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Archives from 2002-2006

For anyone who thought I was giving credit where it wasn’t necessarily due yesterday when I talked about JB being such an awesome caregiver with sick kids, let me add that he is also, as it turns out, a fantastic and calming presence if it becomes necessary to take a listless, dehydrated toddler to the ER.

I surely hope that was the one and only time we carry one of our children through the bright red EMERGENCY doors of a hospital, and I’m equally thankful we weren’t there for something (even more) terrifying.

Oh, parenthood. My god, there’s just not enough Xanax in the world.

I give JB a lot of crap, both online and off, and the man’s taken his share of flack over things like, oh, for instance, perceived inequality in household chores or midnight baby-wakenings, wherein “perceived” means “based on reality, motherfucker”.

Let me state for the record, though, that when it comes to taking care of a sick child, my husband is a goddamned king. He’s patient. He’s calm. He’s comforting and never shrieks in alarm when a child—as actually happened last night—vomits directly on his face.

I’m not proud of the fact that I don’t deal with sickness very well. I don’t know what my problem is, but I do know that a puking child sends me into an ineffectual doom-spiral where I enjoy many of the classic panic attack symptoms: pounding heart, trembling hands, and the certainty that Life As We Know It Has Permanently Ended. I rush to the computer and google stupid things (TODDLER VOMITING NO FEVER IS THIS EBOLA?), I gnaw my fingernails down to bloody stubs, I hover over the child boring frantic holes into their skull, hoping for some sign that everything’s okay it’s just a virus take it easy oh my god we are all going to DIE.

So anyway, Dylan’s been quite sick during the last 24 hours, and JB has been a saint. He’s at home with him right now, doing all the unpleasant tasks necessary when caring for a child not yet old enough to provide adequate warning before turbo-ejecting the contents of their stomach. Where I would be sending him a frantic series of text messages begging him to come home and help me keep the last of my sanity from unravelling, JB simply mentioned earlier this morning that he was amused to hear a Yo Gabba Gabba song about how “your mouth on your face can do a LOT”.

“You are such a good guy for taking care of Dylan today,” I wrote.

“Just being a Dad,” he wrote back, nonplussed.

He does it better than anyone I know, really.

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