in which another mother totally reads me the riot act

Also known as: In which I totally prove how NOT calm I really am.

So, today, we’re at this cafe/playspace.

Wait, let me back up.

So, this morning, Jonah wakes up screaming at 4:30 a.m. I go in, he’s soaked through his diaper, his pajamas. I take the offending items off him. The diaper weighs more than he does. He calms down, but DOES NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP. Thankyouverymuch.

He takes a nap in the car between 9 and 10. I do not nap, but instead park and yap on my cell phone.

Bad mommy.

We spend the morning in a delightful cafe and playspace of sorts (really just a corner of the cafe sectioned off by baby gates and filled with a mountain of toys) listening to / singing along with a man playing “old time songs” (think Oh Susannah, spirituals, work songs) on an acoustic guitar while his one year old and a few more years old kids run and play with the rest of us; an assortment of toddlers, nannies, moms and grandparents. Several times, the musician has to take breaks because his older child announces that he needs to go potty. For real this time? his dad asks.

Jonah was equal parts enthralled and exhausted, switching between the two modes so often that I couldn’t decide whether to leave right then in hopes of getting another nap out of him or stay in hopes of tiring him out a little more before the nap.

We stay to the end. We go home. I put him in the crib. He pulls all his stuffed animals in with him and orates for an hour. I listen from my room.

“I blah-boo. Eye blab-uh-do. I luhve yeou. I loveyou, puh-py. I loveyou, Bambeeanno.”

Cute, right? Except I am so freaking tired.

Did I nap during his “quiet time”?

Nope.

Bad mommy.

I get him up and we head out again. To another playspace / cafe because frankly, I want to see my mom friend who is going to be there, not because Jonah needs any more stimulation. (In retrospect, I was the one who probably needed a little less stimulation.)

This place is half cafe, half indoor playground, with two climbing structures, a slide, a play kitchen, a puzzle table, a train table, gym mats, various toys strewn about.

Jonah is playing peek-a-boo with a older kid who has basically crammed himself inside the faux-sink cabinet, poking his head up out of the cut-out “sink.” The kid shifts position and the cabinet door accidentally pops open with unexpected force.

The door hits Jonah smack in the face.

I’m standing about five feet away, outside of the little kitchen, which is surrounded by a four-foot faux-castle wall; trying not to hover. I watch it happen.

I’m sleep deprived. I’m afraid it’s his eye that got hit. I yell out “Oh My GAWD” — with the dramatic audible gasp that such a moment requires, and I run over, ducking through the doorway, into the little kitchen, scoop Jonah up. Of course he starts sobbing.

Staff members appear out of nowhere, offer me ice. The mother of the boy makes him apologize. He really didn’t do anything wrong. I think I told someone that but it might have been the staff member, and not the mother. I did snap at the mother’s friend when she asked me if he was okay (in a tone of voice that made it sound like she clearly didn’t believe he’d been harmed) — NO, HE IS NOT OKAY. The whole thing is a blur since I was unsure whether my kid had been blinded. I was a little irrational. I start to cry. The staff member hands me a napkin, apologizing that they don’t actually have tissues.

We all recover. Though I am still shaken. Play resumes.

A little while later, I’m walking Jonah across the room — he still demands that I hold his hands just yet. I hear a child crying in front of us, but all I see is a boy lying serenely on his belly on the floor. As we get closer to him, I KNOW the crying is coming from where he is, but it doesn’t make sense.

We’re nearly on top of him ourselves when I realize HE IS LYING ON TOP OF A SMALL CHILD. She is screaming her head off.

I’m tired, I’m raw. “Oh my goodness,” I say, perhaps a little too loudly. In that moment, I’m panicky. It’s not my kid. Do I lift him off? Shouldn’t I NOT touch him? Where are the mothers? I look around, asking “Um, SOMEBODY? Is there…”

The woman I’d snapped at earlier comes over, pulls her rather large two-year-old boy off of the fairly small 14-month-old girl.

She looks at me and offers her critique of me as a person…

(Here’s the part where I really wish I had a tape recorder because frankly I can’t remember the exact phrasing.)

…”You REALLY need to get a GRIP,” (or something to that effect). “These are TWO-YEAR-OLDS. They PLAY.”

Okay, so maybe I was overreacting. I didn’t mean to sound crazy. Really, I was just startled. I mean, it was startling. This kid, smothering another kid. Who was screaming.

And maybe I deserved it since I’d snapped at her. When she didn’t see like I did how it had looked like my kid had been blinded earlier.

I turned to her friend, now the bystander, mother from my inability to grip myself, Act I.

I’m sorry if it seems like I’m overreacting. I said. I didn’t sleep last night.

I started to cry a little. She said something reassuring-ish. I wobbled off to a different corner of the space, avoided the two women for the rest of the afternoon.

It stayed with me though. That feeling of being judged by the mom in Act II.

Maybe SHE felt judged by my outburst? Maybe her kid bullies other kids a lot and that’s why she’s sensitive? Maybe she thinks most other parents are WAY too sensitive and helicopter-y? The mother of the under-kid seemed completely unconcerned.

I need to get more sleep.

Oh, and then? And then, just for fun…

Tonight while Scott was getting Jonah ready for his bath, he picked our boy up by the waist and Jonah started shrieking hysterically and writhing in pain.

I go in to investigate (still not calm — grab the boy, yell at husband to call the pediatrician’s office).

Jonah is still screaming as we take him out of the bathroom. We notice that a rash is developing all over his torso.

A few minutes later he requests a book. I sit down with him and we read Little Miss Spider, and he calms down.

Now the rash has tiny pinpoint blisters on it.

I call the advice nurse line and am told there is a backlog of calls and it may take an hour or more for the nurse to call back.

Probably people worried about the porcine flu.

I go over all the things he ate today, wondering if it’s a food reaction. And then it dawns on me. The rash is suspiciously hand print shaped.

We decide he must be reacting to the bubble bath solution which was still on Scott’s hands when he picked him up, and therefore highly concentrated. (Even though it’s lovely hippie-esque paraben-free pthalate-free everything-nasty-free bubble bath, right? You know me by now.)

We take him into the shower to give him an extra rinse off, put him in pajamas, and practically a few minutes later, he’s deeply asleep.

The nurse calls back, I explain my suspicions/deductions. She runs through the list of questions she has to ask about rashes, agrees with me that it’s probably a reaction to the bath soap, and suggests I call the doctor tomorrow about getting him to an allergist for testing.

Wheeeeeeeeeee.