If three's a crowd, what's four?
Bad news: Andrew was sick and had to come home from school again, on Monday this time. Good news: we got a head start on his nine-month physical. Here are the vital stats from nine months:
Fortunately, he was not discovered to have an ear infection this time, so let’s hope he gets well soon!
A smattering of pictures from our Christmas celebrations in Annapolis:
Andrew had to come home from school yesterday with a fever, and when Marcie took him to the doctor, we discovered that he had 1.5 ear infections (one for sure, and possibly the other one too). I’m recording this here in the blog because I want to have a more permanent record of his ear infections. He’s been sick with something for what seems like several weeks, so I am a little concerned he might be headed down the same road that Ben did. Of course things turned out fine with Ben after he got tubes, but I hope that Andrew doesn’t need to suffer through that!
OK, I’ve returned from my holiday hiatus with some updates on our goings and doings. We had a nice holiday season, inasmuch as we survived the with with no day care without causing each other any serious injury, either physical or psychological. In fact, we had a very nice time down in Annapolis with Nana and Granddad Wistar. See more on that later this week.
For now, here is a brief photo-essay from the actual Christmas day, which we spent with Granmary:
Observe the following photo and notice what might be unexpected:
It’s true, Betsy can now actually support her own weight on her back legs without any assistance. She’s not really walking again; although she can walk a few steps, she still falls down on her butt quite a bit. But it is rather inspiring to see her make such an amazing recovery from complete paralysis in just a few short months. Perhaps it’s a Christmas miracle?
Nap time for Ben has been a farce for a long time now. When at school he naps for a bout 90 minutes, at home it just doesn’t happen. But I still need a break so I give Ben 1 hour on the timer and leave him in his room. Saturday was a day of faculty meetings for Roger so I had the boys solo and Andrew was sick with constipation and a sinus infection. I set Ben up for his rest in his room then got Andrew set up with a bottle and myself positioned on the couch so I could watch TV while feeding Andrew. I heard a thump from Ben’s room, but nothing else until the timer rang and I heard, “Mommy, my timer rang.” Okay Ben, clean up your room and come on up. “But it’s too heavy.” Huh?? I was a little speechless when I discovered the mess in his room. Check it out:
I don’t remember exactly what I said after giving him a time out on the stairs and running to get the camera so I could take these photos. There was a lot finger pointing and “your dad and I work too hard to give you a nice place to live for you to treat your room with such disrespect.” As these words were coming out of my mouth I was thinking how he has no concept of “respect” “work” He just knew I was pissed.
After lecturing for a few minutes I told him he could not have any Caillou (his favorite show) and had to clean up his room. I hauled the bed back together and then sat holding a fussy Andrew while Ben cleaned his room. He tried to have some fun with me, but I wasn’t allowing any cheer.
When he was all done I gave him another shot at his rest time in order to get his much desired Caillou. He did it this time without destroying his room. Ugh, buddy. That was a rough one!
This past weekend we hosted Grandpa Dan and Cathy for the first of what will be several celebrations of the Christmas season. The highlight on Sunday was Ben opening this huge box:
Which turned out to be a HUGE ZEBRA!
On Sunday our big activity was boarding the Northern Lights Express, a holiday-themed train ride at the New England Railroad Museum. They have a vintage engine that they take out for an hour-long trip up and down the track. There were elves walking around the cars, and even a visit with Santa. Ben really enjoyed looking out the window and describing all of the sights of the trip.
So here I am back on the air after a brief ROBLOMO rest. My goal is to get a post out at least once every three days. That ought to be enough to slake the thirst of even our most avid readers. Anyway, part of the reason why it’s taken a while to get a new post out is the subject of this post. Our kids have been really, really sick the past week. Either Marcie or I have had to take time off work to be home with the kids every day since last Wednesday — that’s going on four days now.
It started when Marcie kept the kids home on Wednesday thinking that they had pinkeye. Fortunately as you know, that was not the case, but Andrew had to stay home another day on Thursday because he was on penicillin for the first time. Then Andrew came home early again on Friday because he was really miserable and upset at school.
The weekend seemed fairly quiet and the kids seemed to be in pretty good shape, but when Ben woke up yesterday, he was not himself. He was cranky, weak, and didn’t want to do anything more than lie on the couch and watch TV. If you know Ben, you know that him sitting down anywhere for more than a few minutes is highly unusual. So this was pretty serious. He didn’t have a fever, so his illness was hard to identify. The coup de grace came just before lunchtime when I was sitting with him on the couch with his head resting on my lap. Without warning he jerked up and vomited explosively all over the couch. It was a huge mess that would have made Linda Blair proud.
Most of the damage seemed to be confined to things that we could wash, so it wasn’t a big deal. But he was still down for the count for most of the rest of the day, until he finally took a two-hour nap just before dinnertime. After waking up from dinner, he seemed to feel better, but he did register a fever last night. We decided to keep him home today, but he has been feeling better this morning. I think we are out of the woods there.
So there you have it — an entire month of posts in the blog. It’s true that I didn’t exactly write a post every day, but there was a post for every day. What can I say after the experience? It wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be, so perhaps it will have the desired effect of increasing my overall output. It seems like if you post very regularly, it isn’t as hard to get up the motivation than it is if you start to skip a few days here and there. Now having said that, I might take a day or two off to just clear my head and focus a little more on other things before resuming my little narrative.
