Looking over all of these pictures, I realize that I could afford to do more photography during daylight. Unfortunately, Reid isn't around a lot for the daylight hours on weekdays, and in the dead of winter, daylight is a precious commodity. And our house, admittedly, doesn't have a ton of bright white light. When I shoot pictures of Reid, I tend to turn on the crummy overhead to supplement the floor lamps rather than use the flash. The flash photos look artificially intense and glaringly (no pun intended) snapshot-ish. What that leaves is a sepia tone from our white-shaded overheads, butter-colored walls and an orange-shaded floor lamp. Reid isn't jaundiced, that's what everybody looks like in our house.

Last night, long after I filed the RPOD, went sour. Reid had already had a rough night. He fell right before bedtime and took a routine cut on his forehead, about an inch to the left of the one from a few weeks ago that was just healing. I've learned to accept these. But for some reason it bled alot, so I was a little worried, though he seemed not to care.

After our bath it had closed up and stopped bleeding, so I cleaned it with a little alcohol and put some ointment on before he went to sleep. Reid's sleep style unfortunately is quite mobile (something we're worried about when it's time to go to a toddler-bed). He scoots around on his knees with his butt in the air and his face buried in the mattress. The net effect is a night of driving your forehead into the crib, teddy bear and whatever else gets in its way.

Of course, because he had hit his head and I'm insane and working on little sleep as it is, I checked on him every half hour to make sure he was breathing. He was. Unfortunately, I also noticed that his nocturnal exercise routine had re-opened the cut. Unbeknownst to sleeping beauty, he had got blood on the sheet, a truly horrible sight for a parent to see. I knew it was just the scab, but it was scary.

Reminiscent of my previous personal parenting triumph, the midnight-no-wake-diaper-reattachment, I went in on a new mission. I would cover the wound with a band-aid, treated with Neosporin. It was risky, but it had to be done, and there was only one man for the job. Plus there was only one man in the house. And I couldn't talk the dog into even helping.

I prepped Reid by rolling him onto his back. He's actually quite compliant when he's asleep, though his high activity while sleeping tells me that sometimes he's right on the verge of waking, so you best not try one of these tricks while he's moving around, or you could have a real bad night. Anyhow, once he was on his back, I left the room and got the band-aid and did it up with the ointment. Then I re-entered the room and using only "the force" stuck it on his head.

I figured I would have to wait hours to see if it was even within an inch of his cut. Sadly, it wasn't as many hours as one would hope. Reid was up for good at 4:30 this morning. He ate terribly last night, so I'm guessing he was hungry, but it really seemed like he was scared of something. He didn't go back to sleep but he became completely calm when I finally relented and picked him up. I'm wondering if it was the fall, which was scary. I goofed around trying to get him to go back to sleep and then gave up around 5:30. So daddy is very tired.

Tonight, I decided to go easier at dinner. Dinner is a place where some discipline can happen with Reid because it's very demanding for him (work with a spoon, focus on one activity for longer than five seconds). For some reason, he's a champ at breakfast, eating an entire bowl of cereal without assistance, but at dinner he either won't help you help him eat, or sometimes he'll shove everything in his mouth like it's a game (which usually ends with a parent catching these things when he can't swallow them without choking). Therefore, parents have an opportunity to tell him when things aren't good, and that if he does them again he gets a timeout or whatever. Timeouts may not work for some parents, we understand, and we don't know if they are working for us, but at this age kids are testing boundaries, we're told again and again, and we need to define them for him. So we need to back up the "no throwing food at me" with something like a timeout. Who knows if he even understands what's going on.

Last night was a meal Reid had almost no interest in. Examining the barbecue chicken, rice and broccoli left on the floor, his pants, my pants, his chair and on the dog (long story) after the meal was completed, I figured he maybe ate two bites. The meal ended when he turned the chicken over on the floor in an attempt to bus his station to tell me he's done eating. Cute. So I'm thinking this is one reason why he woke up early.

Tonight we're a little more relaxed. Simple spoon friendly meal, nothing fancy, and Reid still has none of it. He wants my sandwich, and I give it to him. He pretend eats it (making strange sucking noises I'm afraid I must make while eating) and then it spends about five minutes getting moved from tabletop to plate, slowly falling apart under his inexpert grip, and the meal is over. He ate nothing.

Um. I can't wake up again tomorrow at 4:30. In the remaining time I have, I pack him full of every non-bad-for-him treat I have at my disposal. He eats a banana, a pear, a yogurt and some strange dry-roasted plantain chips that K bought before she left. He has milk, juice and water. He eats slices of fresh tomato he rejected thirty minutes earlier. Hopefully it was enough.

Because tomorrow is a full day. It snowed a lot here this afternoon, so potential road hazards are even more limiting to the list of things we can do. So we'll see what we come up with.



That pear didn't know what hit it.