Pre-reminiscing? Already???

There's a sleestak asleep in our bed. OK, a baby sleestak (yes, Sid & Marty Kroft kids, time travel back for a minute). Little, baby, sniffy wheezes are filling up the bedrooom while we huddle in the dark, absorbed in the addictive world coming to us through the LCD screens of our laptops.

This particular baby sleestak is currently sporting a stuffy nose. Hence, the whole reason for the sleestakedness. And we're not talking one-nostril stuffy, or even pretty stuffed up stuffy, we're talking all out superglued shut stuffy. A mini Lockheed-Martin GA Compressible Flow Wind Tunnel might not be enough to blast through this snot blockade.

He's throughly miserable.

We took turns most of last night doing our best to pace a small freeway into the bedroom floor. Because, as it turns out, this snuffly, achy, baby sleestak can only be consoled when he is being carried HOUR AFTER HOUR by one of his pre-assigned Love and Attention Administrators. Exhausting.

So, here I sit, in the rocker by the bed, finally released from freeway duty, watching the bizzionth episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent, and I think I'm coming down with a tiny case of an achey-breaky heart. As much as it's so, so, SO nice to have my bedroom stay clutter free of Nerf balls, stacking rings, little people and, well just about anything else within reach, for at least a night or two, I desperately miss his little sparkly self.

Suddenly, and I assure you, inexplicably, I can't wait until the creation of the next Charmin labrinth that would send Mr. Whipple into conniptions. I promise to myself that I won't sigh at the next kitty food fingerpainting masterpiece, or inwardly "ugh" when, lovingly he brings me one of my most expensive makeup brushes, bristles soaked in JudeSlobber. I won't mind always having to buy extra tubes of Flava-Craze ChapStik that I know will become JudeSnacks when he inevitably finds them. Even though I thought I'd stashed them all stealth-like in a place he wouldn't notice. Silly me. When will stop thinking I can outwit the Toddler Superpowers?

So, yeah, here I sit, baby sleestak snotting up my pillow, remembering that there will come a time when I'm paying for his million dollar college tuition, and I'll long for JudeTheToddler to be here again, if only for just a few minutes (OK OK, maybe like 3 seconds), wishing with all my heart that I was smack dab in the middle of a spectacularly intricate Charmin labrinth.