Croup de grace

It's been a whirlwind of a holiday season. Zander received many lovely things from his fans - er, family. Most of them make noise. Many of the noise making things don't have off switches. Yes, we are taking names and you will be remembered next year. Be afraid.

Zander's milestones over the past three weeks: He's sitting up solidly, don't remember if I mentioned that. It was sometime in early December that he got that down. Just before Christmas, he started to crawl using his hands AND knees. Actually, it started with one knee and one foot. Pretty funny looking! And when he wants to go FAST or something is impeding his progress, he'll fall back to using just his hands.

He's still pulling himself up on his feet and sometimes that's all he wants to do - get up and down, up and down, up and down. He falls a lot, but he's getting better at not hitting his head.

Zander likes to try and roll over and take off during his diaper changes. He's very cooperative (lifts his legs, holds onto his feet) until the old diaper is off. Then he twists and you grab him and he giggles and twists harder, trying to roll over. All a game to him. Wicked child.

We discovered how much he likes bells just before Christmas. A friend gave him a strand of jingle bells to play with and he went crazy shaking them and laughing and bouncing. Of course, he IS in the rattle phase right now. You know - everything is either a rattle or not-a-rattle. Everything must be picked up and shaken to see if it can make noise.

Last week, in his evening bath, Zander figured out how to splash and quite suddenly had a new-found love for bathtime. This from the baby who was suspicious of water and generally opposed to the idea of sitting or laying in his bath. This was the baby who had to be coaxed with perfect water temperatures and toys and songs. Now, NOW he loves his bath and spends the whole time smacking his toys into the water. Makes washing his hair easier. Of course now he cries when we take him out of the bath. Oh well.

A few days ago we added rice chex to his finger food repetoire. Tonight he tried avocado for the first time. Made a lot of faces but ate it all up without a problem. I found out the other day that he's eating about three times as much solid food as my girlfriend's daughter who's a month older than Zander.

Finally, the biggest and saddest news for last. Zander woke me up yesterday morning with a terrible cough. A croup cough. Luckily I had a good guess as to what it was and luckily the pediatrician's office was open for sick appointments that morning so we took him in. Of course we didn't get to see his usual doctor or even a nurse we knew and so the whole experience was a little surreal. The doctor let us say about three words, told us a lot about what symptoms to look for, gave us a flyer about croup, poured some steroid down Zander's throat to bring down the inflammation, gave us a "just-in-case-it-gets-worse-although-it-usually-doesn't" prescription to get us through the holiday weekend, and sent us on our not so merry way. The weird thing about croup is that most of the time the baby is totally normal and happy (well, Zander is normally a happy baby anyway), he just sounds like hell.

This morning it was hard to say if he was better. He wasn't worse. But after his afternoon nap, I think he might be getting worse. We're trying to figure out if he has stridor, which is the "musical" breathing noise babies with croup make as the trachia and larynx get more swollen. We'll probably give him one of those "just-in-case" doses before bedtime because it always gets worse while he sleeps.

Well I think it's time I go rejoin the family. I think they're putting together toys up in Zander's room.

Happy New Year!