Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Not Mother's Day

The "first half" (e.g., the part where I was at work) of my day yesterday went along swimmingly. As soon as I left the office, things started to go down hill.

First, there was a lot of traffic. There was no reason for the volume of vehicles on the road, but it took me 45 minutes to get to LP's Day Care instead of the typical 30 minutes.

Then, I get into LP's classroom and she has her back to me, but she swings around as soon as she hears my voice and I immediately ask, "why are you upset, baby?" since her eyes are red and swollen. I am told "oh, she just had a reaction, we just came in from the outside." What the heck does that mean? "Just a reaction"! She is smiling, but she looks awful! As I walk closer, I think I can identify the culprit - baby girl reeks of sunscreen. They must really slather that stuff on her. I am betting she rubbed some - or a lot- into her eyes. In fact, I wash her face about four times and she still smells like sunscreen, although her face does clear up and return to normal shortly. I am guessing this is the same reaction LP had a few weeks ago that they blamed on the milk. No more sunscreen on LP's face, please! And the Hawaiian Tropic will be going in the garbage.

As I am trying to gauge my daughter's feelings about her puffy face, I look at her daily report sheet and it appears LP only had two bottles. When I ask I am told, "oh yeah, we are heating the other one up now." Keep in mind, LP gets her snack bottle around 3 or 4, and it is 5:45 (since I am late due to traffic). LP had a solid snack at 3:15, but no bottle. Ummm....hello?! She feeds herself the bottle. It isn't that much more effort for the teacher and yet now her schedule is all screwed up. Since she is starving, not taking her eyes off the bottle, I give it to her to drink while we drive home.

Since the weather was so nice, my original plan was to get home and take LP for a walk. Well, now my kid looks very upset due to the red-face and swollen eyes, so ixnay on the walkay (like my pig Latin?). Instead, I figure I might as well give her dinner. However, she isn't much interested and after indulging me by eating some sweet potato chunks, she spits out anything else I try to encourage her to eat. Sometime during my machinations to get her to swallow some food, she notices the potted plant perched on top of the hutch in our dining room. She reaches out, tugs on a leaf and the entire pot - soil and all, comes hurtling down on us.

I am able to catch the pot, so nothing breaks, except my spirit. I give up on the dinner and attempt to vacuum up the potting soil, except LP freaks out anytime I turn on the vacuum.

The good news is, things can only get better from here. Right?

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