Two Year Old Room Transition

Will is on the move again. This week is his transition from the Toddlers room (15 months - 24 months) to the 2-3's room. He'll be in the 2 year old room to start and after about six months go to the 2/3 room. When they turn 3, they go to the Preschool room. Yes, he's only 21 months old. But, the Toddlers room is getting lots of younger kids, so he and two of his fellow 21/22 month old buddies are joining some of their older friends in the 2's room. Jason and I went in this morning and met one of his new teachers, Ms. Nanda. He also has one of his old teachers back, Ms. Mandi, which we're please about.

Changes will include:

• Pacifiers only at naptime; preferably never
• Drinking out of open cups; no sippy cup lid or straw
• Eating with "real" spoons instead of baby spoons
• Introduction to potty training

The younger twos play in the older twos room in the morning and right before close when both rooms have fewer kids. The two rooms are connected by a hallway with their bathrooms. I'll be curious to see if he shows much interest in potty training. He still doesn't talk about his diaper much, so I'm guessing we're several months away from any serious starting. But who knows the impact of peer pressure?

You want me to give up my pacifier and lids? Ha!

Top Chef

Will always wants me to hold him after work while I'm making dinner. It finally dawned on me that I should let him help me; so I pulled up one of the kitchen chairs and put him to work making pancakes. Best sous chef ever!

Bubble Bath

Will has learned the joys of bubble baths this week! We did the first one so there would be lots of suds to wet and loosen the surgical tape on his face that held the oxygen tube. Unfortunately, that still didn't budge them, so we later took them off with the assistance of some Vaseline. Only the right one had been removed before this bath.

We have a follow up appointment with the pediatrician tomorrow, but it feels like he's on the mend. We've continued to do the nebulizer treatments and he's coughing here and there, which should loosen up the stuff in his lungs. Except for the fact that we stayed inside most of the time, he was his normal self this weekend. I don't want to send him back to daycare too soon, but I'm guessing by mid-week he'll be ready.

We're Home!

Home from the hospital after 3 days and 2 nights. Will was taken off the oxygen around 7 a.m., and although his levels aren't as high as they'd like, he was getting a little too rowdy to be confined to a hospital room! And that's as good of a "symptom" of recovery as anything, so we were allowed to leave around 7 tonight. We're all going to enjoy sleeping in our own bed tonight. Well, except my mom, but pretty sure she'll take the guest room bed over that hospital chair!

We have to do nebulizer treatments and thump on his back and dispense an antibiotic at home for the next 3 days, and then we go back to the pediatrician for a check-in and further instructions. Fingers crossed but he was very tolerant of the breathing treatments as long as he was sucking on a pacifier and watching TV at the same time. They said it was fine to do the pacifier because it meant he was forced to inhale the vapors up his nose if his mouth was full.

Hospital

The unexplained fever has now been diagnosed as RSV and pneumonia. Boo!

We kept Will home from school on Monday due to the fever and split the day. On Tuesday, I went to work and Jason tried to take Will to daycare, but he got sent home after an hour, and they went to the pediatrician. The doctor heard him breathe and sent them to the ER after a nebulizer treatment that didn't help much. They called me at 5 to say they'd been admitted. We've all been in the hospital ever since, so that Will can be on oxygen. He's like an old man with the tube taped under his nose. The first day and night he was very lethargic, but today he's gotten a little ornery. He doesn't "seem" that sick since the oxygen is helping so much. But, he can't leave the hospital until he's been weaned off of it for a day. So, we may be in for a few more days.

My mom got here tonight, and she's going to help us by staying some at the hospital with him, too, and then helping watch him at home this weekend so we can catch up on all of our work that we've obviously just put on hold.

So, So Big!

Another picture of my little baby growing up and looking like a little boy. He really showed us what a little boy he is on Saturday when he just tore off through Little Monkey Bizness to do what he wanted to do and didn't really notice if Mama or Daddy were right behind him.

Yesterday Will stayed home sick from school due to a fever of unknown origin, so he missed his Valentine's party at school. I guess I didn't need to have made that last minute Friday night trip to the store for Valentines and stickers (instead of candy) to pass out. He's taking them today though.

We finally gave Will one more of his Christmas presents; a small Thomas the Train set that has three cars and a little wooden track. It was wrapped and under the tree, but he got so much new stuff from the grandparents that we didn't give it to him. It's been sitting on the bookshelf ever since. It was a nice distraction yesterday, but we'll call it his Valentine's present! Even though I'm not sure that's a gift giving holiday; and even though it was wrapped in Santa paper! :-)

Exersaucer Revisited

While rearranging the toys and furniture in the playroom for the old couch to be added, I stacked Will's exersaucer pieces on top of each other to get them out of my way. Usually they're connected into a figure eight race track an lay flat on the floor. Since it didn't have the connector legs to make it tall, he just hopped right into the seat and got to playing. I couldn't help but snap a few pictures, even though I realized it was an unsteady structure. Sure enough, he toppled out and hit his head against the wall before too long. That's right; I anticipated the issue but still failed to recognize the direction that he'd go and that there would be a wall there. Darn it! At least he had fun until that point; and the crying was short lived. We were off to another game in a matter of minutes.

Sleepy Boy

In addition to the unplanned purchases of a new faucet and a new Baby Einstein soother (see box above Will's head - apparently the fish get tired of swimming after 1,000 hours of night time playing), we recently purchased a new leather sofa and oversized chair for our family room. We moved the old, smaller sofa into Will's playroom (formerly known as the formal living room).

Will has no trouble scaling the ottoman and finding a place to sit in the chair. He also shared this chair with Jason all morning and me all evening, since he wasn't feeling well. Not sure yet what's wrong, but he's feverish and lethargic. He got up normal time but was cranky all morning. He barely ate his breakfast, didn't want lunch, and then took a 3 1/2 hour nap. He barely ate when he got up from the nap (at 4 p.m.) and just rested on me in the chair until 7 when he wanted to go back to his bed.

New Faucet

We had one more wrinkle to our Saturday morning besides being tired and cranky. Some piece on the inside of our kitchen faucet broke and the handle came off. It was still barely functional, but with a lot of manual effort to turn the water back off. So, Jason headed to Home Depot while I got Will his lunch and down for his nap. And then while I was at work, the guys did their magic!

I just found these pictures when I was downloading the blueberry pancake photos, so I don't know how much or little Will actually helped, but it's cute to think he was Daddy's assistant! See below for the Home Depot website picture of our Delta "Addison" faucet. Pretty, pretty!