Snotty Boo

At infant co-op we sing a song that goes: "huggy boo, huggy boo, you are my huggy boo." This morning, Wren, who has been up since 4.45am (and his mother with him) is my snotty boo. He has a cold in his nose. It has kept him waking all night on the hour or so. He was easy to settle again until 4.45am when he lay and moaned and sang and cried for 30 minutes before I gave up on him returning to sleep.

He was so glad!

He rushed off and grabbed a toy, dumped it on the bed where I was lying. Climbed back on the bed. Bounced a bit. Looked down the crack behind the bed. Squealed to me about the ongoing darkness. Rushed to the door of the bedroom and set about our usual daily tasks like chasing the cats and making coffee (hoo hoo = hot hot).

I suspect Wren has contracted the virus Josh has been suffering from over the past 3-4 days and in this context I cannot resist referring to an article I read yesterday on BBC News. It reports on contenders for Australia's Macquarie Dictionary's Word of the Year 2007. One of them is "man flu." Now I am not suggestion Joshua had a man flu but there are times he has:

Man flu, meanwhile, refers to a minor cold contracted by a man who then proceeds to exaggerate the symptoms, the dictionary said.

Alternatively, we need a word to refer to the case in which a woman gets the flu and continues in daily life with all responsibilities intact (cleaning, cooking, waking for children, driving carpool) and does not get to collapse on the couch until everyone else is doing their daily grind. Oh, and if a baby is involved the baby must be having a nap before she rests. See, it would be a hard word to find. Easier just to say "man flu" with envy for its opposite.

Angels or Devils

Last week I took the boys to JC Penney for a photo shoot. Great Granny Charlotte had asked me for some pictures and none of the ones I have seem quite right. I put it down to the difficulties in taking good indoor photos with my digital camera. It wants to go to flash all the time and that washes everyone into startled deer expressions or paparazzi ghosts. I digress.

Here are some of the pictures from the photo shoot. I think they are lovely. However, an experience there reminded me of the different perspective you have once your child has serious health concerns.

The walls of the studio are covered in portraits. Many of them have children posed with some captions underneath. Some have them posing with bears and fake Christmas trees. Some have them wearing wings.

I was looking at one portrait of a little girl with ringlets with a background of wings and clouds. It was captioned "My Angel, Marie". Among those whose children have been in hospital and certainly on all the online communities, an angel is a child who has died. People write something like "Mother to brian (8) and ^o^ angel Claire. I felt sad for a moment thinking of the little girl who had died. The next picture had four children in fuzzy clouds "our 4 little angels". Suddenly, it dawned on me that the child wasn't dead!




I was pleased. Still, it left me feeling very superstitious. I would not let her make Wren into an angel or do any fuzzy clouds. The one of Wren in the stars is okay although I was a bit disturbed when Heather (the babysitter) said "he looks like an angel".

No, he does not. He looks like an earthbound troll. He is.

Heart Kids 'Community'

Yesterday Wren and I went to our monthly CHD family support group which meets at Children's Hospital. Wren was a noisy explorer. He wanted to eat chocolate, drink juice, climb on the table and hoot loudly. He picked the noisiest toys to throw, thunk and beep with. It was a good meeting (as always) although I was the only one who actually ate chocolate. A new family attended for the first time. They have twin 5 month old girls, one of whom has DORV, TGA, VSD and ASD. She has had some procedures but they are waiting on the major repair. It is always hard to be in that waiting part but I hope it goes smoothly for them.

Meanwhile, I have been following another Heart Baby blog. Baby Justin, who has had the first of the three surgeries pre-Fontan, is also 5 months old and is due for an exploratory cath tomorrow. I am sure his family would appreciate positive thoughts and prayers.

Finally, I was told that February 14th (yes, its Valentine's Day) is CHD Awareness Day. As the the Congenital Hearts Information Network reminds us:
"

CHD is the most frequently occurring birth defect, and is the leading cause of birth-defect related deaths."

We talked about doing some publicity for the day in Seattle but we are not a particularly press-savvy bunch so we were not sure what steps to take. We are going to try and publicize our Heart to Heart group as a way to reach out to families with heart babies to offer support.

The Wisdom of Frost

Frosts joke:

Q: What kind of monster likes maple sugar candy for his birthday?
A: Count Sapula.
Q: What do they sing at his birthday party?
A: Sappy birthday to you, sappy birthday to you...


A Conversation about Criminals
Q: Do you think its better to do graffiti on an old billboard like that one?
A: I guess so.
F: Its still bad.
A: Mmmhmm. Why do you say that?
F: Because they are still breaking the law. The people who do graffiti are bad people. They're criminals!
Me: I am not sure its that simple. I did graffiti when I lived in South Africa.
F: You did?
Yes, it was political graffiti but I still did graffiti.
What's political mean?
Its about what people do in the place you live, in your society. In South Africa they had politics called Apartheid which was like slavery. Black people did not have the same laws as white people and they weren't allowed to do things the same or live in the same cities.
F: Were you a black person or a white person?

Timmy Tiptoes

When these stumps were full, they began to empty the bags into a hole high up a tree, that had belonged to a woodpecker; the nuts rattled down--down--down inside.
"How shall you ever get them out again? It is like a money box!" said Goody.
"I shall be much thinner before springtime, my love," said Timmy Tiptoes, peeping into the hole.

Some of you may recall the story of Timmy Tiptoes, the industrious squirrel who is accused of nut theft and spends the winter becoming obese on stolen nuts. Timmy is a good little squirrel to the point that he is captured by squirrels fighting the war on terror who put him in jail in a godforsaken tree. While there he gets influenced by a down and out furry of some sort and goes downhill from there.)

Wren likes squirrels. He looks out the window and hoots when he sees one scurrying along the fence and becomes excited when I feed the crows bread and attract squirrels instead. At the Zoo yesterday we bought Wren a pair of squirrels to add to his animal collection.

[Aside: I have realized I dislike buying ONE of any animal for our animal box. It makes playing so sad. Its like buying endangered species. "Wren, here is the last tiger. It must play with this lone horse. Here is a bunny. It can play with the lonely hen." No, instead of treating the animal box as a vocabulary exercise with one of each specimen we are going to buy families of plastic horses and cows and squirrels to play in happy prolific flocks. This idea came to me as I recalled my paternal Grandmother who in a famous family tale came across a closing sale at a toystore where the animals were on a deep discount. Apparently pigs are not the most popular toy animal. There were many pigs left so she bought all the pigs. As a child we played pig farmers. I enjoyed playing pig farmers]

Well, last night I caught Wren squirreling away things under the floor. Those of you who have not visited our house may not know that our kitchen has been in the process of a remodel since well before Wren was conceived. As part of this remodel we moved the fridge and stove, revealing holes in the floor where the appliances used to be. Frost and Wren loves these holes which are now in the middle of the floor near the dishwasher. Frost shines his flashlight down the holes, I use them to hide clues (dangling on strings) in treasure hunts and I had often seen Wren sticking his fingers in them. What I did not know was that Wren has been dropping things DOWN the hole into the space between the joists, a space inaccessible from any other point.

Last night he was playing with one of the bolts from the Christmas tree base. Its a big metal thing which you screw into the holder to keep the tree upright. Its important. Without it the fancy shmancy Christmas tree base is pretty much useless. Wren was carrying it around and then there was a clunk and he started hooting and pointing at the hole.

For a kid that doesn't talk he is very expressive and it was clear that he was saying "LOOK IN THE HOLE, THE HOLE, THE HOLE MOMMY!"

I looked in the hole. It was dark dark down there.

I got the flashlight and looked in the hole and was shocked to see the Christmas tree bolt, a few forks, a shiny black stone, a wooden hammer, a baby spoon and some paper.

I said "shit, Wren. What are you doing?".

Frost looked up from his laptop army on Feudalism and said "It is not good to be cross at Wren. He is just being a baby."

I said "I am not cross, I am just surprised. I shouldn't have said that."

Frost came over and took the flashlight.

Wren started shouting and trying to hit Frost in order to get the flashlight. I asked Frost to give Wren a turn with the flashlight which Wren promptly hit Frost with and then threw it. Frost said "NOOOO, Wren." Wren shouted loudly because we took the flashlight away.

I went to find the Moo Magnet. I tied it to a piece of string and started dangling it through the hole. I managed to attract the forks, the bolt and a baby spoon.

Frost said "this is the best day of my life! This is sooo fun!"

I closed the hole with tape. This morning I found Wren dangling a fork into a smaller hole. I should not be surprised. I mean, half the day I am encouraging him to squeeze shape blocks into various brightly colored toy containers. He found another hole and is following my lead.

I taped that hole shut too.

The Official NO from Insurance

We received a letter from Premera, finally. Wren was denied RSV vaccination this season. According to the letter he does not meet the criteria for treatment. The criteria are:

* less than two years old YES
* Chronic lung disease NO ...or
* hemodynamically significant cardiac condition YES
* requiring treatment in the past 6 months NO

So, he will not be getting vaccine this winter. We were prepared for this after our clinic visit. Dr Lewin said he was "too healthy" so he doubted they would approve it.

I guess that Wren will be pleased to forgo the shots and we shall hope that he remains free of RSV or any serious respiratory virus this winter.

Tree Take-Down distraction

We are going to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE today. I have no destination in mind although the downtown library and/or Elliot Bay Bookstore is an option. We are all going stir crazy after weeks of winter, rain and festivity. Josh goes back to work today and I think we shall go and ride a bus after naptime. Wren is growing a tooth and complaining like heck about it so I am even more driven to find everyone distraction.

I have just dismounted the Christmas tree and Wren is eating a cherry candy-cane lollipop. Did I mention I needed distraction?

Happy Day

Frost, Wren and I were on our own today because Josh was at work. We have had a lovely day. Frost played with Wren without too much suffering on either part and Wren was happy to run around chasing Frost and hiding in nooks. Hiding gives Wren great pleasure. During naptime, Frost and I played a game of Take Off which he won. It was interesting to trace our potential holiday route for next year as well as reveal how truly awful is my knowledge of geography.

We went to Whole Foods to buy diapers and raspberries and there was a man campaigning for gay rights. I asked Frost if he knew what it meant to be gay. He said it meant you "dance around and don't work hard like a real man like a lumberjack or something". He said he learned this from the Simpsons.

I tried to explain the non-frivolous meaning of gay but when I got to the part about boys marrying boys and girls marrying girls Frost looked incredulous. He said "are you allowed to do that?" and then said that "Alexander said you were allowed to but then how do you make babies in a man?"

Hrmm..

I think I covered all the important facts but it was a long conversation. Ever since Frost is making puns about things being gay because they love other things that are the same as them. I have tried to explain the sensitivities on the issue but now he has the "facts" he is brightly unconcerned with tact.

Wren is recovering from Strep

Just a quick update. Wren has been on oral and topical antibiotics for 24+ hours and the red rash has become much less pronounced. It isn't bright red anymore and hasn't spread. Yesterday we thought he might be a bit warm but it wasn't significant and he seemed happy. Today he allowed me to carry him on my hip again and slept flat on his belly. He had been sleeping in a kind of crouched position.

I can tell he feels better because he doesn't cry for diaper change and ointment application - he just squirms and tries to crawl or run away!

Frost went climbing at Stone Gardens today. He climbs well but became anxious and wanted to come down when he was about 15 ft up. We are going to try again next weekend.

I did a little consignment store shopping while Frost climbed (I was meaning to get a cup of coffee, honest) and Wren looks very cool in his new grey leggins and See Kai Run shoes.

I am feeling relieved that he is better and will be going to bed now.

Strep Infection

Last night Wren woke crying at 10.30pm and despite soothing, singing and rocking he could not get back to sleep until 2am. At that point Josh and I were slouching on the couch in the dark while Wren tossed and flopped to find a comfortable spot on our laps. Eventually, he settled back to sleep (after Tylenol) and we managed to transfer him to his crib. He nursed at 6am and we all slept in till 8. During the night we couldn't find what was bothering him although he was grasping at his diaper a lot and crying as if in pain. He also seemed just exhausted we were confused.

This morning he was okay but wouldn't let me carry him over my hip. He didn't sit on his bottom but sat sideways instead. When I did diaper change I noticed he had a lot of redness and blotching in his groin and diaper area that looked different to a diaper rash so I called the pediatrician to see if they would see him this morning. It was clear he was in pain from whatever it was.

Turns out he has a strep infection in the groin area. I don't know how it got in but due to the tenderness, spread and some mild inflammation the ped thinks it may be in the tissues and he is on oral antibiotics as well as a topical one. I don't think this will help us manage the yeast infection we are just over.

The ped said this is fairly common and not to worry about it unless it worsens while on antibiotics or is not gone by Monday. I have called our naturopath to see Wren next week because this seems a bit much to have a yeast infection and now strep for the second time (in our family) in 6 months.

The naturopath suggests that we give Wren some sacromyces Florstar which is a kind of acidophilos you can take during antibiotics. That should reduce the whole risk of fungal infection.