It was a fixer-upper kind of day…

Yesterday went from screaming-in-your-ear bad to broken-lamp bad to teething-pain bad.

When I posted yesterday morning, after our DSL outage, it was early morning and while Baby Boy had nursed, he was getting ready for his “real” breakfast of oatmeal and peaches. And the Munchkin was, quite literally, screaming into my ear, chanting “I want break-tus” over and over and over.

Of course, when I gave her the scrambled egg and ham with a muffin breakfast that she had been begging for, she ate less than half of the whole thing and declared herself “all done.” I cleaned her up and finished feeding her brother, at which point I broke a lamp.

This is not quite as bad as it sounds. We have a torchiere lamp behind our TV stand to provide extra light in our living room (which has no lights of its own). However, I am short and both I and the Webmaster have to pull the lamp forward by its stand to turn it on. As I pulled it toward me this morning, the stand snapped off of the base. The lamp still worked, but couldn’t support itself.

It was a $12 lamp, so what did I expect? As I type, the Webmaster is installing its replacement.

So, the light was propped up in the corner behind the TV all day, while both kids tried to continue the reign of crankiness. The Munchkin’s bottom gums are clearly bothering her, and I can feel a definite bulge on one side. I think those bottom two-year-old molars are on the move. This also would explain her slight fevers that she’s been having recently. Fortunately, she took a good nap, but woke up mad at life. She was mildly placated with a Veggie Tales video, but was upset when it ended. When my mother called to ask me a question, she demanded to get on the phone, and then promptly tattled to Grandma that “Mommy turn offa Larry Boy.”

Before dinner, she was trying to climb onto the kitchen table. I was on the phone with Friend and finally had to lay the chairs on their backs on the floor, which is something I haven’t had to do in a long time. She used to love to climb as a younger toddler (she started walking at nine months, so I think this was around 13 to 15 months old), and she didn’t have good balance or common sense enough to be climbing up on chairs. So I used to just put the chairs on their backs and out of commission. Well, she was crazy enough today that it was time to revert to older tactics.

Apparently, she was pretty good for the Webmaster in the evening while I was out. Of course, she got to watch Monsters, Inc. She adores that movie. But then she had a hard time settling down for bed, and insisted that I cuddle with her. I did for a little while, and gave her a dose of Tylenol, but we still caught her trying to sneak out of bed. Twice.

She finally fell asleep, but she woke up a couple of hours later crying in pain. Baby Orajel to the rescue! I rubbed it on her gums and she dropped back off. I just hope that this isn’t prolonged. Molars are hard to cut, though. As much as I understand the source of her attitude problem, that doesn’t make it any easier to live with.

There were a few bright spots, though – Baby Boy was his usual genial self, though he’s trying to cut a couple of teeth himself, I had coffee with T. at Starbucks and we talked over the whole Stampin’ Up demonstrator thing (decision pending), and I got a phone call from my brother the Captain! That was really nice, because I hadn’t actually talked to him in about a month. Even the Munchkin insisted on saying hi to her uncle. We had a good connection, too, which made chatting easier.

Why is this a big deal, you may ask? Well, it’s a big deal when your brother is calling you from Baghdad, Iraq, where he’s serving his second tour of duty. I think I’ll write more about this tomorrow. But he’s doing well – he was bored and decided to give us a call before he went to bed.

And here are my American Idol predictions – I say Kinnik and Melissa are gone. It was a close call between Melissa and Ayla, but I think Ayla did just enough to make it to the next round. Though she will definitely be the first girl to leave the Top 12. I see Kellie and Mandisa going far, but I think that the guys are generally much better this year. However, the best line of the night belonged to Kellie: “I’m a mink!”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 12:53 am and is filed under General.
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