It's about the Festivus Festival

Another weekend, another festival.  It was a crazy end to last week.  My brother bought a house (Wahoo! Congrats!) and my parents sold a house (Wahoo! Congrats!) and Gavin survived his bout with RSV.  I took off Thursday afternoon with Q in tow to help my brother move, which puts the moving score at about 12:1.  I guess I'm fortunate he doesn't like to move as often as I.  His new home, all the walls pink on the inside, didn't have stairs so that made moving easy but it made you really non aggressive.  One might say passive.  I think the Iowa football team may be on to something (visiting football locker room is all pink including the toilets, walls, lockers and carpet).  I think the next day he was going to paint it Badger red for football season.  Atta boy!

Gavin is doing much better and is back to his old self.  He's still on meds and hacking a bit but sleeping fairly well.  He was so babied during his tough seven days that we are weening him back to falling asleep by himself so he's having middle of the night fits.  I'm solo parenting next week as the wife is heading to San Fran for a business trip.  She's a baller.  Entertainment for my conferences - dumpy tavern around the corner. 

Her?  She's got tickets to Metallica.  Ya, Metallica.  Really?  We've been practicing her mosh pit skills to make sure she properly fits in.  I'm sure she'll survive.  At any rate Daddy needs him to be sleeping through the night or it's going to be a long week.

He's ultra mobile at this point.  He's full fledged crawling and gets in bear mode all the time where he has his hands on the floor but is on his flat feet. I take this as a sign he wants to walk but can't figure out how to get his top half vertical. He can pull himself up and is officially standing so it won't be long before we have a walker.  I am predicting 6-8 weeks which would put him right around 1.  October 13th is his birthday.  Wow.  Time is flying by these days.

Quinny and I got some nice bonding as we continue the festival tour.  When in Lake Geneva to help with moving, the 49th Annual Jaycee's sponsored Venetian Festival was going on.  I don't think I have attended since high school so it was fun to be on the parenting end of the event. The entire 4 hour drive Quinny was repeating about a million times, "Dad I want to go to the CornBestibal.  Yup, we'll go tomorrow buddy.  Dad, I want to go to the CornBestibal.  Yup, buddy, we're definitely going to check that out tomorrow.  Dad, I want to go to the CornBestibal."  Dude!  Nowhere near as cheap as Cornfest 2011, though. I was dropping $20 bills in 30 minute intervals to go on the kiddie rides.  I mean it was $5/ride for the kids!  That's approximately $1 every 15 seconds.  Yikes.  Corn, our abundant supply of corn, was going for $2.  Wowsers.  I need to get in the commodity market.  I kept reminding myself it's all about Quinny's happiness.  Seriously, how many years are you going to ride the strawberries with your ultra-manly son?  I did run into an old classmate that I hadn't seen in probably 10 years with his two girls, wife and parents in tow.  His wife was an aeronautical engineer, as in way out of my buddy's league. Ha!  Oh, how time does fly.  My mom was able to join us as well and after riding all the rides Quinny played on the playground near by for probably an hour.  Hmmm, maybe should've started there and we could have saved a few bucks.  We finished the night by riding the ferris wheel, a first for both of us and were rewarded with some beautiful sunset views of Lake Geneva.  He hit the balloon ride, plane ride, strawberries again, carousel again and the aforementioned ferris wheel.  The kid does enjoy a good ride.  And I enjoyed visiting with the carnies.  Such pleasant folk.

 

This weekend we are doing a last hurrah at the river.  We probably don't have too many more weekends and the Stinks gets to come and enjoy the great outdoors with us. We'll head up to Prairie Du Chien on the big muddy Friday afternoon.  And speaking of Stinks he got a modeling gig this week.  We entered him into a cutest pet contest and it sounds like we are dominating the voting.  $65 in gift certificates are on the line.  The old dog needs a new bed so if he's a winner he'll be sleeping on a bed again.  Here is the pic we submitted.  Cheers!

Gavin Update

Oh man!  Our little guy is really in rough shape.  He made it to the doctor still sporting a 101+ fever and it was not good news.  He has a double ear infection and was diagnosed with RSV.  Yikes.  RSV is not cool and takes a long time to get rid of, up to 3 weeks.  You can read more about it here.  It's rare to have it in the summer time so they tested him on a whim and were surprised to find out he had it.  It sounds like one other baby in his class was extremely ill over the weekend as well.  We'll call that kid patient 0.  Wash your hands once in a while dirtball!  Geez, my kid is practically dying.  I know he'll tough it out because he's such a nice baby with his good natured disposition but it's going to be several more long nights and probably a couple more days home from school. We're not sure how much sleep or work is going to be getting accomplished. 

They recommended we see an ENT to explore the options of putting tubes in.  This kid always has perfect timing.  I figure by the time we get an appointment for the consultation and get the procedure scheduled, well, let's just say it's unlikely to happen.  These kids sure do keep it interesting.  On top of that he lost weight since the last time he was in there, which was about a month ago.  Obviously, that's not a good sign either.  I'm sure with some meds he'll gain his appetite back and start getting his strength back.

Last night he was vomiting more and kept that up this morning.  He's on both antibiotics for his ears and on breathing treatments for his lungs.  He can't cough hard enough to break up the mucous in his lungs so the treatments help him do that.  He's having a tough time keeping food down so dehydration is a concern.  Carrie spent some time with the nurse so she knows what to look out for.  They said he probably won't turn the corner for about 7 days.  Saturday would be day 1 so we have probably until the rest of the week.  Hopefully Care and baby can make it.  It's exhausting and almost like reverting back to newborn status where you're at Gavin's mercy for when you can catch some Z's.

On a more positive note we received his 9 month pictures in the mail. I posted a couple here but Carrie can get you copies of whatever you would like or pass on the proofs electronically if you're interested in ordering some.

Rough Night saved by Corn Fest

Welcome back blog readers.  We have so much to catch up on after such a busy summer.  Last night was like going back in time to when we only had Quentin to deal with but he didn't sleep a wink.  It was discovered after a long day with little napping happening for either boys that Gavin was sporting 104 degree temperature.  We were planning on going to the Sweet Corn Festival (oh, Iowa!) but since neither of the boys took even an hour long nap I could see the crabby map on the wall and saw numerous public tantrums and didn't want to go down that path.  We hoped we could squeeze it in on Sunday.  Turns out Gavin was having a tough time sleeping because he was sick as a dog. His screaming led to big brother not being able to get to sleep and the afternoon adventure was in full swing.

We had our typical long, tear-filled afternoon when the boys don't get a robust nap filled with, "Dad I burned my hand touching the hot grill," touching the hot pan the cookies came out of the oven for the newly moved in next door neighbors (oh Iowa!) and my play lawnmower attacked me and smoked me in the chin.  We literally ran out of ice packs.  When is bed time!?  We finally got Quinny tucked in without much fanfare, after all the Brewers had a late afternoon national game (national! - they are so going to the World Series.  You know they haven't won a pennant since 1982 and made the playoffs exactly once since then as a wild card team in 2008) and that game was immediately followed by the first pre-season Packer game.  Boys, oh boys, can't you throw me a solid on a such a sporting afternoon?  What happened to the Sundays of, "Go Pack Go!"?

Carrie and I got little sleep with Gavin trying to navigate his way through his fever.  He was burning up, which put us on edge and was having such a tough time.  We were giving him ibuprofen and Tylenol, which helped bring his temperature down to the 101-102 range but all day today he was still sporting it.  He was still eating pretty well and wasn't dehydrated.  We can't really find any other symptoms.  By the time we were getting ready to put everyone to bed tonight he was feeling a little better but not much so he'll shuffle of to the doctor's office tomorrow.  He just made it to 10 months and we're pretty sure he's been to the doctor's every month.  I think it's just daycare.  It's been so hot that the kids don't go outside for recess so they've been trapped inside most of the summer.  They get stuck inside all winter and then it's too hot in summer to go outside?  This is bizzaro world! I don't get that but then again I'm not running a daycare center.

He's in full motion these days crawling all over the place.  He's still mostly pulling himself around army style but can prop up on his knees and crawl in the traditional sense if he wants.  He's able to sit up and down now and has begun pulling himself up.  The other night he woke up and I went in there to give him his bah and he was standing, much to my astonishment.  It freaked me out a little.  I think we may need to lower the crib again. He's entered the realm of table food as well so he's trying new foods on a regular basis.  We haven't found anything he doesn't like but we haven't given him too much either.  We're taking it slow but he's well on his way to walking, talking and eating. 

Since Gavin was sick we didn't think it a good idea to bring him to Corn Fest 2011 so Q and I went on the adventure together.  All morning long Quinny kept saying, "Dad we're going to the cornfield right?  Dad, I want to go to the cornfield!  When are we leaving for the cornfield?"  It's funny when he gets mixed up.  It's crazy to go back just a few months on video and hear what he was saying.  In just that short time his vocabulary is larger and enunciation is so much clearer.  He's growing up big time.  He and I straight up dominated the fair.  The Corn Fest is totally set up for little kids under 10.  The thing is super cheap (free parking, free to get in, $1 for an ice cream cone, corn on the cob for $.50, brats for $3, rides for a $1, games for $.25) so we did everything.  Deep breath - we rode the ladybugs, bumper boats, spinning strawberries, rocket ship, and the swings.  He won tic-tac-toe, played the ring toss game, played the launch a frog onto the lily pad game and finished it off by winning the catch a fish game.  And of course Quinny ate a ton of food.  He had an icee, a brat, a hot dog, a bag of popcorn and finished the day off with an ice cream cone.  It was good fun but we missed the other half of the fam.  Best of all it was a tantrum free day.  Hooray!  We're very much focused on listening these days so it was nice to hang out with such a good listener.  Enjoy the pics!