Oskar is the Only One Who Doesn't Like Amoxicillin

Warning: This message is not for the squeamish. Heck, it may not be for anyone because it is exceptionally gross but I need to stay awake for a while yet, so here we go. If you plan on having children, it might be worth a read. If you already have children, you probably won't find it unbearable. If you voluntarily chose not to have children, this is probably one of the reasons why. If you want children and for one reason or another don't have any, I know my complaints are trivial. Here is a video of Oskar in a happy, part healthy state. It is tiny again, but if you click the box in the lower right hand corner it will make it bigger. Resolution is not great.

Coming to you live, from the middle of the night, this is an exhausted mother dealing with an incredibly sick chomper.

It all started on Tuesday. I picked Oskar up from daycare and was informed that he pooped twice that afternoon and that it was probably part of the teething that we are going through. Okay, cool, we know how to deal with poops. In the next 36 hours, his output increased about 12x normal. I'll spare you the details, but it wasn't a great 36 hours. Then, tadaa! He was healed, left with just a little runny nose. Boogers are fun too by the way, not at all something that makes me gag when I have to remove green and yellow globs from my son's face when he wakes up and literally pull strings of boogers out of his nose. The runny nose continues with gusto through Friday and into the evening. Dan was busy so Oskar and I spent Friday night outside relaxing and playing, it was quite pleasant. The evening took a quick turn. Oskar took a bath and finished up and we have been doing this thing where we barrel roll him in a towel from the bathroom to the living room. He LOVES it and he has the heartiest little giggle when we do this. We did one roll and he whimpered a bit, so I picked him up and carried him to the living room to dry off, get diaped and put on pajamas. I usually give him milk at this point to help him wind down but he didn't really take to it. He had a weird burp so I sat him up. I think it was a burp where he threw up a little bit in his mouth. He tried to swallow it again and really struggled with it, and who can blame him? See, my little boy was blessed with his mama's gag reflex. This is not to say “Hooray! Good job Oskar you handled the situation well and now it is over!” This is exactly where it all went to hell.

5 minutes before my doom. Just like Vesuvius, no one saw it coming.

The next minute (felt like 5) was exactly like a vomit fountain. I’m thinking about 3 cups total. Where did it land you ask? Well, I could see that my little guy wasn't feeling the best so he I had him sitting on my lap, facing me while I was patting his back. So I had vomit completely covering my shirt, exercise skirt- pretty much the only vomit that landed on the floor dripped off of me. Oskar hasn't really been sick before. A cold here and there, but before this, besides gagging on a grape I don't even remember him spitting up as a baby. This steady stream of vomit gave him a bit of a fright. No, wait, he was absolutely terrified. He’s crying. Vociferously. A cry that I have never heard before. Usually a mother’s role in this situation would be to give a comforting hug. This mother was literally covered in vomit. Hot, chunky, vomit. Vomit covered mama can’t comfort terrified baby. Mama feels helpless and in a state of shock starts crying and says, “I don’t know what to do...” It is not often that I don’t know what to do. I usually have a solution. Well I came up with one, but it was neither graceful nor dignified.

Sleeping at the doctor's office.

Dan answered my phone call and came home very quickly to help out. Another bath, a shower and a fever followed. His fever was pretty high so we called our nurse hotline on Saturday and they told us to take him in. We took him into urgent care and learned that he was in the beginning stages of an ear infection. We picked up the delicious pink medicine and came home with a pretty happy baby. Had a nap, he woke up with a fever of 103.9. Through all this he isn't eating or drinking much, so that's petty comforting. Talk to nurse friends, wait an hour and the acetaminophen finally kicks in and it comes back down. Crazy, happy, jumping, singing baby. Went to sleep like normal. I went to check his temp after the 4 hour period of acetaminophen: 106.7. I freak out a bit, but try to stay calm. I pick up my baby, bring him out to the living room to try more readings. 103.7 was the most consistent one I think. Oskar had flipped his head over and had made his forehead superficially warm for the first one. More acetaminophen and restless sleeping.

He hasn't been sleeping in his bed well, he prefers the ground next to me, and me on  the couch.

He did better on Sunday. Still feverish at times, but I think we are on the upswing. Still not eating or drinking a lot. And the dude hates amoxicillin. WHAT? That is insane. The next 9 days of getting him to take this stuff twice a day will be awesome. 

On to more exciting things! I have completed some projects. The bedroom remodel is complete. I still need some things on the walls, a mirror, and a couple other things, but it I think it is looking pretty good.

Before

Now

I also re-finished the table and chairs that Oskar got from Dan's parents for his room.

Kind of before- I had already started sanding. Oskar helped.

Kind of before- Shown with the first coat of stain.

I need to stop taking pictures at night.  

I hope for the next post to be less gross. Sorry, again if it was too much information. Thanks for tuning in!

Oskar and Dorisa go to the Cabin

Wow. Three weeks since my last post. I apologize for neglecting my friends.

As you can tell from the lack of posts, we have been keeping pretty busy around here. We bought some rocks! It actually was very exciting- they were landscaping rocks for around our flowers in the front yard. We have most of them in place now and I think we are going to edge them with old railroad ties. Once it is all finished I will post a picture. Our flowers aren't doing great. We went and talked to the people at the garden center about them and we think they got to wet when it rained a bunch over the last week. We were told to deadhead them and let them dry out. This is tricky because it is raining again today. By the way, I didn't know about this deadheading business. There is a large sticky note in my brain to avoid getting any more plants that need to be deadheaded.

The bedroom has been painted for a while now and i am FINALLY finishing up painting the windows today. Between the humidity and the bumps on the walls, the tape isn't holding on too well, so I will need to do a bit of touching up but at least it's getting closer to done. I was wondering why whoever painted our windows before us did such a crappy job. Now I know. It is because painting the windows sucks. So so much. A work light would help I'm sure, but it is just ridiculous how much time it takes to do what looks to be so little. Plus I'm pretty convinced we will need to find some money and get new windows someday, so it's hard to put in a lot of effort on it.

'New windows? Aren't you getting a little crazy with the home improvement?' You ask. Well, here is the story of our windows. They are original to the house (1956) and they are actually quite cool. They each have a number plaque on them and they have corresponding winter windows and screens that you can snap in. It's a neat little system. The trouble is that a fair number of them don't open. At all. All the neat in the world hardly makes up for a lack of function when concerning windows. The previous owners said that the house stayed plenty warm in the winter, but I'm thinking that the windows probably aren't the most efficient things either. And yes, I am crazy about the home improvement. Have we met?

Bald Eagle friends!

My job is going well, Dan's job is going well AND we had ANOTHER friend come and visit us a couple weeks ago! In 2 months in South Dakota we have reached the number of friends who visited while we were in Alaska! It is fun when people visit.

I promise he doesn't wear this shirt every day. We apparently
just happen to take pictures of him every time he has it on.

Last Wednesday, Oskar and I drove 312 miles to the cabin. Dan stayed home to go to work and do chores. It is supposed to be a 5 hour drive on highways. It took us a bit longer but we never stopped and my little Chomper was a perfect little baby the entire way. And yes, there was a bit of a pee explosion in Oskar's car seat that required some attention when we got there. Oskar had a great time playing on the beach and in the water. He also got to fish with grandpa and drive grandpa's boat, which apparently was exhausting because he fell asleep on the boat and slept for about 2.5 hours. It was great. The trip back didn't go quite as smoothly as the trip up. Off and on torrential down pours mixed with stop and go traffic pretty much from Pequot Lakes to St. Cloud. We got out in Spicer to eat and stretch but Oskar was still a little whiny toward the end. In his defense, so was I. He does a hilarious thing now where if you look back at him in his car seat he makes faces at you and does a funny little giggle. We also played this fascinating game of 'Hi' for about 10 minutes.