Thus far, our fall and winter has been kind of like the experience of being on a small boat at sea. You get buffeted by a wave, then the wave disappears. Is it calm, or is it a trough between waves? Trough. Another wave comes and goes. Calm? Nope, another trough. Another wave, calm again. Or so it seems. Trough after all. Having played a few rounds, I'm pretty confident that the answer is pretty much always trough. Some troughs may be wider than others, just to kind of mix it up, but they are all troughs in the end.
Some may say that I jinxed our last pseudo-calm by noting how calm it was. Not so. In fact, at the time that I wrote last week's post, Lime was already beginning to cough and sneeze as a result of cold #307 that was about to make its way through our family. But, I wanted to dwell for a little while longer on that flat stretch of water. As it turns out, #307 was quite a doozy. Lime was perky enough on Tuesday morning, so I brought him to school as usual. When I picked him up, though, he was in a sorry state of affairs and his teacher said to me, "Maybe not tomorrow." So, I arranged for our former nanny to come and watch him on Wednesday morning. Of course, by Tuesday night, Lemon was coughing too, and since I had childcare arranged at home anyhow I let him stay home, too. I might point out this is the first day of school he has missed this year--quite an achievement on his part.
On Thursday, both guys were feeling pretty lousy so I kept them both home again, but on Friday they both seemed quite improved so back to school they went. Lime continued to recover, whereas Lemon's recovery sort of stalled, and he continued to look really pale. I mean even paler than usual. In spite of his color and the cough he seemed sprightly enough until yesterday morning, when the cough took a marked turn for the worse--with Lime's cough almost completely gone, Lemon's was suddenly big, wet, and productive. I did not like the sound of that at all, and Papa Bear and I agreed immediately that it was time to start Cayston again. That was definitely the right call, because 24 hours in to the course of Cayston, Lemon's cough has nearly dried up and he seems to be feeling quite a bit better. Hopefully this means we can get away with just doing 2 weeks this time.
For the past couple of months I've been wanting to teach Lemon to swallow pills, since everyone has been getting pretty tired of the whole enzymes with applesauce show. But, with all the puking there hasn't been a good opportunity--the last thing I want is for him to draw a connection between that and swallowing pills. He also hasn't seemed that interested, in spite of not wanting to do the applesauce anymore. But, this evening, he spontaneously mentioned to me that he wants to learn to take pills whole. So, that seems hopeful, and will give us something fun to work on over the holidays. Don't worry, in addition to learning pill swallowing, Grandma and Grandpa are coming to visit and we are going to a water park, so there will be some more traditional fun as well!
