Done Worse

We have now come to realize that Action Jackson is a more appropriate name for the boy than we had first realized.

The boy has been “off” in terms of his behavior since his last round of immunizations, about two weeks ago. Cranky, eating tons, sleeping lots, just not his normal chipper self. Last Tuesday, he was sent home early from daycare with a fever over 100. When I picked him up, he did not look good, he had that glazed-eyes-fever look. Starting Tuesday night, he had a consistently high fever of 103. I called the nurse line to ask what to do – especially since we were supposed to fly to the Bay Area for a wedding on Thursday afternoon. She said to give him ibuprofen and bring him in the next morning to check him out.  At the doctor’s visit, after a lot of digging wax out of his ears, we found out that he had a double ear-infection. He was prescribed antibiotics, we were told that taking him on an airplane would be cruel to him and any other hearing person who might be around and that he had to stay home from daycare on Thursday and Friday.

We now have a copious amount of data indicating that five days at home with mom and dad is NOT GOOD in AJ’s mind. No matter how many activities Mike and I plan, we simply cannot compete with a room full of 12 babies, 4 day care providers and a constant stream of activity and toys. During our “stay-cation” we read lots and lots of books, we went to the zoo twice, we went to the park six times, we tried on all sorts of hats and head-wear, we went to the grocery store numerous times, we went on errands, we went to Target, our babysitter came on Sunday for five hours and the two of them went back to the park for more fun, and finally on Sunday night we went to the drumming circle where we listened to drums and I danced with AJ for about half an hour. This was simply not enough.

Last night, the boy woke up at 3:30 am SCREAMING. This happens on occasion and usually remedies itself. [[ And he sleeps about six feet from our bedroom. –mjg ]] No problem. But the screaming went on and on and on, so Mike got up, took his temp (normal) changed his diaper, bounced some hugs and put him back to bed. SCREAMING. We waited it out about another 20 minutes at which point Mike said “the only other thing I can think of is that he’s thirsty”. I got up, made a small bottle of milk, gave it to him, bounced him, put him back in bed and stroked the back of his head and neck in a soothing way. He was fine until I left the room. SCREAMING. We waited another 20 minutes until I said, “okay, I’ll bounce him on the yoga ball”. I brought him to the front room, I bounced him for a few seconds, then he slid out of my arms onto the floor. He made a happy sound and then crawled over to his toys and proceeded to read some books to himself while  chatting in a chipper and nonchalant way. Of course. After all this is what we always do at 4:45 in the morning.

Apparently, the cause of the hour and a half of SCREAMING from 3:30 am to 5:00 am was extreme boredom. Can you blame him?  No one ever takes him anywhere or ever does anything fun with him and his life is just a long series of drudgery upon drudgery.

He finally fell back asleep around 5:15 when I carried him – SCREAMING – back to bed. He slept until 6:30 when he woke up SCREAMING and Mike decided that he might as well get up and bring the boy to daycare and end all of our suffering. You can see the look of sweet anticipation on his face as they drove to daycare this morning. We can only hope that a fun filled day with his daycare homies will satisfy his needs for excitement and our need for a SCREAMING free night of sleep.