Hey Jakey,

What's wrong with this picture? You wake up at 4:30 am, hungry and fussy, with a wet, foamy diaper. Twenty minutes later, you're asleep and snoring, and mama's wide awake, tired as hell, and futzing around with my email. You sure have me trained.

What a waste of a $15 co-pay at Dr. Stevenson's yesterday. She said, yeah, you have diarrhea, but couldn't tell me why. Or maybe she did and I just didn't hear her. Halfway thru our visit, you decided to throw a shit fit. A loud, screaming, inconsolable shit fit. Forgive me, but all I could think was "I gotta get outta here, I gotta get outta here." From seemingly far, far away, I heard her say that you were probably hungry and I should nurse you. Right there in her office. Shame-facedly, I told her I had never nursed in public before (I've been meaning to give this a try. But I wanted to ease into it at my own pace, not be thrust into it, under the harsh flourescent glare of close-quartered proximity with a near-stranger...). So she left the room, and I popped my titty out, right there in front of God and everybody, and fed you long enough to get you to shut up.

Anyway, somewhere in there between shit fit and titty, Dr. Stevenson may have said something about-- Oh ferchrissakes, I don't even know -- all I really got out of the visit was that there really wasn't much I could do, and you weren't that bad off cuz you didn't have a fever and weren't vomiting.

A kind stranger sent me this. God, my HTML skills are back down to nil. I hope that link shows up. Anyway, the info there makes more sense than all my wild imaginings: salmonella, poisoned breast milk, that new "rotavirus," etc. Thank you, Barbara, for the link.

Okay, so you're not the idealized Huggy commercial baby that we imagined coming down the pike, but damn, you sure smell good. I can't stop sniffing you under your chin, your cheek, your hair. Could be cuz you're cradled right up there under my nose for most of the day, but I can't stop sniffing you. And okay, I've licked you a couple times too. I'm not the only one, either. I licked you moments after first meeting you in the hospital. A quick taste with my tongue, *not* like a dog licking off your birth sac... And I saw your dad do it too, that very same day. Weird. You're a baby that pleases *all* the senses, I guess.

Even your breath is sweet-smelling, even tho you haven't brushed once since I've known you. Reminds me of "The World According to Garp," where Garp checks on his boys when they're sleeping, and his youngest son's breath smells sweet, not like his older son, who has already reached the age where everyone's breath starts to smell faintly of death's decay.

Enough rambling for now. I've got to try and go back to sleep. Sometime last night between watching the beginning of "School of Rock" and the end, mama got slapped with a big sore throat. I've got to try and shake it, cuz I do *not* want to be sick. Love you.