The Small Family   

So, as the title of this post indicates, this was the Week of Upgrades and Overhauls. This began on Monday, when I got an email from Walmart that Theo’s crib had been recalled for a safety hazard that had already caused one infant death. Naturally, we didn’t want to take any chances, so we went out Monday evening and bought Theo a new crib, which I have to say is much snazzier than his old one. It’s just a plain crib, but it just looks nicer than the old one. And luckily, it was on clearance, so we didn’t even have to go broke buying it. (Would you believe that cribs can cost up to $1,200, depending on where you shop?? Our new crib was a very modest $150, which seems much more reasonable to us!)

Right around the same time, we discovered that our downstairs baby gate was coming apart. We thought it might last a bit longer, but no...not really. Within three days it had self-destructed, so we had to replace that, too. We ended up putting the upstairs one at the bottom of the stairs and getting an extra-wide one to fit in the larger part of the hallway upstairs. So Theo now has a slightly larger upstairs area to roam, which makes him happy.

But not only were baby-stuff items “sick” this week, so was our baby! He was a sweet, happy boy all week...up until Thursday. In retrospect, we should’ve known something was up Wednesday night, when he fell asleep in his high chair while eating dinner. But he seemed fine, and I figured he was just tired from a big day—a walk with Grandma Diane in the morning and a visit to Grandma Ruth in the afternoon. But Thursday morning, he woke up in a horrible mood, and we assumed he was just crabby after not sleeping well the night before. But it quickly became apparent that he was running a fever. He had no other symptoms—just crabbiness and a fever—so we assumed it was teething. But he got progressively droopier throughout the day, to the point of just lying rather listlessly on our laps. This frightened me a bit. Theo is never, ever listless. In 15 months, I don’t think the kid has really ever slowed down. He never cuddles, never sits in laps for more than a minute or two—he’s just not that kind of kid, and he never has been. So to have him just lying in our laps rather glassy-eyed and docile was disconcerting, to say the least. I called the advice nurse, who assessed that he was probably fine, and at her suggestion, we just kept an eye on him overnight.

As it turned out, the nurse was right—it was just a 24-hour bug that knocked him out. He was much the same Friday morning, but by Friday afternoon he was significantly perkier...and I was breathing a great sigh of relief. I don’t normally fret about things—I stay pretty calm about all manner of baby things, probably in part because he had so many alarming digestive/skin issues due to his dairy sensitivity when he was a baby. So when he gets a cold or something, I really don’t worry about him. But this had me nervous because he was so darn docile...and that is just SO out of character for him! Next time I’ll know what’s going on better, and perhaps I’ll be able to relax and just enjoy the fact that for once my son is CUDDLING with me! ;-)

I should’ve known he was on the mend by late Friday morning, when I took him on a walk. I wanted some coffee, so I turned right out of our complex to walk to Starbucks. All of a sudden, Theo started whining and crying and twisting around and trying to climb out the back of his stroller. I wasn’t sure why, and then it hit me—the park is to the left, and he thought we ought to be turning left to go to the park! He was not pleased by a trip to Starbucks—not when there were swings and slides if we had only turned the other way! I had to laugh at what a smart little cookie he was about that.

We were supposed to have lunch with some Sac State friends on Saturday, but several of them have babies, and in case Theo was still contagious from whatever bug he had, I didn’t want him to infect them. So we skipped lunch, and instead we went to Davis to walk around the farmers’ market. Theo had great fun playing on the playground, and he enjoyed people-watching as usual, too. He also got his first pair of big-boy, hard-soled shoes. A shoe store in town was selling out, so we got him a pair of Stride-Rite tennies for just $5. He was quite pleased with them while sitting in his stroller—they smash nicely against the stroller when he kicks his feet! But he’s not sure about walking in them yet. He stands glued in one place, teetering back and forth without taking a step. I think we’ll be practicing with those in the house for awhile before we debut them to the outside world!

As long as I’m talking about shoes, I have to mention a funny incident from this week. On Friday afternoon, Chris took Theo for a drive in the hopes that he’d get an afternoon nap, since he was still a little under the weather and thus the sleep would probably do him good. I was pretty caught up on work, so I decided to go do the yard work while the boys were gone. I looked everywhere for Chris’s flip-flops, which I wanted to wear out in the garden. But they were nowhere to be found! After searching everywhere, I finally decided to give up and just wear a pair of my regular shoes (and hope not to step in any Luna piles—Chris’s flops are much easier to spray off with the hose when one has an unfortunate accident in a Luna mess!). No worries, and I got the yard done. A couple hours later, Chris was fixing dinner and said, “Hey! Why are my sandals in the Tupperware cupboard??” Evidently Theo, who up until now has usually preferred to take everything out of the cabinets, decided he wanted Chris’s shoes in the cabinet. And so there were the flops, among the Tupperware! (I should also mention that earlier in the week, I found one of said flops in the drawer underneath our oven. And I highly doubt Chris put it there!)

Another rather exciting Theo development is that every once in a while, he forms a short sentence. Which is amazing to me! His (understandable) vocabulary isn’t that large yet, but every so often he strings more than one word together. When he was sick this week, I couldn’t get him to say “Bop!” on Friday morning for his bottle. Which is very out of character for him as well—he loves his bops so much that whenever one is in the vicinity, he proudly proclaims, “Bop-ahhhhh!!” Anyway, I gave him some Tylenol in his morning bottle on Friday, and once it kicked in and he finally crawled off my lap and started to move around, he pointed to his (now-empty) bottle and said, “Dat ma bop,” which I translated to mean “That’s my bop.” Smart monkey!

He also picked up a new word this week, I think: Shoe! Auntie Jeanette came over for a visit on Sunday, and she was talking to Theo about shoes. She asked him where his shoes were, and he picked up his foot to show her. (We had no idea he knew what shoes were!) She said he also tried to say “shoe,” making the “sh” sound and a bit of vowel sound. I, alas, was making a bop for him at the time, so I didn’t get to hear this new word. But given how much he tries to say, I’m not surprised!

Continuing with our Week of Upgrades and Overhauls, we did some much-needed yard work on Sunday. (Well, Chris did. I did some work inside and took care of Theo while Chris worked in the yard.) Our grapefruit tree was showing no signs of growth after 2 1/2 years, so we finally took it out (and put it in a pot on the patio to see whether it would grow better there) and replaced it with a lovely Japanese maple, which hopefully will do better than its predecessor.

Chris also killed my cyclamen last week, so he replaced them with a mandevilla this weekend. This wasn’t a heartless murder, though. Chris didn’t realize that my lovely cyclamen plants bloom every spring, and then the flowers have died by summer. So he was out last week doing a bit of trimming, saw the rather sad-looking cyclamen, and ripped them out. Poor cyclamen! They were only waiting for next spring, when they could bloom again! But what’s done is done, so we now have a nice climbing mandevilla in their place. And as long as I’m not feeling the need for revenge over my cyclamen, hopefully it will live long and prosper.

One more quick note: The first couple pictures in this week’s album are from last week, at the 4^th of July. Uncle Bill took them with his camera and sent them to me this week. Thanks Uncle Bill!

That about wraps it up from here. Have a nice week, all!