Turbotot was sitting on the couch when I went into the kitchen to get him a sippy. I measured his medicine into the cup, added orange juice and water, and closed the lid. I turned around to go back into the living room and fell on my face. Turbotot had crept behind me and gotten underfoot again. He was completely uninjured, but my knee twisted and screamed at me when I straightened it. I sat on the couch for a few minutes while Turbotot climbed all over my leg and aggravated the pain.
I suppose I should quickly explain why any knee injury is a bad one for me. When I was 21, I dislocated my knee and had to have it surgically fixed because the joint locked at a 45 degree angle and wouldn't move. I ended up having extensive damage to the joint and I'm now missing most of the cartilage, some soft tissue, and a chunk of my femur head. That effectively ended my running and skating days and I'll likely need a joint replacement down the road.
Back to today's adventure.
I didn't want to let a simple achy knee keep us in the house on a 70 and sunny Monday, so I decided to take the kidlets on a walk. I put Turbotot in the stroller and Messy Mouse in the wrap and away we went.
At the end of the first block, Messy Mouse spit up on the wrap. No problem. She has reflux so spitting up is normal for her. Turbotot pointed across the street and demanded, "That way!"
At the end of the second block, Messy Mouse spit up again. I stopped to flip her from forward-facing to facing me. Turbotot simply cannot tolerate stopping under any circumstances. He screamed, "No! Move! That way, that way!"
Messy Mouse continued to spit up at a rate of one teaspoon per block. My shirt was a little wet and I contemplated the irony of a "Go Vegan" shirt covered in regurgitated breastmilk.
We reached the halfway point of our route. The fun accelerated.
My shoe came untied, so I crouched to tie it. I had to reach around the baby in the wrap without making her head tip back too far. Meanwhile, Turbotot spotted a group of kids playing basketball in a driveway. He began to point and scream, "Kids! Kids! Play basketball! I play basketball!" His "basketball" sounds a lot more like "diaper pail" than anything else. By the time I stood up, he was tantruming and trying to climb out of his stroller. I kept limping on my now-painful knee and he kept tantruming.
We barely passed the kids before the next bit of fun occurred. Messy Mouse gave me a big smile, then simultaneously barfed the remaining contents of her stomach down my shirt and filled her diaper with a grunt and a tremendous squirt. We still had half a mile to go.
We kept walking, Turbotot kept screaming about "diaper pail", and my shirt was beginning to feel a bit... moist. And not just from the barf. I picked up the pace.
Turbotot gave up on "diaper pail" and returned to screaming, "That way! That way!" He took off his shoes and threw them into a yard. Messy Mouse fell asleep in a puddle of her own barf. I retrieved the errant shoes and slipped them back on Turbotot's feet. We crossed the street and there were three blocks to go.
Finally, we were on our own block. Turbotot squirmed in the stroller, whimpering, "Kids. Kids." There were no kids outside today on our block. Spring break whisked them off into the unknown. We live on the top of a hill and I could barely walk by the time we got to the driveway. My knee was stiff and swollen in addition to throwing knife-like pain into my femur.
With Turbotot screaming, "Door open!", we went inside. He laid on the floor in the entry way and cried while I went upstairs with Messy Mouse still in the wrap. I took her out of the wrap and laid her on the changing table. I was a victim of the world's grossest wet t-shirt contest. In addition to barfing all over me, Messy Mouse had experienced an extreme diaper blowout. Extreme! I don't know how she does it... Turbotot never had a blowout with cloth, but Messy Mouse does almost every day. I cleaned her up, managed to get my shirt off without getting anything in my hair, and immediately started a load of laundry.
Now I'm sitting on the couch with ice on my knee, which is starting to bruise. Turbotot is begging to go back outside. I don't think so, kidlet. I don't care if it's only 2:30, Mommy has had enough adventure for today. We'll do it again tomorrow. Probably with the same results. And I'm inexplicably okay with that. I choose the "Yeah, Whatever" approach, and move on.
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| This is not my knee. This is my thigh. My knee is in another castle. Someday I will make it through all of the levels of the garage and rescue the pictures of the interior of my trashed knee, because they are pretty cool and worth finding again. |
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