Tuesday, December 28, 2010

From Nasty Poop to Christmas Croup, or How We Survived The Holidays

Hey everyone, it's Dan. I'm doing a guest blog at the request of Nicole.

If you have been following the blog you may have known that Grayson has been battling an interesting little stomach bug that manages to make his gross looking poop smell like delicious buttery popcorn. It truly has been a very confusing time trying to get my sense of sight and smell to agree on the relative nastiness of the whole situation. This little bug was going on for about two weeks, and we were beginning to worry that it would never go away, and that our house would forever smell like a movie theater lobby, no matter how many times our pediatrician told us to shut up, stop worrying, and stop calling. Things were beginning to look better, but then it was time to pack up and head to CT for the holidays.

We chose to drive with Grayson to CT because of our complete lack of faith in the airlines. We (mostly me) were utterly terrified about how the little guy would take to travelling. Turns out he has no problem sleeping for really long car rides, not matter what time of day, and hotel beds are way more fun to play on than the floor at home. On Friday I chose to sit in back with Grayson to play with him for a little. Grayson tends to think of my fingers as lollipops, so when he grabbed my hand and stuck it in his mouth I expected some licking , and sucking, but not pain. What do you know, the kid has decided to grow some teeth during the holiday. That's right, whether it was all he wanted or not for Christmas, he was getting his two lower front teeth.
We worried about how he would act while teething, but it turns out we had nothing to worry about when compared with what was to come.

Grayson was great at Christmas Eve, and during Christmas morning. In fact the morning came with the first normal bowel movement in two weeks, which was followed by much cheering and high fiving from the parents. We did stop short of actually throwing a parade in the name of good poopy diapers, but it was only after my brother became worried that we would wake the neighbors. All would not stay great when Grayson started to act a little funny during the afternoon. A little crankiness began, but that could be for any multitude of reasons for an infant.

We started to hear him cough really throaty, and started to really get worried when his breathing sounded kind of flemmy. On top of that we started to receive weather reports of the impeding doom of a winter blizzard for the following day. We (mostly me) began to act completely irrationally, and threatening to throw everyone in the car for an immediate overnight return trip to Ohio. Nicole was eventually able to calm me down and convince me to wait until the morning and see how Grayson was doing. After noticing that Grayson seemed to be doing better while hanging out at my little brothers "magical house", I agreed that maybe I was being a little rash.

Well that evening became very interesting. Grayson became increasingly worse, and Nicole and I took turns holding him for the entire night since it was the only way he would sleep. We woke up to find out that our baby now was doing his best impersonation of the core of the sun by feeling ridiculously hot to the touch. We took his temperature at 102.4.

This was followed by a fair amount of acting completely insane with some calls to parents and to our pediatrician. The call to the pediatrician came after a frantic moment of trying to boot up one dead laptop, and watching helplessly as the second laptop chose to perform a five minute check of the hard drive during boot up. Suffice it to say that I now have the pediatricians number in my cell phone, and have been thoroughly embarrassed for not having it in there in the first place. Turns out that our boy has croup, rhymes with poop, but turns out to be a bigger problem. I was instructed to take my child outside into the cold air and walk around for 10 minutes. I remembered to bundle up Grayson, but forgot to bundle myself up. I think Freud would say I was helping myself atone for the sins of letting my kid get this sick.

We then piled into the car and got the heck out of dodge in order to avoid getting caught in the blizzard which was slated to begin in a few hours. We spent a relatively uneventful 11 hour ride home in which we kept Grayson loaded with ibuprofen and sleeping with a little feeding in between. The feeding was fun because it involved Nicole working on her contortionist skills while moving from the front seat to the back seat, and then back when the feeding was done. Our plan was to get home, spend a few hours resting, and prepare to spend the evening up with a sick child. Grayson had other plans.

He started fussing for the last half hour of the ride home. Please note, he did not make a peep the entire ride up until that point. He then proceeded to be a complete nightmare for two hours before his exhausted parents put him back in the car, and drove around, again, until he fell back asleep. We got home, and ninja skilled our way to his room where we put him down to sleep without removing him from the car seat. The night was spent taking care of a child who was coughing and wheezing. This care included a few trips to the bathroom with the shower running to create steam to help the kid's breathing.

The night was long, but we eventually all got some much needed rest. Grayson has since been having fun recovering at home, and has even felt good enough to run some errands with his parents. Things are finally starting to calm down.

Basically this weekend turned out to be nothing like we planned or hoped, but one thing is for sure, we are going to have some great stories for a long time about Grayson's first Christmas.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Super Gray-Man

Santa came a little early for Grayson...Christmas in CT means that presents get opened early!
How seriously cute is that super hero cape?

Below, G opening presents from Grandma and Pepere.


Some updates:

Update 1: Grayson has not slept through the night once since Thanksgiving. Silly boy. I'm definitely not complaining, though. Waking up twice a night to eat (most of the time that's all the issue is) isn't bad at all. We also think he's got some sort of virus running through him...his eating is all out of wackand he's had BLOWOUT diapers - I actually took scissors to one the other day because I didn't even want to attempt to get the onesie over his head.

Oh and he refuses to eat rice cereal or banannas now. REFUSES.

Update 2: FIRSTS (a couple of these)

~We have a sitting baby. LOVE IT. It was so sudden, like he was a little baby, and now he isn't anymore. I actually almost started to tear up. I know your sitting there thinking I'm completely ridiculous for "crying" when my baby starts to sit. But it's oddly a big thing. It feels like he's not a "baby" anymore. One step closer to being.... toddlerish?? I constantly look back at pictures of when he was just born and miss it. He's my Big Boy. I heart him.

~He went to his first birthday party this weekend for Emerson who turned 1. G even got a little gift bag!
~He got to participate in the Annual Christmas Cookie Bake
Every year my girlfriends and I get together and bake cookies, while the boys play video games/watch football/basically deem themselves useless. Always a great time. I would post pictures if I had remembered to bring the camera...OOPS
~He got his first grab of beer....what?? No, really. The kid was completely obsessed with Dan's beer yesterday. Like MESMERIZED by the can. He legit wanted some. Kids already an Alchy.

Update 3: DAN POST???
Yea. Dan is gonna write a post. Within the next two weeks. I giggle at the thought.

Update 4: CT
We leave Thursday.

Not sure I'm going to post before Christmas....MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE. I'm sure to have tons of pics when I get back!




Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Hungry Hippo

So - this was Dan and I trying to take a family pic. Hilarious! I Heart the look on Gray's face.


After Gray's 4month appt, the pediatrician told us he was ready to start on solids if we wanted. Gray has been eating over 35oz of formula a day, which really meant he was ready for something more.

Dan and I decided we wanted to start him with rice cereal so we could make it as thin as needed, the first four days was LITERALLY soup. As you can see in the pics below, it was a little messy, but we just wanted him to get used to taking food off a spoon.

As each day went by we kept thickening the cereal to the consistency of say..mashed bananas!

As soon as we felt the consistency of the cereal was about that of a mashed Banana, it was introduced..and he LOVED it! Unfortunately, he came down with the stomach bug (along with his parents) and we haven't fed him anything other than formula in a couple days.

We're hoping he feels better again this week so that we can get him eating those solids again!


Yummy Cereal..


Ha. You can see how soupy it is!


Look, he doesn't need a blankie underneath his feet anymore! Such a big boy. Oh, and Dad got the Mets hat on him - a little big, but SOOO cute!



Wednesday, December 1, 2010

O Christmas Tree

oh where o where is Grayson???

So, after everyone left for CT Sunday morning - Dan, Grayson and I decorated for Christmas. Grayson LOVES lights! So cute. This weekend we're going on a hunt for........a CHOO CHOO TRAIN!!! If anyone has any recommendations for a train - let me know!

We let him play with some of the ornaments :)

Staring at the lights....


This year we put up two trees - the main "big" tree in the living room, and this second one in our foyer. I've actually removed the mirror from behind the tree...I guess I hadn't done that when I took the pics!