Yay for Z-Packs!

It's been a week.  And it's only Wednesday.  I've spent a lot of time on Web MD and have learned quite a bit of new vocabulary.

His incisors are coming in.  Slowly.  Painfully.  Drool everywhere.  Finger chewing.  Raunchy poop.  Snot pouring out of his nose.

Then he tripped on Sunday night coming out of the tent that Nate set up in the front room (see picture below), creating some amazing imprints of his two bottom front teeth into the inside of his lower lip.  The impact also tore his frenulum from his upper lip, leaving a shockingly large and difficult-to-clot wound inside his mouth.  I was wearing white that night.  Oh, the blood...  But some cuddle time and an ice cube while watching Elmo's world helped all that (God Bless youtube).

Then, on Tuesday night, I noticed that he would cough a couple of times, followed immediately by a high-pitched inhale.  It kept him up and every couple of minutes he would have a coughing spell.  Nothing too crazy, but enough that I started to wonder about whooping cough.  The next day, I was on the phone with my genius sister, asking her about whooping cough, and she could hear his sharp inhale.  She suggested taking him into the doctor.  After a crappy night of sleep for everyone in the house, I took him in this morning.

Guess what?  Weston's got a mild case of pertussis.  He's been vaccinated, but turns out that there is a chance that people can still get it even though they've been vaccinated.  It's called an attenuated illness.  It happens with chickenpox and other such diseases that we have vaccinations for.  The doctor prescribed him azithromycin, a pretty heavy duty antibiotic.

We were supposed to go to Chicago this weekend for my cousin's wedding, but because he cannot be around other people for the next five days, especially other children, we had to cancel.  I'm super bummed.

I will say that the medication seems to be working really well because Weston was all smiles this evening and actually let me put his Halloween costume on.  He wanted nothing to do with this thing for the past two weeks.  So we quickly went to two neighbor's houses and went trick-or-treating for about five minutes.  It was totally adorable and made my night after such a crazy week.

Thanks to Joyce for another amazing hand-me-down!!

My little lion

Totally geeked about his costume!

A bucket for candy (thanks, Aunt Terry!)

Neighbor Steve offering some treats

Excited about the Fire Fairy inside Ann's pumpkin

First Reece's peanut butter cup--loved it!

Cleaning vs. Napping

Weston's been asleep for nearly three-and-a-half hours.  And I'm kicking myself right now for not napping myself.  Instead, I chose to clean the house while he napped.  Nate and I did the second floor yesterday, and today was the first floor--dusting, vacuuming, and washing acres and acres of wood floors.  I always have this debate as soon as he goes down for a nap--should I hop in bed, too, and get some much-needed sleep?  Or should I be my very own cleaning lady (because she isn't showing up on my doorstep any time soon)?

I'll be honest; we vacuum the kitchen about 3-4 times a week and the rest of the first floor maybe gets it twice a week.  But washing the floors??  I'm lucky if that happens more than once a month.  Everyday, I just take mental notes; "There's a smashed pea.  That oatmeal is going to cement itself to the floor.  That looks like yogurt."  I feel like Dudley from The Royal Tenenbaums.  "That cab has a dent in it.  Another dent here, and another dent here."











When I put him down this afternoon, I couldn't put off washing the floors any longer.  We finished about an hour ago, and he's still sleeping.  Nate even had time to create this for Weston to destroy as soon as he comes downstairs:

Clean floors waiting to be dirtied...

I've had time to catch up on some work email, write another blog post, and think about how I wish I were sleeping.  I've been running on very little sleep these past few weeks as we still try to figure out what time works for bedtime with his schedule at child care.  He's been waking up between 4:45 and 5:30 am this past week, and it's been pretty brutal.  Last week, I tried putting him to bed earlier, thinking that maybe he was overtired, and last night I started to try staying up later.  That seems to be working because he woke up at 6:10 this morning.  Quite a relief.  Oh yeah, and he's had a cold these past few days.  Did I mention that he's been biting, too?  Bit two kids at day care, and I've lost count of how many times I've been bitten (but I can still see some red marks).  Needless to say, it's been a rough week.

I suppose that lamenting about lost sleep is ridiculous.  Sure, a three-hour nap this afternoon would have been absolutely amazing.  But, the house is clean.  And there's always next weekend to nap, because I can assure you that I won't be washing any floors.

A little bit of shotgun bed head

Looking for a tortilla to make a "dee-ya"

Link up: 

Sick.

By some grace card that we've been dealt, Weston has been one healthy little dude for the past 14 months.  He's had a slight cold here and there, but nothing serious, other than the lead poisoning we've experienced (which, by the way, has gone down significantly to 10.6 μg/dL, so we're doing well).


All is good, until Wednesday.  I was on the phone with a friend around 4 pm, and he got super fussy and crabby all of a sudden.  I picked him up to quiet him down, and noticed that he was really hot.  I took his temperature and it read 102.3.  Yikes.  I gave him some Tylenol to bring the fever down, and it helped a bit, but he was very clingy, irritable, not really eating, and just wanted to be held.  More teeth??  Those one-year molars are a doozie...  He did okay that night with some more Tylenol, but woke up early Thursday and still had a really high fever.  That whole day, he kept putting his head down on my shoulder and was not like himself.  Oh, the whining!  He took two really good naps, but was still burning up every time the Tylenol or Ibuprofen wore off.  There were no other symptoms, and now I was beginning to suspect roseola after reading up on it.  I also remember reading a blog post from a friend whose daughter experienced the same thing as Weston.

I figured this whole illness would pass soon, and he'd be on the mend by Friday...

Not so much.  We actually ended up bringing him to the doctor on Friday afternoon because his behavior was so unusual--playing fine, but then frequently crying out as if he were in pain; not napping; eating very little.  His fever was down in the 100s, but fearing an ear infection, we took him in.

Of course, they couldn't find anything wrong with him other than a slightly inflamed throat, so we were told to keep doing what we were doing--alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen, cool washcloths to bring down his temp, offering lots of fluids, and rest.  We put him to bed on Friday night with a dose of Tylenol.  At 12:30am, Nate was up playing online poker or something like that, and woke me up to the sound of Weston softly moaning and crying out.  We went in to check on him, and as soon as I took him out of his crib, I knew his temperature was going to be really high.  My little guy was cooking at 104.3.

I love my husband--we worked together to get him some Ibuprofen, water, cool washcloths, and we were able to bring his temperature down to 103, and he fell back asleep, but woke up again at 4:30.  Somehow, in his fever induced craze, he was able to put it together that waking up and crying in the middle of the night brings Mama in very quickly!  He fell back asleep for a little while, and the rest of the day on Saturday was a lot like the previous two days, except that I was getting more and more exhausted...  Let me say that dealing with a sick child is somehow quite similar to dealing with a newborn.

Sunday rolled around--nearly four days after the onset--and he had a rash covering much of his torso and neck.

Yup--roseola, a very common childhood virus, was the culprit.  He had a low-grade temperature, so that was improving significantly.  His appetite isn't quite back yet, and I think that has a lot to do with a sore throat, because he's hoarse.  It sounds super cute when he talks, but I know it's probably painful.  He also has some swollen lymph nodes on the back of his neck that will resolve in a week or so.


Here's to hoping that we can stave off any other illnesses for the rest of 2012!