January 15, 2008

The Adventures of Sick Alex

For those who don’t know, both of Alex’s ears are infected. He didn’t sleep well last night, since he had a bad cough, and he’s been more “sensitive” (read: crabby) since Sunday morning.

But before it became clear that Alex’s run-of-the-mill cold would turn into something miserable for both him and for us, he’d actually been having a pretty good weekend.

Saturday, I took care of Alex for most of the day. In the back of my head, I still thought it was possible to ski for half a day on Sunday, so I wanted to give Molly as much of a free day as possible on Saturday to make up for it. Saturday morning, I talked Alex into seeing the “fishies and octopus!” — in other words, the aquarium. He was delighted and busy until naptime.

When Alex got up from his nap, we blew bubbles next to the kitchen sink. I got some fun pictures from this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bdewey/sets/72157603715830540/

How do you use this again?

The next day, I decided I was too tired to ski (it had been a late night, and I didn’t have time to prepare everything beforehand), so I decided I’d take the morning to take pictures around town instead. It turned out it was a glorious sunrise in nearby Madison Park on the shore of Lake Washington.

Sunrise over the lake

Luckily, I hadn’t gone very far. Molly called me later that morning and told me that our normally cheerful boy was an inconsolable terror, so I went back home to help her. I was able to get a few more hours of happiness out of Alex, first by taking him to the Ballard Locks. The clouds that had been around since sunrise had burned off, and it was a beautiful morning. Alex loved watching the boats.

Watching the boats

I took Alex home from his visit at the Locks hoping for his traditional 2-hour nap. That didn’t happen. After an hour of coughing, he was awake again. That made me sad because I needed a nap. Molly let me sleep for an hour, and then I took Alex out to our neighborhood playground with his tricycle. I think that was the last bit of clear happiness for the last 24 hours.

Alex push!

During his trip to the playground, Alex started coughing non-stop. He coughed until it was time to go to bed, and then kept coughing. Amazingly, while he cried several times during the night, most of the time he fell back to sleep on his own within 30 seconds. But still, nobody in the household slept very well.

Today, we kept Alex out of daycare. Molly took him to the doctor early in the morning. We’d been fearing Whooping Cough or pneumonia (there’d been a case of pneumonia in his room at daycare). Lucky for all of us, it turns out that Alex just has a sinus and ear infection. He’s now on a 2-week regimen of antibiotics. And now that we know his ears are hurting, we’re keeping him on regular doses of Tylenol. Hopefully, in a few days, everything will be back to normal.

P.S. Make sure to check out all of the new pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bdewey/


Written by Brian Dewey.

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