...the rest of the story

So, Saturday's story continues. At about 10:30am we noticed that Leo seemed a bit warm--102.5. Not alarming, so we gave him some Tylenol. He seemed liked he'd rather nap than have lunch, so we put him down for a nap at 10:45am and he woke up at about 1pm. We offered him some lunch but he wasn't so interested. He sat with me for awhile, and still seemed really warm, so at about 2:30pm we took his temperature again and it was 104.8. Ok--it's not supposed to go UP after you give Tylenol. He was very quiet and flushed. We called the nurse line and eventually the doctor on call recommended we take him to the ER. So, we went to the ER at about 3:30pm and were there until about 5:30pm--he has bronchitis and an ear infection. They gave him Motrin as well to help bring the fever down, but when we left he was still at 104.7. After we picked up the antibiotics prescription and some dinner for us, we went home and Leo had some toast and applesauce and then went to sleep around 7pm. Jeff woke him up around 9pm for another dose of Motrin, and he didn't want to go back to sleep. I had gone to bed around 8pm (I'm still sick), but Jeff came in with Leo around 10pm and Leo promptly puked all over our comforter and the floor. Luckily it was just the comforter and not the sheets. We got everything cleaned up and that Leo slept some more, but then the rest of the details are fuzzy. I remember getting ready to sleep out in the living room chair with Leo around 3:30am, but he fell asleep right away and let me put him in his crib, so I went back to bed.

By Sunday morning Leo was mostly back to his old self--no more fever and happy. His appetite isn't back to normal yet, but that will happen soon I'm sure.

Maybe the ear infection explains all of the early morning wakings--although he hadn't seemed ill. I was surprised to hear about the bronchitis--since he's hardly even coughing. The ER wasn't all that bad--but I'd rather not have to go back any time soon!

Oh boy... here we go

The good news: In case we haven't mentioned it before, Leo's block-stacking abilities are far ahead of what he ought to be able to accomplish at his age. When he's so inclined, he can build block towers that are consistently 3-4 blocks tall before they fall over (usually because he decides to knock them down), and I've seen him get as far as 7 blocks once. Most kids his age can build a 2- or 3-block tower.

The bad news, part 1: He was up at 3:15 this morning. I think he might have dozed a little bit over the next 4 hours, but not much. We got a little sleep by giving him a glass of water and some books in the crib and leaving the nursery light on. He's really not showing much sign of slowing down, either. Needless to say, we're planning to nap when he does.

The bad news, part 2: Last night triggered his first real temper tantrum. It had to do with going to bed and book (or was it milk... maybe one the first go-around and the other the second) removal. We hadn't quite identified it as a tantrum during part I, got him up and read to him for a little bit. We figured it was a tantrum during part II, and let him mostly cry it out.

If any of our parents are reading this, we're interested in comments on how tantrum-prone we were, and for how long. Trying to brace ourselves for the long haul and such......

Jeff's news: Currently running through Kaplan Teacher Development toward a planned summer job. That's got me out late Monday, and there's an enrollment open house at school on Wednesday that will have me out late, too. I've got meetings scheduled every night after school except Friday, so it's going to be a busy week.

zhoosh! (15 months)

That's how Leo says "shoes" and "juice". Sort of sounds like he's watching someone ski downhill very fast.

Tomorrow Leo turns 15 months old...

Not too much new going on this month. Leo will transition up to the next room at daycare in mid-February--he'll officially be a toddler! One of the daycare managers is leaving because her husband got transferred...to Madison! I'm so jealous. She doesn't want to go because she's lived in NC her whole life. She said we could trade. I wish. We visited with Ms. Ete from the infant room a bit this morning and she said that she sometimes slips and calls one of the new babies Leo because they sort of look alike.

Leo has been getting up between 5 and 5:30 the last three mornings--it is becoming very difficult to stay awake at work, especially when it is quiet in the mornings. He's tired when he goes to sleep--usually around 7pm. One night he couldn't get to sleep until 8:45pm, but he still got up at 5:30 the next morning. I hope this is just a phase--cause mornings are not my favorite time of day. I also don't really want his bedtime to be too much later, because there are only a few hours to get stuff done (ok--veg with a book on the couch) at night as it is.

Lately when we give Leo a snack like crackers he likes to have some for each hand, and he'll eat one and ask for more, preferring to keep the other in reserve as a "security" cracker. He's still eating a lot and we're letting him try to use utensils more and more. He understands the concept, but doesn't quite have the mechanics perfected yet. I discovered this week that the way to get him to eat the root vegetables that he used to love as purees and then spurned as finger foods, is to mash them up. So, it feels like a step backwards, but at least he's eating them (and asking for more!).

We can now see all of his bicuspids coming in--one is completely in, the rest just starting. The last of the four middle teeth on the bottom has yet to make an appearance--it's taking its own sweet time.

Leo's 12 month-size pants all still fit, but almost none of his 12 month shirts do--so we've moved up to 18 month sizes--which really have him starting to look like a little man. I know my sister will like his "Future Rock Star" t-shirt. He's also finally starting to grow some more hair. It is so soft and silky.

In the last few days Leo has started to show a real interest in his books. He's always like playing with his books and our books--but then mostly as objects. Now it seems he understands more about what they are for. He will bring one to you expectantly and stand there until you offer to read it to him. Yesterday and today books were the first and last things Leo played with at daycare. When I walk in the room to pick him up he always brings me whatever toy he is playing with to show me what he's got.

The 15 month checkup isn't until the end of next week, so we'll update with stats etc. then.

Snow!

Well, we finally got snow yesterday. Only 1"--but around here that was enough to close schools and daycares. I still had to go to work. I took Leo in with me for a bit in the morning and then stayed home with him until lunch. Then Jeff came home (even though they didn't have classes he went in to work on student evaluations) and stayed with Leo while I went back to work. Leo took a three hour nap yesterday! He seemed to be interested in the snow as we watched it fall in the early morning, but it was too cold to really let him get down and play in it.

Today was back to daycare, and as we approached his room at daycare I was talking to one of the managers and Leo went up to the door of Ms. Gayla's room and knocked before we went in. It was so cute! I have never seen him do that before.

Leo's pink eye seems to have cleared up but I've still got it--yuck. I'm trying to be really careful so no one else gets it.

Not much else exciting to report--

Kirstin

new words, new teeth, new stuff

It's been a busy month.....

For the grown-ups, this weekend saw both Kirstin's "girls' night out" group heading out to a local steakhouse to celebrate the 40th birthday of one of its members and my sister & brother-in-law coming up from Charlotte for the weekend (more shortly). Next weekend includes my regular game night, plus one of the three-times-a-year NC Games Days, in addition to Kirstin having a rehearsal and gig on Friday and Saturday nights. On top of that, I start 5 weeks of training with the Kaplan Teacher Development Program on Tuesday night. February looks like it will be fairly dead other part of the Kaplan training sessions. When March hits, we may spend a weekend in High Point, since I just remembered that one of my favorite authors -- Jim Butcher -- is the Writing Guest of Honor at a convention happening there.

(Blatant plug: The SciFi Channel has an original series based off of Jim Butchers books, called The Dresden Files, premiering this coming Sunday. Watch it; it's gonna be cool.)

We've caught a new addition to Leo's vocabulary this week, which took a little thinking about to figure out: "guck" is what he calls the dump truck that you've probably seen in the Flickr stream by now.

And then, on Wednesday night, we were doing some horsing around and suddenly caught what looked like bloody drool coming out of his mouth. Sure enough, he had a bleeding spot on one bottom gum. It wasn't until tonight that we caught the tip of a bicuspid coming out of the top jaw just over it. I guess that explains that.

The two main reasons that Cynthia and Alex came up were to deliver most of our Christmas presents and to help out with replacing boards on the attic floor that had to get torn up when we redid the kitchen. We'd flown to Michigan over the holiday, but they drove, in part because they also had to do a trip to Toronto as part of that same swing. So, most of our Christmas presents got loaded into their car and came from Lansing to Durham by way of Toronto and Charlotte. After Leo woke up from his nap yesterday, he went shopping with his mom and aunt (no, he doesn't need new shoes yet) while Alex and I set about puzzle-solving which boards needed to go where in the attic before nailing them back into place. Then we rebuilt the mechanism on the master bathroom toilet, which had gotten sediment-clogged. Busy day all around, including the adults watching the film version of The Da Vinci Code after Leo was in bed. (OK, but nowhere near as compelling as any of us remembered the book.)

This morning, he got to play with relatives more, and then after his nap Kirstin's friend Natalie came over to borrow maternity clothes. Add in a trip to the park and grocery shopping, and we ended with a pretty busy day.

Amusingly, the first picture isn't his "guck" and the big cube isn't something Cynthia and Alex brought down from Charlotte. But, we haven't had the camera out recently, just because he's had us so much on the go.

Slurp!

This weekend Leo learned how to drink with a straw. We were eating out and we didn't feel like transferring his milk from the cup he was served to his sippy cup, so he got to have fun with the straw. It went pretty well, until he figured out he could make a big mess by pulling the straw out of the cup.

Now in addition to using the sign for "more" he can say the word "more"--so I really don't have any patience when he whines at dinner because he wants more to eat--he has two other ways to tell us besides whining! At any rate, he acts as if we feed him nothing, given the rate at which he has been stuffing his face at dinner. He's also taken to walking straight to the fridge, waiting until one of us opens it, and pulling fruit or yogurt out. He also will walk to the pantry, yanking on the curtains, and looking up at the crackers (and whining, don't forget the whining). Because of course, we feed him nothing whatsoever. One night for dinner he had green beans, yogurt, toast with peanut butter, a banana, cheerios--as he would finish something and indicate he was still hungry, we'd have to figure out what to feed him next--since it all disappeared into the bottomless-boy pit.

Leo loves the wooden block set he got for Christmas. Last night he had fun transferring the blocks back and forth between a paper grocery bag and an empty cardboard diaper box. We'll see what happens when the rest of his Christmas loot arrives this weekend. There are some other fun toys in there too--we might have to ration them out over the weeks, just so he can really enjoy one or two toys at a time and not run like a lunatic between all of them. Although, nothing really holds his attention for that long anyway.

More pictures soon!

new pics

Howdy--Blogger was not playing nice when we tried to upload pics with the last post--but Flickr is current. I've even got things sorted into sets--so you can see the holiday pics there.

Christmas and 14 months

Perhaps you can tell by the scarcity of the posts that the majority of our time is spent chasing after Leo when we are home. And I do mean chasing; that boy does not stay in one place very long. We're excited when a toy holds his attention for more than 30 seconds (and I am not exaggerating!).

Because so much happened over Christmas I don't think I can keep everything in chronological order, so here is a list of our adventures as we went to Michigan to visit with most of Jeff's family.

Things Leo did:
--was very social in the airports and elsewhere, at times approaching and even hugging complete strangers (and trying to take their coffee cups)--this is one very busy, very curious, very social child!
--ate his first frosted cut-out cookie--in the shape of a lion, made by Gma Carol.
--visited the sheep and fowl teaching and research barns--the sheep freaked him out (think big shaggy dogs!) but he seemed to like the fowl (mostly pheasants)
--got to feed ducks on the MSU campus but ended up eating more bread than he threw to the ducks
--visited almost all of Jeff's family, including his (Leo's) Great-Granddad, three grandparents, and all but one set of great aunts-and-uncles, two sets of aunts and uncles, and assorted cousins of various flavors. Leo is one of only two babies in the family at the moment and the other baby was in home in Chicago, so he was often the center of attention. Not necessarily a bad thing (especially from his perspective!) but it will be fun when there are multiple kids running around entertaining each other.
---[Note from Jeff: after Leo and the baby in Chicago, the next youngest person on my father's side of the family is about 2 1/2, but lives in Canada. If you restrict the options to the Americans, the next youngest becomes a high school freshman. On Kirstin's side of the family, the next-youngest that counts is about 10.]
--got some great presents, although thankfully nobody went overboard--as it was most everything came back via Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Alex's car via Charlotte--they'll bring it to Durham in a few weeks
--had a gunky eye infection (pinkeye without the pink) that cleared up on its own (thank goodness--I really didn't want to get the chance to evaluate urgent care facilities in Lansing!)

Other non-Christmas Leo things this month...

--giving lots of hugs (mostly to Mama and Papa)
--using the baby-sign for "more" when he wants more to eat
--eating like a "bottomless boy-pit" at most meals
--using words like: me, duckie, papa, go, bunny, thank you, hi
--walking like a pro, but not doing much climbing yet--although he did get to work on stairs in MI (since our house is all one level)

When we brush Leo's teeth we ask him to make a "monster smile" to get him to open wide and we growl at him like monsters to make him laugh.

Yesterday Leo helped me load the laundry into the washing machine, and later when asked to throw something away he went into the kitchen and placed the item into the kitchen trash can.

Today Leo seems to have a cold and a bit of a croupy cough--I am guessing post holiday letdown and travel exposure. Luckily Jeff has tomorrow off.