Brooke and Calvin went to Kansas City this past weekend for a baby shower, so Meg and I were home on Saturday by ourselves. For once, Meg did a wonderful job of staying upstairs in her room playing after she woke up and didn’t come downstairs to wake up Daddy until 8:15 or so. Believe you me, this was great.
She comes into our room and points out the time, I ask her if she slept well, and we go through our usual morning routine. I then ask her whether she closed her bedroom door so that Sam doesn’t go in (as that’s where her fish resides and I’d prefer not to deal with a half-eaten fish). She says she closed her door, and Sam’s in Calvin’s room. She also said…
“There’s a bird in Calvin’s room.”
To which I replied…
“Uh huh…”
I turn on the TV for her, get her some cereal, proceed to check the internet to see what happened overnight. Nothing too crazy. But then she brings up the bird again.
“There’s a bird up in Calvin’s room.”
“Meg, there’s no bird in Calvin’s room. Please don’t make things up.”
“But there’s a bird in Calvin’s room.”
“Meg, lying is not okay. Please don’t make things up. It isn’t very nice.”
We continued with our morning. To help entertain her a bit, I grabbed a few games for the Kindle and she sat on my lap while I showed her how to play.
A bird flew from the dining room into the living room, landing on our window blinds.
“There’s a bird, Daddy.”
“…..”
Needless to say, I apologized to Meg for not believing her, followed by me locking Sam in our bedroom while I opened the kitchen door in order to convince the bird to kindly leave our home. Thankfully, it didn’t take long and he/she left without much of a fuss.
How did this bird get in the house? No idea. Our landlord poked around yesterday and couldn’t find anything obvious, either. Best we can tell is it came in through the basement somehow, and then during the night, made its way up to the main floor and then the top floor where, thankfully, Calvin wasn’t sleeping that night.
At the very least, I know to listen to my almost-4-year-old a bit more carefully when she makes wild claims. About birds being upstairs.
We had our first substantial run-in with sickness this past week. To some degree, it’s pretty impressive it took this long. Meg’s teachers had all commented how she’s the only student in her class of 20 that had not missed a day of school since it began last Fall. That isn’t to say she hasn’t had a runny nose or anything, but she certainly hasn’t run a fever. Even Brooke and I have both come through thus far unscathed, again, aside from the aforementioned runny nose or cough.
Traditionally, my immune system has been pretty great. I’ll come down with an affliction from time to time, but it seems to be pretty rare. If I recall, I’ve had a fever exactly once in the last 3 or 4 years, and it lasted for a few hours one afternoon. So far, it appears that Meg has taken after me, at least to a degree. She has certainly gotten sick before, but she’s around a lot of kids at her preschool (inside an elementary school…) and she hasn’t come down with anything (knock on wood).
But as I’ve written before, the Demon Baby Disease is one you don’t always see coming. And this past week, it struck the one person in this post I haven’t mentioned yet:
Calvin.
This presents a few additional difficulties compared with last time around. First of all, Meg was born in March, so by the time we hit the Winter cold and flu season, she was already 8-10 months old. Calvin turned 4 months last week. So, he hasn’t been exposed to nearly as much as Meg had at this stage in the year. Secondly, it’s a little bit easier to determine what’s wrong (i.e. “where does it hurt?”) in an 8-10 month old than it is in a 4 month old. Thirdly, we have a second child that has somewhere to be, let alone our schedules with our jobs and other engagements.
All we knew about Calvin is that he was fussy last Sunday. This was followed by a fever that started early Monday morning. Fever means “no school,” but thankfully, it was Martin Luther King Day, so Meg was off school anyway. I went in to work for awhile that morning while Brooke stayed home, as her son was having his first semi-serious illness. Dealing with a sick baby and a(n almost) 4 year old can be trying, for sure, but it was made worse by the weather on Tuesday, when they cancelled school…so Meg was out again. That day, I went in crazy early and left late morning so Brooke could go in that afternoon. Wednesday, Meg could go back to school, but Brooke had to teach that morning, so I loaded up Calvin, took Meg to school, and then brought him back home until Brooke could arrive so I could go in for a few hours.
During this whole time, Calvin had a fever and a productive cough that was getting more pronounced. The fever was kinda “on and off,” where it’d get better during the day, and then rear its ugly head overnight. Brooke was the trooper for most nights, staying upstairs with him as he’d only attempt to eat from her directly and wouldn’t take a bottle from me. Really, he wasn’t eating much at all, but he was drooling enough to suggest that he wasn’t dehydrated. She took him to an Urgent Care clinic on Monday evening and they said it was a virus of some kind, so he’d just have to work through it.
By Thursday, though, he’d had a fever for (effectively) 4 days, so Brooke took him to our pediatrician. He had also developed a very minor rash on his chest, still have a 102 F fever, and via chest x-ray, apparently had early signs of pneumonia. Great.
[That last bit we didn’t know until Friday after the radiologist had looked at the scans and talked with Calvin’s pediatrician].
On my way home Friday, I picked up some antibiotics to hopefully take care of pneumonia. If you didn’t know, there’s a viral form and a bacterial form, the latter of which is more common. If the antibiotics were effective, he’d have to have bacterial pneumonia.
Thankfully, that’s what he had. As of Saturday, he was almost back to normal. His sleeping schedule is still a little bit off and his eating is steadily improving, but importantly, he’s just acting like a happy baby again. No more constant and incessant moaning and whimpering. He still has a cough, but he doesn’t get nearly as mad about it anymore, and can lull himself back to sleep after he wakes up briefly. All in all, we’re mostly back to normal. Finally.
Nana and Papa came in to visit on Saturday, which was a big help for everyone. Some much-needed “distraction” for Meg and another set of arms to hold Calvin. All in all, a good visit and just in time to help Brooke and I re-adjust ourselves after a long week of half-days at work and half-nights of sleeping.
Let’s just hope this is the last time we deal with D.B.D. for 2014…
As Christmas fell in the middle of the week this year, our schedules were thrown into something of a tizzy. Christmas in Columbia with my family was the weekend before, we still traveled to Louisiana, MO to spend Christmas Eve with Brooke’s grandparents, we returned to St. Louis for Christmas morning so the kids could open presents under their own tree, and then we went to Hannibal for yet another Christmas celebration this weekend. That’s all with a second trip to Columbia for Meg and I between St. Louis and Hannibal destinations so I could see a few friends of mine from high school (good times had by all, by the way).
Needless to say, while the countless presents have been welcomed by our eldest, I’m sure the constant travel and disrupted sleep schedule has strained her. Still, in some ways, it helps us by having easy things to keep her occupied for days when she’d otherwise be making me play “sleepover” with her, or “hide and seek” (wherein she lays on the floor and considers this to be “hiding”…). It also helped all that traveling by having a new car to drive in…
Regardless, we had a pretty great trip. We received far too many presents, but that just goes to show how generous our two families are. Meg really enjoyed opening presents four times in a week, so getting to spread these things out over a longer period of time than usual was nice for her. Christmas just kept on coming!
Though I knew this phase of my life was coming, it’s starting to become even more evident that Christmas is becoming less and less “for me,” at least with regards to the “magic of Christmas.” I’m not talking about the religious aspect of the holiday, but more the shift from childhood to adulthood, where Christmas was such a big deal for a large portion of my early life. It still is, but now, it’s more of a big deal for my kids than it is for me. I still love Christmas, don’t get me wrong, but it’s beginning to take on a new meaning: where it’s now my job to make Christmas magical for my kids rather than make it enjoyable for myself. I hope that doesn’t sound “bah humbug”-ish, and maybe it’s just something I need to try and work on for next year, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.
Still, watching Meg open her presents (and Calvin in the coming years…he was kinda useless at opening things this year…) was enough “magic” for me. It wasn’t the same, watching someone else open presents as opposed to me opening presents, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be as meaningful. It certainly was this year.
Calvin Andrew Linsenbardt (or “Cal,” as he will be called) was born on Monday, September 23rd at 3:54 am. He was 7 lbs, 13 oz and 21-1/4″ tall.
Compared with Meg, this delivery was remarkably easier! We had to induce Meg at 10 days post-due date to get her out, so the delivery was very difficult for Brooke and took a good 3-4 hrs of pushing. This time, Brooke was able to do it without induction (though still got the epidural) and only ended up pushing for 9 whole minutes. Craziness.
Regardless, Calvin is doing well and Mom and Baby are resting at the hospital (while I rest at home with Meg, who needs to go to school tomorrow). As I will likely get the better night’s sleep, I suspect it’ll be my duty to entertain him tomorrow while Brooke gets a bit of rest.
Happy to help, of course. He’s cute like his big sister. 🙂
So almost a year ago, we started looking into applying for the magnet school program here in St. Louis. As the St. Louis Public School System isn’t exactly the best in the area (they just achieved state accreditation again, after 5 years without it), we were wary of considering that option for Meg’s education, but the magnet schools are accredited individually and all feed in to each other: once you get into one of them, you stay in the system, and your siblings are grand-fathered in. Once you turn 3, you can enter into a lottery for a limited number of slots at various schools across the city.
To be honest, the whole process was a bit difficult to navigate, as the web sites for each school are separate from one another, each with their own procedures, etc. Still, Brooke took care of the application to the magnet program and we entered Meg in the lottery. She ended up getting in on the first try, getting one of 24 spots at her school, Mullanphy Investigative Learning Center. This school is located near the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, which is about 10-15 min from our house, and halfway between our house and Washington University, where I work. It also happens to be a “science-oriented” school, so believe you me, I’m all for it.
Anyway, Meg has been pretty apprehensive about this. For the past few weeks, she’s had trouble being left at her old school in the mornings, as she could tell things were changing pretty soon. She liked her old daycare quite a bit and had friends there, so it’s understandable that, even at age 3, she’d be pretty worried about starting in a new place with new people. Still, we continued to bring it up so she’d be constantly reminded the change was coming. We went and met her new teachers last week twice, so she was at least introduced to these new people she’d be seeing every day.
Monday was still pretty difficult, though. To be fair, after I left her there, everything was fine and her teachers said she did a great job, raising her hand to ask questions, laying on her mat at nap time, etc. But the act of actually leaving her there was the most difficult part. Let’s just say there was a good deal of screaming and hyperventilating to deal with that morning. The past few days, things have improved somewhat, though there are still quite a few tears as I leave in the mornings. I’ve gotten a bit better about breaking away quickly, rather than lingering too long, allowing her to keep me there. After a few weeks, I’m sure things will get better, but for now, it’s still pretty tough.
At the very least, I hope this school ends up making life easier once we get to Kindergarten. This way, it won’t be nearly as much of a shift for her, as she’s essentially attending elementary school now, two years early (the preschool is housed in the elementary school, though the different age groups are separated for lunch time, recess, etc.). She’s getting used to the routine, the set times for activities, the different subjects, and most of all, the yearly change in teachers and classmates. She’d been at the same daycare with many of the same teachers and the same kids since we moved here, so while there was obviously some turn-over, much of the experience remained the same. This new school will be much more like “the real thing,” so hopefully that helps her transition even better each year.
But it’s hard to watch how quickly she’s growing up! In some ways, I don’t think my 3-year-old should be wearing a school uniform, wearing a backpack, and taking her lunch to school already.
Brooke wanted to go on a little vacation this year, but wanted to go a bit early in the summer to avoid being far away from home when she’s closer to her due date. She was also thinking this would be a good time to take Meg to “see the ocean” and experience a beach, as we likely won’t be going very far next year with a newborn.
Thus, she looked into a few options and we decided to head down toward Biloxi, MS, a place neither of us had been to before, but close to the ocean (or “gulf,” technically). This was a relatively short trip, as we spent two days driving, and two full days actually at our destination.
We got up last week on Wednesday morning relatively early, leaving just after 6:00 am. We expected a 9+ hr drive, based on Google Maps, most of which would be a straight shot down I-55 towards New Orleans, cutting off on US-49 at Jackson, MS. Unfortunately, Google didn’t understand that US-49 is filled with small towns and stoplights, so our 9+ hr trip became an 11 hr trip…grrrr… Meg stayed entertained for most of the trip, with an assortment of books, stickers, and movies, and thankfully was able to sleep for a few hours that afternoon. In total, the trip down really wasn’t all that bad, despite the traffic lights.
Technically, we stayed in Ocean Springs, which sits northeast of Biloxi. Our hotel was maybe 10-15 min from the nearest public beach, so we checked it out Wednesday night. After a long day in the car, though, we grabbed a bite to eat at a local restaurant and headed back to the hotel to go to sleep (even I was asleep by 9:30…).
Fillin’ my bucket…
The next day, we drove to Gulfport, where we boarded a ferry to Ship Island, part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. After an hour (and a brief dolphin sighting), we crossed the island to the Gulf of Mexico side, where Meg played in the sand for 4 hours. The high was in the low 80s that day and, while it was quite comfortable out on the beach in a swimsuit, it wasn’t quite warm enough to get into the water. Then again, as Meg can’t swim yet, we probably wouldn’t have been out there much, anyway. Still, she had a good time dipping her toes in and letting the waves chase her.
There was also a Civil War-era structure, Fort Massachusetts, to see. It’s amazing that building has survived so many hurricanes. There were displays of pictures showing how buried everything got during Hurricane Katrina, suggesting it was quite an undertaking to restore it yet again. Still, it was an interesting bit of history to see while on the island.
Fort Massachusetts
After we were done at the beach, we went back to the hotel for a few hours. Meg fell asleep in the car on the way back, and then fell asleep again on her bed once we got back to the hotel. Once we finally convinced her to get up, we went to a good seafood restaurant in Gulfport and filled up on plenty of fried fish. Pretty sure I ate enough to never eat again.
The next day was rainy, so we didn’t do all that much. We still took some time, between showers, to hit the other portion of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, closer to the bayous. This was your typical national park visitor center-type exhibit, complete with a video describing the history of the area, and some child-friendly activities. The bayous were cool to see, but we didn’t observe much wildlife. We had a good time getting Meg to help us search for alligators, though.
By Saturday, it was time to leave. As we weren’t about to try and take US-49 again, we looked at the alternative route to I-55 by way of I-10…and as that route takes us right by New Orleans, we opted to stop in for breakfast at Café du Monde for beignets, and Central Grocery for muffulettas. I was just in New Orleans for the annual Society of Neuroscience meeting in 2012, but Brooke hadn’t been there since our honeymoon back in 2005 (pre-Katrina). As expected, everything was wonderful!
The rest of the ride home was mostly uneventful, though the amount of time in the car and the constant proximity with her parents had finally worn on Meg. This was a looooooooong 11 hr drive home…but, we survived. 🙂
It was a good trip overall! A nice little excursion for a few days, seeing new places and having new experiences. Though Meg likely won’t remember this particular trip, we can at least point to the seashells in her fish bowl and say “you found those down in Mississippi when you were three.”
It took me a few seconds for me to understand what Meg was saying, and then translate those words into a song I knew (“Liquid,” by Jars of Clay). It frequently takes me awhile to grasp her requests for songs, but I picked up on this one somewhat quickly. I had to ask Brooke about this later and she said they hadn’t listened to that song recently. To our knowledge, the last time Meg heard it was when we were playing it just prior to the Good Friday service at church, when we last played it. And that was March 29th.
It isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I’m reminded of another song she wanted to sing a month or two ago when we were in Hannibal, “Forever Reign” (though she recited the first few lines as “You are dead, you are dead, you are nothing to me…” For the record, those aren’t the correct lyrics.).
Meg’s pretty good at remembering random things from a long time ago, especially things you didn’t think she was paying attention to. Thankfully, she appears to grasp music better than other details, which hopefully means she will be at least as good as I am at just “picking up” a song and playing it. We’ll just have to make sure she focuses on sight-reading a bit more than I did.
At the same time, if you ask her what she did at school that say, all she’ll tell you is “I don’t know.” Clearly she knows, but for some reason, doesn’t want to tell you. We’re working on this, too.
Still, at times like last night, I have to wonder how her little mind is working…
Brooke’s pregnant again! No idea what the gender is yet (boyboyboyboyboyboyboy…), but the due date is September 21st, 2013 and all is well with Mom and baby.
Well, maybe not with “Mom,” as much. She’s taken to a bit more “morning sickness” (read: all day sickness) than she did when she was pregnant with Meg, but hopefully as the first trimester draws to a close, that’ll start to subside a bit.
Still, we’re excited to add to the family! And Meg’s excited to be a Big Sister. 🙂
Meg is three today! I thought it would be nice to put up the “comparison shot” just to show how much she’s grown in the past 3 years. I can still see some similarities in the two pictures (especially in the nose), but she’s pretty different now!
We had some folks over for a birthday party on Saturday – a “Fiesta”-themed party this year. Meg is very much into Dora The Explorer, so while we didn’t want to specifically theme it around that bastion of consumerism, we still wanted to make it center on her interests. That, and a “fiesta” theme work swell for margaritas and Mexican beer.
Brooke devised an activity for the kids to do (we had 3 other toddlers in the house that day, among 20 people in total…full house!!) where the kids went “on an adventure” (like in a Dora episode…), going “over the lake,” then “up the ‘stair’ mountain,” then “dancing,” then finally to a box of “treasure” including maracas and stickers for them to all play with. We also had sombreros available for the kids (and certain adults).
Overall, a good party for her, methinks! She doesn’t quite get that her birthday party wasn’t on her actual birthday yet, but we’ll get there. Spreading it all out over a few days is likely a bit confusing, as she probably thought she was now three on Saturday instead of today. Oh well.
Still, Meg got a dollhouse this morning, opened a few more small things, and we’ll go out to Uncle Bill’s Pancakes tonight for dinner – that girl loves her pancakes. 🙂
On our second day of vacation at Interstate State Park, we opted to give hiking a try. Again, this is one of those things where it’s difficult to know how well, exactly, Meg will do on an extended hiking trip, but we figured it was something to do besides playing with rocks. As a baby shower gift, we received this huge child backpack doohickey that fits much like a frame backpack and can carry children up to 50 lbs (supposedly…though how you carry that much, I dunno…). Regardless, we tested the rig out a few weeks prior to see how Meg would take to it and she seemed pretty cool with the idea of riding in a saddle on Mama and Daddy’s respective backs.
In the end, she did remarkably well! She asked to get down a few times, but not all that often. She liked removing my hat and putting it on her head, but for the most part, she was entertained just sitting in the pack and looking at our surroundings. She sang a bit to pass the time, too, which is always amusing (except at 4:30 am).
Taking a rain break at a local community center.
One of the songs Meg particularly enjoyed singing was “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” as we ended up getting caught in a reasonably heavy bout of rain. Most of the hike, it was just a drizzle, but right around the point we were to be out in the open, about halfway through the ~4 mi trek, the heavens opened up a bit more. Thankfully, the trail ended at an empty community center in Taylor Falls, MN, so we took a brief respite while the rain clouds passed overhead. It was a good time to introduce Meg to trail mix (which she loves now…) and let her walk around a bit before continuing on.
This, my friends, is a "pothole."
The trail passed by an area with some interesting geological formations known as glacial potholes. The Minnesota DNR has a video up describing them if you’re interested. While you’d be right to think of potholes on the road when you think of these things, in reality, they refer to formations in volcanic rock (basalt) where rivers fed by glacial runoff slowly drilled down in a vortex fashion, making deep holes in the river bed. As the glaciers receded, the potholes were exposed, leaving us with formations like those pictured here.
Looking up through the bottom of one
The potholes truly came in all shapes and sizes. There were deep craters, some filled with water, and other areas that were more open after sections had collapsed over the millenia. Because some had collapsed in on themselves, visitors are able to safely get down into the area and look up from the bottoms of some without needing a ladder to gain access. The sides of the potholes were very smooth, indicative of water slowly scraping away the rough edges of the rock as it bored down.
The area reminded us of Elephant Rocks, a state park here in Missouri that neither of us have visited in years. We’ll probably try to get down there in the next year or so, now.
Making Mimimi her breakfast...
The rest of the hike back to camp was uneventful. Really, the rest of the day was uneventful, with us laying in the tent trying to get Meg to take a nap (she didn’t…but Brooke did…grrrr…). The rain held off for the rest of the day, which was very nice for ensuring the tent would be packed up dry the next morning.
But before I get to that, I thought I should briefly describe what was going on in the picture above. Recently, we found out that Meg has an imaginary friend named “Mimimi.” When we were visiting the potholes, Meg took it upon herself to walk back and forth on this walkway to her kitchen to make Mimimi her breakfast. She’d tell Brooke and me to stay back while she walked toward the rock-formed archway, where she made some hand gestures, and then came back and delivered the imaginary cereal to her imaginary friend.
Things like this occurred for most of the trip to Minnesota. I just thought I’d mention it here for posterity, so we can remind her of it when we meet her first boyfriend. 😉
Regardless, Day Two was fun. A 4 mi hike was definitely lengthy, especially with a 25 lb child on your back, but we had a good time, got some exercise, and got to see some cool stuff. Well worth it!
