The whine festival

Danny is turning into a 2 year old faster than the calendar can turn. To say it's been a bad couple of days is an understatement.

One recent day began at 12:30 a.m. with pitiful cries from his crib. Tooth pain. Molars are arriving. Tylenol. A few strokes of the forehead - a trick I learned from my mother-in-law, God bless her. Turn on the Bach. Drift back to sleep. Luckily, he slept in until 8:00. Get up, change diaper, clothes, shoes, wash face.

"Dan, time to go down for breakfast." Dan runs the other way, grabs a few toys for the five minute trek down the stairs, if he's walking. "Time to go down. Mommy carry or Danny do it?" Runs off, fakes me out at least three more times, insists "Light on. Light on. Light on." I sit atop the stairs, waiting, nauseous, debating whether to revisit the bathroom.

Downstairs, finally!

In the kitchen ... "apple, apple, apple. juice, juice, juice." Whine, whine, whine. Yogurt and apples and cinnamon toast, which he calls a cookie, bacon, a few scraps of whatever I'm having.

Run around, smack the dog on the butt, fall on his own butt, whine, whine, whine while I try to read the paper ... yeah, I know, I can't believe I still try this. Go to the post office. Go to the park where he plays with everything but the playground equipment. He climbs up on the picnic table, climbs back down, repeats, insists on holding the snack cup, spills the snack cup, tries to eat the goldfish crackers off the ground. Whine, whine, whine. Go home, "eat" lunch, and by that I mean suck the tomato sauce and cheese off the English muffin pizza before handing the rest off to the dog. Whine, whine, whine. Arch back in the high chair while I try to wipe tomato sauce and dirt off his face.

Nap time? Maybe, maybe not. He's trying to give up his nap, I think. Either that or the molar pain is too much. Or maybe he's going to start speaking in complete sentences soon and he needs the extra time in the afternoon to work on it. Then maybe the whining will lessen? I think on this particular day he fell asleep only after a dose of Tylenol and a stern warning, after which he hid his little face behind Dennis the monkey and went to sleep as instructed. Poor kid. Mommy is losing her mind ...

By 5 o'clock, I called my mother and asked if I could sell her a toddler, cheap. She replied that she'd pay a lot for this particular toddler. And with that money, maybe I could buy my sanity back.