Category Archives: Porter
as in, Magoo.
Monkey
Scenes From A Double-Wide: Supper
Sick and Tired of Sick and Tired
Let’s recap, shall we?
My mother arrived a week ago, Thursday. By Sunday, Porter began throwing up more than usual. Monday, he threw up in the middle of the night. Although no other symptoms existed, we began to suspect the flu. Tuesday, we kept him out of daycare. Wednesday morning, Steve began asking me if I thought the house felt cold. Wednesday afternoon, Steve’s parents arrived, Steve puked, and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening under 600 blankets. Wednesday night, Stella slept at the trailer with her Grammy and Gramps, and threw up in the middle of the night. By Thursday, everyone seemed to be feeling a bit better. Porter was still throwing up with some regularity, and added diarrhea to his list of tricks. We all of a sudden realized that we needed to go to Costco to pick up more laundry detergent because we had been doing a minimum of 3 loads of laundry every day for 6 days. On Saturday, Steve’s dad spent the better part of the day holding court in the bathroom and on the couch. After being urgently booted from the bathroom by Stella – the girl with ZERO understanding that anyone else’s needs might outweigh her own- he opted to move himself to the trailer to convalesce. We were reminded, for the gazillionth time, that we need a second bathroom.
Although our house is wall-to-wall wood floors, Porter somehow managed to throw up three separate times on the thick shag area rug in the living room. The carpet cleaners come tomorrow at 1:00. After receiving yet another donation from Porter this morning, I attempted to wash our puke covered, king-size down comforter in the washing machine this afternoon. A tip for anyone who might try this in the future: when you have to brace yourself on the cabinets and use your foot to shove the entirety of the item into the machine, it is a good indicator that you may have exceeded capacity. It is currently sitting by the back door in an over-sized contractor bag along with about 10 gallons of water. Stella will be making her first official trip to a laundromat this evening.
Today, as I changed Porter’s outfit for the umpteenth time, and realized that although he has thrown up either in or on his shoes about 6 times, there is no point in buying him a new pair until I am relatively certain he won’t be filling the new ones with regurgitated bananas. And due to the mounting feeling that if I have to clean up puke one more time I am going to lose it, I made myself list the ways that it all could be worse. Remarkably, even with all that Porter has been going through over the last week, he has a.) not had a fever, b.) kept enough fluids in his system to not dehydrate, and c.) been in a remarkably good mood. Oh, and d.) I have set a new speed record in changing a crib sheet, in the dark, while not waking the sibling sleeping 5 feet away. Need I go on?
I guess that probably gets you up to speed on the gist of things, and also lends some explanation to my absence of late. More than anything, though, I’m just hoping that when the realtor comes over on Friday to help us set a list-price on our house, that the overwhelmingly foul smell of bodily fluids will have subsided.
Rhymes with Duke
These last weeks have been about 7 varieties of crazy. The new year has been good, but it is foolish to think our lives were actually going to be calm. Our consecutive hours of sleep number has been improving (on a good night, we can eek out about 7 or 8). But, both children refuse to sleep past 5:30am, like EVER. Stella has also recently come to the conclusion that our cumulative household napping hours are being fulfilled by Porter, and has given me no end of grief in refusing to take her afternoon nap. We tend to live and die by our daily schedule, so when it is disrupted, the whole system begins to erode at an exponential pace. And, no matter how hard we try, some part of the system inevitably gets corrupted, leaving us to face the aftermath. Most nights we reach our fever pitch right about dinner time. Watching us try to complete our evening meal is like watching one of those old British comedies where everyone runs around at double speed bonking each other on the head with clubs. That, and throw in some crying.
Of our two children, it usually works out that one tends to run us through the emotional obstacle course,while the other works the physical angle. Stella has been going through difficult, yet completely typical, growing pains at school, and we are pulling out every trick in the book to keep her on track. Let’s just say that the sticker chart has lost it’s appeal and we are now moving onto Plan B. I’ll let you know when we figure out what that is.
Porter, on the other hand, has, in the last 48 hours, treated us to three rounds of puking and one round of explosive diarrhea. The puking part isn’t actually all that new, but the diarrhea was, well, it was just a special treat.
Although the diarrhea was a little perplexing, the puking part was less of an “Oh My God!” and more of a “Ugh! Not Again!” We have actually had intermittent spells of puking with Porter for about the last 4 months or so. At least, that is when we considered it no longer ‘spitting up’ but rather ‘throwing up’. (For those who are wondering about the exact distinction between the two, I have one word: chunks.) Although we have done our best to figure out some cause and effect, we have been stumped. He’ll sometimes go weeks without so much as a cough, but then will, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, shower us with his lunch three days in a row.
There was a day a couple of months back where even Stella became a victim to Porter’s trademark firehose of barf. As I was trying to maneuver him from the dining room to the changing table, we left a virtual river of spew from one room to the next. As Stella emerged from the bedroom after her nap, I was still trying to wrangle McGoo out of his clothes. She rounded the corner into my bedroom and immediately slipped in one of the puddles, falling awkwardly to the floor. As she tried standing up, she slipped again. I felt like we were all three trapped in an episode of I Love Lucy.
I mentioned all of this to the pediatrician at Porter’s last appointment, but my details were spotty and lacking in any meaningful insight other than, “he seems to throw up a lot.” I just can’t imagine how she couldn’t come up with a diagnosis based on my meaningful description of symptoms. Instead, we had had to go this one alone – gathering data the way the early pioneers did – with a crayon and a bar napkin. At this point, we have observed that, 1.) each time he throws up he has just had a bottle, 2.) the bottle was given to him within a couple hours after a meal, 3.) he never shows any other symptoms of illness, and 4.) he is ready to eat again pretty quickly afterwards, and never with any ill effects.
Thusly, we have ruled out food poisoning or flu. Instead, our hypothesis at this point is that Porter’s “I’m Full” sensor is on the blink. You know, that little voice that we all have in the back of our subconscious that says things like, “Please step AWAY from the cheesecake.” His seems to be there sometimes, while other times it turns into the cheering crowd at a hot dog eating contest, “One More! One More! One More!” It is always shocking to both Steve and I how much actually comes back up. We look at one another as if to say “did you secretly take him to an all-you-can-eat buffet?”
And so it shall be that we will commence with operation Rhymes with Duke.