Mostly about Finn and germs with a side of quirky neighbor
I might be able to blog a little more often if we could go a day or two around here without someone being sick. I was coming down with something by the time I came back from Illinois last Sunday, and the "something" was a respiratory bug which caused a sudden asthma flare and some inflammation that brought back my long-absent sleep apnea. I saw my primary care doc, who was very very concerned as I guess asthma can get really bad, like emergency room bad, really fast during pregnancy. So she put me on an inhaled steroid AND sent me to a pulmonologist who will help me manage the apnea for the rest of the pregnancy (because the extra pregnancy weight really makes it likely to stick around at this point. Same thing happened when I was pregnant with Finn so I'm really not surprised).
When I was just starting to recover from my bug, Hans got it and was out of commission for the end of the week. We had plans to visit his parents/sisters/cousins in Minneapolis over the weekend and go to the zoo on Friday, and I was ABSOLUTELY NOT going to skip out on the plans even though I wasn't totally better and I knew he would probably wind up staying home, which is exactly what happened. But really, walking around the zoo and watching Finn play with his cousins and grandparents was not that much more strenuous than what I would do at home to keep him occupied, and he got a lot out of it, and I had a pleasant time too, so I was glad I went.
Sunday night Finn had a weird episode of nighttime crying, which I posted about to P101 in desperation in the middle of the night. Even P101 was not full of advice about the situation, so I guess it really was weird. He cried a lot in his sleep last night too. I am a little worried about it.
Two days ago Finn got pegged in the face with a toy, and had a tiny scratch on his cheek under his right eye. Yesterday, I noticed that eye was weeping goop more and more throughout the day. Today, it was stuck shut when he woke up this morning, and looked red and puffy, plus the other eye was starting to weep. So I made an appointment for him with an opthamologist to see if he had a scratch or an infection. Well, half an hour before I took him to the eye doctor, he complained of an "owie in his mouth" and I looked in his mouth and there were a ton of little red dots at the back of his mouth/top of his throat. So it was no huge surprise when the opthamologist said his eyes are fine and what's coming out of his eyes is the equivalent of a snotty nose, just in a different place. If he's worse tomorrow, I'm supposed to bring him to the pediatrician, but with chances being it's a virus I hope I won't need to bring him in. On the other hand, I just googled it and Mayo says it's a symptom of strep throat, so maybe better safe than sorry if he's not doing well in the morning. A round of strep throat would be pretty special right now, and by "special" I mean "might send us over the edge".
And now I need to tell you about my neighbors. We've only met the neighbors that live on either side of us. On one side is a nice single lady named Kara. She's trying to sell the house so she can buy a duplex as an investment, so we don't know how long she'll be around, but no one is even looking at the house so chances are she'll be around for a while. On the other side is a nice older couple named Harry and Robin. They have two kids who live with them, a daughter who just graduated from something, high school or college, not sure which, but she looks older than high school to me; and a son named Ryan who I think has graduated from HS but isn't in college. He is straight out of an indie movie. He is a really nice kid, but very quirky in his conversational style. He told Hans once that he is working on a screenplay which he hopes to send to Disney so they will give him a college scholarship. He swoops around on a ten-speed bike in long jeans, red Converse, flannel shirts, and a trenchcoat even when the temperature is in the eighties or higher; and sometimes he can be seen breaking up household objects with a sledgehammer in the backyard. Today I stepped out the back door to drop something in the recycling bin and I heard a bloodcurdling scream, and looked up to see him running across his yard with an axe. He spent the next twenty minutes or so yelling and busting up random junk with the axe. Even when he is startling me with an axe, I have to say, I really like this kid.
When I was just starting to recover from my bug, Hans got it and was out of commission for the end of the week. We had plans to visit his parents/sisters/cousins in Minneapolis over the weekend and go to the zoo on Friday, and I was ABSOLUTELY NOT going to skip out on the plans even though I wasn't totally better and I knew he would probably wind up staying home, which is exactly what happened. But really, walking around the zoo and watching Finn play with his cousins and grandparents was not that much more strenuous than what I would do at home to keep him occupied, and he got a lot out of it, and I had a pleasant time too, so I was glad I went.
Sunday night Finn had a weird episode of nighttime crying, which I posted about to P101 in desperation in the middle of the night. Even P101 was not full of advice about the situation, so I guess it really was weird. He cried a lot in his sleep last night too. I am a little worried about it.
Two days ago Finn got pegged in the face with a toy, and had a tiny scratch on his cheek under his right eye. Yesterday, I noticed that eye was weeping goop more and more throughout the day. Today, it was stuck shut when he woke up this morning, and looked red and puffy, plus the other eye was starting to weep. So I made an appointment for him with an opthamologist to see if he had a scratch or an infection. Well, half an hour before I took him to the eye doctor, he complained of an "owie in his mouth" and I looked in his mouth and there were a ton of little red dots at the back of his mouth/top of his throat. So it was no huge surprise when the opthamologist said his eyes are fine and what's coming out of his eyes is the equivalent of a snotty nose, just in a different place. If he's worse tomorrow, I'm supposed to bring him to the pediatrician, but with chances being it's a virus I hope I won't need to bring him in. On the other hand, I just googled it and Mayo says it's a symptom of strep throat, so maybe better safe than sorry if he's not doing well in the morning. A round of strep throat would be pretty special right now, and by "special" I mean "might send us over the edge".
And now I need to tell you about my neighbors. We've only met the neighbors that live on either side of us. On one side is a nice single lady named Kara. She's trying to sell the house so she can buy a duplex as an investment, so we don't know how long she'll be around, but no one is even looking at the house so chances are she'll be around for a while. On the other side is a nice older couple named Harry and Robin. They have two kids who live with them, a daughter who just graduated from something, high school or college, not sure which, but she looks older than high school to me; and a son named Ryan who I think has graduated from HS but isn't in college. He is straight out of an indie movie. He is a really nice kid, but very quirky in his conversational style. He told Hans once that he is working on a screenplay which he hopes to send to Disney so they will give him a college scholarship. He swoops around on a ten-speed bike in long jeans, red Converse, flannel shirts, and a trenchcoat even when the temperature is in the eighties or higher; and sometimes he can be seen breaking up household objects with a sledgehammer in the backyard. Today I stepped out the back door to drop something in the recycling bin and I heard a bloodcurdling scream, and looked up to see him running across his yard with an axe. He spent the next twenty minutes or so yelling and busting up random junk with the axe. Even when he is startling me with an axe, I have to say, I really like this kid.