January Twenty First, Two Thousand Sixteen
2AM.
After Gill put Oz down for bed, we heard crying from his room at around 9:30PM. He’s been doing that a bit lately, so we weren’t worried - I just went upstairs, snuggled with him for a while and he calmed down. Exchanged 'I Love You's, and he was out in 5 minutes. But then the crying started again. Gill tried her hand, but this time he wouldn't stop.
By about 10PM we figured out that his ear hurt, but without a fever it was tough to decide what to do overnight. We tried forcing some ibuprofen during the bathtime he insisted on having, but to no avail. I held him, and watched bits of Toy Story 3 with him. Took him to bed twice, but he was getting less and less settled and soon enough was crying consistently. Poor, poor boy. Nothing worse than an earache. I used to get them all the time at his age - may or may not be the cause of my tinnitus.
11:45PM, I load him up into the car, he’s crying the whole while, entirely unlike him. In my increasing panic I park as far from the hospital as possible, entirely like me, and walk the rest of the way with him clinging onto me, saying ‘daddy, daddy, daddy’.
Urgent care has 3 people in the waiting room - exactly 3 - and it still takes 45 minutes to see the doctor. The change of scenery at least has him calmed down somewhat. We watched Trevor Noah in the meantime and he is remarkably unfunny.
We wait and wait, I alternating between feeling the tragic empathy of a sick child, and feeling the restlessness of a Boring Place. The wait seems hardly a concern anyway, because it’s not like the doctor can wave a magic wand and make pain go away immediately.
When we finally meet him, Dr. Scrapneck (?!) finds the obvious earache and prescribes antibiotics. I drive to the Osborne Pharmaplus to get it filled out, then drive around Corydon and Osborne for 15 minutes while she 'prepares' it, whatever that ever means. I am overwhelmed with gratitude that we live in a time when an infection is not life-threatening. Simply a night’s minor inconvenience.
And, I mean, the magic drug is $20. How crazy is that.
He blessedly fell asleep in the car, but that meant I had to wake him up to funnel 5 mls of Azithromycin into his face. He literally chokes it down. I throw him back into bed and he falls immediately asleep. I’m hoping that he sleeps for 12 hours and wakes up feeling at least a bit better. No three year old deserves to feel pain. No one does. But especially not three year olds.
6PM.
The boy woke up at 9AM fresh as a daisy. He’s since had a 4 hour nap, and is basically perfect, if just a touch low-key. Resilient fellow. Must make sure to get his second shot of das wunderdrug before he goes to bed.
In unrelated news, I'm coming up on the last week of my four month parental leave. Um, yeah, that was about as quick as I expected. Or does it feel like a hundred years? Impossible to tell. Don’t care. Boring.
So how are we. The three girls are angelic - beautiful, alert. They smiled for the first time a few weeks ago. First Sadie, then Mar, then Ellie. So they're getting pretty jolly now. A pleasure to be around. If they get fussy we can console them. If they can’t be consoled, they’re hungry. Tidy, very tidy.
I’m sitting at a corner of our hideous beige wood dining room table, bouncing Ellie with my foot. She was fussing for me pretty good a couple minutes ago, and her eyes remain moist. But she’s looking right at me, and she’s beautiful. Sadie and Martha are hanging out on the couch. Ozzie is playing with his Mr. Potato Heads. (Mr. Potatoes Head?).
Oh, a funny thing - to lure Oz into his much-needed nap, I told him that we’d have a popsicle ready for him as soon as he got up. He proceeded to sleep for four hours. I walk into his bedroom, getting concerned with the time, and he wakes up immediately with a big smile on his face. ‘Oh, hi Daddy! I’m ready for my popsicle!’.
Kid doesn’t miss a beat.
