Peek-a-boo

We continue our travels with a combined business/pleasure trip to lovely Phoenix, AZ. It was a delightful 62 degrees and sunny today.

E spent the day with his Dad and Granny seeing the sites (well, napping in the car while they saw the sights).

E spent the evening playing peek-a-boo with the Dean of very large university. He also had a blast flirting with the lovely daughters of said Dean, playing choo-choo (a word he pick up from his cousin) and reading books. And posing for pictures. The easiest way to get E to cheer up is to shove a camera in his face. Cheese!

We head back to New Mexico tomorrow; back to his favorite toy; a black lab named Molly.

On our trip out to Phoenix we stopped in the Petrified Forest National Park. The Painted Desert is beautiful but E never did spot a dinosaur. (He looked and looked though).

For a very small child, he's done a lot of traveling. He's been in:
IL, IN, MI, NY, MA, NH, ME, CT, NJ, PA, OH, NM, MO, NC, TN, AZ, and WI. That's 17 states already! And Canada. Not bad, huh? (amended to include the great state of WI, where E spent many a happy hour entertaining the other guests at the former Playboy resort. There are no Bunnies anymore, not even E's favorite little floppy-eared animals but the sophisticated little boy was more charming than Hef could ever hope to be).

Holiday Greetings From Denver International Airport

local time: 9:33pm. Feels like 10:33pm since we're used to central time. Been on the road since 11:00am (central) this morning.

Travel itinerary:
Leg 1: drive to Indianapolis airport. In ice storm. 3.5 hrs in car. (Usual drive time is less than 2 hrs). Highlight of leg: There is a brand new airport in Indianapolis, open only 6 weeks. Did not know this until we drove by the old airport exit and found a defunct terminal. New airport an extra 15 minute drive away. Real highlight of leg: new airport is extremely family friendly and passenger service oriented. Plus everyone was helpful and nice; way over and above the norm.

Leg 2: fly from Indianapolis to Denver. Flight delayed about 1.5 hours. Small child held still for about 1.5 minutes on 3 hour flight.

Leg 3: sit in DIA airport waiting for airplane. Attempt to eat dinner in restaurant with VERY tired small child. Upon our arrival in Denver we were greeted with the news that our airplane was in Chicago. After getting to Denver it has to go to Salt Lake City then back to Denver. THEN it can take us to Albuquerque.

Legs 4 and 5 will be the flight to New Mexico then a 30 minute drive. Project time for head to meet pillow? around 3 am central.

Small boy is asleep now, snuggled up with his blankie and toy doggie in his stroller. I'm so wishing the camera was with me.

16 months old

These pictures were taken when E was 16 months and 1 day old. That was a couple of weeks ago but better late than never.

Now that E is 16 months old, it is high time for him to get to work and become a productive member of the family. You can see him hard at working building the Christmas tree. He also "helps" me with my research by testing all of my laptop's buttons.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire

Stomach bug? All gone.

Ear infection? Check.

Possible side effects of antibiotic? same as stomach bug.

Days until 10 hour car-airport-plane-airport-plane-car trip out west? 2.5

Little E spent most of the morning (from 1 am on) screaming. Arching his back. Demanding we go from room to room. Demanding to be offered all types of food. Saying "no" to just about everything. Not sleeping. Not even wanting to watch TV.

Tylenol helped for a couple of hours but wore off long before the dosing interval was up.

Our new pediatrician's office has drop-in Saturday morning hours. We got there at nine. Picked up some Infant's Motrin on the way. After 10 minutes of screaming at the clinic we gave E the medicine.

There is no physically possible way that the medicine can work this fast but pain reliever almost always immediately changes E's disposition. No sooner had the dropper dispensed its last drop into his mouth than he turned back to his delightful cheerful normal self. Good thing too, since it was another hour and a half before we saw the doctor. We're talking a reverse incredible hulk transformation. The big green mean monster turns into a sweet happy baby.

We are 3 for 3 at this clinic: all three of the doctors we've seen (our "regular" doctor and 2 on-call doctors) have been great. Today's doc diagnosed a raging ear infection and sent us home while she called in the prescription.

Perhaps the difficulties of last week are already fading from my memory but I think I prefer the mellow, cuddly stomach-bug-baby, even with never-ending laundry, to the screaming, flailing ear-infection-baby in acute, writhing pain. Yet another aspect of motherhood I could not have anticipated: puke is better than pain.

On the up side, the little man weighs a whopping 21.8 lbs (fully clothed) up nearly 1.5 lbs from his worrisome 15 month weigh-in. He's turned into an eating machine. He still extremely picky but if he likes it; bring it on!

He's sleeping fitfully now. Hopefully he'll be good to go by the time we board the plane on Tuesday. We'll have plenty of Motrin on hand, just in case.

Here's a picture from the brief lull between illnesses when E was operating in full happy-toddler mode.

E is for Engineer

 

E built these towers completely by himself a couple of weeks ago. Note the proud hand clasping in the first one. I wasn't there for that one but the Mav said E just stood back and beamed. I took the second picture. This was actually not even the highest tower he built that day, I just couldn't get the camera out in time.

We have no desire to pigeonhole the little boy, either in terms of interests or abilities. But perhaps our little apple is sticking close to his trees after all.

Once bitten, twice shy

Before E fell ill last week there were exactly two foods he could be counted to always eat; bananas and gerber puffs. He had of late been rather obsessed with bananas. He would do the sign for banana while saying "ba-ba" (this is E-speak for banana). We had to move where we kept the bananas because he could see them from his highchair and would INSIST upon having one no matter what else he had on his tray. As for the gerber puffs, he had his teachers at school buying them just for him. He'd pick them out of any snack mixture, leaving the other items behind.

No longer.

The higher the esteem the further the fall. I believe he is taking it personally that these foods did not want to stay in his tummy last week.

On the upside; we pulled all dairy from his diet last week so it never had a chance to do him wrong. He still loves his yogurt.

This morning the Mav asked E if he wanted a waffle. "No" said the little boy. "Do you want a banana", I asked. "No". "Yogurt?". No reply (he does not nod or say yes yet). "E, if you'd like some yogurt go show Daddy where it is".

He reached up his hand, grabbed the Mav's finger and led him to the fridge.

He also needs to try whatever it is his Daddy has. After a 4 month hiatus from eating eggs, E sampled his Dad's breakfast sandwich this morning and then went on to eat 2 whole eggs by himself. After a whole cup of yogurt.

I wonder how long it will take for him to forgive the poor innocent bananas.

Half empty

Little E is wearing a soft little romper that has a bottle of milk painted on the front along with the phrase "half full". I guess this is supposed to imply some kind of optimism.

He's in this soft, cuddly, pajama-like outfit because he is still rather sick.

My optimism over his appetite for soup was misplaced.

The virus reared its ugly head again in the middle of last night. And again at breakfast.

He won't drink the pedialite the doctor's office recommends, neither in grape nor apple flavor. He won't touch most food, not even bananas.

The Mav and I were looking forward to a date tonight. E's school is holding a parents' night out event and we were going downtown for dinner.

Instead, we'll be home force-feeding him dropperfuls of flavored sugar water, trying to keep him from needing emergency hydration.

I'm thanking my lucky stars

(well, Campbell's Chicken and Stars) that E has finally kept some food down for longer than 4 hours, for the first time in 4 days.

E has been sick with a nasty stomach bug since Sunday.

He passed it on to the Mav who's been bed-ridden since yesterday morning.

Oh, the laundry.

Oh, the floor cleaning.

I have spent the better part (and I do mean the better part; the worse parts are not things I wish to remember) sitting in my yellow rocking chair with my small boy snuggled up tight watching TV. He's seen more TV and movies in the past 4 days than in his entire life to date.

I think things are finally looking up for the boys. Hopefully tomorrow they will start to recover their energy and their appetites.

Remember when I said it was cold out?

Well, now it's really cold out!



We took E to the park around the corner to watch the Christmas parade. It was a balmy 24 degrees and windy but this in no way affected E's enjoyment of the parade. He watched with rapt attention, waved enthusiastically and fussed when we took him home.

If you were wondering ...

what age a child starts to throw anything and everything and especially food, it is just shy of 16 months. At least that was the case here.

Sorry it has been so quiet here lately. Things are and have been very, very busy with holiday plans, holiday travel, work, work, and work. (ok school, but it's kind of like work, except you don't get payed as much).

I promise to get back to writing regularly very soon. The kid is doing all kinds of cute or frustrating things these days.