March 16-18: comes in like a Lion and goes out like a Lamb

So the weekend started out with another poop watch reaching critical mass.  

I left work on Friday to pick up a particularly fussy Elizabeth who had been holding back from pooping again after 4 days.  Now we'd been upping her veggie intake (crazy baby actually likes asparagus and broccoli over fruit or cookies) and supplementing with the stool-softener so we thought it was just a matter of time.  But what should have happened naturally days ago had become a battle of wills between Elizabeth and her little body.  I bring her home thinking that Chris would come walking through the door minutes behind me since he said he'd be leaving work shortly after we'd spoken when I left work.

The whole way home she fussed and cried and pretty much from the moment we got in the door she was wailing.  I tried rubbing her tummy, bending her legs, walking her around while her shows were on the TV and still nothing would stop her crying.  This probably went on for a good 25 minutes when I decided to call Chris and see how far out from home he was.  To my horror, he hadn't even left yet!  He'd decided to stay and get some more work done.  Not a call or a message to let me know during the hour it'd taken me over at my parents house and driving back. But that's not the point.  The point was that I knew what I'd have to do. 

So I take the baby upstairs and get the dreaded suppositories and handled it all on my own.  Not an easy task considering that I hadn't been the one to apply it before and when we had used it there had always been an extra set of hands to hold a very unhappy and squirming Elizabeth.  Somehow I got it done with the least amount of tears possible on the part of both mother and child. And  then the waiting game began as I unknowingly hoped that Chris would not hit traffic and be home in record time.  Unfortunately, the start of his weekend was just as...poopy.  He calls me back to say that his car wouldn't start and now he'd be waiting for his co-worker to give him a ride home (complete with a pit stop of his own). 

Everything begins to move along and I've already changed 3 poopy diapers on my own by the time Chris is home.  Saturday, he gets to leave to go deal with his car that ended up being left at work then towed to the shop, while I'm alone with the baby for most of the day.  I'm not sure how it happened but our usually good system of "it's your turn to change her" ends up with me on duty to change all the poo-filled diapers in a row over 3 days even when he was home.  That's Ann 7- Chris 0.  That just reminded me that Elizabeth, age 1 and half, already knows way too much about her own bodily functions. Poor kid.

Back at Christmas, she got a baby doll complete with all the gear from my cousin.  As soon as we opened it up, she was doing all the things we do to take care of her.  She started rocking the baby in her arms and sang to it.  She put the binky in it's mouth. Then she fed it a bottle and gave it drink from the little sippy cup.  She handed it the teddy bear. It was so cute and everyone says that it's because that was all the things we did for her.  Then the next day she proceeded to take off all the baby's clothes and tries to stick things up the little hole in the baby's butt.  This was not something I had wanted her to learn but it was unavoidable.

Just a footnote about the rest of the weekend,  Chris and I were able to make it out to a movie on Sunday night.  We just hustled out the door as Grandma and Grandpa were agreeing to watch the baby.  We had to make it out quickly before we felt bad for leaving her and decided to stay home like so many other weekends before.  (The last movie we saw was Captain America, probably a good 9 months ago now.) As it was Chris heard her calling, "Mommy! Mommy!" when he was walking out the door and almost nixed the movie. Good thing I was already in the car or it would have been over for sure. We ended up seeing Friends with Kids  because that was the only non-horror movie playing within 15 minutes of the time we made it to the theater.  I guess that's our new selection method.  Works for me because there's never a movie that we both really want to see; only ones that either of us will tolerate. It was actually very funny and had Chris laughing out loud.  There were a lot of parts that we could definitely relate to. Let's just say, explosive diarrhea and leave it at that. And so goes the mild end to the chaotic start of our weekend.