Last night was a full spectrum flashback to those dire early days of Fusshood, when sleep came in 20 minute lozenges punctuated by prolonged, high decibel shrieking fits. Only instead of a baby with lungs like a tiny Ronnie James Dio, now he's a well seasoned three year old working with a state of the art arena sound system.
Why, you ask?
Is mystery.
It kicked off with a run-of-the-mill freakout at Keith's birthday party. There were kids, there were chickens, there was a trampoline, there were frosted cupcakes with piggies on them and he hadn't had a nap. The meltdown was inevitable and expected- he wanted to go in the hot tub, I said no and the ceiling fell in. I tucked his squalling, kicking form under my arm and toted him to the car, sending him home with the Wife while I stayed on a bit longer.
I left around ten, which in the current era constitutes an evening of hard partying excess.
Arriving home, the Wife informed me that Fuss had fallen asleep, but then woken up howling a half hour later and it had taken some yeoman work to calm him.
Huh, weird, I thought. These days once he's down he stays there for the duration.
We sat on the couch for a bit getting caught up and then I headed for bed.
I'd no sooner settled in that Fuss rolled, thrashed and started howling like a banshee. Really, really loud, like his foot was caught in a bear trap, or I'd just told him he couldn't have a second ice cream cone. Totally inconsolable, just thrashing around, shrieking at the top of his lungs. Calling out for dada, then when I told him I was there and patted him, switching it to mama.
The caterwauling drew her in short order, not that it made any difference. We both comforted ineffectually for a while, then retreated to the living room tried to ignore the howling. After a while I went back in and he was more receptive, eventually hiccuping himself to sleep. I passed out shortly thereafter.
Only to be rudely awoken at around 1 AM by another explosion of howling.
This time there seemed to be no stopping it. Queries like "what's the matter?" drew incomprehensible or contradictory replies.
"Why are you crying?" the wife asked.
"I kicked dada! I KICKED DADA!" was all she got.
We rode this tsunami for a bit, then the wife decided we were taking him to the emergency room.
I got him dressed, over vocal, violent protests- "DON'T WANT MY SHOES ON! OW, OW, OW, MY LEG!", etc etc.
Eventually I got him ready, by which point he was marginally, deliriously conscious. The Wife explained to him that we were taking him to the doctor, which made an impact. He stopped screaming and laid down. "No, no doctor...just wanna lie down for a little bit."
And that's what he did. I was skittish and it took a while to get to sleep, but he stayed put until morning, when he was happy and chipper and showing no ill effects from his maniacal evening rampage.
A nightmarish reminder that for the first, oh, two years of his life last night was every night.
I honestly don't know how we did it.
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