I mean, right? Beth in Little Women dies of a fever. (Was I supposed to spoiler tag that? SORRY, EVERYONE WHO HAS NOT READ LITTLE WOMEN BUT WHO ALSO READS MY BLOG. Beth dies, and also Amy is a bitch.) The Velveteen Rabbit gets set on fire, because of a fever.* Helen Keller. BLIND AND DEAF. Why? FEVER.

So as you can imagine, I was a little bit, shall we say, concerned. About the fever.

But here’s the other thing: we don’t have health insurance. We haven’t had health insurance since the Poorpocalypse of ’10, when all of the money in the world spontaneously decided to opt out of being part of our income. So instead of fretting to an advice nurse, I fretted about on the internet (which, I hasten to point out, sort of universally said that unless his fever went over 106 for any length of time it was probably ok) and felt like the World’s Worst Parent while fever-kid lay on top of me and was feverish and also I couldn’t work. True story.

And of course if his fever had gone over 106 or if it hadn’t gotten better after five days we would have brought him into urgent care immediately, or possibly faster than that. The money part of it wasn’t the issue – the accessibility part of it was. If we’d been card-carrying insured people, I probably would have brought him to the doctor, just because I could – and the doctor would have checked him out and given him some Tylenol and told us to get some Pedialite and bring him back if he got worse. Which is what we were doing already.

It would have made me feel better, being told that we were taking the best care of him that we could by an actual M.D. instead of Dr. Google.

But we pushed fluids and encouraged naps and snuggled with him nonstop and the fever broke on its own, finally, and the kid perked right up and was running around like a crazy person again. So looking back, we did just fine.

But it still bothers me. I dislike the feeling that I was making a choice – the choice to wait it out and see if he got better – based on the fact that we didn’t have insurance rather than any deep-seated belief that the kid was going to be fine.

And he is fine. But UGH.

*It is possible that my memory of childhood classics is a bit hazy.

I’m beginning to think raising a techie kid is as controversial as raising him atheist. Which we are also doing.

Wanna talk about how we co-slept?

• Beignets from Violetta
• Mallhopping with the kid, who insisted on getting a plush Koopa Troopa (he’s been on a Super Mario kick)
• Ice cream using the gift certificate I won in the Metro Parent drawing
• Dangling our feet in the fountain at Director Park

It was a pretty good day.

Anyway: the party was a success, if a little under-attended (one group of guests had apparently been sure it was the next weekend, at which point they e-mailed me going “Um, did you know that your party was a week ago? You probably did.” Which was funny, and I may have LOLed, but only very quietly and to myself). The kid had a fabulous time. He helped me decorate the littlest cupcakes (which he decided were meteors). No one else had any idea what the cake/cupcake spread was supposed to be, which was fine. I guess.

Also a (qualified) success: the rocket softie. I made some modifications to a pattern I found in One Yard Wonders (which is a pretty fabulous book, if you’re into that sort of thing) and it turned out kind of awesome. The kid likes it, which was the important part.

In other crafty news, I finally slipcovered the Fabulous!Rocking!Glider! (the exclamation points are to emphasize the fact that I love the lovely glider and am not going to get rid of it despite the increasing impracticality of having it in our house). A favorite snuggling spot for both kid and cats, the F!R!G! was sort of disgustingly stained and matted with cat hair, and since the cushions were both a) cream-colored and b) upholstered, cleaning it was a pain. ENTER CRAFTY MAMA, with her IKEA fabric and her barely-passable sewing machine skills! Given that I don’t have the first clue what I’m doing, I think it turned out pretty well.

All those other grand ideas I had? Not going to happen. I was totally going to make garland, and ornaments, and stuff. But what did I do instead? I caught a cold. (I did make gingerbread men. I’m not dead.)

Even so, I can’t wait. Ellison is so excited he can barely stand it. I have a feeling preschool is one of the things that is going to fill my child with joy.

But.

So I just snarfed a huge piece of really gross cake and I feel elephantine and miserable and I really want to sit in a quiet room where I have no projects (over)due and no one is demanding that I console them while they pee on me,* for christ’s sake, and maybe, just MAYBE, I can sleep for more than two hours at a stretch, please, yes?

*The kid is having a slight potty-training relapse. I mention this in case you were entertaining notions of a more adult nature, which, ew.

Don’t worry about it.

Seriously. I started worrying pretty much the second I found out I was pregnant (am I gaining enough weight? What does that pain mean? Am I gaining too much weight? Is he going to be born with both legs fused together? Did all that kicking dislocate one of my ribs?) and it only ramped up from there.

First there was the milk situation, and the fact that mine took like 4 days to come in and the lactation people were making me feel really, really bad about it, like I was deliberately starving my baby or something (note to lactation consultants: I would tell you to suck it but you’d probably take it the wrong way).

Then there were the milestones that did not correspond with established charts: clapping (oh, how I worried about the clapping), jumping, talking.

We got walking out of the way relatively early, what with the taking his first steps at 8.5 months, but he didn’t really talk until well after he was 2 and still has some trouble with pronouns. And I think I may have mentioned how worried I was about potty training (but we all know how that turned out).

But for all my fretting and teeth-gnashing and late-night scouring of the internet, the kid did just fine. He reached all his milestones when he was ready to reach them, with relatively little input from me. It’s like – gasp! – I don’t have total and complete control over my child’s development! It’s like things happen when they happen no matter how much I worry about them!

He might not be reading super early like some of his friends, or drawing recognizable pictures like other friends, but I’m not going to worry about it. My kid is who he is, and I can’t imagine him any other way.

Except maybe he could eat more. That would be okay.

I can now use the childcare center at IKEA.

(Honestly, it was the first thing that occurred to me when we realized he was potty trained. But I have yet to do it, since they’re remodeling. Remodeling! Damn them and their delicious meatballs!)

On a larger scale, we can actually actively consider sending the kid to preschool, the thought of which fills me with a giddy sort of glee. Not that I don’t enjoy spending every second of every day with a small child climbing on me and yanking or poking some portion of my anatomy, but since I’m usually trying very, very hard to get some work done during those seconds, I think the kid is often bored. I’m a firm believer in boredom as parenting device, mind you, but I also like the idea of the kid learning to play nicely with other children his own age and listen to authority figures who aren’t his parents. Plus he’s seriously awesome, and why would I want to keep that all to myself?

So, we’re looking. Preschool hasn’t even been on my radar, so I have no idea if other parents are reading this and laughing hysterically at the idea of me thinking I can just waltz in and enroll my kid all willy-nilly. Go ahead, laugh. I can’t hear you over the sound of my own denial.

Yes. You read that right. He potty trained himself.

About two weeks ago, Ellison announced that he wanted to use the potty. Nothing new; he’d been doing that periodically for months, but last time I hunkered down and tried to get him to use it reliably resulted in nothing but soiled underpants and tears. So, sure, he used the potty, and then I went to put his diaper on and he was like “No! No diaper!”

Okay. So I let him wear some big-boy underpants, thinking what the hell, we don’t have to be anywhere.

And he wore them all day. And didn’t have any accidents.

And then his diaper was dry in the morning. And he wore underpants all that day, too.

And then all of the next night.

And it’s been two weeks.

DUDE. If I had known potty training would be this easy I would never have stressed out about it. This parenting thing is a piece of cake.

I mention this because today Ellison’s breath smells like rubbing alcohol, and I foresee nothing but doooooom. (Though it does explain yesterday’s foray into Meltdown City, in which a sobbing tantrum was thrown every five minutes or so by my normally cheerful kid.) We all had the flu a couple of weeks ago & are only just now getting back to normal; the last thing I want is another illness! But the kid’s got a fantastic immune system and usually kicks whatever bug he gets pretty quickly. Mommy and daddy, though, are another story…