snuffly
poor paul is having a rough time of it.
cam had a 3:30 am paranoid freakout on friday morning because he woke up and discovered that paul still had a fever. so he hopped on the phone to kaiser, only to be told they'd call him back. by the time they called -- about an hour later? -- the het-up had cooled and left him sheepish. the advice nurse said to make an appointment, so cam got to work and started calling in at 7 am. around 7:30ish, he got through and made an appointment for 4 pm.
we knew how the appointment would go -- the struggles of getting there, well, that's another story completely -- and it went as expected. the doctor came in (a pretty asian lady with an italian name and the strongest grip i've ever felt), checked paul's ears, nose, mouth, lungs and heart, pronounced him fine, diagnosed him with the flu and told us to come back in a few days if the fever hadn't eased. "heart," said paul to me, showing me his belly. paul was well mannered and charming with his noes and hm-hms (his yeses and laughs of assent have been trimmed down to hm-hms, which, dammit, i've picked up as well). she gave him a monsters inc. sticker which he gamely accepted, but then returned gratefully for a hot wheels one. "um, that's the one movie he didn't like," cam explained.
he fell asleep on the way home, so we tucked him into our bed and left my mom guarding over him. cam and i went out to eat -- a much needed treat, it had been a long week -- and returned home to find him lively and energetic. cam went to sleep and i took over. from about 9:30 to midnight, we were up and down. he would cough, he would whimper, he would cry out to be carried and for me to walk ("dance! floor!") the floor and not merely hold him in my arms while sitting. he asked for milk and actually drank some. sometime after midnight cam woke up and he carried paul while i got some sleep. then it all began again at 3:30 for me when paul fell off our bed and into his own (where i was sleeping). up. down. up. down. then cam stepped in at 7:30 and i went to sleep until 9ish.
all day long we carried paul. his naps were short and infrequent. i froze some pedialyte and he ate it. he wanted nothing more out of life other than:
*to be resting against the shoulder (his arms tucked in) of a walking person ("cawwy!" cawwy!")
*to eat unlimited otter pops
*to not have one's nose wiped
*to eat canned peaches and frozen blueberries
*to watch thomas and blue's clues
*to watch me play sims ("my game. mommy. cooking. dinner.")
*to sit on the lap of someone in front of a computer (provided one was watching google video (trains and/or destruction preferred) or playing thomas games or the belly boing game from the deko boko friends site)
with such a narrow range of desired activities, one could hardly say no, especially when a single refusal would cause the slow motion face crunch of sadness.
it was a long day and my shoulders were constantly damp with tears and baby snot.
right now cam and paul are sleeping. how long paul will sleep is up in the air. i can hear his little coughs over the baby monitor. i should really shut this computer off and get some sleep, too, because i know i'll have to be the first one on the scene when paul wakes up. (i noted to cam that his snores get louder when paul starts crying. he wasn't amused.) it's all the more difficult to be up and down all night because i'm sick, too, with precious little resting time to get better. for instance, cam will take paul and i'll settle down somewhere only to hear "mommy! mommy!" and "when you have a minute, he wants to see you!" ringing down the hallway. but this is hard on cam as well because he too is not completely recovered from his own bout with illness. there are crumpled kleenexes and empty halls wrappers all over the place.
hopefully tomorrow will be a better -- healthier -- day for all of us.