Playing with Frogs

This week, Max discovered a new game and it’s been quite amusing. He has a little boat with a miniature Elmo and Ernie for deck hands, and he loves to play with it in the bath. It came with a small dingy (heh heh) and up until this week, that’s all it’s been.

Now it’s a breeding ground for small froggies.

He gets the boat filled with water, then reaches in to it. When he lifts his hands out, the thumbs of both hands are pressed against their respective forefingers. He then shouts, “Frogs!” or “Froggies!” and hands them to me. I cup them in my hand saying soothing things like, “Hello Froggie, how are you today?” Then I snap my head back hard, acting like the Froggie just punched the crap out of me. My hands flail about as the Froggie facilitates his escape from my clutches. Max and I shout for Froggie to come back, but by that point he’s halfway to Cabo. Sometimes I even catch the Froggie and hand it back to Max, who opens his mouth wide and acts like he eats it.

Good times, these. I love seeing his little imagination develop and even the smallest of games are ones My Fair Lady and I encourage. He’s past two now and his brain is running a mile a minute from the moment he wakes up. I don’t know when or if he’ll ever lose that energy, but if it happens it will be very far in the future. He’s going to look back on his childhood and smile if we have anything to say about it.

That is until he starts to think about the times he was sick, like this most recent instance. It’s been a brutal couple of weeks due to day care. He enjoys the heck out of it but being surrounded by viral carrier monkeys all day every day will test even the strongest of immune systems. This latest bug started as a head cold before gradually revealing its true nature as something far more insidious.

It sapped his energy, then filled his head with total congestion followed by a raging cough and a scorching fever. And for good measure it threw in a minor ear infection. In short, Little Man was nine kinds of screwed. I took him to the doctor and received word that we should try out a breathing machine on him to see if that worked. We also were given an antibiotic. Fast forward several days later and I’ve got it, because sharing is caring don’tcha know, and he wasn’t showing any sign of improvement. To make matters worse, his eyes started filling with junk to the point where they were sealed shut by morning. It’s great fun as a parent to wake up to a screaming child who physically can’t open their eyes.

We returned to the doctor who wisely prescribed an even stronger antibiotic along with some eye drops.

Two days later his fever broke and he started feeling much better. By Friday, he was running around the house playing with his Tootsie (my mother who graciously watched him all week). But the even better news was with the weather as awesome as it was this weekend, we were able to get out and enjoy it without hacking up our lungs. He enjoys running around the yard, especially with his play structure in the back. Whenever he slides down it he always says, “wheeee.” It’s not a shout or anything, more like a statement of fact which makes it even funnier and cuter when he does it. Which pretty much sums up most everything he does now.

Yup, I’m kinda glad we have him.

"Where are you off to?" "Work."

Recently, little Max decided he needed to go to work. So he picked up a pool floatie that conveniently came with a strap, put it over his shoulder, turned to us and said “Bye bye” then walked out the back door to the car. When he got there, he turned to me and said, “Open!” In between fits of laughter, I was able to unlock the car door and open it for him. He climbed up in the driver seat, and waved good bye to us. My Fair Lady and I could barely stop laughing at the sheer cuteness.

It appears that we’ve hit yet another turning point. Now he knows how to go to work and by God if it’s good enough for Mommy and Daddy, then it’s good enough for him! We let him play in the car for a while and it was amusing to here him scream “WORK!!!” when we rang the dinner bell an hour later.

Apparently he’s also ready to eat on the go, but that’s a skill I’ll teach him another day.

-------------

This week saw the beginning of a new phase in our lives – Daycare. With My Fair Lady finally going back to work, we had a short window in which to track down a quality daycare. Fortunately, we found a strong one near our house that I can hit en route to the office. The ultimate plan is for her to work 7-4 while I do 8:30-5:30 so I can drop him off and she’ll pick him up. We did a half-ish day for his first time out since I had the day off. It went as well as could be expected when we first arrived – he burst into tears and wailed at me to come back.

I actually did have to come back an hour later for the initial parent orientation which neither of us had had time for up to that point. While there, I checked in on him and there was nary a tear to be seen. He was focused on coloring and did a bang up job at it too. When I picked him up, he was all smiles and ready to go but he did hug his teacher and another little boy on the way out the door. It was a man hug, just so we’re clear.

In the hallway I asked him if he had fun that day. He replied, “School fun.” The second day he walked right in without any tears, sat down for breakfast, and was promptly served a pop tart and an orange. No complaints from the little man, no complaints from Big Daddy.