Something I’ve learned since Amos came along: dads get sick, but moms never really do. Have doctors studied this phenomenon? Because I tell you, there’s something to it. I don’t know if it’s leftover pregnancy hormones that keep moms going even when they’re spewing phlegm or sweating out a fever and really could use some R&R. Maybe it’s just the general anxiety of motherhood, a sort of adrenaline/fear cocktail that keeps us revved up like we’re mainlining a mixture of steroids and Starbucks.

My husband is pretty tough, and he’ll ignore clear signs that an ER visit is in order, but only up to a point. That actually happened this weekend. On Saturday night, I was sitting in the den when I heard a loud bang and looked up to see a FIST POPPING THROUGH MY SCREEN DOOR. It was my poor husband, who’d slipped on a lego on the patio and came crashing in like the Hulk or something. He shrugged it off even as his foot turned blue and puffy, and he even hobbled around with us at the zoo the next day. He refused to ride in one of those motorized buggy things, though, wisely predicting that if he did so then I’d take his picture and post it here.

But when I left him at home today to take care of our still sick baby, he finally crumbled. He’d been sluggish and quiet this morning, so I knew it was coming. When the phone rang at work around 10, it was him calling to throw in the towel. “I have a fever of 102.2. Mom’s on her way.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I totally am supportive of him crawling into bed and calling his mom to the rescue. In fact, I secretly love that my sick little boy has more than one person on duty to nurse him back to health. And I’m glad too that Rodney is going to do what it takes to get better quickly, rather than stretch the misery out over weeks and weeks because he tried to do too much. 

All I’m saying is that I, and many moms I know, are too stubborn or too dim-witted to do the same. We would try our best to carry on, chasing Tylenol with diet Dr. Pepper and dramatically wiping the feverish sheen from our brows. Anyway, I don’t think moms get as sick as dads. I chalk that up to the constant steroid/Starbucks adrenaline jolt that keeps germs from making themselves too comfortable.

Amos is on the mend, but speckled from head to toe from an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. Rodney is locked in our bedroom, shedding virus cells that better not have any freaking thing to do with the swine flu.  Y’all, STAY AWAY from me, for your own good! 

Here’s an image from an email forward from my mom. Ha ha:

Today my son ate ketchup for lunch. It was the first thing he’d agreed to put in his mouth today, so I was happy to let him suck the ketchup off his turkey burger and leave the rest. The ketchup smeared together with the dried blood from his ear and a river of snot to make him look clownish and creepy, like Heath Ledger playing the joker. It made me cry a little bit, then Amos cried too, which only made him look creepier.

It’s been a hard week. Amos’ ear infection from Tuesday night got worse and worse, his fever rose until when he woke up late last night he seemed to not comprehend where he was. Back to the doctor this morning to make sure his pneumonia wasn’t back and that swine flu hadn’t crept up on us.

The doctor had to take a metal rod to Amos’ ears to gouge out the gunk. One of the useless blue plastic tubes came out, and I say good riddance. It never worked anyway. The rod nicked Amos’ ear canal, and blood dribbled down his neck. Screaming, tears.

Then Amos had to go into the Hannibal Lechtor constraints for a chest x-ray. Terror, howling, sobs all around.

After that, two nurses held Amos down to swab his nose for the flu test. By then I’d given up on helping restrain him. The nurses had to do it, I was busy praying and keening in the corner. Anyway, after three days of forcing medicine on him, I was grateful to let someone else do the dirty work.

I wanted to give the doctor a trophy when he told us Amos didn’t have the flu or pneumonia, just infected ears, a virus and bronchitis. It definitely could be worse. But still, I can’t believe he’s this sick and it’s only August. Secretly I want to pack a trunk, board a train and escape with Amos into the countryside like they do in British novels.

Day care called yesterday afternoon. I’d been waiting for it and wasn’t surprised to hear that Amos was sick.

He was pretty healthy when I dropped him off yesterday, just the lingering runny nose that plagues most toddlers in the world. But as the day progressed reports came in from other moms that they were dropping like flies at our day care, fevers and puking all over the place.

It was an awful predicament to be in. Do you take a sick day and go retrieve your healthy child before harm befalls him? I figured that if I did that every time I got reports of sick kids at day care, I’d lose my job. So I waited and hoped, which turned out to be the exact wrong thing.

We were at the pediatrician’s by 5:30. The diagnosis was our usual, an ear infection. Yes, we got the tubes when he was nine months old. No, they never, ever worked.

Amos’ fever and sore ear woke him up for the day at 4 a.m., and we’ve both been pretty grumpy. We did get out to shop for antibacterial soap and clorox wipes and other over-the-top germ-fighting supplies that I don’t believe in but am going to use now because I’m scared to death about the swine flu. If I hear about a case of that at day care, I plan to pull Amos out asap and not leave our house again until Obama himself gives me the all-clear.

Do y’all think I’m being paranoid?

When we first moved into our house last November, there was no grass in the backyard. We thought, so what, it’s winter, of course there’s no grass. Then, this spring we tried to get some green things going, but still no action. Only dust and despair. The oak trees that keep our backyard shady pretty much doomed us to a yard free of any living things besides mosquitoes. 

So my handy husband whipped up a gravel walking path, a mulchy sitting area and a fantastic deck. YEAH!!! The deck isn’t quite finished, it still needs to be stained (my worst nightmare, see previous post). But you can see from these photos that it’s going to be awesome.

So the point of this post is…? OK, it’s just to brag. Check it out:

We love LR for lots of reasons, but this weekend we were especially smitten. Sunday was our first trip to the water jet park thingy down near the rivermarket. If you haven’t been there yet then go this weekend. We plan to go as many times as we can before the weather gets chilly and they shut the thing down for the season. What’s so great about it? See below:

There’s also a great slide there, and a miniature tunnel for the kiddies to run through. Amos got so excited about pretending that he was a train in the tunnel that he gorped up his lunch. But we cleaned it up, don’t worry. See you there next weekend?

I suck at home improvement. I am pathetic when it comes to anything requiring measuring, nailing, drilling or sanding. Someone who can paint trim without smearing and dripping inspires the same awe for me as a gold-medal gymnast. Thank goodness for desk jobs, is all I have to say.

 My husband, on the other hand, is amazing at handyman-type stuff, and spent his entire summer vacation building a deck, a patio and a new privacy fence, and painting the exterior of the house. The least I could do was put on my overalls and slap some stain on the fence, right? So that was my weekend project.

 After spending 5 miserable hours with a brush and roller Saturday only to get about one-fifth of the way finished, I pulled out the big guns Sunday, an air compressor with paint sprayer attachment. This much is clear: I should not ever be allowed near a power tool, ever again. The first squeeze of the trigger sent cedar-toned stain splashing over the freshly painted house. DAG!

I tried to be more careful, but when I stopped to survey my work about five minutes in, I realized that the stain was spraying through the cracks in the fence (of course it was, duh!), covering more of my own house and splashing on to my neighbor’s truck and carport. Crud!

Luckily the neighbor was really nice about things. I’ve since learned that mineral spirits will eventually get the stain off of metal hubcaps, but only if you use lots of elbow grease. Still working on how to get it off his truck without ruining the paint job. I’m going to have to repaint a good chunk of my house, and probably some of the neighbor’s carport, too. So that’ll keep me booked up with weekend projects for a good time to come. The most miserable part is that the fence is only about halfway finished, and the parts that do have stain on them are all splotchy and speckled with drips.

I don’t really like what my ineptitude for all things Home Depot-related says for women’s lib, although I know there are loads of women out there who rock the power tools and would scoff at my clumsiness. So yeah, okay, it’s just me that sucks at this stuff.  If I ever manage to finish painting the fence and repair the damage I inflicted this weekend, I am hanging up my work gloves for good. That’s it! I feel bad abandoning the heavy lifting to my husband, but I sort of suspect he will be secretly relieved.

The baby is at his grandparents’ house, the husband is at work and I took the afternoon OFF. Driving out of my office parking lot for three hours of alone time gave me the exact same fluttery feeling as if I was skipping school or stealing a bottle of fingernail polish. NAUGHTY! So y’all, since I was already feeling all free and edgy, I headed out west to buy new panties. I know, this is getting rated X, but hang in there, I think you’ll be okay. Target is pretty much the only place I shop since Amos was born, and although I thought for a second about breaking out of the rut today, I decided to stick with what I know.

Do you want to see the racy new gear? Check it out, but don’t blush:

That’s right, a bonus pack of “body tones” cotton panties, size L for comfort. Tossing those babies into the cart only egged me on. I thought, why not go even racier? I’m a grown woman, I can be a little crazy with the undergarments. No one has to know. So I did!

Check out these beauts:

Little blue owls! HOOT! Hot, right?

Now excuse me, ladies, but I have to run. It’s date night here, and I’ve got to get ready. I think it’s pretty clear it’s going to get wild around here tonight.

Amos is a year and a half old, so you would think we’d be over that first flush of love. But no, I still want to cuddle and smooch and all but lick his face all the time. His skin tastes like the thin sugar coating on fresh Krispy Kreme donuts, so how can I resist sucking on the back of his neck? And that hair! Someday someone will catch me working the ends of his fine little baby hairs between my lips and I will be embarrassed. But really I have no pride, I refuse to stop nibbling on his belly or slobbering on his ticklish knees until he laughs. 

Friends who have older boys tell me this won’t last, that soon enough Amos will shed his fresh-baked sugar coating and take on the scent of a billy goat or a hunk of bleu cheese. My husband sometimes smells like this, so I suppose it’s genetically possible. 

I wonder if little boy funk is Mother Nature’s way of telling mamas to back the freak off. Right now it’s cool for me to keep Amos speckled with hickies and shiny with my slobber, but they tell me that won’t fly for all that much longer. I have a couple of years at best. A friend who has older boys says she sometimes shudders when one of her little men want to cuddle up in her nice, clean sheets with her because they always manage to leave dirty footprints, even right after bath time. And another friend told me she had to roll all the windows down in the August Arkansas heat this week because the stench of two little boys was about to knock her out.

 This blows my mind, I don’t want to believe it, but maybe it’s true. So for the time being I will continue to make out with my poor, defenseless baby boy pretty much 24/7. Why not cram it all in before he starts getting annoyed or taking on a barnyard odor? Not sure when that’s coming our way, but I noticed for the first time yesterday that his breath was not exactly winter fresh.

This week we started a new day care class, and it is great. Cheery, fresh paint on the walls, new toys, fabuloso teachers. Yay! Except for this one thing. The babies are all very, very thirsty. 

Last year we had a mini-fridge in Amos’ day care room, so the babies always had chilly bottles and sippy cups close by. I suppose they got used to having cool drinks throughout the day. And I really liked that they always had fresh milk at hand. 

So when we moved to the new, fridge-less room, the babies plum dried right up. Seriously, Amos downed crazy amounts of water and milk Monday night after school. And I got worried. So I asked some other parents, and found out that other babies were desiccating before their parents’ very eyes, too. One mama admitted to crying when her baby boy gulped down two sippy cups of water on the way home from day care that first fridge-less day.

There is nothing like the thought of a parched baby to bring on a full-fledged episode of working-mom guilt. Our day care is a solid one, the best I could find and more than I can really afford. But nothing is perfect, and incidents like these sometimes make me wish that I made enough money to hire a team of nannies. I mean jeez, I felt like I was dropping my kid off at the edge of the Sahara every morning.

Like most mamas out there, I will freak the freak out if I don’t think my little bug is getting what he needs. So I flew into action. The teachers voted yes, they would love a fridge to keep cold sippies easily accessible, but the toddler coordinator said it was a no-go because the budget was too tight. So I asked the other parents for donations and planned a trip to the big box stores in search of a cheap dorm fridge.

Luckily I talked to my even-keeled friend Carrie about these things this morning, and she made the excellent point that before I shelled out any cash I should just ask the director. Worst she could say was no. Brilliant! In the end, a simple phone call to the director, a simple request, and “We can make that happen by next week.”

So yay, a happy ending, a few thirsty days but no lasting harm done. But the guilt will not be quenched for a good while.