Well, That Was An Adventure*

I think someone, somewhere has wished me an interesting life. Because dang.

It all started innocently enough with my decision to turn 40. I say decision because, well, I'm not ready for the alternative as yet. So - turn 40 it is! I awoke on my birthday brimming with optimism for the year ahead because, if nothing else, Tim will always be older than I am. And he hasn't seemed much worse for wear for his few months of 40. So what could possibly go wrong?

By mid-morning, I realized that either 40 was going to slam me with "Gosh, I'm really old" aches and pains right out of the gate, or something was very wrong. By the younger boy's nap-time, I was headed for bed myself and unable to get warm despite having piled roughly every blanket in the house on top of me.

H1N1, FTW.

So there went five days of my life in utter misery. Yeah - 40 started out with a bang.

Finally on the mend, we decided to try celebrating my birthday with friends. We headed out to Red Robin (our usual haunt when we can't decide where else to go), waited 30 minutes for a table (sadly, since the quality of Chili's has gone to the southern end of the hereafter, everyone is flocking to RR), ate a mostly mediocre meal, and headed home.

By 9 pm, I realized my burger wasn't sitting particularly well. What followed was 24 hours of the worst pain I think I've ever experienced.

Food poisoning, FTW.

At this point, I pretty much gave up on celebrating my birthday. I don't need reasons to feel old and achy, no matter what anyone else might tell you.

Of course, two days later, Tim is commenting on how the younger boy starts disrobing when his diaper is full. I've noticed this trend and been putting off doing anything about it, because, well, he's young and his verbal skills aren't where his brother's were and he's young (did I mention that?) But on the eight hundredth mention of it by my loving hubby, I said, "Fine. I'll potty train him this week."

So we did the potty training dance. And after 3 days of saying very little other than, "Tell mommy when you need to go potty." It seemed to click. We ventured out, he did pretty well with the little portable potty as needed in the car. Toward the end of that 4th day it deteriorated a bit but, maybe he was tired. The next day it was hit or miss - mostly miss. Then on Sunday we put him in a pull up for church because they're lazy very busy in nursery and it wasn't worth hearing about it.

And that was the official death knell for the potty training.

Monday, I tried, I really did, to get back on track but after going through his entire stock of underpants (18 pairs) before lunch time I was done. Back in the pull up and I considered it done. Note to self: listen to your gut.

This morning I changed him in the morning and...holy moly, his poor little butt was raw and oozing blood. I'd forgotten (once we found a diaper that worked) how easily he rashed out. And apparently the pull up was in the toxic-to-his-skin category. So I stuck him back in undies this morning because really, you can't keep using things that cause someone's skin to, effectively, melt off like the Nazi faces at the end of Indiana Jones.

I managed to avoid going through every single pair of undies by virtue of just putting him on the potty every ten minutes. But honestly, that's no way to live. For anyone. (And he STILL had accidents.)

And of course, all the while today I was dealing with phone calls to my in-laws as I tried to get my mother-in-law to wake up and go meet my father-in-law at the emergency room where he'd driven himself after having what he felt was a "heart event" during his morning exercise. Back and forth, lots of calls, and at the end of the day he's been admitted for testing overnight and a stress test in the morning - no official diagnosis as yet (a-fib runs in the family so it could be that, could be a small attack, we don't know).

And, just because we apparently needed some icing for the stress cake, a fish died and had to be scooped and sent along to his watery grave, along with all the requisite sorrow from the older child (who is also happily grossing me out with a very loose tooth that's just not *quite* ready to pull but is nasty enough that I can feel my stomach twist when he grins at me and pushes on it with his tongue. Stinker.)

I'm ready for a calm couple of days.

Or a valium.

*spot the quote.