What an El*mo on your back looks like (as opposed to a monkey)

So, somehow, I managed to drag Ed into a children’s shop with me today. The planets were all aligned, or he was super drunk. Kidding about the last part. He actually just wanted to spend some time with us. This is going somewhere. If you’re bored and make it to the end, it will make sense.

Last week sorta turned into the week from hell for me…not to complain, but here I go!!! (BTW, it was not that bad. I’m just a little worn down right now, so it all seemed to pile up at once.) I was out of town and away from Mattix for the FIRST time last Sunday through Tuesday. I had a girls’ weekend planned for almost two months, and although the timing pretty much sucked for me, I went anyway. We ended up having a really great time. Thankfully, my friends are nearly as lame exciting as I am and we were in bed by 11:00 the first night. Although we stayed out late the second night, it was a pretty tame weekend. (I missed my baby like crazy, but I believe it was good for the both of us, being that we had not been separated for more than a few hours since he came home. Plus, the one-on-one time was really great for Mattix and Ed.) I came home tired on Tuesday night. Ed had to leave before the sun came up Wednesday morning, so I started out a bit “behind.”  Remember how I said that I needed to get some sleep on Thursday night because I thought it was going to be a long one? I swear, I have a sixth sense. We were up and down all night, until Mattix finally had enough a little before 4:00 a.m. Friday and called it a deal. Someone please tell me how I was able to go night after night after night during the first few months, but one all nighter now and I thought I was going to die?! I think I’ve aged like ten years in the past six months.

Mattix just didn’t react well to this set of vaccines; he ran a high fever all night and was pretty miserable. There’s no crappier feeling than not being able to make your baby comfortable. To make matters worse, I finally got him down for a nap around 8:00 a.m. That’s not the worse part. The worse part came at 11:00 a.m. when he woke up. I went in to get him and I kid you not, his lips were swollen to four or five times their normal size, along with the entire left side of his face. I seriously did a triple take. Poor little guy looked like someone had went after him with a two for one special of Bo*tox.  I almost screamed when I saw him. I had to stop myself because my initial reaction was to grab the phone and call 9-1-1. Crazy mom? Um, yeah, but holy hell, it was shocking! Thank goodness he was actually in a fairly good mood, as opposed to the one he was in when he fell asleep. That kept me calm enough to realize that he wasn’t in any immediate danger. He did his usual wake up routine, which involves yelling for the dog and giggling. I made sure his airways were totally open – my first thought was that his throat might be swelling – and looked his body over. I couldn’t find any signs of a bug bite or anything. Because he wasn’t feeling well, all he had eaten all day was a tiny bit of baby food, so I didn’t believe it was a food allergy.  I went downstairs to call his doctor. Long story short, the nurse had a different doctor call me back. My main freak out was due to the fact that he’d been vaccinated less than 24 hours earlier and I was concerned that he was having a major reaction. The doctor assured me that he had never seen this sort of reaction, especially the following day, but told me that I could bring him in later in the afternoon to have him looked at if I’d “like.”  Would I like? Uhh, yeah, ’cause if not, I was going back to my original plan of calling 9-1-1.

While we waited to leave for our doctor’s appointment, which wasn’t for three hours, I noticed the swelling going down. A little later, it occurred to me to give Mattix Benadryl. Hello! So, I gave him a pretty heavy dose. By the time we would have needed to leave for his doctor’s appointment, I was able to cancel it because he was about halfway back to normal. Although the doctor didn’t believe it was vaccine related, and although I wasn’t able to find any scientific or anecdotal evidence relating similar reactions, I’m still not entirely convinced it didn’t have anything to do with the vaccines. At the same time, he really could have just gotten a bug bite during his nap and the incident was coincidental.  I’m not sure whether the Benadryl helped with the swelling or if it was in the process of resolving itself when I dosed him. Who knows. I’m still a huge proponent of vaccines – it would take a lot for me to change my mind on that – but I will admit that this distressed me somewhat. (BTW, so not opening the door to a vaccine discussion.)

It was a pretty unsettling day, though, and I was looking forward to Ed coming home that evening around 9:00. Well, silly, silly me. I forgot that we live in a country with the cruddiest airline industry known to man. Ed’s flight home from DC was cancelled while he was sitting in the airport and he was rescheduled to return on Saturday late morning. I was a little overwhelmed because I was so tired, but I knew I’d be fine. However, I about had my meltdown when he called me on Saturday morning to tell me THAT flight had been cancelled as well and he wouldn’t be home until Saturday night. BTW, my parents and brother were out of town and unreachable (up in some remote mountain location) and my two closest friends were out of town. Seriously? I knew if I called anyone, I’d just start crying – which is SO not me – so I stayed off the phone and breathed deeply!

So…..if you’re read my little rant, thank you. And if you skipped it, I totally understand. Everything’s okay. I believe that I have great coping/life skills in general, but given the past month, they’re slightly depleted. Normally, I would have taken everything in stride and kept on goin’, but like I said, not this month! June is here, it’s a whole new month, so things have to be on the upswing, right?  

Now, back to my point. Because Ed didn’t get home until Saturday evening, he wanted to spend as much time as possible with Mattix and me on Sunday and Monday, thus prompting him to hit up my favorite children’s resale boutique with us. (By the way, KAREN, this is all your fault! I’m fully addicted. It’s a sickness. I can’t stop. Mattix has WAY too many toys – seriously, even my mom thinks it’s outta control - and I CANNOT stop. It’s bad, really, really bad.) As I was browsing around, I heard Ed crack up. He called me over, and I found the cutest thing EVER….

Mattix, with an El*mo on his back!

Obviously all of these photos were taken once we got home (with my cheap camera, in case you couldn’t tell). I used to swear up and down that there was going to be none of this Ses*ame Street BS in my house, and now my kid’s sporting the world’s third most annoying character on his back. (Third because Bar*ney is first by a landslide, followed by all of the Tell*etubbies, lumped into one, because thank goodness I can’t name them individually at this point! I’m not messing around here when I say that there truly will be NO Bar*ney or Tell*etubbies, no matter how much he likes them. You can quote me on that one. In my defense, I’ve always said that IF it came down to it, I could handle Ses*ame Street! Ahhh, look what a mom has done to my resolve.)

And then the photos stopped being so cute because Mattix decided that HE wanted the camera. And as of about May 1st, Mattix thinks that whatever Mattix wants, Mattix gets. He is sorely mistaken, so every time he doesn’t get what he wants, which is often, this is what it looks like:

 

How can you not love that face? When he first began sporting it, I had one heck of a time not laughing hysterically because it’s so cute. Not so much now, but you know..

I know I keep saying it, but I really am going to get caught up on my reading, start posting regularly, and get through my email. I have a lot of really cute photos that I WILL have up by the end of the week.  I just haven’t had the time or energy as of late, but it’s coming back, I promise.