Somebody takes after his mommy…

Charlie started having some congestion midway through the week, and on Friday, his teacher called to tell me he’d eaten all his lunch and then coughed and given it back.  The life of a preschool teacher must be a tough one – when I apologized, she said, “Not to worry, we’re used to it.” Lovely.  Anyway, she said she thought it was probably just his nasal drip bothering him, and he was happy so we didn’t necessarily need to pick him up, but I thought that was unfair. Pamela headed over to school about an hour early, brought him home, gave him some juice, and put him to bed. Within minutes, she was stripping his bed and putting him in the tub – clearly he wasn’t feeling his best.

Luckily we were able to get him into the doctor, who said his chest and ears were clear but his throat looked pretty raw. They did a quick strep test, and it came out positive. Boo.

As a kid who had strep all my life (mom says in first grade I had it SIX times), I know that the one blessing about strep is the antibiotics work wonders!  Charlie’s now on amoxocilin and seems to be feeling much better already. He shouldn’t be contagious anymore, so hopefully he’ll be 100% tomorrow and back to school on Monday. I just hope he’s not like me, extremely prone to it. I remember a Christmas Eve when I couldn’t eat with my family, an incident where I was so sick I passed out INTO the toilet and almost broke my nose, and a summer bout that seemed very unfair. I hope he won’t grow up having similar memories of strep throat!  And I hope my years of it mean I’m now totally immune (so far, so good).

Here are a few photos of our little sickling from last night. Seeing him sick is no fun, but I do enjoy that he wants nothing more than to snuggle with his mom and dad. We had a good hour on the rocker together, which was great except when he sneezed and blew saltine bits all over me. Considering he had gotten sick ON me earlier in the day, though, a little soggy saltine didn’t seem so bad!

Sleeping it off, with his blanket tucked under his arm:

 

Similar pose, this time on the ottoman:

With saltines in hand!

 

Watching a few minutes of Monsters, Inc (we still don’t really let him watch tv, but when I saw the movie was on, I let him see a few minutes of it. I think he liked it!)

Feeling good enough to take Baby Gladys for a stroll:

 

Posing for the camera (very unusual behavior – the medicine must have gotten to him!):

 

School continues to go well. Pamela says he gets mad sometimes when she drops him off, but he doesn’t cry. Apparently he’s a very good boy there  – Ms. Lynne said he is a “ray of sunshine” in the classroom. She came for a visit on Thurs, so I kept Charlie up late in the afternoon instead of putting him down at 2 for a nap. As a result, he was pretty cranky and clingy while she was here. I was happy when she said the crankiness was a new side of Charlie she hadn’t seen before. I’m glad he doesn’t act like that at school! 

He’s saying a few more words – he came home from school this week saying “bathroom” (well, it sounds more like bah-fwoom, but he knows what it means!). Apparently 6 out of the 8 kids in his class are still in diapers, but they go through the changing routine in the bathroom and talk about it while they’re there, so hopefully he’s starting to get what he’s supposed to do in there. Ms. Lynne seems to think he’ll be one of the first to start potty training in the class, because he understands so much. I’m looking forward to giving up diapers, but am not so excited about the in between, training stage!  Charlie’s also saying “apple”, “uh-oh”, and occasionally, “bye-bye”. His speech still isn’t very consistent and I’m going to work on finding a speech pathologist to do some work with him, but I’m glad to see he’s making progress.

He’s also getting bigger – people continue to comment that he seems tall for 2, and at his sick appointment yesterday, the scale said he weighs 30 pounds!  I think that means he’s gained 3 pounds since March!  He still looks long and lean to me, but I’m glad that his finicky eating isn’t having much effect on his weight.

Not sure how many of our friends and family are still reading regularly (or making it through long posts like this one), but to those who are, I hope you’re having a great weekend!!