So it's been a few days, and my first big absence from this blog. It came as a result of our son's first real illness. I guess on Wednesday Oma said she thought he was a little warm, but he seemed to be playing normally, so I didn't notice anything. Thursday morning he woke up regularly and went down for his nap a little early, but I didn't really think anything of it. I still didn't when he woke up as soon as I put him down. He wasn't sleeping too soundly, so I just figured that I would hold him for a while so that he'd nap. I was in the basement, so I was worried about him being too cold, so I kept checking his hands, which were warm. By this time, I should have figured it out, but I didn't. It wasn't until he was eating after taking the nap (a long-two-hours) on my lap. Stephanie called and asked if he had a temperature. I checked it and he definitely did. He got up as high as 102.7 degrees in fact. I ended up just holding him and having him nap as much as possible all day. We gave him tylenol and tried to get him to rest. He slept a lot, but every time we did get him to sleep in his crib, you could feel the heat from his body when you picked him up. Stephanie was on the phone to the nurse line, and Diana came over for a while when I went to the Stars Soccer Supporters meeting.

The meeting was relatively uneventful, but more on that later, when the things that need doing (and I agreed to do) come up.

When I came home, we planned for me to just sit in the recliner downstairs and have Nathaniel sleep on my lap all night. We set me up with my laptop, the PS2, and a movie all ready to go if I needed them. His fever finally broke around 2:30, though, so I was able to lay him in his crib from then until about 5:30, when he woke up for the morning. We'd planned for Oma and Opa to take him for a few hours (before a doctors appointment, if he needed one) but those few hours allowed me to sleep enough that we decided against packing him into the car.

Then, he seemed to be feeling pretty good in the morning. He hadn't had another dose of tylenol since the early morning, and he was playing in the living room just fine. But only for a little while. In less than 20 minutes, he was feeling warm and getting clingy again. Even so, we decided to wait a bit to see about the doctor. Later, with his temp still going up when not on the tylenol, we decided to go in to the doctor, who made a special appointment to see him (her only patient of the day) just to be certain there wasn't an ear infection or something. She checked his ears and no infection! But she warned us that he might develop one, because with fevers and colds and such the inflammation of the ear can cause an infection. We're watching it, but he seems to be feeling better, and doesn't show signs of an infection at the moment.

He started seeming to feel better, but not fully himself over the weekend, but both Stephanie and I ended up with illnesses. I actually had a fever of 100.3--the first fever I can remember having in years. Both of us have been coughing up a storm, Stephanie has had a sore throat for days and I've been hacking up really thick mucus. We spent an absolutely beautiful weekend in doors recovering.

Today Nathaniel went to Oma and Opa's again so that I didn't have to worry about still being worn out, and so I managed to get the floors cleaned in the kitchen and bathroom, and to clean the garbage can lid, which was dirtier than I realized. I also got a lot of laundry done, so hopefully heading into tomorrow Nathaniel will be back to his playful self, and we can spend the day playing, exploring, and maybe take a walk.