Double the Trouble

 

 

Please someone tell me why I elected to have one child, let alone two?

This is what goes through your mind at 2 a.m. when the crying from the newborn has awakened the 21 month old who finally fell asleep at 11 p.m. after crying and talking in her bed for two hours. The same 21 month old who is allergic to sleep and, if awakened by her crying brother, is likely to be up for another two hours. Her carrying on will eventually wake her little brother… and the whole cycle will start over.

Woe. Is. Me.

Good thing I have a wife who is a teacher and has summers off. “Honey, can you deal with Tyson and Sydney and wake me in the morning?”

Yeah, right. The answer to that is likely to be a right hook that knocks me off the bed.

You want to know how life is in the Gregg household? Two kids. Two adults. Man-to-man defense.

I’m tired. Just tired.

And my wife is the one carrying the water. I suck at taking care of babies. I would rather watch Sydney by myself for a week than watch Tyson by myself for a day. I never know what is wrong with the kid. I can’t ever make him happy. I’m always afraid I’m hurting him, or smothering him or missing some sign that he might die in the next 15 minutes.

With Sydney, it’s like, “Here’s a toy, here’s the Sprout TV network, here’s a grilled cheese sandwich, there’s a gate on the stairs and the cabinets are locked down ….now let daddy play Words with Friends for three hours.”

Thank God for my wife. And I am not the only one who says that. I am pretty sure Tyson screams that in his little mind every time Brooke takes him from me because I have screwed up and sent him into a tizzy.  

Speaking of Sydney, she has not exactly welcomed her little brother with open arms. She still calls him baby. Occasionally, she will say brother. I don’t think she ever says Tyson.

The first time she saw him cry, she felt so bad she cried, too. But that sympathy didn’t last long. Ever since, when he cries, she laughs hysterically.

I’m clearly raising a budding sadist.

She hasn’t pushed him off the couch yet, but she hasn’t embraced him either. She, like Vegas the dog, mostly ignores him.  On the rare occasion when she does acknowledge his presence, she might go over to pat him on his head and show a little affection. But her pats are slaps, like when she pets the dog.

He’s too fragile to endure slaps upside the head.

She does like to bounce in his bouncing chair. The weight limit on it is 25 pounds. At her last doctor’s visit, she weighed 24. I’m thisclose to a broken bouncing chair.

Tyson is adjusting to his new world. He already sleeps better than his big sister. It is probably too early to make the call that he will be a good sleeper, but all signs point that way.

He LOVES to be held. I don’t know if it is the product of being in that hospital bed for two weeks and not being held, but, if he is awake, he wants to be in someone’s arms.

That can keep a person busy. Brooke is pretty adept at holding him while eating, or while using the other arm to play with Sydney. Surprisingly, I am not.  

He cries for three reasons:

·         He hates to get his diaper changed. Not sure if it is the cold air or he’s just too modest to be naked, but you can count on some screaming when you pull the tape on the diaper.

·         He is hungry. We all cry for food, right?

·         He has gas. And he has A LOT of gas. He doesn’t deal with it well and can’t seem to get comfortable. This necessitates me having to move him 100 different ways to keep him comfortable until the gas passes. Unlike Sydney, who was a farting machine, Tyson seems to hold a lot of gas inside. He gets the hiccups after every meal.

He also has a clogged tear duct that produces regular discharge from his eye. It has even crusted his eye shut a couple of times while he was sleeping. Imagine his terror when he can only open one eye! That’s his Indian nick name, One-Eye Tyson.

Poor kid can’t catch a break. A defective heart. Excess gas. Eye pus.

He actually has a myriad of issues that we can’t determine whether they are normal baby issues or because of his heart. He sweats, shudders, grunts and yawns a lot. One of the things they told us to look for was sweating, so we may be hyper sensitive to some of these things, but each has me concerned enough to ask the doctor.

Also, his lips blister. They look like the back of a boxed turtle. Is he dehydrated? He gets plenty of milk.

All of these questions shall be posed in the weekly cardiologist’s visit tomorrow.  

We know for sure we have had a bit of a set back with him. Doctors released him to come home with the understanding he would gain weight and be stronger for his operation. But, they warned, if he is not gaining weight, it will likely be because his heart is working too hard, which would necessitate his first heart operation, the one we thought we’d avoided.

Despite eating like a Sopranos character, he has lost a little weight since he’s been home. Now, Sydney also did when she first came home, and I understand many other babies do, too. But because of his condition, they have decided to supplement his breast milk to see if they can add on some pounds.

We’ll cross our fingers.

Other than that, life is normal. We’re living the dream. Well, actually, there is no dreaming in our house. No one ever gets to fall into that deep of a sleep. 

Daddy Screws Up, Version 2,652

OK, this is what happened:

Brooke had to pick up a friend from the airport. This left me in charge of bathing and putting Sydney to bed.

The normal routine is Brooke does the bathing and I read the bedtime stories and feed Sydney her bottle, after which, she usually falls asleep. On this night, I handled all three parts of the bedtime routine.

On the times I have handled the bath, I usually let her play for 20 minutes, then spend about five minutes cleaning her, then we are off for the stories. That was my plan this time, too.

Brooke threw me for a loop adding bubbles to the water (she prepared the bath before leaving). I don’t usually do bubbles, but, since they were in there, I figured I’d take advantage of it and let the bubbles self-clean Sydney. This would save me the five minutes of work at the end. The bubbles would clean Sydney while she was playing.

Now, while Sydney plays, I usually sit nearby scrolling my Ipod, setting my Fantasy Football lineups, reading the news of the day or playing Words with Friends. My job is to simply make sure she doesn’t drown. She loves bath time, so I let her play.

So I am scrolling and about 15 minutes into the bath, Sydney stands up. I immediately sit her back down and tell her “NO! We don’t stand in the tub.”

Sydney loves to get this kind of reaction from me. She thinks it is funny and it encourages her to again do whatever it is that drew the reaction.

So, a couple of minutes later, she stands up again. Same routine. I sit her down, tell her “NO” and go back to scrolling. A few minutes later, the same.

This time I tell her, “If you do that again, that is the end of your bath. We are getting out.”

Of course, she does it again two minutes later. I quickly whisked her up, threw her in a towel and walked her to her changing table.

End of bath.

I dried her off, put on her pajamas and read her a few stories. After her bottle, she was ready for bed.

Shortly after she fell asleep, my wife came home. She and her friend sat downstairs talking for a couple of hours and then came up for bed.

My wife goes in the bathroom and then comes running into our bedroom with a horrified look on her face.

“Did you see the tub??”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to drain it. Sydney kept standing up and..”

“NO! There is poop in the bathtub! How long did you have her in there?”

“What? No, she didn’t poop in the tub. I was watching her and…”

“She pooped in the tub. There are three turds in there. It is disgusting. How could you not have noticed?”

“Well, there were bubbles and you can’t see below the bubbles and…”

“I can’t believe you. She is going to be sick from being in that water. You have to pay more attention. You are so non-observant when it comes to watching her. You have to be more observant.”

“Yes, dear.”

At this point, I was totally defeated and feeling like a horrible dad. How could I not have noticed something taking place three feet from me?

That’s the story. If letting her roll off the bed onto the floor wasn’t bad enough, my inattentiveness now has led to my daughter pooping in the tub and me leaving it there for three hours. While Brooke had a friend staying with us.

I’m sure my wife had a fun time explaining what an idiot her husband is.

Thank God Sydney didn’t decide to take a few swallows of bathwater, which she is sometimes apt to do.

Call me Daddy Disaster.

Despite my stereotypical ineptness, I really do love my daughter!

So, if you are used to playing Words With Friends with me, I’m afraid I will no longer be able to carry on a game between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Sorry.