Snot central

It's now been a week since we stopped nursing, and it hasn't been so bad. She's asked a few times but is easily distracted, so we have really stopped. I haven't had much pain at all, but now a week later it seems I have one last plugged duct for old times' sake.

And hey, I'm not saying there's a direct correlation, but she just developed a nasty, wet, bark of a cough. We nursed for nineteen months and she never had more than a cold, and now one week after I cut her off, she's sicker than she's ever been.

The poor tot is a drippy, congested mess, and is a tantrum powder keg. If hokey-pokey Elmo looks at her the wrong way, she's ready to blow.

The girls are retired

As of yesterday, I think I'm done nursing. We had a false alarm last week, but I kept at it (if just barely) in anticipation of stopping for good this coming Thursday. But last night my daughter didn't ask to nurse, and I didn't offer. And that, it seems, was that. Tonight was very huggy, but the story was the same. I'm sad because...

...it was lovely.

The difference between mom and dad

This morning, the tot's 2nd day of daycare, her dad was late getting home. Now this was a problem because:

• The plan was for him to take her in until she's adjusted to the place, at which point I'll take over, and
• We're trying to establish a routine to facilitate the adjustment mentioned in bullet point #1, and
• It drives me nuts when he's late and doesn't think about how it messes things up such as bullet points #1 and 2.

Also, this meant that after I failed to reach him by phone, I decided to take her in myself and stop being such a weenie. Because the whole reason he was driving her in the first place was because I didn't want to see her cry. Because it doesn't bother his been-there-done-that-dad self one bit, and it totally undoes me. I'm having enough trouble with the notion that my little chicken of a newborn was already old enough for school; I just didn't want to have the image of walking out on my crying toddler seared into my brain all morning.

Even though I knew she'd stop crying and be OK. Unless, of course, she didn't, and I got the call to come pick up my sodden puddle of a baby. So I'm working up a full head of righteous indignation in the car, when he calls. Can't you wait two minutes? I'll be home and take her. Nope, nope I can't. Because:

• Just like during the fourth quarter of the Giants' game, two minutes is never two minutes. If you had a decent internal time clock, you wouldn't have been late in the first place, and

• I'm martyring myself here, so I've got to go ahead and do it myself. After all, I wanted you to do it, but its not like I NEED you to do it. I can take care of it myself, thank you very much. For nothing! (If I let you take her, then I can't be pissed, and I'm now of a mind to be pissed, it seems.) And...
• I always over-worry things that, once I do them, aren't so very bad. So what the hell, I'll take my own damn kid to daycare. If I was a single mom I'd be doing it without a thought. (Well, I'm sure I'd have a thought, but I always use the single-mom I almost was to shame myself into doing things.)
  

So I take her. And she bawls. I walk out fast like I'm supposed to, but I feel like crap all morning.

So I kicked her out of the house...

It was high time too. The little slacker was perfectly content to sleep in, watch videos, eat take-out thai (without ever even reaching for a wallet, much less contributing the ocasional twenty), but she showed no sign of looking into school or a job. So once she hit 18, I signed her up myself.

She's eighteen months old and we just started her at a daycare place 3 mornings a week. Today was the first day and she seemed pretty OK about it, but I'm a dishrag.