May 12: Andrew was a sick boy today. Even with a good dose of medicine, his fever was in the 102-104 range. He was so sleepy and cuddly, and HOT. Several times today, he fell asleep in my arms. I am very thankful today for DVDs. Back in January when he was sick, and then again today, I’ve found that there is no better way to get through some tough hours. When I tried to read to him, he would find a reason to sob (I turned the page wrong, I picked up a bad book, I asked him what the animal says). He watched Animals are Beautiful People and both Fantasia movies. When his medicine kicked in, he would come over and ask to read. I felt like watching his shows let his mind tune out and helped him feel maybe a little less miserable. If only there were numbing treatments like that for life’s larger crises. “Wake me when it’s over,” one could say.
Before supper, Andrew and I took a stroller ride, and he was clearly feeling a lot better. I’m hoping he wakes up in the morning feeling more like himself. And I’m also hoping that Bryan and I don’t come down with it! It doesn’t look like much fun!
Brrrito
May 12: For the last six months, Andrew’s leaving-the-tub routine involves Bryan or myself making up a baby burrito to wrap Andrew in. In the last week, we’ve stopped doing bath time burritos, so I wanted to record that routine for posterity since it was such as constant in our lives.
It all starts with the towel (the tortilla). As bath time wraps up, Andrew would announce (rolling his “r”s) “Brrito!” Brandishing the towel, one of us would lay it down on the floor and ask Andrew what should go on this burrito. Andrew has a pretty standard ingredient list. Once upon a time, prompted by us, he put beans, cheese, onions, or sour cream on the tortilla. The final ingredient is always a baby. That’s why it is a baby burrito.
These days, he’s gotten much simpler and more bizarre. Andrew always requests beans. And usually rice. And onions. Then more beans and more onions. More onions. More onions. More onions. “Andrew, we’re out of onions…what else?” “Oranges!” “Oranges? That’s a funny thing to go on a burrito, oh well, oranges it is. What else?” “Onions!” “We’re out of onions, honey, what else?” “Beans!” “OK, beans on the burrito. What else.” “Beans!” “OK, beans. What else goes on the baby burrito?” “Beans!” “Out of beans, hon. What else?” “BABY!” “Excellent, my favorite part! A baby goes in the burrito. Wrap him up tight. Mmmm good. Who wants a delicious baby burrito?”
Recently, other strange toppings include milk, lots of oranges (including an orange on top), burger, butter, and water. The game was getting excessively long, and Andrew often didn’t want Mommy to do it. “Daddy do it. DADDY DO IT!” So I have started holding out the towel and asking him to be a horse and jump into the towel. How quickly the burrito has been forgotten. Tonight when he was done with his tubby time, he said “Horsey, towel. Jump.”
Owl Sagas
May 1: I think I mentioned several weeks ago how much we have been enjoying hearing our neighborhood owls hooting in the evening. There was quite a bit of speculation about the presence of chicks, and last week, we all go to see them for ourselves. Three chicks tumbled about forty feet from their nest in a pine tree across the street from our house. Two of the chicks, fuzzy puffballs on the wet, green grass, seemed to be feisty and healthy. In the wild, owls that fall out of the nest are taken care of on the ground. But in a neighborhood, an exposed owlet doesn’t have much of a chance. We called over to animal control, and they picked up the chicks with a promise that they would bring them back when it wasn’t raining and try to return them to their nest.
On Friday evening, Hooter and Howie as they were dubbed returned along with a new basket/nest. Howie suffered a concussion and perhaps other injuries from his fall, so they are going to raise him in captivity. Hooter, however, got hoisted back into the pine tree, while one of his parents looked on. Tonight we could see one of the parents sitting in the basket along with the baby. What a neat experience this has been! Pictures of the saga taken by Nancy are in the gallery.
Climbing boy
April 29: Andrew is really getting the hang of climbing ladders and jungle gyms! See a video here.
New photos of Vicki, Alex, Andrew, and me at the arboretum and of Andrew playing at Tenney Park are in the gallery.
Mom’s latest cat scan was clear!
April 25: What good news! I haven’t posted updates on my mom’s pancreatic cancer lately…mostly because there hasn’t been much news to report. Since her surgery at Mayo in January 2006, she has been cancer-free. She did follow-up chemotherapy treatments and a clinical trial for a cancer vaccine at Northwestern University last summer. Her cat scan in January did not show any cancer, and now the scan she had today also did not show any cancer. What a relief!! Mom is scheduled to have quarterly cat scans and appointments with her oncologist (they also check-up on her at Northwestern), so the next one will probably be in July. That means that we can all returned to our favorite state of blissful denial that anything was ever wrong with our sweet mommy. Thank heavens:)
Budding imagination
April 22: Andrew’s ability to put words together is growing dramatically, and he’s really starting to amaze us with his ability to recall things that we did and to tell us about how he feels and what he thinks. He is also doing just adorable make-believe games with his toys. His favorite is to put his toys in a pile and put them to “seep” with “bankies” and sometimes his “pacie.” He has his animals eat and drink and sleep, climb mountains (a big person) and the other day, they were dancing.
When we play outside, he likes to go to the side fence, look into the neighbor’s yard, and tell us about all the animals he sees. The pandas may be sleeping (shhhh), the tiger is hiding, the monkeys are eating, oh, and Bruno the dog is there too. When we were walking in the arb last week, Andrew suddenly stopped and very slowly turned to me to tell me that there were rhinos. They were sleeping, so we tiptoed by. I am continually stunned at the way he can suddenly share all this wonder with us. I find myself thinking, “Where does he come up with all this!”
Oh, sweet spring!
April 22: It seems hard to believe that my last post was ten days ago. I was working really hard on a grant application for work from the moment we returned from Wichita until last weekend. Then I’ve spent the last seven days riding the crest of new spring activity. I’m finishing up a four day weekend. Today was an amazingly beautiful Earth Day, and we spent nearly all of the last three days outdoors. Andrew’s not so into napping these past days, but other than that, out time together has been great fun.
I took off Thursday and in a fit of self-possession, I sent Andrew to daycare and spent the day doing my own thing. I cleaned and gardened and went to the library, and ate ice cream outdoors in the sunshine while reading a book. It was delightful. We dug up a flower bed in front of our house, and I supplemented the soil. Pictures of the new garden are in the gallery. On Saturday, we went to Madison’s first farmer’s market of the season, and we got cheese curds, tomato plants, and several perennials for our garden. This afternoon, I planted peas and radish and two tomato plants. Andrew helped drop the peas into the soil. However, after we covered them, he really wanted to “dig, dig!” them up again:)
Today we went to the zoo, and the little guy did not want to walk. Silly boy. So we ended up carrying him all around the zoo. It was packed with people and kids getting outdoors to enjoy this amazing weather.
We saw our neighborhood owl a couple times this past weekend. There’s speculation about which tree holds its nest and whether there are chicks.
Loads of pictures are in the gallery!
Exploring the floor
April 12: Andrew has discovered a new approach to being unhappy: throwing himself on the floor. Sometimes he isn’t even unhappy…he’s just done being vertical. While we were traveling over the weekend, he would regularly stop walking and drop to the ground, spread eagle. Staring up at the ceiling, he would then begin inching his feet in a circle. Bryan or I would stand nearby to make sure he wasn’t going to trip up a fellow traveler or be run over by a beeping airport car. At one point, her rolled over onto his belly and began crawling down the hall. This seemed to amuse some tired travelers.
We’ve found that picking him up usually results in an unhappy boy, so if at all possible, we let him spend his quality time with the floor.
Easter in Kansas
April 9: We’re back home after a really nice visit with our family in Wichita. We flew out on Friday and returned today (Monday). It was such fun to see Bryan’s parents, Melanie and Ben, and all four of Bryan’s grandparents. We even got to see Ben’s family as his brother’s quadruplets were celebrating their third birthday and we were invited to join the party.
Andrew had loads of fun finding the Easter eggs that his granny filled with fun treats, and we all enjoyed munching on the frosted Easter cookies she made. I wish we could see all the Dotzours/Harveys/Davis more frequently, but we sure do have a great time when we are together!
Extensive pictures of our visit are in the gallery.
It’s a rainy day
March 31: We had a really quiet Saturday today, which was a nice thing. Yesterday Andrew and I visited Olbrich and saw the conservatory in its newly pruned loveliness. Andrew has the best time running around, looking at the fish, pointing out the water falls, and navigating the stairs.
I was hoping a bit for sunny, warm weather so we could work on some new garden beds, go biking, and in general play outside. Mother Nature had other plans in mind, though, and a soft rain has been falling off and on since morning. So we hung out around the house. Andrew helped me set up a new composting bin that I finally acquired, and he got to wear his new froggie rubber boots for a quick romp around the yard between showers. April is here tomorrow, and it really feels like spring. Speaking of April, this will be our first April without our pooch April. It’s been 10 months since we put her down. I was thinking about her with all the storms tonight. Sweet doggie. We sure had fun having her in our family.
Pictures of Andrew playing in the back yard are in the gallery.