Catching up

So I haven't felt like posting for a few days. I'm back now.

J was sick over the weekend. We went to the doctor on Thursday, and she'd said he had a sinus infection. Well, on Saturday he started running fever. After two days of antibiotics. ??? Of course, the battery in my thermometer died (I have one you can use in the ear - when his head is all stuffed up and he can't breathe through his nose, there's no way he'll hold one in his mouth) and I couldn't figure out how to get the battery cover off to see what kind of batteries I'd need, so I'm not sure how high his fever was. All I know is, he felt warm and was clearly not himself. K came over and I ran to the store to get some medicine and other things, and he called while I was out to tell me J fell asleep on the couch. !!! This is the boy who hasn't voluntarily napped in two years - when he sacked out in the middle of the day, I knew he felt rough.

So, he was under the weather Saturday and Sunday. Both nights I gave him some nighttime cough/congestion medicine, and both nights he woke up in the middle of the night when the medicine wore off. I ask you, if they're making nighttime medicine for children, can't they at least design it to be effective for six hours, if not eight? I certainly didn't want to fight the medicine fight in the wee hours with J, and I wasn't keen on being awakened when the medicine wore off, either. Blech.

Monday, he was back to normal. What with the fever and lethargy and general not-himself-ness, I was worried it might be the flu. Apparently not, though. I guess it was just a little viral thing that he picked up and that ran its course. Now he's just a big ball of snot, but that's pretty much an all-the-time thing.

Monday night J got an education in the fact that he is not actually the one running the show. He didn't like it. We had battles royal over everything - he wanted Whataburger, mama doesn't have money for Whataburger, and he screamed and cried and carried on. I told him we could go to the store and get some little cheeseburgers (the White Castle ones in the frozen food section) and orange drink, but we weren't getting a toy. Well, he then started screaming that he NEEDED a toy. I told him no, we don't get a toy every time we go to the store. "But I'll be GOOD!" Good has nothing to do with it, you have more toys than three children could play with, I know you want one but we don't get a toy every time we set foot in the store. And he sobbed and screamed and carried on some more. We stopped at the store, and I told him we'd only go in if he stopped crying for a toy. He started howling again, and I told him I wasn't taking him in acting like that, that we'd just go straight home. So we did. And then we had round fourteen over getting in the bath, getting out of the bath, and going to bed. Sometimes standing your ground is hard. But I know he's got to learn now that the world doesn't revolve around him and he doesn't get everything he wants simply because he wants it.

And last night was fun. Not J, so much - his behavior was much improved. I picked him up from school, and it was folder day. He'd gotten an E in conduct, so as a treat we got to go to Target. That was fine and good, except that it put us later than usual getting home. We got home, and I told him that before we watched TV, we'd do our homework. His homework consists of a little reading book twice a week - letter sounds, letter sounds in combination, and finally sounding out and reading three-letter words. He did great with the letter sounds and vowel/consonant combinations. He did great with sounding out and reading (reading!!!) individual words on a page. Then we got to the last page, where he was to read a three-word sentence ("Sam met Tom"). He'd just read the word "Tom" two pages earlier, and "Sam" and "met" were part of previous assignments. So it wasn't like these were words he was completely unfamiliar with. But he just balked and started wailing, "I CAN'T!" when I asked him to read the sentence. So then I tried to pry out of him why he didn't think he could. He finally said he was scared - um, of what? "Scared of coming back to my house." ?!?! What the hell. Finally, after about 15 minutes of screaming, we sounded out the words and read the sentence. He did it just fine. I told him we really could have saved that 15 minutes of screaming and he could have just gone ahead and finished it. I have no idea why that last bit was such a challenge, when he ripped right through everything else, but it frustrated me no end.

Then there was the great grape soda explosion. We'd gotten a 2-liter bottle of grape soda at Target, and J asked if he could have some. I told him he could have a sip, but he didn't need much, because it was too close to bedtime for all that sugar. So I went into the kitchen to pour a little bit for him. I started to unscrew the cap, and KABLOOEY! It went ballistic and sprayed grape soda all. over. everything. All over me, all over the cabinet, all over everything on the cabinet, all over the floor.... Ugh. Of course I couldn't leave my kitchen covered in sticky purple soda, so I had to clean it up. J got to stay up extra late while I did that, and it was rather a project. I ended up getting the steam cleaner out to get the floors clean (and as an added bonus, I discovered it works really well for getting accumulated grime off my white cabinets!), and I had to wipe down every single thing that got covered in sticky ickiness. Ugh. So J didn't get into bed until 10:00, and somehow managed to stay awake for 100 pages of Curious George stories. I'd think he was dozing off, I'd stop at the end of the story, and here comes a little voice: "The next one is Curious George and the dump truck, Mama!" He finally fell asleep about 10:30, and woke up around 1:30 wanting to come sleep with me.

At the risk of jinxing myself, I've noticed that he's staying drier at night. Not dry - we still need the GoodNites - but there are less mornings where he wakes up soaked through. So I guess that's progress.

Gotta work now. I'm going back to handbells tonight - I'm really excited about that!