cat named pig

[Editor's Note: Our host migrated data and somehow lost my posts, and your comments, from December 9th, 10th & 11th. Even though they said it was fixed after we contacted them, it wasn't, so I've given up and decided to just repost them. New content to follow soon.]

I know that I’ve written two long posts this week about Elliot being sick, and my fear absolute terror of contagious eye germs, and how inconvenient it has been for meeeee that we have to deal with all this. While it is inconvenient (I had to miss yoga! OMG!) and while I certainly could’ve used an additional prescription (in the sedative family) to deal with the eye stuff, I do recognize that none of this is really all that bad. At all.

So I would just like to offer a little postscript to the sick baby posts: he is taking all his many medications and seems much better today, and I am relieved and grateful to see that.

And even though I managed to misread the writing on the prescription label and give him an extra-big dose of antibiotics (which the nurse assures me is just fine and had nothing to do with him not going to bed last night until 10:00 p.m., and then waking up at midnight to sleep on Matt’s chest the rest of the night), he seems to be feeling OK.

And while my tired brain is clearly struggling to keep track of the dosing instructions and timetables of his various treatments, I am grateful that everything he had could be treated with prescriptions at home. I am grateful that he is eating and napping normally. He sits cheerfully for his nebulizer treatments, mimicking our deep breaths and grinning, then studiously exploring the little hose and how the pieces fit together. (I’ve given Siena plenty of nebulizer treatments in her short life, and I can’t remember a single one that ended without screaming. Elliot, by contrast, looks like he’s at a spa retreat.)

A family we know lost a child this week. Every winter, we hear news reports of children dying of the flu, croup, whooping cough. Things that seem like they shouldn’t happen anymore; maybe a hundred years ago, but not in 2008. But children are still fragile, susceptible, and these things do happen. This is why, after I complain at length about gross, disgusting eye infections and doctor’s appointments where we bleed all over the toys and make the room smell awful, I also go in to Elliot’s room when he wakes up crying. Matt and I both do this, although Matt generously takes more of the turns while I Google “eye infection,” “toddler cough,” and “Zithromax overdose.”

When it’s my turn to go in, I sit in the rocking chair and Elliot nestles his head into my shoulder. He is drowsy, but doesn’t want to be put down. And even though the first season of Ugly Betty is waiting in the DVD player downstairs, even though Matt and I will groan and curse when Elliot wakes us at midnight, I am glad he doesn’t want to be put down just yet. It is enough just to sit there and hold him, my cheek resting on the top of his fuzzy head, while the medicine works its way through his small body.