DeadpanAnn (old blogger version)

We're having a helluva time here in the McDeadpanAnn household. Charlie's got eczema super bad, including on his face, and he's scratched the hell out of his cheeks and forehead. I try to put little mittens on him before he goes to bed, but they usually come off when he wiggles his hands out from under the blanket I have him swaddled in. I find him the next morning with bloody scratches on his face and the mittens are under the blanket. If I don't swaddle him, he won't fall asleep. I've clipped his fingernails as much as I can. Several people have told me of the miraculous healing powers of various ointments and lotions, but I've had no luck with any of them. They work temporarily to stop the itching, but they wear off by morning.

He's also cutting a tooth, if you can believe that. He's been showing signs of it for a while now, and a few days ago I looked at his bottom gum and there's a white spot where a tooth is pushing its way through the skin. He's having fits with it, too. I'm giving him as much infant Tylenol as I possibly can, and trying not to think about the fact that we'll have to go through this 19 more times before all 20 of his baby teeth are in.

So we're dealing with a scratched up face and the pains of teething, but that's not all. He was having gas so bad that it was waking him up and he was screaming and grunting. The poor thing was inconsolable. I could barely keep him in my arms because he was kicking and flailing in pain. After a few nights of this, I switched him to soy formula, which seems to have helped. He still has gas, but it's not as bad and it's not causing him pain. The downside is that soy farts smell like a possum carcass that has been rotting in a sinkhole in Missouri for three days. Just this morning little Charlie was in the floor in his room playing (actually, he was staring out the window) while I put up his clean clothes and gathered the dirty ones. I noticed a rancid smell-- the smell of rotten eggs, perhaps. I searched the room high and low for the source. I tore the sheet off his mattress, dug through the dirty clothes hamper sniffing each piece as I went, and changed the liner in the garbage can next to the changing table, but the smell remained. Then I leaned down to play with Charlie, and just as my nose hairs started to curl up I discovered that the odor was emanating from his ass area. His diaper was clean. Soy farts linger, apparently.

I don't know if I can take him in public. People will think I'm the worst mother of all time with my bloody faced, angry baby who smells like rotten eggs!

To top it all off, his first appointment with the photographer was yesterday. (We're taking him at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.) I searched all over the internet and all over town for the perfect outfit, and ended up finding one at an overpriced baby boutique in Oak Grove at the very last minute. I was afraid he was going to scratch his face up before the pictures, so starting about a week ago I started trimming his nails daily, put the tightest pair of mittens I could find on him, put Neosporin on his face to heal the couple of scratches he had, and even put hydrocortisone on his face at night. Within a couple of days, all the scratches were healed, and I thought we were home free. His sweet little angel face was going to be perfect for his pictures. Woke up yesterday-- the day of the pictures-- and he had three or four fresh scratches right in the center of his forehead. It almost looked like Charles Manson's swastika.

There goes my bid for Mother of the Year.