We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
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2006-02-07 - 17:02
My little Heartbreaker
Well, Jack is sick again.
He wouldn't get sick so often if we didn't keep bringing him to indoor playgrounds to play with other kids, but he loves it, and while we don't enjoy having a sick baby, we do think it's best for his immune system to get stimulated regularly.
So once a week, more or less (sometimes twice a week and sometimes we skip a week or two entirely) we take Jack to our newly opened indoor playground Fantasy Forest - http://www.fantasy-forest.com/ to play with the other kids and get some gross motor activity. And some immune system stimulation.
And so, not infrequently, he gets a case of the creeping crud.
On Sunday night, just before bed, jack asked for a vitamin C tablet at vitamin time. I usually only offer those when he's sick, but since he hadn't had one in a while, I agreed. That should have been a sign, I suppose, but I didn't make the connection until he woke me at 3am on Monday, he was snorting and restless, but he didn't wake up. I went back to sleep, aware that he wasn't well. I mentioned it to Rod Monday morning, and he said that Jack was "off his feed" and not quite himself, but he mainly seemed fine.
The guys joined me for lunch Monday and Jack, after refusing breakfast, ate a huge plate of fruit for lunch, so we thought that whatever had been bothering him had passed. By the time I got home from work, though, Jack was feverish and limp. Rod reported that he had spent the better part of the afternoon walking a limp, sad boy up and down the hall. Eventually, Jack fell asleep, only to wake up again hot and sweaty and feeling awful. We took a bath and he had some fever reducer and then we had pancakes for dinner. (Even when he doesn't want to eat, Jack will eat pancakes -- he polished off two!)
He seemed like he was on the mend for a couple of hours, and then it was bedtime. He was, again, snuffly and restless but exhausted. It didn't take him long to fall asleep, though he reached for me and patted me in his sleep a lot longer than he usually does. Poor baby.
About 1am, I woke to find that Jack was awake and watching me. He was feverish and limp and looked so very, very sick. We took his temperature -- 39dC! (102dF) In the old days, when TJ and Corey were babies, that would have warranted a trip to the emergency room, but as I've mentioned before, these days they don't want to see children with temperature under 40dC (104dF).
I got up and got Jack a glass of water and then I got a bowl of cool water with peppermint and a cloth to help bring his fever down. (Peppermint makes the water feel cooler on the skin without actually chilling the feverish child.) Once he'd had his drink, he lay down and I began to wipe his face and hands and arms with the cool cloth. It felt so nice that he started to offer me the bits that felt hottest. Eventually, his temperature was down enough for him to be comfortable again. Once he felt better, Jack took the cloth away from me. At first I thought he wanted to continue to cool himself off -- but instead, he began to wipe my face and hands and arms! It felt nice to him, and my sweet little boy wanted to share that with me! I got teary at the sweetness of a sick little boy wanting to make Mamma feel nice, too.
What a little heartbreaker!
Packing progress
As you might guess, packing is well underway. Rod guesses we're about 30% finished -- and with the move almost three weeks away (and with three weekends to finish) that's not too bad.
Then again, I don't know whether his guesstimate takes into account the stuff in the garage that should have been sorted almost four years ago, or the stuff "out of sight" in the storage shed and the garage. I'm not nearly as pleased with our progress.
I will concede that we have time, and that the kitchen and the majority of the family room are (or were) packed. Of course, just before Jack got sick, we had pulled up a dozen boxes of books from the garage for me to sort through so now the formerly "packed" family room is knee deep in half packed boxes of books. It's hard to sort while holding a limp tyke, so progress has pretty much ground to a halt -- but I am quite determined to have the books sorted and the ones were keeping repacked by the end of the week. And next week, we'll freecycle the books (and other stuff) we're not keeping, so we'll be back on track for the weekend.
Jack has taken the packing process pretty well. His "Auntie" Dana bought him a copy of the Berenstein Bears moving book, and we started to read that to him before we started packing -- and while in Bear Country one can evidently move with three or four boxes, they do at least save Brother Bear's box of toys for last, just as we plan to do with Jack, so it has helped Jack to have an idea what to expect.
Last weekend, he played on starfall.com for 11 and a half hours while we packed. I am both extremely impressed and thoroughly dismayed. That's a lot of time to be on the computer -- especially at two and a half! And while Rod and I got an enormous amount done thanks to Jack's cooperation, and starfall.com is a reading and phonics web site, so that intensive brought Jack right up to the ability to sound out words -- I still can't think of that much time on the computer as good for him. He had the glassy eyed stupor by the time we broke for dinner and he went right back to it immediately after dinner. I'm not sure we could have gotten him away from it for dinner except that we were packing the kitchen so we went out to eat!
We ended up taking him to Fantasy Forest on Sunday for most of the day to counter the effects of too much computer time.
And on it goes...next weekend, we have to get half of what's left to do done, because Rod will have a bad case of jet lag on our last weekend to pack. My mother is coming to watch Jack and help me pack while Rod's gone, but just watching Jack is plenty, so I'm not counting on getting much done until he gets home.
