Let us discuss the plague which has made its snuggly little home inside my body for the past two weeks now. I'm so done with it. Waking up this morning to discover that I've lost my voice just made me all the more done with it. Unfortunately, the plague doesn't seem to be getting the hint and is currently kicked back in my lungs and throat, sipping on a Bartles & Jaymes and watching
Love Boat reruns.

The baby is now sick as well -- breastmilk antibodies can only ward off so much before they shrug and step aside. So now like legions of blogging mommies before me I get to tell you that to my child, squirting the saline up the nose to soften the boogers and then sucking them out with the Bulb of Death is on par with having layers of one's skin gently removed with a potato peeler. The only positive aspect is that the screaming makes his wee little nostrils flare and makes it easier to apply the Bulb.
Being an aspiring Good Mother, I went to Target yesterday to buy a humidifier to put in Baxter's room, only to discover upon bringing it home that it was missing a part. THANKS, Target. I would have gone to exchange it last night but was otherwise occupied watching the Longhorns win the national championship in one of the best football games I've ever seen. Total sweetness.
I've also discovered a musical preference in my boy -- he appears to share my shameful Randy Travis fixation. Truly, there are no limits to what this mother will do to keep her sick child smiling, including blasting Randy (as much as one can blast Randy Travis) on the iBook -- complete with iTunes Visualizer effects, oh-so hypnotic for a 12-week-old -- and singing along while performing an intricate dance routine throughout the kitchen. Just in case you think I've hit rock bottom (the cold rock bottom of your heart, natch), allow me to disabuse you of that notion -- I hit rock bottom a couple of weeks ago when, after getting home from the 8 1/2 hour drive from Mississippi, I had to (HAD TO) hold my inconsolable baby on my lap while pooing.
Now I can only sit around hoping that the loss of my voice does not mean I have laryngitis, because I overheard my pediatrician telling the father of the patient in the next room, the one with the St. Bernard cough, that laryngitis is the CROUP in children, and as any reader of
Anne of Green Gables will tell you, you don't want to fuck around with CROUP.