He’s baaaaaaaaaaack!

The gremlins who had kidnapped my son apparently gave up overnight and brought him back. The changeling is gone, and Captain Adventure is back in da house.

Let me hear the Mommy say: Whew.

You see, my son is a happy little person. The changeling we had yesterday was a bawling, squalling bundle of can’t-be-made-happy neediness. There were moments when I was ready to call a priest for an exorcism. Or at least burn some of that sage incense I know I’ve got lying around here somewhere…maybe put on some woad…I don’t know. Something. I wasn’t that proud to begin with, and was becoming more and more desperate by the hour.

The sudden recovery began last night with a bag of Ritz Bits peanut butter crackers. He had eaten a few bites of bread over the weekend, but refused to even look at most solid food. Last night in a fit of sheer desperation we offered him a bag of the crackers thinking that a) he’d say ‘no way’ and b) if he did eat any, he’d probably throw them up but at least he’d have something to bring up instead of just dry heaves, which suck, but most important c) it might distract him long enough for me to have a good cry about the whole thing.

But he ate those. And then a couple peanut butter cookies. And drank some water. And then some juice. And when he saw me plating up the fish sticks, he jumped into his chair and began begging. He threw the fish sticks on the floor but cheerfully ate his applesauce.

He was still fussy, though, and fell asleep on daddy pretty quick, giving up on the whole thing in disgust.

First thing this morning, I heard…singing. Singing! From the crib!

eeeeeeeeeYES!!!!

“Are you ready to get up now?” “YEAH!” “You want to play today?” “YEAH!”

He took his medicine, drank some milk, ate two scrambled eggs and a piece of toast, chatting and laughing and occasionally leaning forward to point at his runny nose (like maybe I wouldn’t notice) (well, OK, that actually has been known to happen) and then said, “Dah-own pees!” (down please), ran over to the TV and threw his hands against it and said, “OOOpffff!” (which I think may have meant ‘on’ or ‘hey mom, how about putting on some toddler-appropriate programming, maybe some Dora or a show about shapes and colors, c’mon, hook a guy up, whaddya say?’)

We are now sharing an episode of Baby Newton (Square! See the square? BLUE! Blue. Square. YAY!!) (…can we please move on to something more intellectual, like Spongebob or maybe 2 Stupid Dogs…?), and once again, you would never know he had ever been sick.

Well. Unless you noticed the Niagara Falls impersonation his nose is attempting, or the glazed expression on my face this morning. I woke up about eleventy-million times last night because I thought I heard him vomiting.

But $DEITY be praised, I think the worst may finally be over.

Cue a sister getting sick in three…two…one…