Monday, July 19, 2010

Poor Kiddo

Poor little guy has been sick lately. And beyond that, he's had some rough moments.

Last week, he was running a fever. Took him to the doctor, who said he had a "non-specific viral illness." I took that to be doctor speak for "he's sick." Anyway, the doctor said the leading candidate was West Nile Virus, because of all the mosquito bites he had. They've just been horrendous here the last couple weeks, even after we've sprayed, and the county has sprayed. He had a fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and a rash all over his torso. But unless he got so sick he needed to go to the hospital, there's nothing you can do. He can't even tell us how he's feeling. We have to guess.

Then I had a bad mommy moment. We were out late Saturday, and I rushed through his bedtime routine. I accidently stuck both his legs into one leg of his shorts for bedtime. Poor little guy spent all night with his legs stuck together, then in the morning, he had a terrible rash on them, and he wouldn't walk for a couple hours. I felt awful. :( Sunday morning, we just sat on the couch and watched Sesame Street and Food Network for 2-3 hours until he started to feel a little better. The ibuprofen probably helped too.

I do have some more pictures to post sometime, but I haven't turned my computer on in 2 weeks. I've been using the laptop in the evening, but I can't do pictures on it. I'm thinking of buying a new computer, but I don't think I need one yet. I've just been so busy with my new exercise routine, and trying to watch the Tour de France that I don't have any spare time to deal with my computer.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

The Idle Parent Manifesto

Check out this essay by Tom Hodgkinson in the UK Telegraph.

Great piece on letting kids be kids and giving parents back their time. okay, I'm not going to jump into this right away; after all, my tot is only 15 months old and still lacks the common sense of a goose. He sits in puddles and will happily put mud in his mouth if I let him.

But last night, I let him wander around the house unsupervised while I read a book. I kept an ear out for him, and every 10-15 minutes, I'd go peek in on him. He found a toy box in his playroom with a shape puzzle that I'd thought was too hard for him. I'd shown him how it works numerous times, but he never got it. Maybe I was just too impatient with him and never let him really play with it. He sat and played with that shape puzzle for 20 minutes or more. I never let him see me, never made a sound to let him know I was watching. When he was done, he came and toddled back to the couch and made clear he wanted some attention. And I was happy to give it to him.

Monday, July 05, 2010

Declan Updates

I'm trying to think of all the new things Declan has been doing lately.

He knows how to brush his hair, put on his sandals, put his shirt on (sort of, he puts his arms through). He knows the signs for "milk", "water", and "more", and we're working on the signs for "kisses" and "kitty". He can climb everything in the house now, and does. Unfortunately, he doesn't always know how to get down, so he cries until someone comes to help him. He also fell off the bed this afternoon, but no serious harm.

Daniel swears that he said "three" the other day, mimicking one of the puppets on Sesame Street, but I'm not convinced. I didn't hear it. He certainly does say a lot of syllables, though, like ma-ma-ma, and da-da-da. He's a regular chatterbox sometimes.

He also understands words. When I ask if he wants to read a book, he'll run to his books and pull one out. When I say it's bathtime, he runs to the bathroom. When it's time for a walk, he finds his shoes and gets all excited about going out. He also knows the word for naptime, and he starts crying. Poor thing.

He loves stacking blocks, and he can stack them as high as he can reach on the coffee table. His favorite things to do are to experiment with what fits inside other things. I put a whole box of toys away this weekend, and he rediscovered a couple of older toys and spent several hours playing with them over the weekend. He definitely doesn't need any more toys right now.

It's good to remember how far he's come every once in a while.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

A little dirt never hurt anybody

It's been raining all week. I'm guessing somewhere around 5 inches, maybe more. My yard is a lake. I'm glad we have the rain, because we had a drought for the past 8 weeks, but I'd rather it was a little more spread out instead of drought / drench.

Yesterday, I took Declan out for a walk and to play in puddles. We found a nice big puddle in a street nearby without any traffic on it. So he spent 20 minutes or more just splashing through it, then he had to pick up twigs and throw them in the puddle for another 10 minutes. Then he decided to just sit down in the water and play some there. Oh well, we were going to take a bath anyway. But it was so much fun to watch him play in the water. I think he would have stayed out there for hours, but I finally got tired of watching him.

He even managed to eat some mud before I noticed and could stop him. Meh. Maybe now he'll realize that mud isn't good to eat and won't try it anymore. Maybe. I firmly believe that kids need to get dirty and exercise their immune systems. At any rate, he's only been sick once, and that was a 2 day cold. Probably the fact that he doesn't go to daycare has a lot to do with it too.