Katie and Peter's Blog: Two Months!

Monday, January 17, 2011

Two Months!

Today Peter turned 2 months old! It's been remarkable watching Peter grow and develop. He's so expressive now and loves to smile. He also likes to grip things in his fingers (mostly other people's fingers) and has even started gripping things with his toes. We've started laying him on the playmat that has little animals hanging down for him to stare at and try to grab.

He had a routine checkup with his doctor last week and it went well. He's a big boy (in the 85+ percentile for height, weight, and head size).

The last few weeks have been a blur. About 2 weeks ago I came down with some sort of virus in my chest. The main symptom was an annoying cough but it was soon joined by some congestion, headaches, and fatigue. A few days later Katie caught it. It wiped her out. She was pale and lethargic and had a fever. She missed all 3 days of school last week.

And then Peter got sick. He was so congested that he had some trouble breathing at night (or at least it sounded that way). He hasn't really figured out how to breathe with his mouth yet. It sounded like it took a lot of effort for him to get some air through his stuffy nose. And then he would let out these coughs that just sounded awful, usually accompanied by lots of crying and a fever.

It seemed like every day poor Nancy was shuttling someone to the doctor or hospital. She was so concerned about Peter one night that she called the doctor at 4am and they told her to bring him to the ER. She did and luckily everything was ok. The ER doctor said that Peter has a respiratory virus named RSV. He had never seen so many people with it before. Every room in the pediatric wing of the hospital was booked, mostly due to RSV.

During the height of our illnesses, I was supposed to go to New York for a 3 day business trip. Luckily they got a bunch of snow dumped on them and the trip was postponed until next month. I'm not sure how Nancy would have managed the sick kids by herself. Not that I was a huge help, but it made it easier for her to be able to leave one of the kids at home while she took the other one to the doctor.

And, on top of all this, our dog Rusty one night was experiencing discomfort and would not lay down. He would sit there panting in obvious discomfort and giving us sad looks. We were worried that it was symptomatic of something really bad. It made it a long night for both of us. I finally got him to lay down on the carpeted basement floor for a bit but soon he was back up and staring at me. Somehow we finally went to sleep. Fortunately, he felt much better the next day and now is back to his goofy self. We have no idea what it was but are really glad that it seems to be gone.

Now, thanks to Nancy, things are starting to return to normal. She somehow didn't get sick and took care of everyone but now she's exhausted! She's the only one of us that had received a flu shot and one of the nurses said the flu shot this year seems to be effective. So this may be a good year to get one.

Katie's fever is gone and she's back to her silly self. She's going to school tomorrow and is really excited that her Mom will be the co-op parent. Peter's cough has gotten better. We've been using a nebulizer on him to help relieve his congestion. It's kind of funny to see him smiling underneath a plastic mask with all this smoke (mist) pouring out of it. It looks like a scene from a Lewis Carroll book. It makes it even more surreal that the mask is shaped like a fish.

We've spent the last 2 weeks watching way too much television while we were recovering. This weekend we were determined to get out of the house. On Saturday I took Katie ice skating and today Nancy took her shopping and to an indoor playground.

I think the lesson we all learned is that the next time I get sick, I'm banished to the basement until I get better.