Had a Bad Day

I should have known, judging by the start of it, that today was going to be hard. But I had no idea how hard. Libby cried over everything, all day. She is refusing to eat. No banana, no cereal, no bagel, no chicken, no eggs, not even toast. Nothing. She also decided she no longer liked her flourescent-pink, bubblegum-flavored medicine. Dose number two of the day ended up all over the kitchen floor. Twice. So I did what every good mom would do: I threw the dosage spoon against the wall (good idea, now I have to clean sticky pink goof off me, my child, the floor, the wall, the counter, and part of the cupboards), said a bad word (sorry), kicked an empty bottle of Gatorade (which ricocheted off no less than 8 surfaces, impressive), slammed the bathroom door (nothing as satisfying as a good door slam), and began to cry.

I calmed down, got a wet washcloth and a medicine syringe so I could squirt the flourescent-pink, bubblegum-flavored goo straight down Libby's throat, opened the door, and there was Libby, giving me a look that said "What the heck is your problem?". The medicine went down and stayed down, I cleaned up the gooey pink kitchen, then put Libby down for her nap. An hour later she was sobbing. I looked in and she was lying on her stomach on the floor, crying in her sleep. Did she fall out of bed? Who knows. I put her back down and down she stayed until after 5 pm. I got a bit of a nap, and was awakened at 4:30 by a phone call from John.

Let me be honest: I spent much of the day thinking unfriendly thoughts about John being in Atlanta with a $50 per diem food allowance while I sat here with $28 left in the budget to feed my family for the rest of the month (my pantry and freezer are already stocked, we won't starve). John got a nice hotel, and gets to sleep with Codeine as a bed partner tonight while I try to wrangle a few hours of sleep from my sick toddler. Or so I thought. John is in Atlanta, and he does have $50 a day to spend on food, but he's so busy in meetings that he is living off granola bars. And he has a fever of 103.6 and is throwing up his antibiotic along with his granola bars. Because of his celiac, room service is a crap shoot. Somehow his project manager got wind of his condition and came to the hotel to pick John up and took him to get some chicken and rice for dinner, then to Whole Foods for bananas, then to the drug store for Gatorade. If John doesn't improve tonight, Charles is sending him home tomorrow, losing his best worker and ally in this whole mess.

So tonight John and I sat on the phone and cried for a while, both feeling sorry for each other as well as for ourselves while Libby kicked, pinched, hit, scratched, jumped, and spit on me. When I started typing this blog, she was sitting quietly watching Winnie-The-Pooh. Now she is standing on my end table wrestling with the lamp and (thank you!) eating some chicken. She just stepped in a container of dry cereal, spilling it all over. At least she is cleaning it up.

Pray for sleep. Pray for deep, deep, long, sleep. And pray for John, too.