How Colic Has Affected Our Household

Here are just a few examples:

1. I'm kinda cranky. One afternoon I was driving home from picking up Henry from his after school basketball thing. All three kids were in the car. A few blocks from our house, in my rear view mirror, I noticed a big black bamma SUV riding my butt. Even after a 12-hour sleep, tailgaters drive me completely up the wall. Guess what happens when I've had virtually no sleep for several days.  I'll share:

First I tapped my breaks a few times.  That had no effect.  Next I slowed down to like 5 miles per hour.  That seemed to work, but only for a few seconds.  Once I got back up to speed (a whopping 25 miles per hour) the jerk was all over me again.  Finally I hit the brakes pretty hard, slowing down to 5 miles an hour again.  That totally ticked her off and she honked her horn at me.  The horn put me over the edge.  I yelled out, "Oh no she didn't!" 

I threw that gear shift into park before stopping completely, causing our big fat white Toyota Sienna to come to a jerky, screeching halt.  I jumped out of the car, hoisted up my elastic waistband jeans, and marched my enraged, sleep deprived, postpartum butt right up to the window of that teen aged girl's daddy's SUV.  Rightly so, she looked at me like I was completely insane.  I wish I saw the look on my face (the look on hers was priceless) when I yelled, "You're driving too fast and too close!  Stop it!" and stormed back to my car. 

After slamming the door Maren broke the few seconds of awkward silence by asking, "Mommy, why?" That was my first thought.  What the heck was I thinking? I'm lucky I didn't get shot or run over.  I apologized to the kids, told them never to do what they just saw me do, and then drove past our house and pulled into the neighbor's driveway so he would get eggs thrown at his house later that night.  Just kidding.  I drove around the block.     

2. Henry gets put on "Maren Duty."

One night while I was nursing Emmy, Henry stormed in, informing me that Maren needed to pee.  I told him to help her pee.  Totally annoyed Henry turned around and shut the door.  A minute later, he was back.  "Maren peed her pants and needs a new diaper." After telling him to help her put on a new diaper, he stormed out once again and I didn't hear from either of them the rest of the night. 

The next morning we got up and came downstairs for breakfast.  A couple of minutes went by before I noticed Henry's handy work.  Both legs sharing one hole.  Classic.

3. Maren gets to watch Netflix on the iPod... a lot of Netflix.



That says it all, really.

4. I got the brain damage.

I knew I had misspelled "birthday."  I ran out of room and just didn't care.  I didn't realize I had messed up Randy's name, however, until a few hours later when, with pride, I propped his birthday brownies up against the stove for him to see when he got home from work.  Ugh.  

5.  I resorted to taking my kid to the hippy doctor.  'Tis true.  I read somewhere online that hippies take their colicky babies to the chiropractor for them to work their voodoo magic.  After three months of hell Randy and I were ready to try just about anything.  I don't know if it was God finally getting sick of hearing us whine to him night after night about Emmy's issues, time, or this doctor flicking a bone in Emmy's neck back into alignment, but I'll be darned-- she's steadily been getting better over the past week.  Whatever the cure, I dare say we've made it over the hump... knock on wood.