life in a northern town: October 2012

I've been finding myself thinking back to life a year ago the past few weeks...while I'm very thankful to be getting more sleep these days compared to this time last year, I can't believe how life hasn't slowed down, not even a little. It for sure is a different busy...instead of feeding and waking every 2 hours, I'm chasing around my little monster who is constantly on the go and into EVERYTHING! He is so naughty and is constantly testing us. He purposely goes to the places in the house he knows is off limits...and he stands there and grins and laughs at you as you chase after him and tell him "no". It is SO freaking hard not to laugh, he is just too darn cute and smart for his own good...yet the second we laugh, it turns into a game.

The past few weeks, he has started to throw "mini" temper tantrums (you will see it on film in the pictures below). Although they are usually short lived and he can easily be distracted...I know the full blown, I-want-to-crawl-in-a-hole-and-die public tantrums are just around the corner. I can hardly wait for those.

Two weeks, daycare was closed for Columbus Day and I took the day off. Mason and I had a great day together...we snuggled and read books on the couch, ran to Target and then met up with Joe for lunch. However around 2pm that day, Mason started to cry for no reason. He was drooling like crazy and chewing his hands, so I gave him some tylenol to help with the teething pain I thought he was having. However, as the night continued, he started to run a low grade fever, was super fussy and cried every time we laid him down. I ended up spending the night in the chair with him so he could sleep. So Joe took him in Tuesday morning, we were convinced he had an ear infection...he was showing all of his symptoms he's had before. The ears were good but he was diagnosed with sinusitis. The recommended treatment was amoxicillin. We had previously avoided anything with the amoxicillin/penicillin family, due to Joe's severe allergy to them. But we had been reassured by several doctors and allergists that this allergy has not been proven to be heredity. So we tried it.

The medication worked great, Mason was almost 100% within in a day or two. However, around lunch time on day 9 (they take the medicine twice a day, for 10 days), I got a call from daycare. Mason woke up from his 1.5 hour nap (which is unheard of for him) with a rash covering his face and stomach/back. I couldn't leave work that day, so Joe picked him up and took him to the doctor. She gave him some Benadryl and we stopped the medicine immediately. The rash continued to disappear and reappear over the next few days but it has cleared now. We are to avoid amoxicillin until he is able to speak and tell us when he's not feeling well...however, we plan to avoid everything in that family until we've exhausted all the other antibiotic options and have no other choice...why risk it? I'm just thankful we had the reaction we did and not the severe reaction Joe had as a small boy and nearly died. Joe has made it 31 years without the drug...I don't see why Mason can't do the same.

On Saturday, Joe headed north to put his tree stand up and I stayed home with Mason. We got my errands done and we hanging out at home when Mason took off towards his toy shelfs and lost his balance, right in front of the tv stand. He fell forward, hitting his head on the knob. I've never heard him cry so hard and it immediately brused and puffed out. I was really freaked out about it and Joe was about 15 minutes from home when it happened. We decided to go into urgent care...I needed reassurance everything was okay and I didn't need to worry every time he fell asleep. If it wasn't so close to the eyes and hadn't immediately ballooned, I wouldn't have been so concerned. Urgent care was very slow, so we got right in and everything was fine. Just a really good bump. I'm so thankful he hit where he did, we got so lucky!

On Sunday, after the Viking game, we headed to the pumpkin patch. Mason was in a mood and wanted nothing to do with pictures...but we made the best of the situation and still had a good time.