Like Father (and Mother and Both Grandmothers), Like Son

Leah and I have been confronted this week with the archenemy of parents everywhere: the Goliath-sized virus that wages war against not only your child, but your entire family while it's at it.

Here's the story. Last Thursday night, Nicholas sits up in bed and throws up in his bed. Pretty much everything he'd had for dinner. Yuck. So we're up at 1 AM, changing out the sheet, mattress pad cover, etc., giving Nicholas a bath to get vomit out of his hair.....the whole nine yards. We get him back settled down and asleep in his crib, and we resume our night's sleep in our bed. For a minute. We hear him through the baby monitor--here we go again. New sheet (no bath this time), new clothes, etc. A small bottle of Pedialtye comes back yet again 20 or so minutes later. Nurse's line says, "Give his stomach time to settle, and see how he does in the morning." As a matter of fact, he did just fine. Told daycare to be on the lookout, but all was well on Friday.

Now, the three of us had planned a weekend in Nashville. We usually go sometime in January, and Leah had a long weekend for the MLK holiday. After Friday seemed to be OK for our little dude, we assumed it was a fluke and declared all systems go for Saturday's departure.

No sooner had we hit the interstate than Nicholas threw up. We thought we spotted a common element, so we changed his clothes and continued I-40 East. Got to Nashville around 2PM and checked into our condo. Got settled and headed over to Opry Mills for a tourist-caliber lunch at the Aquarium. A short pass through one small section of the gargantuan mall, cause we figured we'd be back. If only...

Approximately midnight, Nicholas wakes us up crying. More vomiting. Very little in his system, but he's still vomiting. No indication of fever, his disposition seems fine, he's seemed "normal" most of the day...It's just the vomiting that concerns us. After a couple of rounds of watching our 13-month old do this, we decide it's time to pack up and head home. We check out at 1:30 AM and head home, arriving in Memphis around 5 AM.

Sunday finds us tired, but Nicholas still seems relatively OK. The vomiting still has us baffled, but he's drinking Pedialyte rather well, so we're hoping that dehydration isn't an issue and we can hold out til Monday and go see a doc. Approximately 6PM, Nicholas is standing in his Pack n Play, has a bewildered look on his face, and here it comes again. Time to get some answers, so we head to the E.R.

In short, it has all the earmarkings of the rotavirus, which in children can last up to 10 days. Oh boy. Now is when all heck breaks loose. While sitting in the ER exam room, guess who gets a severe hot flash and begins vomiting? Yours truly. Well, ain't that just peachy. Nicholas gets gets a little IV for fluids, some meds to combat nausea, and we're on our way to wait things out. Tests will be run to confirm, but it's very much assumed that rotavirus is the culprit. I decide to stay at my mom's so Leah can worry about just Nicholas and not me. If only it was that easy.

I talk to Leah around 6:30AM on Monday and she has now gotten sick. Now all three of us have it...something not altogether uncommon, apparently.

I'm better by the end of Monday, and plan on taking Tuesday off to care for Leah and Nicholas. Leah had thrown up 6-8 times by then, but she had to end up watching Nicholas because I had minor emergencies going on at work--quite the timing for someone who is the only IT support for his office. Ditto on Wednesday....My mom was going to stay at home with Nicholas so Leah could go back to work, but she started throwing up Tuesday night. So I guess I get sitter duties, but cell phone rings around 8:30A..."Hope you're on the way...". Uh oh.

Nicholas saw the doc today and the rotavirus test was NEGATIVE, but it's still an apparently ugly, rampant, forceful, take-no-prisoners type of kid virus that is/was extremely contagious. I'm sure we've only just scratched the surface, but all in all, this has been a very stressful, tiring, eventful, and emotionally draining week (and we're just now getting to Thursday).

Just Curious

Anybody else really annoyed by "double rolls" and "triple rolls" of toilet paper? Heck, I've even seen "extenders" that you have to buy to make the super roll fit on the holder with enough room to spin. And the trend seems to be these packages that to me seem like smoke and mirrors . . . 12 DOUBLE ROLLS = 24 SINGLE ROLLS! I wonder if Consumer Reports or some independent organization has ever decided if this was really true. I'm still not convinced.

I know...A blog about toilet paper. But I'm having more and more trouble finding good ole classic single-roll multipacks. And I'm not happy about it.

Adventures in Babysitting

Oh, how I wish this post was about my fantasy wife, Elisabeth Shue (waterfallsceneinCocktail), but it's not. Sigh.

Probably one of the biggest decisions to make when planning to raise a child involves childcare (and not near as divisive as the breast vs. bottle debate). We considered ourselves lucky, as we received a referral to an individual who kept a handful of kids in her home. She had daycare experience, yet we saved a considerable amount of money on a weekly basis as compared to what a typical daycare would've cost.

Well, in the "we got kicked squarely in the teeth" department, our sitter told us the day after Christmas that we had exactly two weeks to find another arrangement because she was "resigning". Well, crap. Not really what we had planned on putting on our "To Do" list for the new year. So began the phone calls in an effort to find a place that was affordable yet provided an environment that Leah and I felt was best for Nicholas. Prices ranged everywhere from $85-170/wk, and arrangments included a woman and her elderly mother watching kids to a daycare requiring an annual "membership fee" (what the....? Does he get a monogrammed shirt or cardigan sweater?).

So tomorrow, our little man starts in his new place. It's a daycare that bills itself as a learning center. It's accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. He'll have scheduled lunch and nap time, a class pet (a bunny rabbit), playground time, and all of that. Leah and I toured the place on Thursday and felt really good about it. I told her that I wish we could be an invisible presence on Monday...Just to make sure that his transition goes well. I don't know how traumatic a change of environment like this is to a 13 month old, but I can't get down on one knee and explain to him about new friends and all of that. I'm sure he'll be OK, but a part of me will be thinking about him all day tomorrow.