Worst. Day. Ever.

Not for me, thankfully, since I have thirty three years worth of days that a day has to be worse than to get top billing, but for Cleo. Got that? A bad day in the life of the kid, poor thing. 

Being a beginning walker is a little like being a beginning anything: lots of missteps, lots of uncomfortable lessons, lots of learning the same thing over and over in slightly different ways. How Not to Fall Face-First Onto The Floor she has down pat, but she has a ways to go on How Not to Fall Face-First Into A Pesky Chair-Leg. She put out her arms to catch herself, but the chair leg got right through her defenses and whacked her hard on the cheekbone. Now she has the kind of bruise that indicates a good story in her recent past. A real you-should-see-the-other-guy blooming up in blue and purple. The holler that this face-whack produced was one of those slow-building eardrum-busters, impressive in both length, tone, and volume. She was a little subdued the rest of the day, so I'm not sure what we were thinking when we did what we did at lunchtime (the foreboding music starts here).

Months ago, I had to go away for a whole day, and instead of blowing through our supply of frozen breastmilk, we decided that she could have some formula. Some soy formula, since she does not like (will not drink, no way, no how) the dairy-based stuff. She sucked down two or three bottles, and by the time I got home, she had been throwing up for an hour already. We weren't sure it was the formula, since there was also stomach bug going around, so we tried it again a few weeks later. Same story: barf, barf, barf, doctor visit. The doctor was unconvinced that this was soy-related-barfing, and suggested that we try it again. At that point, my response was a polite version of, "Hah! Right! As if!" But yesterday, after a vomit-free few months, it seemed like a reasonable (and doctor-recommended, after all) thing to do. We gave her three small bites of soy-based veggie burger. Two hours later, the answer arrived: Soy=No Good For Cleo. That answer kept arriving every ten minutes for two and a half hours, and left poor Cleo limp and sad, and her parents sad and covered in, well, you know. We got enough fluids back into her that she could get reassuringly cranky, and we all slept fitfully. 

Today she's a bruised and subdued baby, but no serious harm was done. There are thunder clouds gathering over that benighted doctor's head, though, as the wrath of A Mother Who Has Been Proved Right prepares to descend upon him.