Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Good With The Bad

Yesterday was rough, and yet somehow wonderful at the same time. How can it not be wonderful when you have two awesome kids, right?

Anyhow, it all started the night before when Baylor's diaper rash had started to creep down his legs. Weird, right? And it was a bad rash, too. He woke up in the morning with it all the way to his knees, a little on his feet, and on the sides of his fingers, little red blistery sores that scared the crap out of me.

I called the doctor and they got us in for later in the afternoon ... right at Baylor's nap time, as luck would have it. But I took it because it was Friday and I didn't want him to turn into one big red bump over the weekend and have no idea why.

We skyped a bit around noon with my family, then I realized it was getting a bit late, so we signed off and got lunch. Mollie had blissfully fallen asleep, so I was sure we'd make it to the appointment on time, no problem.

Such assumptions should never be made when one has two children under the age of two.

Baylor wanted ketchup on his grilled cheese sandwich bites, and since he eats it so excitedly that way I happily obliged. Unfortunately, he was in a lovey mood and ended up putting his ketchupy fingers all over my shirt; luckily it was black so you couldn't see the ketchup. (I could smell it, though, and honest to goodness that is one of the worst smells in the world - in my opinion.) He also got some on the floor, but I put that aside until a later date.

Then Mollie woke up and decided it was lunch time, too. So I nursed her while I fed Baylor his pureed veggies, and he kept me entertained with his little boy thoughts. First he did "This Little Piggy" on his toes, right up to the "wee, wee, wee" part. Then he wanted a drink of water, and when his cup fell down and rolled away he said, "He shoots, he scores!" Then he started saying, "Orange juice ... on sale!" over and over again. I love his little character these days!

Mollie finished up, and I put her on my shoulder to burp her. As luck would have it, the girl who never spits up did so all down my back ... and splattered it all over the kitchen floor. Ketchup you can't see on a black shirt but spit up you can, so I did the world's fastest wardrobe change and got the kids in the car.

I had calculated that we needed to leave no later than 2:00, preferably leaving around 1:55 if I could swing it. We pulled out of the driveway at 2:02, and I was feeling pretty good about that until I realized I was supposed to be to our 2:20 appointment ten minutes early! Yeah, I had completely miscalculated things. Oh well, we were going to be a little late but at least we'd get there. Then about two minutes away from the office, I realized that our appointment was at 2:30, that I had already factored in the ten minutes early deal, and that we were going to be even earlier because I had sped ever so slightly to get there.

Anyway, we checked in and Baylor promptly headed to the play room section of the waiting room, while I stood and swung Mollie back and forth in her car seat, mentally begging her to go to sleep. She didn't. But we did get to enjoy watching a grandma and her four grandchildren play "I Spy" - the grandma totally stumped the kids with her last spy: a mouse, which turned out to be a computer mouse! So clever!

They finally called us back, did the usual check-in routine, and left us waiting in the room for about a half an hour. My kids awake when they should have been napping. Ughhh. When the doctor finally came in, she took a look at Baylor and quickly figured out that he has hand, foot, and mouth disease. Oh boy.

Before she left I decided to ask her if him eating his blanket could hurt him, and she said potentially if he ended up with a build up of it in his stomach. Then she asked when his last hemoglobin check was, and seeing that the last one was in December she decided to have that tested. Good thing too, since it turns out my little man is pretty anemic! The blanket eating is part of that; apparently you can develop pica, a craving for non-food substances, if your blood is low in iron. So we need to up his iron intake to see if that helps; if it doesn't, then he has to start going through a battery of tests to figure out what is wrong. Needless to say, I really hope I'm just doing a crappy job of getting iron into his system; that is something that can be easily fixed.

Over the next month, he'll be taking an iron supplement to see if that helps. In the meantime, blankie is taking a siesta in my closet and has been temporarily replaced by a polar fleece blanket. And in spite of all the rashes and toe pricks and waiting, waiting, waiting, Baylor only had one meltdown and was otherwise very well-behaved and happy. Mollie was pretty happy too, only a couple crying fits when she got overly tired and/or hungry.

I am so lucky to have two wonderful children.

No comments: