Hi all..
We had a great weekend. Here is the run-down:
1. Jammer and I headed to CT on Friday evening to visit with Grandma Illick and to go to church to see Adam's First Communion on Saturday morning.
2. Jammer slept great at Aunti-Beck's Friday night. Mommy stayed up until 1am talking to Aunti-Beck.. oops!
3. Saturday morning came too soon.. Jammer woke up at 5am ready for the day. The good news was that he was in for his nap at 8am. The bad news was that we had to leave at 10am for Adam's ceremony.. so I couldn't nap too.
4. Benjamin was an absolute DREAM in church.. he played with a few cars, drank some water, read the psalms book, threw a copy of "how to avoid strokes" over into the pew in front of us (don't know why it was there in the first place!), ate some teddy grahams, crushed some teddy grahams into the carpet, and was a bit in awe by the fact that everyone kept standing and sitting and kneeling and standing and sitting. It's a catholic mass sweetie. Take notes.. we plan on exposing you to as many religions as we possibly can so that as you grow, you can choose what path to follow. I was proud and pleased on my little guy for being so quiet and making it through the whole ceremony. I was also proud and pleased (i've watched too much Thomas the Tank Engine) for my Godson, Adam, who looked so grown up in his suit and tie as he accepted his first communion.
5. I forgot the baby gates at home. Aunti-Beck's house has two sets of stairs and LOTS of space.. it's a good thing to block some of that space off. As a result of my brain-fart.. I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon and evening chasing Ben up the stairs.
6. Saturday night -- Ben went down to bed at the normal time and I was good.. I went to bed around 11pm.
7. Sunday: 2am. Ben wakes me up barking like a seal (coughing). Having had Croup a thousand times as a child.. I knew the sound and popped out of bed. He had woken up and was rolling over and starting to stand up in his pack n play. I picked him up to give him a hug and took his temp.. it was normal. He still felt warm, but the thermometer didn't pick up a change. I carried him downstairs and we got some warm milk in hopes that it would help loosen up his cough/breathing and because he was starvin-marvin.
Back up in Beck's room, I laid him on the bed next to me and gave him his tippy of milk. As he was drinking i noticed that he was started to get a glassy look in his eyes and a spacey expression (or lack of) on his face. I bolted to our bags and grabbed the Motrin and his seizure kit and gave him a dose of the children's Motrin and then cuddled up next to him and held him and crossed my fingers and toes. We managed to dodge the bullet. The Motrin worked its magic and kept his core temp from spiking to the level of triggering another seizure. I'm sure if I had waited even another minute, he would have seized. After about 10 minutes, he started to come around and act like Ben again.. albeit a sick Ben. Once he started sticking his fingers into my nose and eyes and laughing.. I knew that we had crossed the line and would be ok.
I switched gears from seizure-mode to croup-mode and thought about how to deal with his coughing and breathing. I remembered the things my mother tried quite well. It was either into the bathroom with the shower running to build up steam or it was outside to let the cold air calm the inflamation around his vocal cords. I started the shower, but didn't get to far with it because #1.. it takes forEVER for the hot water to get to that bathroom.. and #2.. i was worried about having him in a hot room given that we had just avoided a febrile seizure. We opted for the cold air. I opened Beck's window and grabbed a blanket and held him with the cool air blowing over us. Within about 10 minutes he was nodding back off to sleep.. breathing much better and not coughing.
I proceeded to stay up the rest of the night. To keep with the tone of this email.. I was proud and pleased with myself. I still couldn't sleep.
8. Ben woke up at 6am on Mother's Day. I gave him some Tylenol and we headed to wake grandma up so she could help me while I packed up our stuff to leave CT early. I wanted to get home so that we could get ben in to see the doctor during their office hours in the morning. We left the house at about 7am.
9. My mom is heading back to KY today and while I'm sad about that.. and sad that I didn't get to spend a little bit more time with her on Mother's Day.. I'm glad to know that I'll be seeing her soon because I already miss her. I'm glad that she got to spend the day with Ben on Friday while I was at work and Shiela was running errands and I'm glad that we had the opportunity to visit two weekends in a row.
10. Shiela's mom arrived from TX Saturday night. She's staying with us for about a month. She hasn't been able to stay WITH us since we moved from our Malden apartment.. even then, it was difficult for her to get in and around and that was just with a few steps in the back (we went through our neighbors apartment instead of having to deal with the steep front stairs). She has lost a lot of weight and is doing amazing with her mobility and decided to give staying in our second floor apartment a shot. We were nervous.. but again.. proud and pleased as she made it up the steep front brick steps and then all the way up to our second floor landing which includes two bends in the stairwell. All in all, it only took about 10 minutes.. it used to take longer than that for her to get into the house in Malden without all the stairs. We were happy. That's an understatement. We had a lot of difficulty with the decision to move into the place where we are at now because of this very issue. We didn't want to be in a place where one of our parents automatically couldn't visit. Proud and pleased.
11. I just talked to my sister on the phone for an hour and completely lost my train of thought. I'll continue this later if I can remember what else I wanted to write about... *laff*
Edited to add:
Hey.. I remember! (it's now 4:18pm, Monday.. hours and hours after my original post)..
12. I returned the rental car to Harvard Square and got back in one piece. I think that all of my pride and pleasantries were shot to hell by the annual May Fair. It took a while to find a road that would actually allow me onto the road that the hotel was on.. I returned the car.. no problems there. Then I exited the Charles Hotel into the masses of people. Unlike my good friend, Snickollet, I did NOT have a good time at the fair. I think it was because I was already tired because shiela and I have gone for several years and I've always been ok. This year? Panic City. I had cash in pocket and had planned to take a cab back home to avoid the humanity of the public transportation system (I loathe buses).
13. I couldn't find a cab. The regular cab stops in Harvard Square weren't accessible because of the roadblocks for the fair.. and I wasn't able to flag one down (i.e. jump on their hood) on the streets that were open.. by this point I had HAD it and was going to just take a bus. Heading back to the train station I had to brave all of those people again. The smell of sausage and onions, the sounds of a distant street performer, hoards and hoards of people.. SNAP. Totally lost it.. couldn't take being out there and it was just like the movies.. it was like everyone was running at me and pushing me when in actuality nothing of the sort was happening.. no one was even noticing me. I ducked into the nearest door, which happened to be the Curious George bookstore (a kids store). Shiela doesn't believe that this was unintentional. I came home with about $50 worth of Melissa & Doug toys for Ben including a bead thingy and some wooden pots and pans for his kitchen set and a book called Binky. After I stopped feeling like I was going to snap into a billion pieces, I headed back outside where, shockingly, everyone was smiling and having a good time on a sunny afternoon. This was DEFINITELY NOT the mad crowd that I had to escape from! I headed down into the MBTA dungeon and waited for a bus.. it took me home. I was happy to be home. Ben liked his loot.