Rough Day.

Every once in a while I’m reminded of how good our kids truly are; how blessed we are to have two happy, healthy, and naturally curious children. This revelation usually occurs the day following a rough day with the kids. Like getting over a long suffering, difficult cold, everything is made clear once the fog of frustration and neuralgia is lifted off of one’s head. Today is one of those days. Yesterday was a rough day.

The grueling day began several hours before the kids’ even woke up. Simon had been put to bed wearing his green dinosaur outfit: long pants with gripper sole booties and a long sleeve over his short sleeve cotton onesy. I should have known the outfit was too hot– it was still 70 degrees outside when I put him to bed, but I figured it would probably rain and the temperature would drop to the low 60s or even high 50s like it had the last several nights. It didn’t.

Two hours later, just as I was about to fall asleep after reading three-dozen pages of Virgil’s The Aeneid, Simon woke up on fire! His body temperature was easily up two degrees, and he felt like the clothes on his back were going to burst into flames at any moment. I thought he was only hot from being overdressed and, in response, doused him with copious amounts of baby powder to offset the thin layer of sweat separating his pale skin from his cotton clothing. While this fine blanket of sweat may have contributed to his discomfort, the real reason he was so hot was from a low-grade temperature; he was teething. Six teeth are coming in, four molars and two incisors, the poor boy. After an hour of cuddling, Simon finally fell back asleep, exhausted. I shortly followed suit, completely ignorant of the real reason he awoke in the first place.

Simon’s teething pains and how he reacts to them are much different than Taylor’s were. Taylor had suffered. Her discomfort lasted every minute of the day and night until her tooth or teeth came in. Crabbiness and irritability followed her everywhere she went until she was given temporary relief from products like Tylenol and Baby Orajel; or given cold teething toys, a wet washcloth, or frozen foods like Italian Ice and hard ice cream. We also knew the exact moment her teeth started coming in and, with much anticipation and relief, when they finally grew in. Simon’s teething pattern, however, has been a bewildering mystery to us. He behaves normally throughout the day: he runs, he laughs, and he plays without a care in the world. There is no indication of teething, whatsoever, unless one catches a glimpse of the red spot– the exposed nerve– in the middle of a new tooth breaking through his gums. But at night, for one to three hours, usually sometime between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., an entire day’s worth of aching, misery, and wretchedness descends on him like hell’s fury and relentlessly clobbers his mouth, his head, and our sanity.

In all honesty, it took nearly two full days before Adrianne figured out what was going wrong with Simon at night. I completely missed every sign and symptom of his teething while standing in the dark of the night in his bedroom holding him while he’s screaming and practically rolling out of my arms from all of his squiggling, pushing, and alligator rolls. The worst part is, neither Tylenol nor Orajel seem to mitigate his pain. It’s almost as if, overnight, his body has become immune to acetaminophen and benzocaine. On this particular night, either from sheer exhaustion or the absolute maximum dosing of medication I gave him, I was finally able to put him down to rest for another few hours before the start of another day together.

The remainder of the day was spent, I thought, since I incorrectly misdiagnosed the reasoning behind it, chasing Simon around the house and yard and keeping him from pushing, pulling, and biting Taylor. His behavior was definitively out-of-the-ordinary. He was in pain.

He also fell asleep two hours earlier than his normal naptime. This, in turn, threw off Taylor’s nap schedule because when she was heading off to bed Simon was wide-awake and letting the world know it!

Yesterday was a long day, a rough day. But as a friend of mine once said, “If everything was perfect there would be nothing to talk about.” Or in this case, write about.