Single and Loving It!

no, of course i won't smile for the photo!

Oy! The last few days we have had a disaster child on our hands. Calder has been completely inconsolable, nothing like his normal self. Sure, he ordinarily cries, but not nearly as constantly. Recently, if he were awake, he was crying. Initially we speculated he was upset on account of the bottle feeding, which could have increased his gassiness, and/or the introduction of Prevacid this past Sunday, which is supposed to help him with his GERD. Maybe it wasn't sitting well?

so sweet when asleep! thanks, grandma.

Of course this would come to a head on a snow day in DC. Our pediatrician’s office was closed on Thursday, and as I said in the early days of this blog, I have never been one to dial the answering service easily (and as I learned then, maybe I should!) Instead, I emailed both his GI doc and his pulm. Both answered immediately, the GI NP with a follow-up question and the pulm with a very thorough response and tons of follow-up questions: Does he look as if he is in pain? Is his belly distended and/or hard? Is he throwing-up? Et cetera. He said it would be atypical for Calder to react this way to Prevacid.

you people exhaust me!

The next day, as I ducked into the grocery store for some hamburger buns, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d never checked the ingredients in some hamburger buns last week. I Googled the brand and sure enough – milk product! Kraemer asks me periodically when I plan to “test” putting dairy back into my diet, and I always put it off, wanting instead to focus on Calder’s success with the bottle and eventually breastfeeding. So this "test" was on accident, but I think we have our answer for a while: no dairy for Mom.

At his second physical therapy session last week, Calder continued to exhibit decent head control, picking up his head and turning it both directions when prompted. Toward the end of the session, Cristiane was in the middle of telling us we should encourage him to lift his head higher and that that’s what she’d look for next week, when Calder reared his head waaaaay up! Overachiever. Of course, we were glad he went ahead and met that milestone that week because at the session yesterday, during the aforementioned “disaster week,” we could barely coax the poor little guy into PT for more than 10 minutes.

Lucky, lucky for my parents, they chose to visit at this very opportune time. Truly, it was lucky for me, as we had a couple of willing volunteers ready to take a fussy Calder off our hands at any time. Sweet relief.

Also in true parent fashion, they offered to let us have a night out for Valentine’s Day. Kraemer and I had picked out a little place literally three blocks from our house a month or two back, and by now it was so obscenely popular that they already have a line out the door daily, prior to their 5pm opening. We figured out when to show up and wound up having a fun, delicious dinner, complete with my own menu, personally marked up by the owner and head chef. How fun it is to be dairy-free. ;)

Happy Valentine's!

Kisses to my nurses!

Until this point, we have done a fairly decent job of keeping up with our doctor appointments, arriving on time, etc. That is, until this morning, when not two minutes after our alarm went off, Kraemer pondered aloud how we had had NO appointments this past week. Zip. Zero. None. He felt that just couldn't be right, and, of course, he was right. I’m still not exactly sure what happened, whether we’d forgotten to write it down or whether it was never scheduled, but it clicked with me then that right around now Calder was due for his next dose of Synagis. Our ped was adamant that we not be late, as the immunity drops precipitously after 28 days. I got on the horn and had us scheduled for a shot within the hour. Calder is now back to being protected from evil RSV! And I am going to be double-checking at the beginning of each week that we have all our doctor appointments on the calendar. :)

O2 = built-in toy