I mentioned earlier about those days when you get to call yourself the winner just for making it to bedtime without one of either you or your toddler having killed the other.

This was one of those days.

Hurricane Owen is teething again.

Two year molars.

All of them.

Teething makes Owen snarky. Today my my sweet, charming Angel Baby turned into Bielzebaby.

Bielzebaby woke up at 6:02am and tried to chew his way out of his crib.

Bielzebaby and visits to the creative play session at the Early Years Centre are perhaps not the best combination. Mommy had a fantasy about stopping at McDonalds for breakfast on the way over as we walk right past one, and Mommy gets an odd sort of amusement out of taking the stroller through the drive through. Why not? Bielzebaby ate all my oatmeal this morning when he’d finished his own breakfast. I suspect Bielzebaby is either growing, or preparing to divide himself into a hundred lesser demons or release spores or something. Either way, it seems he was hungry this morning.

I’m still on a fairly high dose of prednisone trying to beat the latest Lupus flare up into remission. (No luck yet.) Prednisone MUST be taken with food. Paranoia and mood swings are just a couple of the side effects of prednisone on an empty stomach. Coffee and an Egg McMuffin are usually enough to soak up 40mg of prednisone and an oxycontin. Took drugs with coffee as soon as it was served. Oxycontin went to work straight away, and in less than fifteen minutes the burns stopped hurting.

Hurricane Owen, when he is his usual Angel Baby self, is usually pretty ambivalent about food. I’ve certainly never had to worry about defending mine. We get around this and avoid starvation by carrying a pocketful of raisins or graham crackers at all times, and firing them surreptitiously into his mouth whenever it happens to open. A slingshot and a good hiding place come in handy.

Not today. Bielzebaby made a lightening fast grab, and in about six bites, ate my Egg McMuffin. I managed to get half a cold hash brown while he was eating the wrapper it came in.

Then he threw a fit when I defended my coffee.

I’m not sure where he got the fork, since Egg McMuffins aren’t usually served with cutlery, but I’m now proudly sporting a Blue’s Clues bandaid. I doubt he has a permit for carrying concealed.

Minus fork, we finally arrived at the Early Years Centre, where Bielzebaby promptly did his best to chew through the baby gate.
The communal Mr. Potato head is missing his feet now. I suspect they too were eaten by Bielzebaby, who, for an encore, bit the head off Dora the Explorer before running Boots the monkey over with a fire truck.

Repeatedly.

A very little girl named Alysha, was still crying when we left at lunchtime.

We pass a park on the way home. That’s P-A-R-K if you’re talking about it around a Snarky Baby. Bielzebaby must stop and play in every park he sees. I’ve never seen a toddler hang from the monkey bars by his teeth before.

He was growling the entire time.

I’ve never worried too much about him eating things like sand or sidewalk chalk. My thinking on this was always that these sorts of things tended to be self-policing. A baby SHOULD only taste a mouthful of sand once. The bulging cheeks and “I know something you don’t know” slant to his eyes when I turned back from the Other Mommy I’d been talking to told me differently.

Apparently, in a pinch, diaper wipes taste better than a mouthful of sand. Other Mommy and I managed to clean him up with what we had on hand. The Other Mommy had FOUR under six. All boys. She assured me that neither sand nor Huggies washcloths are toxic, and on the upside, the baby powder burps are actually kind of pleasant. Far nicer, she promised, than some of the other disgusting things that all little boys will eventually put in their mouths.

There are days when you just can’t be shy about crying on the shoulder of a stranger. We Mommies have to stick together.

Actually with the perpetual sticky toddler fingers, it’s a physical, as well as metaphorical fact. Mommies DO stick together. So do babies. You’ll find little clumps of us in playgrounds and grocery stores all over the world, all glued together like popcorn balls, and waiting helplessly for the onset of puberty. I’ve been sticky for over a year now.

Bielzebaby had finally passed out in the stroller by the time we got home. The gnashing teeth and little growling snores coming from the stroller seemed almost peaceful. I had just tiptoed up and laid him in the crib at noon, looking forward to breakfast, when hubby came home. As mentioned earlier, prednisone, when not taken with food can cause some very unsettling mood swings. It had now been four hours since I’d taken it. Still no breakfast. Hubby has very big, very loud shoes, and chose today at lunch to brace the front door open and make several trips in from his car with something very loud. Less than ten minutes after going down for his nap, Bielzebaby woke with a roar.

I’ve been hearing voices telling me to burn things all afternoon.

Having filled up on Oatmeal, Egg McMuffin, Mr. Potato Head’s shoes, Dora’s head, a shovelful of sand and a Huggies Washcloth, Bielzebaby spent the rest of the day refusing to eat or drink anything. We’ve had 462 minor meltdowns today about things like socks that won’t come off, diapers that won’t stay on, crayons not fitting down the air vent, and why it’s a bad idea to bite the cat.

Daddy is on duty now. It’s twenty to seven at night. I’m signing off to go take a shower, make a cup of decaf and have breakfast.

He goes back to daycare tomorrow.