Just a touch of pneumonia...

Poor Charlie has been sick this week. He sounded a little congested on Tues night, but wasn't running a fever and didn't seem to feel badly. By the time I got home from work on Wed, however, his breathing was making scuba-like noises and he was running a 102 fever. Poor Pamela was also sounding and feeling very under-the-weather. I figured we were in for it - and I was right.

We put Charlie down around 9 on Wed, and about an hour later, he started getting sick to his stomach. The rest of the night was pretty rough, as the congestion was making it very hard for him to breathe when he was horizontal, and he was obviously feeling terrible. He and I ended up sleeping together in the guest room bed, and I did my best to elevate his head so he could try to get some sleep. Unfortunately he's an extremely wiggly sleeper and I think the Benadryl had the opposite of the soporific effect I was hoping for; we got about 4 hours of sleep all night.

Luckily I was able to get him a doctor's appointment yesterday, since she immediately diagnosed him with an ear infection and a touch of pneumonia. Even "a touch" sounds scary to me! So he's on an antibiotic, and we're nebulizing again! Good thing we still have our handy torture nebulizer machine. We haven't had to nebulize Charlie since he was about a year old, and it is definitely more difficult now! He's stronger and louder, and also knows enough to anticipate what's about to happen as soon as he sees me filling the mask. Hopefully his chest congestion will clear quickly, and we can stop the torture.

The fact that my sweet boy is ill has me reflecting on his early life. I've basically forgotten what it was like when he was on the heart/lung monitor, needed months of nebulization, and required countless medications. We're so lucky that he has come so far! An occasional course of antibiotics and a few days of the nebulizer are nothing compared to where we've been!

A few updates on our little guy's growth and development: he's finally over 25 pounds (feels like 40 when carrying him around!), has started to feed himself with a spoon or fork (with a little help), prefers to walk rather then crawl (but still loves to be carried), says "mamamamama" (but not necessarily in reference to me) , has started to have memories of/associations with places (screamed as soon as we got into the check-up room at the doctor's office yesterday), and is decent at playing by himself (though prefers to play with us). He likes to wrestle and be tickled and play chase in circles around the chair in our basement. He's good at it too - when I hide from him and try to be sneaky and change directions, he catches on immediately and whirls around to attack me. He's sweet, smart, messy and so funny. He keeps us very busy and very entertained!

Here's a quick video of our big boy.