Moms & Dads Don't Get Sick

Moms and Dads don't get sick. Or at least they don't get sick days. I don't remember my parents ever even having a cold until I was in high school. In retrospect there is no way that is possible, but either they must have hid it like champs or I was totally oblivious. Probably the latter. Ian and I had our first experience at being 'sick' with Evan this past week.  Sick is not in quotation marks because our maladies were minor, but because we did not get to act sick.

Prior to Evan, being sick meant maybe taking a day off work, and definitely snoozing as much as possible when home and trying to treat ourselves well by taking all the homeopathic remedies we could think of. Not so much this time.  It all started with me coming down with mastitis, a common infection for new moms.  I should have picked up on it sooner, but I thought the backache and tiredness was from carrying around my 10 pound companion all the time.  Then I woke up with a 102 fever, chills and dizziness.  So, I called into my doc and got set up to take some antibiotics.  Pre-baby, I would have then grabbed some green tea and vitamin c and plopped back into bed to wait until my prescription was ready.  This morning, however, I had this cute face cooing at me, asking for morning playtime:

Super smiles!

Pretty hard to resist.  Given that Ian had stayed up half the night before trying to get Evan to sleep and had to work that day, a tag team morning was not going to happen.  I wrapped myself up in a blanket and put the baby jungle gym next to me on the couch and tried not to hold Evan when a dizzy spell hit.

Playtime!!

After an hour or so Evan happily took a nap while I scrounged up some oj - the closest thing to a homeopathic remedy that I could find that morning.  A few minutes later, Evan was ready to eat again (right as I was finally going to lay down for a nap) and so we did feed time.  Rinse, wash and repeat. The day continued surprisingly similarly to all the other days when I was not sick.  The only major difference was that I had a big ratty blanket wrapped around me. Ian stepped up his game when he got back from CU (with the antibiotics in tow), and we stumbled through the next day. Then tragedy hit.  Ian started with a scratchy throat, which quickly became nonstop sneezing.  We tried to delude ourselves that it was just allergies, but we had to concede it was a cold when we looked up the active allergen count in Denver and there was literally nothing registered.  Both of us were down for the count, and Ian's cold was something that Evan could catch.

It was a tough few days, but we made it.  Evan was smiley and sweet the whole time so maybe he didn't even notice a difference. The best thing was that Evan didn't catch Ian's cold.  In fact, that is probably the biggest change of all - the most important thing during the whole ordeal was to make sure that Evan was ok and not getting sick. Just like everyone told us, the focus has completely shifted from 'me' or 'us' to him. While I miss the downtime that I used to afford myself, especially when sick, it's totally worth it. I guess we are ready to join the troops of Moms and Dads who no longer get sick.

Our sweet guy putting up with us being sick.

One Month Old Photo Op!

Evan is one month old! I cannot believe that we are at a date that you could count as a meaningless anniversary for a high school couple. Evan gave Ian and I a present even better than any sliver charm bracelet from the mall - he slept for 7 hours in a row! I doubt this will be a reoccurring event, but it gave us hope that there is a future where regularly occurring REM sleep is achievable.  To celebrate we took cheesy pictures of Evan that I hope come out to embarrass him on his wedding day:

And of course there were a few times that Evan conscientiously objected to the pose we selected for him:

The actual day itself went quite well - starting with tummy time and concluding with a birthday bath that Evan did not pee in. For all non-parent readers, this is a big deal.  In fact, we have started doing a 'pre-bath' with Evan in a medium sized plastic bin filled with warm water so that he can happily pee himself and we can quickly throw that water out and dump him into the actual bathtub where we can clean him sans any bodily fluids.  I have not yet taken any pictures of this ritual since I am not sure who it embarrasses more, me (for washing my child in Tupperware) or him (for enjoying urinating himself in Tupperware).  I did snap a few adorable shots of him and Ian with the shark towel.

I can't believe how much he has grown in just one month!

Eat, Poop, Sleep

Eat, poop and sleep.  Everyone has said that these three things are what we would be focused on for the first few weeks. As Ian observed, we thought that these tenants of babydom only applied to the newborn, but really it's how all three of us make it through the day. Evan has become very talented at all three tenants (especially poop), while Ian and I seem to be unable to attain the last one, sleep.

Evan showing off his mad sleeping skills.

The sleep thing  does not bother me as much, however, as the inability to do anything other than the three tenants of babydom. There are 24 useable hours in a day.  I am now awake for most of them.  How then, is it impossible for me to manage a shower, walk outside and preparation of a meal during the day? These are things I did regularly pre-baby along with working a 9+ hour day! On the days that we do a bath for Evan, all chances of both Ian and I getting a shower in are totally out the window.

Good excuse for a cute bath time pic!

Somehow, we are (somewhat smelly-ly) making it. Ian is managing to teach his classes and I have not gone out of my mind yet. We have also arrived close to on time for every pediatrician visit so far. This is a particularly impressive feat since there are approximately a million visits you have to do in the first month.

At the pediatrician in his bear suit.

That said we love our pediatrician and visiting him. Not only because he looks like Jeff Goldblum circa 1994, but also because every visit we bring our list of "oh crap this happens, does that make us bad parents??" and get affirmed that no, as of yet we have not screwed Evan up to the point of being considered bad parents.

Our pediatrician. He is also good at hunting dinosaurs and aliens.

All in all it is going pretty well. We are all figuring out how we work in our new routine (or lack thereof) and having fun as we watch our little guy grow.

Another excuse for a cute baby pic!