Well last night was more of the same. I thought my son was getting better from his sinus/cold/viral thingy, but when I picked him up after work, he was crying again. He kept holding his sweet little curly head and sobbing into my shoulder. It broke my heart. Soon he climbed down off my lap and began his ritualistic trashing of the bedroom. I was glad to see he was feeling better.

After a while, though, he started crying again and I rocked him to sleep. It took forever. I was vaguely aware that Ben was in the background. He looked concerned but since I am still upset at him, I did not ask him his opinion.

I do recall at one point, he kept asking me why I had not emailed him all day. I told him I was busy at work and did not have time. Which is partially true. Usually I don't email him because he rarely answers me, anyway. So what is the point? Then he accused me of not going to work at all. I blotted him out after that and rocked my boy.

Finally I got the stinker to sleep after about an hour. I left the heater on low and went out to prepare dinner.

I said nothing to Ben. He attempted to entice me into conversation about a program on PBS. I just mumbled a few affirmative responses. He had made himself dinner with no regards to me and was sitting at the table, online as usual on his laptop. I looked through the cabinets and decided on a tuna pasta dish.

As I began cooking, he started asking me "So, why are you mad at me?" I did not want to bring up the other night again so I said "Nothing. I am tired." That did not satisfy him so he kept asking me over and over. I finally told him I just did not want to talk, I had not had much sleep with our son having his viral bout. This pissed him off and he mumbled something negative I chose not to pay attention to.

The baby woke up again, so I stopped cooking and got him rocked back to sleep. When I returned to the kitchen, Ben started in again. I repeated that I was not in the mood for a fight. I sat on the couch and tried to focus on a crossword puzzle while I waited for dinner to cook.

He got off the computer and walked over and looked down at me with a bemused smile on his face.

"Hey, you aren't mad at me are you? Huh? Cuz you had better not be..you know what I'm saying? You'd better not be."

I just looked up at him, but did not answer. He pushed my crossword aside and repeated himself:

"You'd better not be, you know? Because you don't have any reason to."

I got up to tend to dinner and he followed me.

Then he made some comment about what I was preparing, and something about it being nasty, despite he has always liked it before. I ignored it.

Then he sat on the couch, waiting for me to respond. When I didn't, he said:

"You are gonna pay for this. You know what I'm saying?" then he watched his shows.

The baby kept waking up and crying through the evening. I gave him Children's Motrin and just held him. At 12:30am, I put his beloved "Cars" movie on for him and suddenly he relaxed and began chatting and playing. It went this way until nearly 3am, when we finally both dozed off. I set my alarm for every 30 minutes to check on him, but he was finally breathing easier and did not seem to be in pain. I suspect he had a really bad headache earlier in the evening. Luckily the fever did not return.

All I know, is I cannot continue like this. I don't even want to take the kids home at night because I fear another fight.