Author: Shannon

Liam is the child who cannot sleep with any light in the room, who will not nap in the car because it’s (to use his words) “too bright,” and for whom we have to turn on a nightlight after naps and in the morning to ease him into the overhead light.

Liam is also the child who has decided lately to spend two hours (or more) without any warning awake in his bedroom instead of napping until he finally gives in to total exhaustion and lies down to nap.

Liam is unfortunately the same child who has just discovered that his arms are now long enough to reach the overhead light switch  that is very poorly placed by his bed.

Liam is now the very same child whose bed is in the middle of his tiny room, leaving no room to walk or play, but hopefully enough room to sleep.

The contents of this post are so disgusting that I hesitate to put it next to the macaroni and cheese post because it feels unsanitary.  But people, what’s going on in this house right now is so far from cool, and somehow writing it down makes it feel like I’m not in it alone (at least until the next incident).

This morning as we were finishing breakfast, Liam looked up at me and said “Poop.”  Very definitively.  I went to get a paper towel to clean him off so we could head for the bathroom, but by the time I’d crossed the kitchen again to get back to him, the whole area smelled like rotten eggs.  I kid you not, I was hoping that I’d maybe passed an SBD without knowing.  Alas, this was not the case.  Although I guess it’s a good thing that I’m still fully aware of my own bodily functions, the only other answer to what had happened was almost more than I could handle.  I went to get Liam out of his chair and was almost knocked to the floor by odor alone.  What I found when I got him on the changing table was, in short, indescribable.

We’re going through the Big D and much like Mark Chesnutt, I don’t mean Dallas either.

This is the third morning that we’ve had such issues.  On Tuesday morning, Matt and I went into Liam’s room and instead of the usual chirpy “Good Morning, sleep well, turn light on, turn sound machine off.”  All we were greeted with was “Poop, Poop, POOP.”  Although there was nothing in his diaper at that particular moment, it was certainly a harbinger of things to come.  That day we had four incidences between 9am and 5pm.  Yesterday we were down to two.  I’m hoping that this morning’s atrocities will not be repeated and that we’re finished with this particular phase.  It certainly makes the idea of staying in today very appealing.

I’m not sure how long we should let this go on before calling the doctor, but to be honest — I hesitate simply based on the fact that we’ve caught nasty child germs twice in the last three weeks and going to the doctor’s office is like begging to get a doctor’s-visit-worthy strain.  After waking myself up coughing for the past two nights, I’m not too thrilled about the idea of doubling-up with anything else…

Our potty training books were delivered yesterday, not a moment too soon.  I stayed up entirely too late last night reading one of them and something tells me that staying up until I finish tonight might be well worth the loss of sleep.