Peanut butter, pine needles, puke

New Year's Eve is here and I'm wondering whether I can even hold out until the end of this Auburn bowl game before putting on my sexy Breathe-Right strip and hitting the sack.
Today has been busy, and my pregnancy brain can be to blame for some of it. Buying a dead Christmas tree can be blamed for the rest of it.

After observing this Christmas tree for a few weeks now, I've started to wonder whether or not this thing was dead when we bought it. We bought it from Lowes, and I didn't even get to see it before it was loaded into the car, as it was raining and we were in a big hurry to decorate before Steve went to training for a couple weeks. So it's been pooping its little pine needles all over my floor (not that that stresses me out- thanks to my SHARK!) and ever since we got back from Philly after Christmas, ornaments have been dropping like flies. The branches seem to point straight down. So after picking up one too many ornaments and worrying that some of our "good ones" would break, I made the executive decision to take the tree down today instead of our usual day, January 6. But I couldn't just take down the tree... I had to rearrange all the Christmas bins! And I needed to gather up ALLLLL of the Christmas items so that I could organize it all! right! now! So we got all the ornaments off the tree and Steve got the tree out the door and there were pine needles EVERWHERE. Steve seems quite resistant to the charm of the Shark and opted to sweep. Like, the old-fashioned way. Which kind of blew my mind. Because why would you bother sweeping up 56,987 pine needles when you could suck them all up with a super vacuum in three seconds?
So while Steve went outside to do something (most likely to pick up leaves with his bare hands instead of using a rake), I picked up Sam and read him a book in order to keep him from crawling in the massive mess of pine needles.

I will backtrack and say that we introduced peanut butter to him for the first time this morning. I woke up thinking about it and thought that today was the day. Unfortunately, I am an idiot and since I'm on "vacation time" and can't remember what day it is, I had no idea that it wasn't Friday, or any other day that our doctor's office might be open. Steve swears he said something to me about what a bad idea this was before I fed him the poison, but I cannot recall such a comment coming from his mouth. (In addition to the raging, moody hormones, I have acquired quite the case of selective hearing.)
Anywhoodle, I gave Sam a piece of peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast and his airways didn't immediately close up, so I figured we were good. He did however, refuse to eat any more of it after two bites. I figured that maybe peanut butter might be an acquired taste for him (THIS IS CLEARLY NOT MY CHILD) and gave him his regular breakfast of carrot cereal. (I KNOW. Again, questioning whether ANY of my genes were absorbed during the reproductive process.) He drank an obscene amount of milk, but I figured that he wasn't used to the peanut butter, he slept for something like fourteen hours last night and was probably genuinely thirsty. So we obliged and gave him three cups of milk (approximately 12-15 oz total).

BACK to the story. I'm reading this little angel a book and he starts babbling at me and getting fed up with the reading. I turned him around so that we were face-to-face. I picked him up over my head to distract him momentarily and then I see the face. The panic face that says "omg Mom I'm fixing to UNLOAD all over you." And I put him in the burping position and started patting his back and he unleashes the most VIOLENT puking rampage EVER. It was so rancid and undeserved as I had been so kind earlier to make him the best breakfast on the planet (the PB&J, of course). Anyways, he goes through about three barf sessions and each one smells worse than the one before and Steve is still NOWHERE to be found. I'm yelling for him and wondering if he has moved on from the leaf-picking to something more ridiculous like starting our car with a hand-crank. Or his feet, a la Fred Flintstone.
EVENTUALLY, he reappears and I hand him the screaming baby who is pretty well covered in a carrot-cottage-cheese mixture and instruct him to strip Sam in the bathroom and close the front door so I can strip and shower. Steve offers to cut the shirt (his, by the way) off of me because "there is just no salvaging that." But it's an AUBURN shirt and I strongly disagree, and I plan to wash my ratty puke-covered yoga pants and Sam's pj's with this nasty tshirt as well.
Steve does redeem himself immensely by talking sweetly and calmly to Sam while giving him a bath and brushing his teeth and letting me wash the nastiness off of myself.

But back downstairs.... there is now puke MIXED IN with the pine needles and it's enough to make me break out in hives... Needless to say, the Shark was fully employed today. Steam action and all. We are fully sanitized around here. And not a pine needle to be found.

While I was showering and wondering how bad Steve was going to rag me for jiggling a baby that had just drank a load of milk, Steve tells me that Sam is allergic to peanuts. After bathing him, it is obvious that the child is breaking out in hives and his nose is running like Niagara Falls. He is also doing this ridiculously disgusting thing where he sneezes and ORANGE PUKE flies out of his nose. So that's lovely.
And then Steve reminds me that it's a HOLIDAY WEEKEND and this was a really stupid idea and I'm still stressing out about the hives and if it's possible for his throat to close up this long after being exposed to the peanut butter and there is still puke and pine needles all over my kitchen floor OMG.

I finally get out the door to trusty ol' Walgreens and grab some children's benadryl. I stopped by the pharmacy to ask how much to dose a 15-month-old and she was all, "I don't have a chart for that." SERIOUSLY? Did you not go to school for this very occasion? I ended up calling the emergency number at the hospital on post and was told that he needs one teaspoon for his weight. Once I got home, Steve informed me that the rash was gone and his nose had stopped running. I still gave him half a teaspoon of benadryl and put him down for a nap. He woke up in a great mood and seems to be back to 100%. I still feel AWFUL about the whole episode though...

So that was my New Year's Eve! My house is totally de-Christmas-tized, I'll be in bed before ten, and I'm hoping that 2012 will be gentle! No more allergies for my sweet Sam! Easy delivery for Second Baby! Happy husband at work! Increased metabolism for Mama so that all of this holiday food will just MELT AWAY....

Here's to dreamin' big. Happy New Year! See y'all in 2012!