EPT
I seem to only want to blog on TL after I've got through or am going through some period of hardship. I'm not sure what draws me or anyone else to do this, but I suppose it is therapeutic in many ways. At least this time I'm in a good enough mood to tack on something a little less depressing near the end. And it's been a while since my last baby blog. I dunno if can still refer to these as baby blogs now...maybe kid blog?
My final year of school is in full swing. I'm in clinic each and every day from 8-10 hours or so. It's really tough but really rewarding---I've gotten a hell of a lot more experience over the past month than I have in probably the entire year before this. The problem is and always seems to be illness.
In the couple weeks before I started the year, my son had (in no particular order, because I forget what the order was) vomiting episodes, bacterial conjunctivitis (pinkeye), fevers, diarrhea, a cold, pinkeye again, and some sort of bronchial infection. These were all consecutive over basically a one month period that unfortunately extended into the beginning of my 4th year internship. Now why is he constantly getting sick? Are we horrible parents who are not attending to his needs? Narp. That's just what daycare does. In the first few years of life kids will attract any and all viruses to themselves and since their immune systems are pretty new they don't have the ability to simply fight off infection before symptoms arise the same way that adults can---they have to build up immunity by being infected over and over with many different illnesses (this is the very abridged and simple version---don't get on my case here, TL experts, I used to major in immunology). The issue becomes that the daycare won't take him for the day if he has anything particularly communicable or potentially harmful, namely the pinkeye or the fevers (above 100 degrees). Now since my wife and I both work we really depend on the daycare to...um...care for the guy during the day when we can't, but since he was getting these illnesses so often we had to each miss some time in order to help him get better. When I miss a day I have to make it up at some point in the future. My wife can take sick/vacation days but it kinda sucks to take them for that reason. Essentially that month was pretty damn miserable for all of us. The guy wasn't eating properly, he wasn't sleeping, he was just so upset and sick almost all the time...it sucked. Almost all parents have to deal with this sort of thing, it's real common, but it SUCKS.
Finally finally, a couple of weeks ago, light broke forth. After my wife took 2 days off before a weekend to drive him into our home town to bring him to the doctor (he missed two sets of vaccinations during this period because they won't vaccinate when he's ill) and a couple of trips to the emergency clinic here when his cough got slightly scary bad (they put him on puffers which finally worked), he was finally our happy, talkative, HUNGRY little guy again. Now while he got better I was still fighting off some sinus and bronchial thing of my own. I finally gave in myself after hacking and coughing all over my paediatrics rotation (I feel like the parents may not have been particularly pleased) and got some puffers myself after popping Advil Cold and Sinus like Smarties. Finally all of the illness in our house appeared to be vanquished, and I managed to get through without missing too many days to be made up. Little did I know the worst was yet to come.
Right as I started to get better re: the coughing, I started to have other issues. Dreaded issues I am familiar with but haven't experienced in full force for a very long time. Silly me thinking I was in the clear or something. Without delving into too much detail, for those of you who have read into TotalBiscuit's semi-recent issues, imagine all of the symptoms he talks about, minus the cancer (thank goodness. And best wishes and a speedy recovery to TB and his family. You can beat it!). Essentially it steadily worsened up until late last week and this week I was being prevented from functioning properly in school/clinic to a point that I thought I'd have to take a leave of absence and extend my program past the time it's supposed to end which causes a whole mess of logistical issues involving graduation, board certifications, and living area.
I'd been sort of hoping things would go away on their own as I had had a few scares in the past few years that never reached this level that did go away, but this time didn't appear to be the same. I wasn't able to function at school OR at home and was dumping a lot of the responsibility on my wife. I managed to get some time off and headed to my GI doctor which I'd sorta been dreading as I didn't know what solutions would be available to me (we'd previously exhausted all but very few, which have pretty serious side effects over an extended period of time. This kind of thing is alluded to in my earliest freakout blog I think, though I'm still reluctant to go into more detail). I saw him, we talked, and I was offered something old alongside something new, essentially trying to minimize the side effects while maximizing the effectiveness. Well I woke up this morning feeling and doing way better than I had been in weeks. That shit works FAST. There is definite hope for me finishing my program on time and getting better in the short term. I don't know exactly what it means long term as to how it's going to continue to impact my life as I go forward into the professional world, but I suppose I can't concern myself with such things now. I have a career to finish preparing for, and a family to support (well, once I finish school that is).
Today's been the best day in quite a while. We decided since it was really nice out, and I was feeling pretty good, we'd put together the little tricycle that my brother- and sister-in-law got us (we bought the same one in purple for my niece) and take the guy for a ride.
Now let me backtrack for a second. When it comes to baby paraphernalia, my wife is the expert---that is to say for the most part I genuinely have no fucking clue what to get. She does all the research into what brand is best and why and what offers the most utility. She'll present the options, we'll have a discussion, and we'll choose. Normally it works out pretty well. When it came time to discuss getting him a tricycle of some sort, the same discussion happened, except my wife and her sister had apparently already basically made the decision. She shows me this monstrosity:
![[image loading]](http://truecouponing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Little-Tikes-4-11.jpg)
Look at this thing. Just fucking look at it. The first thing that pops into my head is that car that Homer Simpson
designs in the super old episode with Danny DeVito. In any case, it turns out apparent this is the new 'style' or some shit---it starts kids getting used to these things early and they can start working with the pedals and learning to control it themselves from a much earlier age than with a regular tricycle. I give in (not that I really seemed to have much of a choice this time).
We sit the guy down in his tricycle, put his hat and sunglasses on (and he KEEPS them on...holy shit!) and we take him on a walk. As we approach the park behind our apartment I can't help but feel like the other young parents are judging me both for this ridiculous eyesore of a tricycle, and the fact that I possibly appear to be a young university student with a 30-year old wife taking care of a small child for some reason....but back to the tricycle. The stupid thing keeps hitting something and stopping every so often, and the guy keeps sliding off to one side of the seat even though he's strapped in. Turns out, his legs are too long for the damn thing. We set the thing to 'stage 2' when putting it together---for 12 month olds. It allows the parents to steer the trike with a little handle in the back. Now he's almost 18mo. already but we figured since 'stage 3' requires him to put his feet on the pedals and actually attempt to do something with them, we may be going a little advanced since he's never done anything of the sort before. Our niece hasn't had any problems with it even though she's older 'cause she's a tiny little thing and can use the built in footrests that we had to retract. We tried to walk to 7-11 with it to get slushies but after about 2 minutes of obsessively watching my son's feet to make sure we didn't break his ankle every time he put his feet on the ground as we pushed him, we gave up. The damn thing is just sitting in my front hall now where the stroller used to be. No idea how long it's going to take before we can use this thing properly (ie when he learns to use the pedals).
So for people still wondering about the title:
They say that you get a good estimate of how tall a child will be by taking his or her height at 2 years of age and multiplying by two. My son is 3 feet tall and he is just over 17 months old.
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Pe4p1gY.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JT9Eak1.jpg?1)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/e5AcNrt.jpg?1)
I'm breaking my rule about not posting pictures of my kid on the internet---I haven't really broken it since he was born. I figure it's been long enough and it certainly hasn't stopped my wife from doing so why the hell not? I'm proud of the guy, I love him, and I shouldn't be embarrassed to brag every once in a while even though the target audience here may be off by just a tad.
