It's raining cousins

In a matter of weeks, Eddie's gotten 2 new cousins. Aunt Lore' and Uncle David are fostering a little baby that they hope to adopt. He is 10 days younger than Eddie. Until they get a little further in the process, I can't post a picture, but we're thrilled. His name is Patrick.

Then, we just got word today that my Cousin and her husband got their referral papers for the little girl they are adopting from China. Her name is Jillian. She was born April 4--again very close in age to both Eddie and Patrick. We can't wait for Eddie to meet his new cousins!

Drinking my Legos

Don't know if you can see the chaulk on his pants here, but they are covered. Shoes too.

Eddie's friend Lizzie had this huge bucket of chaulk that he decided to play with. I think he did more of the handling and less of the drawing, but he sure had fun. He just about changed the color of his pants with the chaulk. Guess I need to go get some sidewalk chaulk.

When we got home, we played with some legos--Eddie seems obsessed with trying to drink out of everything.

Back in the Saddle

Okay, so I'll admit that the first time I typed the title, I spelled it 'sattle'. But that didn't seem right. Hey, at least I caught it without using spellcheck. No telling what else is mispelled.

Den is on the road again. This time he's in Ft. Wayne, IN. We enjoyed two wonderful weeks of him being home and joked to ourselves en route to the airport, that we truly couldn't keep track of where he was going in these next couple weeks.

Dennis and I have tried just about every method to get Eddie to take his medicine, and I believe I've written about them in a previous post (pinning him down, tipping his head upside down to let gravity help, etc.). The method that is working right now is to put it on a spoon and put the spoon in his mouth. Whoda' thunk? Definitely my preferred method.

Front Door

We've done quite a bit to the house in the nearly 4 years we've lived here (it was previously owned by an elderly man whose wife had passed a while back and was a bit out of shape when we bought it). One of the things we have yet to do is fix up the front door. Consequently, we still have a metal storm door that Eddie loves to bang on in a sort of greeting to anyone who walks up or in front of the house.

We get lots of attention from passers-by when he's standing at the front door, banging away. I took the trash out tonight and there was Eddie, banging and waving, bouncing up and down. Den snapped these then. Eddie was also doing the classic 'face pressed against glass' game.

I'll have another round, bartender

I've mentioned that Eddie enjoys drinking out of a cup. Dad found an ingenious way to give him a small plastic cup that doesn't have the height of a sippy cup or bottle--yay. It's the cap that goes on top of a bottle. And I thought we were nearly finished with the bottles. As you can see from the shirt, he doesn't quite have 100% accuracy. But he is incredibly pleased with himself.

We kept refilling the cup--the combination of his pride at his accomplishment with the cuteness factor of him drinking out of a little cup was fun to watch.

The Littlest Fish

Thanks to Eddie's miraculous recovery--we headed out for an afternoon jaunt with his good friend Eli and Eli's parents. Destination: Baltimore Acquarium. As expected, it was a little lost on them, but they did seem to enjoy watching the dolphin show.

Dad walked around quite a while with Eddie passed out in the back of the carrier. People kept smiling and pointing.
Getting ready to go, just after the naps. Eddie tried to get away whilst we were sitting here (he's the one on the left).

Watching the Dolphin Show.






Hiking around with dad. The borrowed carrier works pretty well, according to dad. Mom thinks so too--she didn't have to carry him.

+ 5 Hours

It's about 5 hours after I took the photos in the post I made earlier today. Eddie's had at least 3 good naps today, 2 nebulizer (for his breathing) treatments, one dose of meds, and actually ate something for dinner (he refused dinner last night and lunch today). I'm sure we still have a rough couple days and nights, but sure makes a parent's heart sing to see their kid smile.

"It's like flying to Europe without the alcohol"

This is how Dennis described his night of sleeping upright (well--reclined the minimal amount that the chair reclines) so that Eddie would sleep more upright. I gave Den a break a couple hours, but it was mostly all Den--he claims to enjoy the time with him. Eddie slept in 30-40 minute increments the whole night and when he wasn't sleeping he was crying/screaming. I was errand girl, getting drinks, providng bathroom breaks, and in general making sure the boys had what they needed.

I called the after hours line at the pediatrician last night 2 times and no one returned the call--to say I was miffed would be an understatement. We left the house 2 hours after I called and they called just after we left to drive Eddie around in the hopes of getting him to sleep. He was feeling really bad. I contemplated several times wether we should go to the emergency room. In the past, the doctor had given 3 signs to watch for stress/distress while breathing and he was exhibiting 2 of them last night.

This morning the doctor tells me that Eddie has an ear infection in both ears. Just the act of sticking the probe in Eddie's ears caused him to melt down in huge tears and writhe in pain. Fortunately his lungs sound clear--but we are the proud owners of a nebulizer. Guess I'm set the next time I get a bad cold.

He continues to be fussy today--wanting to be held a lot, still not being content while being held and not sleeping well. Hopefully by the time Den leaves this week, Eddie will be feeling better. The pictures are from Eddie's nap today. We were getting ready to drive him in the car to get him to sleep, when Dennis noticed he had fallen asleep in the 2 minutes he'd been holding him. And I'd been trying for an hour to get him to sleep. Den definitely has a way with Eddie's sleep habits that I unfortunately don't.

Wish us luck with this new and different antibiotic and breathing treatment.

MONTHLY--13 months

Holy cow, I just realized it was Eddie's 13-month birthday. Den actually had to remind me. I'm not as conscious of the 22nd of the month any more. This is really a 3-day post--I've not quite had the time to complete.

Ed's got a cold. The wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-sit-in-a-steam-bath kind. We've only had to put Eddie in a steam bath once before, but he was just coughing so hard and sounded so raspy. Ugh. Time to break out the lotion, tissues and suctioner.

Not sure how much longer I'll keep up the monthly posts, considering the dramatic changes have slowed, but for now...

He's definitely said his first word and knows what it is. Ball. He points to it in a book and says "ball". He hands you a ball and says "ball". Not consistent of course, but pretty definite.

He says other words indisciminately, like mama and dada, and daht--as in 'that'.

The Time I've (we've) been dreading

I wonder if there is a limit on how much I can upload in a given day. Having difficulties again with posting pictures to the blog. I'd switch to typepad, but I think that may be beyond my abilities--and patience. I'm sure I could learn it, but blogspot is so idiot-easy that typepad would actually take a bit of time to figure out and therefore = less posts. And less posts = less pictures--which for the g'parents would I'm guessing be a problem. We'll see how frustrated I get, but then I've heard of problems on typepad too. Anyone have a blogging site/software that is relatively easy to learn and use and reliable, or does that combo not exist?

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, the title of the post--the time I've been dreading. Well, of course g'ma and g'pa Wisc. leaving. They woke up with Eddie--wether they liked it or not when he woke in the middle of the night. He is back to sleeping fine. I don't know what it is about G'ma and G'pa Wisc. but something makes Eddie want to get up in the middle of the night when they visit. They also got up with Eddie when he woke for the day at 5:30/6am. Sure was nice to sleep in--til 7:30 or 8:30, depending.

The thing I think I've been dreading even more is the transition to one nap. I LOVE Eddie's naptimes. Is it constricting in what I can do? YES. But I have the potential to get so much accomplished during those, two periods of 1.5 hours during the day. And it is nice to take some time for myself--or update the blog. Sadly, I believe those days are coming to an end if not already over. Eddie is doing some marathon sleeping, often from 10/10:30-1 or sometimes later, depending on when he fell asleep. Of course he has no desire to sleep more after this. My productivity, which as a certified procrastinator is already low, will potentially drop even further. Or maybe having such a long chunk of time will be good.
This change in naptime also represents another "milestone". These milestones are sure passing by faster than I realized they would.