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This weekend we moved every piece of furniture in the two upstairs bedrooms (not the master fortunately).  Ethan has his new big boy bed in his room as well as the rest of his big boy furniture.  I think it was more stressful on his parents than it has been on him!  He has done pretty well, sleeping at night has been the easy part.  Nap times have been more difficult.  Nap time yesterday was nonexistent, it just consisted of him wandering around the room, playing with things, pulling clothes out of drawers, and not doing a bit of sleeping.  Today’s nap time started out the same, but did result in a nap (that is currently still happening) though we will have to have a time of cleaning up his room after he gets up.  The nice part of moving him was that it was so exhausting that I didn’t really have much time to be emotional.  And I still haven’t had the time as we’ve been fighting to get him to bed, stay under the covers once he is there, and rearrange the baby’s room.  You should see my house, it’s a disaster area!  I take that back, I don’t want anyone to see it right now!    It won’t be long now until we’ll need to put the crib to use again.

It was a rough evening yesterday.  Ethan started with a small cough Sunday night which gradually progressed to him having a hard time breathing after his nap yesterday.  We debated over dinner and decided to play it safe and have him evaluated by the good docs at Children’s Hospital last night, and we’re both glad we did.  They built a brand new satellite campus facility literally just up the road so we went there after dinner and stayed through breakfast.  He has croup which causes a narrowing of the trachea and airways in his lungs and makes it hard to breathe.  They started with doing 2 epinephrine treatments through a mask, which Ethan did not like at all.  Those helped, but not enough to stop his stridor so he was admitted for the night around 11 pm.  Stridor is a whistling sound during inhalation made when the trachea is markedly narrowed by inflammation, and his was loud.  They won’t let you go home with this since it means your airway is compromised and you may not be able to get enough oxygen.  So he was admitted and we spent the night.  Ryan and I shared a couch bed, which wasn’t too bad but would have been better if I wasn’t 7 months pregnant.    We were up most of the night listening to the monitors and the oxygen, poor Ethan slept ok but was really freaked out by the sensor on his toe and all the beeping.  It was so sad to hear his hoarse, scared little voice asking for daddy over and over, even if daddy was right there holding him.  I think the hardest part was watching him be scared because he had no idea why all these people kept messing with him.  He’s such a sweet little guy and listening to him cry just reaches down to the deepest parts of you.  Anyway, he was discharged this morning after his stridor subsided and oxygen numbers looked better.  He’s done really well today at home in spite of being really tired.  He took two long naps and was still ready for bed by 6, poor guy!  So now we just have to keep an eye on him and hopefully we won’t have to go back.  It was our first, and hopefully last, experience staying overnight in the hospital for an illness.  He probably would have been fine if we’d stayed home, but neither one of us would be able to forgive ourselves if he wasn’t, and seeing those O2 numbers in the 80s reassured me that we’d made the right call.  It was a night to remember, and one I’d rather never repeat.

A few months ago I started wondering when I was supposed to teach Ethan how to eat with utensils rather than just his fingers and how in the world I was supposed to do that.  Ryan and I had tried to teach him how to use a spoon a few times at dinner when whatever we were eating had a lower disaster potential but hadn’t really tried all that hard.  And honestly, I mostly forgot about it and really didn’t want to deal with the mess anyway.  But when Ethan’s grandparents were here over Christmas, they usually got him up in the morning to let us sleep a little longer and to have some play time with him since he’s usually up before we are anyway.  And so they let him use a spoon to eat his breakfast, usually cereal with yogurt, and I found that he liked it and was surprisingly good at it.  So from that point on, he’s used his own spoon to eat his food and I don’t have to worry about feeding him myself anymore.  One of his favorite meals is “sauce and cerole” meaning applesauce and cereal.  Of course, he makes a huge mess sometimes (most of the time really) but it’s nice to not have to sit and feed him, I can actually eat my own meal.  He does a great job, he loves using a spoon and can even eat soup with it.  He gets really mad if you try to feed him now, he’s a big boy and can do it himself!  He will pick things up off his tray with his fingers and put them into his bowl just so he can use his spoon to eat them, which has made for some pretty interesting combinations (think peaches in lentil soup).  Sometimes it’s nice to have a decision taken out of your hands, especially one you don’t know how to make, and I’m just glad this was decided for me.  Now, that doesn’t mean I want more decisions taken away from me though… 

Ethan had a lot of fun at our Super Bowl party yesterday.  I don’t think he watched even a minute of the game.  We had lots of friends over and lots of kids, some younger and some older than him.  I know I’ve said before that he loves big kids, but he really does.  He was enthralled by them and watched their every move.  For now it’s ok since most of the kids are pretty well behaved, but I hope he learns a little more discernment as he gets older and chooses wisely who to emulate.  I think he went up and down the stairs about 20 times and played with every car in the basement.  Older kids have a way of teaching sharing through the school of hard knocks so maybe he did learn something.  Of course, I had to remind them that he really doesn’t have much of an idea of how to share yet so they had to give him a bit of a break, but kids also have a sense of fairness that doesn’t allow much wiggle room for age.  It was a lot of fun hanging out with our friends, eating a lot of food, watching a (little bit of a) good game and watching Ethan interact with kids both older and younger than him.  It’s fun to see where he’s been and a glimpse of where he’s going all at the same time.