On Wednesday of last week, things were great. Lemon was feeling good, the cold/allergies that were bothering him and Lime had largely cleared up, and we had an awesome visit at the CF clinic. Just look at this growth chart, people--this guy is in the 78th percentile for BMI. All our struggles with the tube feedings have paid off. His lungs sounded great, we made our appointment for a follow-up in 3 months, and we were out of there. 
Wednesday night, we got the first glimpse of a new character in our family's little drama, a beast I will refer to as Something Sudden. Because although Lemon was fine on Wednesday during the day, by the evening he had a bit of a cough, then he threw up during the night, then on Thursday during the day he began coughing more and more, and became increasingly miserable and feverish. By 5pm, we decided to chuck our "wait 5 days before calling for antibiotics" care plan straight out the window and got on the phone with the clinic. That evening, I ran (literally) to Walgreens to pick up a two week supply of levofloxacin, and we got the first dose into him through the tube while he was asleep on Thursday night. 
It took a good 24 hours, but things began to improve slowly but surely. The fever is gone now, but the cough is not. It is definitely better, but we are by no means at baseline and are keeping up with 3 treatments a day for the time being. I'm guessing we're going to be doing levofloxacin for a month here in an effort to turn Something Sudden into Something of the Past. And I can't help but think that this month is still only September. But, I'm not going to dwell on it. We'll do our extra treatments and get through this two week course and see where we are.
In other news, we had a dear friend from Boston come to visit us this weekend. I would say this is the first time in his life that Lemon really understood the full implications of having a visitor (ie someone who has new games to play, reads the same old books in a different way, inspires boring parents to leave the house and do some new activities, etc). He soaked it up, Lime followed his lead, and we all had a great time.
Last but not least, our house is now blue. As has been seared into the memory of those of you who have seen it in person, our house came to us in a sort of pink/peach color reminiscent of slightly faded salmon mousse, with fuchsia accents and black shutters. No longer! It is now "festoon aqua." I will post a few before and after pictures next week, when everything is done, but you can get a sneak preview in the background of one of the shots below...
