Wherein I Lose It

Yesterday was the day that everything crested and spilled over like my own personal Johnstown flood. As I have mentioned before, I am up for review this year and I have been work, work, working on my dossier towards that end. Its due on April 15th and I had a meeting scheduled with the Dean of the Libraries to go over it: very, very nervous. The night before, Donny had been up teething. All those stories you hear about teething? I believe most of them now. Our sunny little boy was literally shrieking nonstop for hours. Hours, I tell you. Then yesterday at work I got a call from daycare that I needed to pick him up as he had a fever of 103. That meant having to cancel my important meeting, missing another committee meeting where I'm actually the chair of the committee, and possibly missing the day off I had scheduled for tomorrow to get house stuff in order. Also: I should mention, when I picked him up, I was told he could'nt come into daycare today because his fever had been too high. That meant me missing another day of work, one in which I had rescheduled all of the meetings I'd had to cancel. It also meant Donovan missing the daycare Birthday Party for him, Ryan and Layla.

When I picked the boy up he just looked exhausted. Mike got the ok to leave work to drive us home so we wouldn't have to take him on the bus. He got one good nap in and the rest of the day was whining with the night taken up by shrieking and drooling. I got him home at about 2:30 and, between 2:30 pm and 2:30 am I changed my shirt 5 times because of his drooling. At one point--I think it was at about 3am--I was holding him to try and get him to calm down and he smashed his head into my mouth. I was very sleepy but I remember more or less dropping him on the bed next to Mike, saying, "Your turn," and going down to cry in the bathroom. All the worries had been stacking up and getting a fatlip (and the 5th droolsoaked shirt) was just too much. Thank god I have a good husband--Mike more or less took over for the rest of the morning even tho he was the one who had to go to work the next day.

Today at home with the boy was a bit dicey. Between Donny being fussy and some big crisises at work I didn't get in the shower until 1pm. Donny was pretty good but the whining, oy, the whining kept on and on and on. I finally decided to take him to the damn playground. I bundled him up in his Snoopy sweater and beret, put him kicking and screaming into his umbrella stroller and off we went. Halfway there, he was asleep. Once we got there he woke up and he got to play on the swings (which he liked) and I helped him down the slide and thru a crawly tube. Right after this photo was taken he had his first tumble at the playground, falling headfirst out of the tube onto the rubber matting below. He was a trooper and cried it off pretty quick. I tried putting him on the metal horse on a spring but he slid right off. Still too little. He had a good time but you can see in the photos just how exhausted he was. I'll be curious to see how tonight goes.