Poo Fingers

Last night the Mushroom refused to go to sleep at bedtime.   This only happens once or twice a month but it drives me nuts.  I always have better things to do than fight to put my crazy overtired child to sleep.  Like shower, watch Breaking Bad, pack lunchbox, do washing, sit for 5 minutes and be alone.  You know, important 'I work too hard' Mummy stuff.

It was a normal evening.  We had play time outside for an hour and then came in whilst I finished off the spaghetti.  We did our usual routine, nothing out of the ordinary.  Juffin entertained the shroom whilst I drained the pasta and put aside some mince to cool.  After a week of fussiness, he finally ate a decent dinner (I may have used In the Night Garden as a distraction tool whilst I shovelled pasta into his mouth*) and then had his usual yoghurt for dessert.  Afterwards we do bath, book, booby and bed.

Except this time he wouldn't go to bloody bed.

Mushroom has discovered how fun it is to climb up and down the recliner.  But it's not fun for us.  It's supposed to be quiet reading time with Daddy when he is reading stories before bed.  Not 'look at me I'm training to be in Cirque De Soleil' time.  Accompanied by these acrobatics is also complete evacuation of the books from his shelf.  He likes to pull each and every book from extensive library off the shelf one by one and take them over to his father to read.  This action is accompanied by loud 'OOO's' and 'AHHHH'S'.

To paint a picture: wriggle down legs of parent onto ground over to shelf, grab book, exclaim 'OOO' loudly and take book back over to parent then climb back up and repeat process.  No listening to the story.  No attention being paid to parent telling child to listen to the story and stop climbing.  No co-operation whatsoever.

Unaware of the demonic type behaviour I enter the bedroom to take care of the booby business (Yes.  I am still breastfeeding my 15 month old son.  Get over it!) and he's all sweaty and riled up from climbing Mount Blue Recliner.  Not ideal Juffin, thanks very much.  I take my place in the recliner and as shoot daggers at my fiance and try to wrestle the clammy Mushroom into submission I start to realise that it's going to be one of those nights.  

He won't feed, writhes around trying to climb down the recliner, laughing, hitting my face with his hand, headbutting my chest, laughing some more, pulling my shirt down and trying to have booby from both sides at the same time, don't even ask me, but it frickin hurt.  In the end I shove the dummy in his mouth and pop him in the cot, crossing my fingers.  Hopefully he's worn himself out enough to just pass out.

And he's up.  Running around the cot.  Throwing toys out the side.  He stands over the railing and starts swinging back and forth.  He takes his dummy and throws it across the room, cackling with glee.  If I attempt to leave the room, full on meltdown mode.  I talk to him.  I sing to him.  I repeat ad naseum 'shhhh, sleepytime, sleepytime for Max, quiet time now'.  Nothing works.  He is a child possessed.  If I get up and lay him down he just writhes around for ages then stands up, chucks dummy and bear out and starts the whole process again.  This goes on for nearly an hour.  AN HOUR!

I start speaking very sternly.  My Mother is coming out of my mouth and I can't stop it

"Enough is enough young man. You are going to sleep. It is nearly 9 o'clock at night.  9 O'CLOCK!  One year olds are not up until 9 O'CLOCK AT NIGHT!  You are being very, very naughty and Mummy has had ENOUGH!"

Whilst I'm having my own meltdown I have a little Mummy brainwave and decide to check the nappy.  How does one check a nappy at night time, why they stick their finger in there of course.

You can guess what happened next.  I mean the title of the post is Poo Fingers so you know what I ended up with right?

Massive shit.  Biggest turd I've seen come out of that child for a long time.

I literally washed my hands of it and called in the tactical response team of Juffin, Juffin and Juffin.  After dealing with that lunatic for nigh on an hour and then getting shit on my hands I was at breaking point.

10 minutes later, the clean bummed, freshly nappied, decidedly lighter after evacuating the entire contents of his stomach, Mushroom happily goes off to sleep.

I feel pretty bad about it.  I nearly yelled at the poor child.  And he was trying to tell me.  I mean honestly, I couldn't sleep if I had a giant shit in my pants either!

The day sleep was fine.  For the Mushroom.
Not for poor Bernard the Bear.  Damn.