Dancing Without Rhythm

Oh Children's Motrin how deceiving thou art. I thought my little guy was getting better. I thought our super incredible genes and unique power to leverage leukocytes at will was the cause of Benja's improvement. I was mistaken.

Last night I was awakened by Benja trying to manuever MY body to serve his needs for comfort and a blanket. I guess nobody has really explained to that boy some rudamentary laws of physics. I'm sure there's at least one out there pertaining to muy pregnant mama's and weak sickly 3 year old boys. After kindly barking for him to leave me alone, he appeased himself by practicing counting to 29. He felt a little warm, but I figured if he didn't complain, we should try to ride it out drug free.

Two hours later I woke up to him thrashing and wimpering. And much hotter. He tried to make it to the bathroom to go potty and only got to the door of the bedroom, where wailing and sobbing to beat all wailing and sobbing commenced. I exercised some serious self-restraint not laughing at him standing bowl-legged over a puddle of pee with his head thrown back in a primitive howl. And I really wanted to say, "Hey little guy, not even a year ago you thought this exact thing was your greatest contribution to our household!"

Instead I spent 20 minutes teaching him how to breath deeply. And then the art of "through the nose and out the mouth". He spent most of those twenty minutes expelling stuttered breaths and wailing, "I....caaaan't....stop....cryyyyyyyying." He really wanted to, and just couldn't get the control. You may think I'm heartless, but I gotta say in my defense, at this point, I'm glad I can laugh.

One clean pair of underwear and happy ibuprofen pill later, I lay listening to his shallow, slightly labored breaths get deeper and longer and more peaceful. And I began to think about how much he's changed my life and who I am. And how, deep breaths or not, I wouldn't know how to breath anymore if he wasn't in it. Even keeping me awake during my hours of precious of sleeptime. Even peeing on my bedroom floor at 3 am. Even rarely distinguishing between which of our bodies is his to control and flop around on, pinch, pull, prod, maul---at any hour. I'll take it. Gladly.

Daylight eases my sentimentality a little and fighting with Avee over peeled vs unpeeled apples and Benja over pants vs no pants definitely brings on a different mood.

I'm watching a little boy and Benja is laying on the couch facing the wall while his friend plays Nintendo 64, Super Mario. Some of you may know Ben's obsessed with this game and even after wimpering a few instructions at his friend to salvage the high standard of conduct Benja works hard to maintain for Mario, it was too much and he turned to face the wall. It probably didn't help that Avee, playing in the corner with a piggy bank kept yelling, "Dop! Dop kyyying baby!" everytime he said something. We're so proud of her compassion toward others.

I'd like to go hold and snuggle the little burrito, but apparently, my attempts to cuddle him "just make his skin feel wohse." Pobricito.

Posted by Angela on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 3/20/2007 | Permalink