we’ve had quite a week, here, in the janaszek/hemphill home. a week i don’t ever want a repeat of, ideally.
this week was seb’s first week of potty training. on friday, may 5, brian and i endeavored to do it in the course of one day, following the rigorous methods of toilet training in less than a day. according to the book, if the instructions are followed closely, the average child can independently toilet him-/herself in a matter of hours. if they can’t after a whole day, well, then the child may be mentally retarded, but that is beside the point. needless to say, toilet training in less than a day didn’t work for our seb… but it got him off to an okay start, after we stopped the yelling and crying and gnashing of teeth, that is. he wears big-boy undies for most of the day and manages to stay dry unless totally distracted. things like birthdays and earaches became major distractions later in the week.
seb’s birthday was on friday. he turned three and got a bunch of good loot–a bike from mawmaw and daddy, a wagon from ja-ja and carolyn, a basketball hoop from pop-pop and grandma, and sandals from brian’s aunt, who we call zizzy. he got clothes too, which i get overly excited about. seb doesn’t much care. celebrations kept seb up late both friday and saturday nights, we all had a great time, but then he began to complain about an earache.
dawn on mother’s day found me, alone, on the couch in the living room, and seb upstairs in bed with daddy, tossing and turning and feverish. he had ceased to cry and moan every 10 minutes at about 6 am. at 7 am i took his temperature, and it registered 101 degrees fahrenheit. i called the doc, and we decided brian would take seb into the emergency room. seb stumbled around the living room like a drunkard while brian got ready to go. the e.r. doc diagnosed seb with otitis media, an infection of the middle ear, and his right eardrum had burst. a fun thing to learn on mother’s day is not that your child’s complaints of pain had perhaps not been heeded as well as they should.
and so we’re at the start of a new week. i hope it’s better.
Posted on May 15th, 2006