you might want to get a drink and a comfy chair...

ay yi yi. what a freaking week. to sum up:

monday - we arrive home at approximately 3am b/c we decided to take a little detour to the massachusetts seashore on the way home b/c a bunch of friends who we haven't seen in a while were all there at one friend's family's beach house and it was kinda sorta on the way home if you don't mind turning an 8 hour trip into a 14 hour trip. do i sound a tiny bit bitter? just a tiny bit, really. we had a great time at the beach (it deserves and will get its own post, later), but being in the car in the middle of the night with a baby who wakes up every hour or so and needs to be comforted back to sleep without being taken out of his car seat which means leaning over the carseat and nursing him when all you want to do is be asleep yourself? not. so. much. fun. so of course the rest of the day is totally lost, i am a total zombie (since wile still wakes up around 7! wheee!), and i conclude things by searing my flesh. (update on that: my big puffy water-filled blisters have deflated to smaller puckery brownish callous-blisters that are splitting open and about to start itching like a mofo.)

tuesday - i don't really remember tuesday, people. between the lingering exhaustion and the injury, the day is kind of a blur. not much gets accomplished besides making sure that mr. baby man gets fed and changed and doesn't hurt himself. so this is now two days in which i have a) not unpacked my suitcases, and b) not done a damn thing to get ready for the big 1st birthday party that we are throwing on saturday....

wednesday - wile's annual physical! yay! i've adjusted to having a gnarled monkey claw instead of a right hand by now, so manage to get us on and off the bus and to the doctor's office pretty easily. i've decided not to get him any shots on this visit just in case he has a reaction to them b/c i don't want to chance him being sick for his party. (please reread that last sentence and commit it to memory and file it under "irony".) he gets all checked out and passes with flying colors and has fun playing with the doctors' hoberman sphere, and then i remember that we need to take some blood from him to check his lead level (since he likes to pick the paint chips off the walls in the kitchen like the little baby in the poster) and see if he's inherited my weird blood disorder and is going to follow in my footsteps to the operating table for his very own splenectomy! i'm a little worried that our so far so good doctor's visit is going to end in screaming, but he is awesome. the nurse comes in and ties the rubber band around his arm—even moving it from one to the other b/c she can't find a good vein in his left arm—and he just looks down at it with mild interest. hmm. then she sticks the needle in and i brace myself for the screaming but he just lets out one little cry/yelp, looks up at me, i smile at him and tell him it's okay, and he decides to believe me and looks down to watch what the nurse is doing. she puts the second vial on the end of the little tubey contraption and he reaches down, starts playing with it, and pulls it right off the tube. so of course the nurse takes it from him, gently, and reattaches it...and then he starts crying. because we won't let him play with his own blood. later that night, my mom (aka the nana) arrives from florida covered in hives.

thursday - the nana, the boo and i trek all over downtown brooklyn in the hot hot heat gathering the food for the party. it's actually not so bad, we get plenty of great stuff at the farmer's market. wile is a little cranky when we get home, but i chalk it up to a long day.

friday - wile is still a little cranky, and very warm, so we break out the thermometer...and he has a 102.5˚ fever. the day before we have 30 people coming over to celebrate his first birthday. aaaaaaaaawesome. so i call the doctor, just to make sure there's nothing i should be doing besides what i'm doing (keeping him in air conditioning, plenty of fluids, rest), and she says (okay, break out that sentence you filed away now!) that there's something going around, she's seen a bunch of cases of it lately, it's fever and sometimes a runny nose and cough and usually doesn't last long. so but i'm supposed to be getting ready for the party (which we are contemplating cancelling), and instead i have a little 22-lb barnacle who is on me like stink on shit (break down!). he won't sleep unless he has the boob in his mouth. it's like we've regressed back to the first two months of his life. i'm holed up in the bedroom sending detailed missives down to the nana and my aunt peg, who has come down early for the party. no fun for anybody. they are envying me being in the air conditioning, and i'm envying them the use of their limbs for something besides supporting a sweaty overheated sickypants. poor little monkey.

saturday - wile's temperature is back down to normal so we decide to go ahead with the party. and considering that the heat index is 110˚ with the humidity, it's a fairly successful party! wile and i take many trips up to the air conditioning to cool off, and though he's not his normal devastatingly charming self, he seems to have a good time and entertain everybody pretty well. but everyone leaves for the sanctuary of their air-conditioned cars as quickly as decent manners allow, and i can't say i'm entirely sad to see them go, since it means i can get back to my air conditioned haven....

sunday - reprieve: we head out to long island to swim in the schmergels' pool.

monday - wile's temperature is back up, so i call the doctor, like she told me to do on friday if it went back up. we make an appointment and head in, she tells us that it's nothing serious, just a bug like she thought and it should pass, and we slog back home through the heat. wile won't sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time once he goes down for the night....

tuesday - the illness has entered the next phase: runny nose and cough. if there is any sound more patheitic than a baby cough, i haven't heard it. we lay low, the last dregs of disarray from the party remain un-cleaned-up. at least the weather is nicer. then in the evening the nana and i escape to shea so that she can get in one mets game while she's up north. we're waiting in line to buy our tickets when this guy comes over, puts two mezzanine tickets in my hand, says "here, they're free, i'm taking a group and not everybody showed up, they're good seats", and walks away before i can even say thank you. amazing! and it's a great game, benson pitches well and cliff blasts a big homer and everyone is on base at least once, even david wright who doesn't get a hit but walks ahead of cliff's homer, and i learn that cliff's first name is cornelius (!!!), and i see our benefactor later on and get to say thank you, which is good because they really are great seats: 2nd row mezzanine reserved, just under the eave so that when it starts to rain we stay dry.... unfortunately stephen, who is home with the little man, doesn't have quite as good a night: the yankees lose in extra innings to the devil rays (the winning run is walked in), and wile won't sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a time.

today - still massive amounts of snot, still heart-wrenching baby cough, still with the clinging and not sleeping, but no temperature and improved spirits and seemingly on the road to recovery. the suitcases remain un-unpacked, but i've made my peace with that. the nana and the little man and i have a lovely last day together—walking, gardening, playing ball—and i put her in a tinted-window car service car and wave her back to the sunshine state. tomorrow is another day....


[alas, i will not be posting any photos from our trip to the maine wilderness right now because stephen...well....while i have you here, let me tell you a little story: we were in our hotel room in portland (having left the wilderness the day before), and i was putting wile down for his afternoon nap. stephen was hiding out in the bathroom, where he was going to check some baseball scores on his phone, take a shower, and clear some photos off the memory card so that we had room to take pictures at bean's wedding that night. all of the sudden i heard him go "oh my god", followed by a strangled yelp. kinda loud. i couldn't tell if he'd seen something funny (on the camera or the phone) or if something terrible had just happened—it was an indeterminate exclamation/yelp. then he poked his head out of the door holding the camera and whispered "i just erased the whole vacation!". and though i felt for him, especially since he was on the verge of tears, i really couldn't move or talk—wile was on the verge of nappage, and i do not fuck with that. so he throws on some clothes and bolts. i get wile to sleep, then text him "are you okay? where are you?", and find out that he's in the lobby and just got off the phone with the canon help line. he didn't erase the pictures of wile swimming naked and sitting on the rocks at pemaquid and eating his first lobster completely, he just erased the formatting. which means that if we buy some auxillary piece of equipment and "image recovery software", we can have them back. as he said, we will take the money for those things out of his "bonehead fund."]