Sunday in Three Acts

Act I: Pre-Mother's Day Extravaganza

This morning was the big Mother's Day breakfast extravaganza.

To be completely honest, I thought it was just breakfast at Amy's aunt's house…but when you walk in the door and see the dining room table extended out to its full capacity, you know something is up. Ordinarily, that would have been the point where I'd feel like an ass for arriving late (as we generally do), but it turned out that we were still one Nana (Mom-O's grandmother) short of a full house, and without our extraordinarily Italian matriarch at hand, no one else could yet be considered late.

Long story short: the day included some sort of egg casserole, noontime beers, and four generations of Mom-O. It was a good time all around.

Babe-O was a hit once again and managed to captivate the room with minimal fussing. I didn't see a lot of her all morning, as the guys were pretty much planted around the kitchen counter BSing and grumbling at a crossword puzzle that eventually got the better of us.

Act II: Baby Diagnostics

Did I mention that Babe-O hasn't been feeling so hot lately? Mostly at night.

She went from sleeping through the night (more or less) to being up four times before midnight and an additional eighty-seven times between midnight and sunrise. Her only symptom, besides being generally cranky, is that she's been pulling at her ear a little bit, which honestly scares the hell out of me. That's because Mom-O's side of the family has a history of ear issues that I've always hoped Babe-O would avoid. As far as I know, I've only ever had one ear infection in my life, but I can remember it like it was yesterday and it was absolutely miserable. And on top of that, if it gets really bad, we end up in surgery territory, installing all sorts of weird hardware to drain ear goo from the ear canal do the nose to the throat to the stomach (or something like that).

Anyway…we had a suspicion that she had an ear infection, so after breakfast we took a run up to Urgent Care, which is pretty much a hospital satellite office that's like a clean, quiet emergency room with no lines or stabbing victims. I think every time we've ever been there, we've shared the waiting room with a Mom carrying a snotty kid and a college kid whispering about burning while peeing – pretty low key, all things considered.

By the time we got there, Babe-O was sound asleep (no nap 'till then), which meant she was NOT happy to doze off in her car seat and wake up on a hard, strange, doctor scale. She screamed, which pretty well set the tone for the rest of the visit. With a little luck, the doctor was able to get a look at her ear, which he thought did look a little red.

We left with an antibiotic script, which hopefully will do the trick.

Act III: Tiptoeing through suburbia

We got home and the little one seemed to be feeling a little better. We played for a while, she had a lengthy conversation with one of the dogs, and then it became pretty clear that our girl was running out of gas again. She wouldn't nap, so I loaded her up into her stroller and headed out for a jaunt. Babe-O was sleeping after a few blocks and I walked with her until I ran out of sidewalk. Once we got home, I tried to transplant the seat part of the stroller (plus sleeping baby) from the garage to the living room. I did not succeed.

Babe-O woke up and wasn't terribly happy about it.

But she shook it off and we had a good night: good dinner (introducing mashed potatoes), good bath, and in bed at a decent hour. Good deal.

Epilogue: Please, please, please, please, sleep through the night

Now, we wait. Babe-O is sleeping soundly. I'm beat. And I'm really hoping that all three of us have a good night's sleep tonight. This last week of fussy nights has left my nerves frayed, big time. Fingers crossed, blog readers!