Specifics

The past oh, 5 days or so have been days of heat, humidity, and horrible yucky illnesses.  And the kids had fevers.  Alex first, on Friday, and Julia yesterday and today.  Long, long story.  Bill and I have had a lot of digestive system fun too.

But enough of that part of it.  I am home for the third day taking care of a sick girl, a just-a-little-bit-of-sick boy, and a husband with a migraine.  About an hour ago, Julia woke up from her nap, but woke up cranky.  I think something woke her up and she was basically pissed off about it so she decided to scream and wail and thrash and flail to make sure everyone in the surrounding 5 miles was aware of her displeasure.

I brought her downstairs to the cool, industrially-strengthed-air-conditioned basement and sat on the couch and she flopped like an angry bluefish out of my lap and onto the couch cushions, face down, her hair all stuck to her sweaty face, clutching her pink elephant.  (The only one who truly understands her at times like this.)  She lay there like the dead until I made the mistake of leaning ever so slightly toward her just to see if her eyes were open.  This brought on a whole new episode of thrashing and screeching until she flopped back down and lay still again.

Then Bill came downstairs (his migraine pain and nausea had eased), and sympathetically touched Julia on the head or arm or some other super-sensitive part of her raging anatomy and set off yet another round of the screaching and flailing and so forth.  Bill left to go buy propane for the cajun cooker - he's brewing a big batch of beer tomorrow and buying propane was a perfect excuse to flee.

Julia finally slowed down with the tantrum...I was kind of wondering if perhaps it was her stomach and if she was going to throw up again, so I was already poised and ready to throw her from the couch if she looked like she was going to start THAT again.  I kept trying to get information from her - "Does something hurt, Julia?  Is it your throat?  Is it your tummy?"  She just kept saying "AAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!" every time, so that didn't really help me much.

I finally tried asking her the million dollar question:

"Julia, do you want to watch Mowgli?"

Julia has a huge crush on the original Disney Mowgli and he is who she turns to when she is feeling horrible. 

"YEEHHHHHHEEEEEHHHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!"  (subtext:  it's about time, genius)

So I popped the videotape in and rewound it to the beginning and she finally, finally calmed down.  Then she said "I want a bah-bah."  I know...she should be off the bottle by now.  But sometimes I still cave in, and when she's sick and could throw up out of pure anger, I cave in.  And then I told her - "But you can only have water or juice because milk will make you throw up."  (Not necessarily, but I've cleaned up enough curdly ick lately that it's not worth the risk.)  Well, Julia loves her dairy products, so this didn't go over well, and so there was another round of rage in the works and yes - I caved.  Like I said, we've all been sick over the last 5 days.  I am still in a weakened state.  Plus I figured I could do half milk and half water and she'd never know.

So up the stairs I went, put a couple ounces of water and a couple of milk in one of the two 6 ounce bottles left over from her babyhood, and then brought it back to Princess Julia, where she lounged on the couch with her pink elephant, gazing at Dream Date Mowgli.

I said "Here you go!" in my daffy chipper Mommy Makes it all Better voice...and she looked at me and SCREAMED and THRASHED and WAILED again.

I was trying to cut through the screeches to tell her "Julia!  It's MILK!  It's what you WANTED!  You got your WAY!"  But nothing could penetrate the "AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAABEEEEEEEEEEEK" that spilled out of her angry mouth.

"What?"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAWWWAAAAAAABBBEEEEEEEEEKKKKK!"

"You want pink?"

"YEHHHEEEEHHHHEEEEEESSSSSS!!!"

Ah.

Anything to make her happy.  Or quiet.

Back to the kitchen.  One of the two remaining 6 ounce bottles is clear.  The other, as you have probably deduced, is pink.  So I poured the milk/water blend into the pink bottle and brought that down the stairs.

Julia looked up.  And saw the bottle.  And smiled dreamily.

And sighed, "My piiiiinnnnkkk!"

Comments

[frotoe]

HAHAHAHAHAHA! oh...she's a scary one.

[Beth]

Aaaaaaaahhh, my precious!!! I have done well.... told you ya should have named her Beth!! By the way, I am on a new med for migraines. It is preventative, rather than treating them once they start. Topamax. Maybe Bill might want to investigate one of the preventative meds,seeing as he gets debilatating migraines so frequently. It has changed my life.

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. This reminds me of a friend's daughter, a beautiful, angelic-looking child whose first word was "no!"