I've got a little echo, lately.
Last week, I called for Tom several times to come collect Michael (I try to have him take the kids up for naptimes when possible, because stairs are getting difficult for me, particularly when lugging 22-40lbs of weight during the trek). Wherever he was, he didn't hear me, so I gave up temporarily and started trying to amuse Michael for just a little longer, instead.
Then, I heard a little voice shouting, "Tom, Tom, Tom!" Abby had decided to take the task upon herself. I chuckled, and she smiled at me, but kept on. Finally she yelled, "Michael needs to sleep!"
Today, it happened again, and curious about whether Tom's name had any meaning for Abby, I asked her, "Abby, who is Tom?"
"Mommy," she said.
"Abby," I corrected, "Tom is Daddy."
She responded, quite knowingly, "Daddy is Daddy.
***
Sadly, Michael is suffering from his first fever, and we've both had a rough day of it, as a result. I'm not sure yet whether it's a delayed reaction to the MMR vaccine that he received on Friday, some kind of virus, or possibly a sudden-onset ear infection (his ears looked absolutely fine a couple of days ago), but he's not taking it at all well.
My first clue should have been when he started fussing like he needed a nap this morning much earlier than he usually takes one. Unable to find any way to make him happy, we went ahead and put him down. When he awoke, he seemed fine at first, and then began whining pitifully from the floor of the playroom. When I picked him up to comfort him, he kept writhing, moaning, and burying his head in my chest. That's when I noticed how warm he was. His tympanic temperature measured 102.9, so we brought out the Tylenol, and after a bit of standing rocking, I managed to get him to doze off in my arms and take a short nap on my chest through the worst of it.
However, even with the Tylenol, his temperature has been hovering around 99-100, and he's been a very unhappy camper through it all.
I could tell that he really needed to sleep off the ickiness, but he just kept fighting it so hard, and even when I took him into bed with me in the afternoon, all I managed to coax out of him was 45 minutes of actual sleep.
Since then, he's been all cranks and fusses, even as I've kept him right by my side and tried futilely to cheer him up. That is, until the last ten minutes of the day, before Tom took him up to bed. Amazingly, though he still felt a bit warm to me, he was suddenly his (more) usual mild-mannered self, chipper and content. Figures.
However, now that it has occurred to me that going without Tylenol overnight might cause his fever to spike again, and that I don't even know what's causing it, I am starting to worry, and to feel dumb about the fact that I was "waiting-and-seeing" for so long that I never did get around to calling the doctor. Here's hoping for an uneventful night, and a happier baby in the morning.
