Jonesing for Tylenol

OK. So I knew that posting about our urp-free existence was going to fly back in my face (in that projectile kind of way that Hallie has mastered).

So, Saturday was lovely: Hallie woke up kissing and hugging us, had a great day, played happily, cooed, laughed, talked, and did not vomit.

Sunday, not so much. She tossed back everything we gave her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At least the kid is consistent. I'm not sure what that makes up for, but you do get high points for consistency in Early Evaluation, so I will give credit where credit is due.

Monday started out a bit better and she did manage to keep down her breakfast and lunch, but refunded dinner. She also refused napping at 11 and I ended up having to walk her to 'our cafe' at eleven, where she refused the bottle (actually, she tossed it out of the stroller at me with quite a bit of force). I raced out of the cafe and speed-walked her around the neighborhood until she finally fell asleep somewhere in Whole Foods and ended up taking a few ounces of bottle from me then. She kept it down, stayed asleep long enough for me to read one chapter of a book I am teaching but have yet to complete and scarf down a Sonoma Chicken Salad wrap. She did better at her 4pm nap, but then needed to get up at 6 for speech therapy. By dinner time she was none too happy of a camper---poorly rested, annoyed, aggravated, and complaining. And so she vomited.

After vomiting she did do something rather amazing (and frightening): we have a weird catch on our bathroom door that is a sort of lever-like thing that needs to be adjusted from time to time so that the door actually locks. The whole family was in the bathroom -- I was running Hallie's bath and fiddling with the lock and Sharon was using the facilities, and Hallie was marauding something or another. Or so we thought. Turns out that the kid was watching me from the corner of her eye. Not one minute after I leave the bathroom (locking the catch behind me so as to contain our toddling explorer) do I hear a shout from Sharon: "Come quickly, she just opened the door!" Great. And if you have ever been to our bathroom, you will know that the 'landing' which was constructed in the 1880s when they put the kitchen/bathroom addition on our house (which dates to at least the 1830s) does NOT meet code. There were no codes back then, so the landing is about a quarter of a foot deep. Not somewhere you want your toddler toddling and also not somewhere one can reasonably install a baby gate. Oy. Our days of peeing in peace are gone!

Anyway, Tuesday resembled Sunday to a tee.

And then we thought about things a bit more carefully and had one of those parenting Eureka! moments. The times when Hallie did NOT vomit were directly correlated to her having a dose of tylenol on board to take the edge off of her teething. The times when she did vomit, she was tylenol-free. While we're technically supposed to wait 4 hours between doses, she gets really cranky at three hours and so we've moved the next dose up a bit. We suspect that her dose is probably on the small side for her at this point since it's not been adjusted since she was about 21 lbs.

So now the plan is to keep the kid happily pumped up with her drug of choice (she used to vomit with baby ibuprofen, and we're not taking any chances!) and hopefully keep the edge off of those molars that are taking their sweet time coming in.

We implemented Project Tylenol yesterday and things were good. One urp, nothing else. I may have just jinxed us again, but I hope not!

Meanwhile, let's hope those chompers come in soon. And might I point out that the concept of teething is particularly cruel for those of us parents whose kids don't really use them to eat.