These days.

We're in the process of surviving a rough couple weeks. We had family visit over the August long weekend, and my nephew, being a year and a half old, left his delightful toddler germs all over the house for someone to pick up. That someone was me.

I was pretty run down for a couple of days but Parker and I came out on the other side more or less unscathed. Parker, especially, survived it like a boss. It's that breastfeeding, I'm telling you. The kid practically has wings. Except, of course, he ended up getting my cold last Monday.

The thing about newborns and colds is that they're taken pretty seriously. He's basically just congested, and only this morning (a week later) I noticed that his nose is actually starting to run a little. All in all, a little congestion and a little coughing hasn't been too bad to deal with. During the day.

You'd think that for a little guy that can't walk around or even hold his head up for very long there wouldn't be a big difference between daytime cold and night time cold. I mean, he's laying down most of the time, anyway, so what's the big difference? I have no idea, but I do know that the poor kid grunts and snores like crazy at night time.

That first night of his cold he slept for a record six hours and 45 minutes. That's almost seven glorious, potentially blissful hours of uninterrupted mom sleep! You'd think. Except he spent a lot of the night grunting and rolling around so I, instead of getting to appreciate the miracle of him sleeping consecutively more that I have total in one night since he was born almost three months ago, spent a couple hours in the middle of the night staring at him, worrying, thinking he was moments away from waking up to feed. Since that fateful night two weeks ago sleep has been an absolute joke.

The next night the poor kid did his grunting routine all over again, so while Karl sat with him in the bathroom steaming up the place with the shower, I was on the phone with the health line at 4:30 in the morning, being instructed to take him into Emergency. Fun times.

Everything's fine, but they just wanted to make sure he didn't have an infection or anything. The doctor recommended that we might need to hold him up while he sleeps for a couple nights, just so he wasn't as irritated. Cue me spending a couple nights with him on my chest on the couch.

To be honest, there are few things nicer than sleeping with a snugly baby on your chest. The only downside is that you're constantly checking he's still alive now that the grunting has stopped and being so close to his own personal barista makes the baby forget that he can, in fact, go more than  2 1/2 hours at night without chowing down.

So I say to you, Sleep? What's that?

Yesterday was a tough day. It might be a coincidence but the last two times I've eaten ginger Parker (and coincidentally I as well) has had bad days afterwards. Ginger and I are officially going to take a mini break. No big loss, it's not like I have to give up goat dairy (bite your tongue!) or gluten (which would make the whole less carb thing much easier, don't you think?). It's worth it, too, to avoid days where Parker is a straight up bear to put down. Karl's words, not mine.

That beautiful child did not want to nap yesterday. My perfect self putting to sleep child up and left for the circus and left me with a no longer manageable to-do list and a very tired and grumpy bear. By about 3 p.m. the only thing that would calm him down was being held in a weird and awkward position then, once the screaming took a mini break, reclining with me on the couch and watching TV. I kid you not, he was mad as all heck until that TV turned on and he had a colourful distraction. He won't follow my finger with his eyes but already he's hooked on the screen time. Parenting win.

The only thing that got me through yesterday was the jumbo sized chocolate bars we keep well stocked in our cupboards. As soon as Karl came home I threw the baby at him and made myself that first well-deserved cup of coffee for the day. Hallelujah.

I was worried that yesterday's bearishness would move over to today but thank the good Lord he's been sleeping like a snotty little angel. He's all smiles and giggles and doesn't even care when I stick the sucker bulb in his nose hunting for gold. Another reason babies are either psychopaths or amazing secret agents that could withstand any torture. Please don't put anything up my nose. Thanks.

Today's been a good day, though. Lots of napping, giggles, and potty training. Yeah, be jealous. Not only does my child (generally) put himself down for a nap, but he knows exactly when and where to relieve himself. That's right, he does his biggest business while he's either eating or naked on his change table. Feeding a grunting, writhing, occasionally wailing baby is super fun and efficient, let me tell you. So is trying to time diaper removal with the end of the grunting, writhing, and occasional wailing. Parker actually thinks this is hysterical when he's on his change pad and very distressing if he's eating. But hey, at least he's potty trained.

Speaking of Parker's development, we're actually a little concerned about him, if I'm being honest. He's already outgrown some of his socks with rubber grips on the bottom and he's not even closer to walking yet.

In other news, last week we'd finally had enough with our obscenely squeaky bed and bought a new one. It is amazing. It's probably a bit big for our little bedroom but it sits so much higher, looks so much more grown up, and doesn't make a peep when you so much as scratch your nose. I feel like I'm living in a hotel. The only problem is that our dressers now take up a bit too much space and the new bed frame is almost the same colour as our walls. We basically need to do a renovation to make the space work better for our bed. My new dream is to replace our dressers with a full wall wardrobe. Have you ever looked into how much that kind of thing costs? I think it would be cheaper to just build a bigger house. Painting also takes a lot of work, so I might just finally hang some pictures in our room and pretend like that fixes things. But winter is long and full of and nothing but boring, so painting might be a good time killer.

I've been practicing wearing Parker in his wrap lately. He doesn't really love it, but we're flying home just the two of us next week and I fully plan on taking advantage of my carry on allowances to save money. One checked bag, one carry on suitcase, one diaper bag, and one wiggly child are too much. So I'm going to put that wiggly child in his carrier that he may or may not hate and just thank my lucky stars that we're borrowing the baby trifecta on the other side (car seat, pack n play, and stroller) so that I don't have to worry about lugging them up to the check in counter, too. I'm not so secretly hoping that they let me check in my carry on suitcase for free since it's smaller than any of the other three items they'd me bring along. Parker's getting pretty good at flirting so I'm optimistic. People just swoon over a baby with a mustache.

I anticipate that he'll probably sleep through the two (UGH) flights. It's only four hours from initial take off to when we land in Victoria so we'll just be praying for no delays, empty planes, and good attitudes all around. I'm bringing him a bottle and me some cookies to hopefully make things less awkward. The cookies are mostly to make me feel better and soothe my nerves but I'm also not opposed to using them to bribe fellow passengers for forgiveness of my screaming child. That's not true, actually. He's much more likely to spit up on them than scream. I'll be packing extra burp cloths. And clothes, for me and my fellow passengers. Honestly, I'm used to regurgitated milk in my bra at this point, so it's no big deal. I just pray that I don't have to pee while we're on the plane or he's having a carrier-related meltdown. Nothing makes strangers uncomfortable quite like listening to screaming while they pee. I assume. Lord, have mercy.

I was going to add pictures but the baby's squawking and, miracle of miracles, I wrote this all in one go, with only one bum change in the middle. Parker's, not mine. Awkward.