jude's terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day

little man LOVES to eat lemons

... even though this is his face while eating them.

note: the above pictures are irrelevant to the story, but since it's about him, i thought i'd put some cute pictures of him to go with it.  :) 

last thursday, jude had quite a rough 24 hour period.  after getting out of class thursday night, we grabbed some dinner at a thai restaurant and took it to a park on our way home so that we could observe people there for one of our ethnographies.   without thinking, i fed jude several bites of chicken from my pad thai dish.  this was his first exposure to nuts, and sure enough, about five minutes later, a splotchy red rash began to appear all around his mouth.  surprisingly enough, i did not panic, but for good measure called one of my friends who is a pediatrician.  unable to get a hold of her, i called our pediatrician's office and spoke to the on-call nurse.  she made me feel a little more panicked as she was very urgent in her instructions to get benadryl in him immediately, that our pedi wanted to call in an order for an epi-pen, and telling us to watch for swollen tongue/lips, difficulty in breathing, vomiting, etc. and when to call 911.  so we get home, i start getting jude's bath water ready while greg goes to rite-aid to buy the benadryl and i realize that the silence is a pretty good indicator that a catastrophe is looming.  so i went looking for jude in our apartment only to find him chugging a sippy cup of milk.  this would have been fine if we had actually given him a sippy cup of milk.  so i looked at him while my pregnant brain replayed the events and realized that no, he had not been given a sippy of milk, which means that he was chugging his morning cup of milk that had been sitting out in our HOT apartment for 12 hours.  fantastic.  i jerked the sippy cup out of his hands to find that he had drunk about 2 oz. (discerned from the visible line where the curdled milk had stuck to the sides).  fabulous - of all nights when i didn't need for jude to drink curdled milk, it was this one.  all i could think about was the inevitable conversation with the on-call nurse that would happen during the middle of the night:  "hi - my son is vomiting, but i'm not sure if it's from the allergic reaction he had tonight or the curdled milk i let him drink....any thoughts on what i should do?"

while worrying about when the vomiting would come, i bathed him and put his pjs on, went in the kitchen to get his nighttime milk (we generally keep milk refrigerated) only to see jude come blitzing in the kitchen and run full-force into the wooden island and fall backwards onto the floor (nailing his head in the front and the back).  could a concussion make you vomit too?  this was not turning out to be the best night. 

thankfully, the benadryl made him sleep soundly all night.  and thankfully, i think the apple he ate off the ground last week in the middle of NYC strengthened his stomach enough to make curdled milk digest with no vomiting.

so while getting him dressed that morning, he suddenly stood up on the bed and in a split second, ran towards the edge (imagine a child with no fear, no concept of what causes pain, and reckless) and did not even hesitate at the edge - just kept running off the bed.  i dove across the bed for him (onto my pregnant belly) only in time to grab his legs as he went head first off the bed - body rumpling backwards in half as he landed on the hardwood floor.  you can imagine the screams.  my heart-rate didn't come down for another 30 minutes.  thankfully - he survived with no broken anything.

and if you think that the 12-hour period couldn't get any worse....  we left the house for class; i went to get coffee and met greg and jude back at the bus stop.  while i was gone, greg and jude were waiting for the bus.  jude's stroller was laden with his diaper bag, our backpack, and lunch sacks all hanging on the handles.  while greg was looking down the street to spot a bus, he noticed that a women kept staring at jude with a strange look on her face.  so he looked back at jude only to see that jude's stroller had tipped over backwards and jude was laying there strapped in with his feet up in the air and head near the ground ... not making a sound.   poor guy, by that point, i think he was feeling like nothing else could really make the day worse, so why not lay upside down waiting for the bus....

i promise - we actually do watch him - but it's moments like that when i think people look at us with jude and, seeing me pregnant, think to themselves, "and she really thinks she can do this again?"