Thank God for Monday's

Wow... anyone ever believe they would actually her someone say that? Well, there you have it I just did. I enjoy Mondays. Mondays are the start of my work week, when I have something structured to do. As I have mentioned before, its difficult for me to make decisions there for trying to figure out what to do on the weekends is sometimes beyond me. In addition to that, The Little Gentleman only goes to see his dad on the weekends when it was been prearranged. My "weekend" without my son is Tuesday and Wednesday night. That was for a reason. I used to be busy on Tuesday night until 7:00 p.m. and when he would go to bed around 8:00 - 8:30 p.m., it wasn't fair to him that we wouldn't even get home until 7:30 p.m. and then he would have to turn around and go to bed without spending time with me. In addition to that, I work split shift on Wednesdays and work until 9:00 p.m. Again, it would have kept The Little Gentleman up past his bedtime, and I'm a mom who rather enjoys bedtime. I enjoy routines, especially ones that involve my child and his sleep. He's a little man who needs his rest. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to me that The Ex keep our son overnight those two nights. It also ensured that as I was working during the week that The Little Gentleman and I got to spend that extra time together. This weekend however, I am rather looking forward to dropping him off with his dad and spending an hour without him before heading to work.

This weekend has been a rough weekend due to him having a slight case of croup. The Little Gentleman was born at the beginning of August and two weeks later spent a week in the hospital with a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). I believe I speak briefly on it in a previous post, and I would be willing to speak more on it later in its own topic, but for now, I'm just referencing. That winter we spent the majority of the winter feeling pretty o.k. - aside from him starting to teeth at 4 months and not cutting a tooth til six months. Then we got two rounds of rotovirus within a six week period. That was NOT FUN, however, that was the only illness until he was just over a year. (We did have one more trip ito the hospital in that time, in July on one of the hottest days of the summer, but again, that is DEFINATELY it's own topic of its self and would be wisely entitled, It Happened To Me). I can still remember the night. It was beginning of winter and The Little Gentleman had been running a slight fever all day. I put him down to sleep and an hour later, he was awake, coughing and crying. I was able to sooth him and get him to drink some water (thank goodness he loved his cups) and he went back to sleep. This was around 10:00 p.m. An hour later, he was awake again doing the same, this time with more bite to his cough. I got him back to sleep again and when he woke up a third time, around midnight, he was having trouble catching his breath as he was coughing and I was beside myself. I called his dad, who I knew was awake, and he came to get me and we got to the hospital. By now, I knew that he had croup for he had the tell tale "barking" cough. We went back to a room and people passing by would stop in for a moment and say, "Oh, poor baby has croup." He got medicine, a steroid, and we went home. It was around 4:30 a.m. or 5 a.m. when we got home and The Little Gentleman and I snuggled on the couch with him watching Thomas on repeat while I dozed and he did his best to work off the ephedrine the medicine had in it. It was early Christmas time, for I just had a memory of the Christmas Tree being lit while we watched Thomas. Less than 2 months later, we were going through croup again and his dad and I discussed and decided that we didn't want to risk damaging our son in any way by giving him a 2nd dose of strong steroids within a short period of time. We determined that we would wait it out and take it only if it got terribly worse. Last winter we had two cases and already, just before Thanksgiving, we have our first case of the winter. I do hope that he feels better before Thanksgiving as I would hate for him to follow my pattern of always being sick at one holiday or another. Anyway. When The Little Gentleman is sick, there is little to console him and he is very clingy.

Take the consoling issue. My mom and I went fabric shopping for I am determined to sew my son, neice, nephew and god daughters pajamas for Christmas. While at the store, my mom took The Little Gentleman to the toy area where he found a pirate hat and a foamy like guitar. I can't describe it. Don't ask. Anyway. He decided that he was going to use the guitar as a sword (as Grandma wouldn't let him have the sword) and proceeded to hit me multiple times with the guitar. I told him that it would be a wise choice to stop hitting me, for the next time that he hit me, I was going to put the guitar back. In his 3 year old glory, he swung the guitar and purposefully hit me to see what I would do. I looked at him, took the guitar, and returned it, with him screaming behind me the whole way. I asked him to please calm down and his responce was to bite me. I took the pirate hat off his head, put it where ever I was standing, picked him up and left the store. He screamed the entire way, and tried to get down, "I want GRANDMA! I want GRANDMA!" continuing when he was in the car and then trying to get out. A dad commended me for letting him scream it out as I waited by the rear of the car. I gave The Little Gentleman 5 minutes to scream and then told him that if he could stop throwing his tantrum we could go back in and find Grandma. We were three cars farther than our own when the kicking and screaming started again because he informed me he was going to get the pirate hat AND sword and I told him he had lost those toys. This time, after letting him cry, we made it back into the store.

Two minutes later we were on our way back out the store, on our way two stores over to a pet store to get cat food. The Little Gentleman was delighted and I let him linger and look at all the animals on the way back to the food. We had just gotten the food when Grandma caught up with us (after having driven over). We headed to lunch and then were side tracked when we saw my sister and followed her to her lunch destination and intruded on her lunch. Yup. that was fun. While we were about to be shown our booth, we saw some friends of ours. We stopped to chat and we laughed about how we all ended up in the same place. The Little Gentleman heard me say "McDonald's" which is his favorite place and where we had originally been headed.

The Little Gentleman started causing a ruckus saying he wanted McDonald's and my mom and I immediately said, "O.k. we will go to McDonald's. Tell Auntie good-bye." A heartbeat later, The Little Gentleman was in hysterics because he wanted to stay where we were. Classic 3 year old moment. I love it. On top of it all, he went without a nap today. Needless to say, today was a somewhat intense day and I'm ready to hand the intensity off to The Ex for a few hours while I go tend to two other children. I'll still miss The Little Gentleman while I am at work, but its a nice break.

Today I am thankful that even though The Little Gentleman has croup, that it is only a slight case.

He's still keeping me on my toes. Has the energy of a bulldozer (when he has had medicine, which he doesn't always accept so I don't force) and his eating, drinking and sleeping have only been affected minimally. We shall hope for a speedy recovery and that he will be well to gorge on Thanksgiving as it is intended.

~Peace