rolling about and crushing. The ability to spray lumpy things out of the nose is an added security measure.
i
number 4. good mommy. 
i'm up at 3:30am just now because i crashed at 7pm last night. i'm hoping i can go back to sleep here.
anyway, just popped in to say you have a faboo writing style! i like it!
I hope your cold is moving on it's way and out of your life. I totally understand the having the kids sleep with you when they're sick. My son was seriously ill when he was 3 years old. After the doctors fixed him (a horrible experience for the both of us, because I was allowed to be in there with him and I was the one that had to explain why he couldn't move his legs (sob)) the doctors told us it might happen again. I had him sleep with us for a year, afraid that he'd wake up screaming in pain some night and I might not hear him right away.
Wow.. that sounded more dramatic than it really was (he couldn't move his legs because they were tapped down while the doc was giving him a barium enema) but it was bad enough in the moment
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