midnight madness

recent events in the Davis household have brought to my attention some generally inconsistent emotions. Jackie has been sick. one of her milk ducts in her left boob became infected and developed into something called  mastitis. Thank goodness Aunt Niesy was visiting this week or we would have been really screwed. Also, Kingsley (one of the dogs) has been having seizures. So what does it mean to this poor blogger. Not as much as you would think. I've been working 6 days/week and not as involved with the goings on of the household as I would like to be. I don't get home until after 7:00pm, so by the time I get home and eat dinner there's a little time to play with Gracyn, hold Evelyn and then it's bath time, then bed time, then time to feed Evelyn again and go to bed. Jackie's mastitis has kept her from waking up with Evelyn for the middle of the night feedings. So, I'm happy because work is going well, upset that I don't see my girls as much as I want, thankful that Neisy is here, distressed because Jackie is sick, exhausted on account of midnight feedings and ecstatic because I just found out that I have a ticket to the Steelers vs. Rams game on Dec. 24th (thanks Mason). So two nights ago I had to wake up with Evelyn every 3 hours to change and feed her. Not so bad. Just tiresome after a while. Night before last this is what happened. After falling asleep around 1:00am, Evelyn woke up at 2 to eat. I rolled out of bed and picked up the crying infant. I talked to her for a bit and calmed her down. Proceeded to the next room to change her. No poop. "Where's the poop?" I asked her. Stupid question, right? So I get a new diaper on. screaming. walk downstairs and start to warm up a bottle. As I'm holding the distressed child I begin to hear a shakey whimpering sound from the living room. Kingsley's having a seizure. Great. So I put Evelyn in the pack-n-play, grab a towel from the laundry room and hold it over Kingsley's pee hole. (he pees when he has seizures). I caught almost all the pee before it had a chance to get soak into the carpet. Evelyn still crying, I remember that I had her bottle in the bottle warmer. Crap. Overheated. So I throw the bottle into the freezer and get back to Kingsley. Done with seizing, he was laying on the floor in recovery. I pick up Evelyn, go to the freezer to get the bottle. A little too cool now, but I give it to her anyway, she's still screaming for crying out loud. I put he bottle in her little mouth and walk back to the living room. Standing over Kingsley, I hear (and feel) what cannot be mistaken as a very loud, very explosive crap. I look at Evelyn, "oh, there's the poop." Kingsley seems stable, so I get back to the changing table. Now I'm standing there wondering if I should interrupt the feeding to change the diaper. There's just something about eating while sitting in her own feces that makes me cringe. Reluctantly I take the bottle, set it on the dining room table and commence the changing process. Take her out of the blanket, unbutton onsie, lift legs, unfasten diaper, take a look at the damage. Oh man, what the hell. it's fricken everywhere. her onsie, the blanket, half way up her back. damn it. So unavoidably she starts crying again. I lift her legs, slide each arm out, then over her head. onsie off. stage one complete. I open the blanket to make a little receiving area for the rest of the dirty, discarded garments. we use a changing pad thing so we don't get the changing table messy; well that has poop on it now too. I take that off and lay her directly on the changing table. Ok. All of the poopy things are away from my work station. I clean her up with baby wipes (probably used 50 or so), lift her up, wipe the changing table off (another 50 wipes). New diaper on, clean onsie, new blanket. Done. I put off dealing with the pile of poopy stuff so I can feed her the rest of the bottle. Put the bottle in her mouth. Stopped crying. All is well, right? Wrong. Kingsley seizes again. Son of a bitch! At this point I couldn't take the bottle from Evelyn again. So I make sure Kingsley isn't going to hit his head on anything, push the towel close to his belly and let the seizure pass. Ok. It looks like Evelyn is almost done with the bottle, she's relaxed and calm and her eyes are closing ever so slightly. She's content. I take her back upstairs and lay her down. Get back downstairs, help Kingsley up, get him some medicine, clean the pee spots on the carpet, throw all baby poop and dog pee stuff in the washer and go back to bed. You're not going to believe this, but 2 hours later the almost exact same events occurred in almost the exact same order. Welcome to fatherhood. Anyway, Jackie is feeling better today, Kingsley seems to be over his bout of seizures and Evelyn will continue to cry, poop, eat and sleep until she passes the infancy stage. Let's hope that's the end of midnight feeding catastrophes.