boys play together

Can you believe how big they're getting? Max is sitting in a chair like a little grown-up. They had fun playing with puzzles. Liam is learning his shapes now. He's mastered the everyday circle, square, and triangle, and is grasping the finer points of the rectangle, oval, pentagon, and hexagon. Yikes!

catching up

Here are some random snippets from the past week or two.

Barb came over to stay with the boys the Friday before they went back to daycare. The boys loved having her, and we were absolutely grateful too. She stayed for dinner. We ordered Chinese, and Mike's plate was the center of attention for two pairs of grabby little hands:



Meanwhile, Liam would like to proclaim to the world his love of his two gray trucks. More specifically, his love of taking the wheels off, then crying for help because he can't get them back on. Several times a day.



And finally, on Sunday Mike watched the boys so I could go have a nice afternoon with the ladies. We enjoyed a fancy-pants brunch in Oak Park complete with the hip, happening drink du jour, the pomegranate mimosa. And after that, we rolled ourselves down the street to take a tour of Unity Temple, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Here's a glimpse, though it doesn't capture the complete concrete coolness of the place:

self-portrait with baby

annual blogger convention

Today we had a visit from Mark, Katie, and Linus of Kozmaniah fame. It was great to see them, and to finally meet Linus. The boys had a good time playing together. Now if only we could make these visits happen more than once a year!

Here, the boys enjoy some parallel play:


Two old friends, and three new ones:

a familiar ring (or is that just my ears?)

Take a look at this video. It's just like Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas, except that it's not Christmas, and the boys aren't water-dwelling puppets, and....Well, you get the idea. Seriously, though, I loved that Emmet Otter. His was a story for the ages.

circus forticus is brought to you today by the color blue and by the number three

Blue, for the color Max turned this morning before we rushed with him over to the doctor's office. He's fine though. Apparently it's normal for babies with the RSV to get poor surface circulation while they're still sick. They checked his oxygen level, and it was great. Also his tongue was (and is) red, and as long as it stays that way, he's circulating just fine. What's not so fine is that the ear that was clear now has a raging, bulging infection (Doctor: "It's at least the worst one I'll see today."--and it was still before her office hours even started!) despite him being on not one, but two different antibiotics for the past 9 days. Which brings us to the number of the day, three, in honor of antibiotic number three. This one's supposed to be more souped-up than the other two. We'll see.

In the meantime, lunchtime is over, playtime (see below) is over, and now it's lovely peaceful naptime for two little monkeys while their mother does some chores.

valentinius maximus

The perfect valentine, courtesy of a much-improved Max:

correction

Max lasted a whole hour at daycare before they called us and said we had to come and get him because he's having...um, diaper issues. So now the boys are home with Mike, who is (I'm sure) having the Best. Day. Ever. We're thinking they'll probably just finish out the week at home, with me tomorrow and Grandma on Friday, and hopefully we can all make a clean start on Monday. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

a plague on our house

In a neat twist, Max is now the only semi-healthy person in our house. I started getting sick (with the flu) Monday night, and Mike and Liam got it Tuesday. The last few days have passed in a blur of vomit and exhaustion. But the good news is that Max has recovered, according to the doctor, and is well enough to go back to daycare again. Too bad Liam has to stay home now. Our new dream is for all of us to be healthy at the same time. It's a beautiful dream, though it seems pretty unlikely from here.

max update

Max seems to be feeling a bit better today. He hasn't had a fever all day, and his breathing seems close to normal. He's spent most of the day sleeping while one or the other of us holds him. He's drinking more (though puking more too!), and he had 16 bites of oatmeal cereal mixed with bananas for lunch. During the brief times he's been awake, he's even given us a few smiles, which we've missed the past few days.

Yesterday we went ahead with his family birthday party, even though he was too sick to get much out of it (we'll still have a celebration when he's feeling better). Liam was happy to help out, though. He blew out the candle for Max, and didn't hesitate to open presents for him. At the end of the afternoon, Max perked up just enough for Liam to show him his new toys and play with him a bit. Then it was sleepy time again. Thank you to Yami, Papaw, Klaudia, and Grandma for coming over and for the great gifts. Max and Liam are very lucky boys!

full circle

At this time last year, we were busy having a baby and worrying about him because he was having breathing problems. It was a scary and awful feeling to leave the hospital without him--he stayed two extra days so they could monitor him and make sure his breathing normalized. And here we are, a year later...worrying about Max because he's having breathing problems. He's got RSV, bronchiolitis, ear infections on both sides, strep throat, and he's cutting some new teeth. He's been sick since Monday night, but hit the peak (we hope) on Wednesday night. He had a high fever (103) and was breathing too fast, straining to breathe, and his oxygen saturation was too low. After three breathing treatments at the pediatrician's office, he wasn't imporving enough, so we took him to the emergency room at Children's Memorial Hospital. They gave him two more breathing treatments (this time with steroids to help open his airways), and he was better, but still not good enough. He was admitted to the hospital at about 3:00 Thursday morning. They monitored him closely and gave him breathing treatments every four hours, and he improved enough that they let him go home Thursday night. Today, he's very tired. He's slept most of the day, and he's been refusing all food and most liquid. He's spiked a fever off and on today, but nothing as bad as before. I took him to the doctor this morning and she said that he's about the same as he was when they released him from the hospital, but no worse. We hope he'll start feeling better in the next few days. But for today, Max is having a pretty sucky birthday. We think we'll wait a couple of weeks for him to feel better, then the four of us will have a late birthday celebration with cake and ice cream for our tough little guy.

poor max

Max has had a rough day. First, he fell down and hit his ear on the table (see later picture). Then, he went to the doctor and found out that he has bronchiolitis (a respiratory infection) so he has to use an asthma-type inhaler and stay home for a couple of days. As if that weren't enough, today was the day he got his first haircut.

Here he is before the haircut. It's a nice side view, so you can see both the shagginess of the back of his hair and the terrible ear bruise. What is it with these boys and hitting their ears on things anyway?


And now, an action shot of Max getting his first haircut. I'd like to say the whole thing went as smoothly as this, but I'd be lying.


Finally, after we finished and Max enjoyed some dinner (lasagna), he was a happy, newly-shorn boy.


And of course, the evening wouldn't be complete if we didn't cut Liam's hair too. We'll spare you the gory middle parts, and just leave you with his before and after shots.

grossman for dogcatcher

sheesh. the super bowl, and we get bad rex. picks, fumbles, bad throws, you name it. yes, the defense let the colts drive on them, and it seemed like the colts were in bears territory all game, but the defense was the only thing keeping this thing from a blowout (and seeing this, grossman tried to make it a blowout all on his own).

the colts had a nearly 2:1 time of possession advantage (38 minutes to 22 minutes), and they ran 81 plays to the bears' 48. it is pretty impressive that they held the colts offense to only 22 points. just a really bad time for the bears offense to disappear. the worst time, in fact.

okay, enough rambling. a bet was lost, so marlene's explorer gets washed. a second bet was made shortly after halftime, on my behalf but not with my consent, so i'm not sure i'll honor that part. maybe i'll burn an effigy of sexy rexy instead.

the boys think

It's a good day to curl up together and read a book.

hibernation

This is one of the windows in our dining room.




In case you can't tell, that's ice crusting the window. The INSIDE of the window. It's COLD! So cold that we're not going outside all weekend. The plan is to stay inside where (icy windows notwithstanding) it's relatively warm. Tomorrow we're going to order pizza (delivery, of course) and watch the Superbowl. We may not even do any laundry because the washer is in the basement, and it's COLD down there.

upward mobility

We took the boys to dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's on Tuesday night. The occasion was a visit from Mike's Uncle Ken, who lives in Colorado and hadn't yet met the boys. Dinner was, to borrow one of Liam's favorite new words, delicious, and the boys warmed up to Uncle Ken very quickly.

After dinner the real fun started. Max decided that he was ready to take a few steps. Four, to be exact, back and forth between me and Mike. He did it three times, and then promptly stopped when we called everyone's attention to his amazing...er, feet.



Liam had a great time too. Here he is with Aunt Erin at the end of the evening.