he says pah (tay) toe

I've been worrying and fretting about what I might be doing wrong that's led to this terrible twos turnaround (the ttt's). I mean, it's normal at this age for shithead behaviour to appear, but being moi, and being a tad precious about my perfectionist ideals, having a child who is, well, running true to form, I can't help but feel that it's something I'm doing wrong. Which I said already. Still, despite my talent for blaming my self for all that ails the world, I also couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't just an age thing, it wasn't all my fault, and that something was wrong with my li'l pookie bear, and after he tripped yesterday and went over all excessively weird about the piggy that went to market on the left side, I checked his "pah toh" (poor toe, HOW CUTE!) out and found that he does, indeed, have an infected toe. So now of course I feel guilty about that too as he stubbed his toe OVER A WEEK ago, and it's my fault it got a) infected, because I washed it clean but didn't bust out the Dettol, and b) that he's been in misery for at least five days while his toe throbbed in protest of its inflammatory state.

No wonder he's been such a grumpy old bastard. Have you ever had an infected digit? Le ouch, is what I'm saying.

The infection was only noticeable on inspection, so it's not like you could see it junless yuo were staring right at the glowy redness, which is why I started believing the naysayers who were all "it's more than an age thing, he's got behavioural problems!" (fucksake). Still though, I should have guessed something was up when he kept saying "pah toh" for the last few days.

It gets better too.

As you know, we'd been to the doctor twice in the last week to see if Daniel was ill, the last time specifically to rule out a medical reason for his split personality. So I called his doctor's surgery this last time vis a vis the infected toe - and "sorry, fully booked". Le what?! He's a baby, for god's sake, and he's been seen twice already FOR A REASON. So after begging and getting nowhere, I called another surgery and they found a time for us and then when we gave out details, she apologies profusely and said "sorry, no new patients", she did however have the decency to ASK the overworked doctors there if they could make an exception, but alas, no. We eventually found a place close by who made a time in their busy evening diary to fit him in because "we always find spaces for children" which, rock! yes! etc, so we went along, saw a new doctor because there is no way I'm taking my precious boy back to a place that outright does not even consider, much less try to fit in babies who are in pain and/or infected with some biohazard that could conceivably lead to something a lot more serious than a simple, localised infection. Fuckers.

Daniel is now on antibiotics and panadol to help the pain, and should be on the road to mendsville in a couple of days.