Drew's First Feaver

I arrived at Drew's day care on Friday to find my son just not himself. Not only did he just look tired, he also had to be held so he could rest his head on my shoulder. He had been that way for an hour or so, but didn't have a feaver and seemed to be teething hardcore. Within another hour, his temperature spiked up to 101.7. Tylenol brought it down overnight, and we spent almost all of Saturday keeping the feaver down and letting him lounge all over us. He perked up in the afternoon, acting more like himself. We thought we were out of the woods until he woke up early that night and hurled (mostly all over himself, but Momma got nailed with a few stray spits). He was fine after that, except for some lingering Momma-clinginess yesterday and a bit of an odd behavior with his right ear, which we'll be monitoring and will bring him in to the doc if he's still doing it this afternoon.

Mark and I did very well with Drew's first illness. There was no panicing, no rushing to the emergency room, none of that stuff. There was confusion as to why he got sick this time when he's not in direct contact with anyone who's ill as compared to a month ago when Mark and I were sick as were several of the kids at day care. And, of course, there was a strong desire on both our parts to snap our fingers and make our little guy feel A-OK. Taking care of him this weekend made it very clear just how active and independent the Drew Monster is ordinarily. I guess it was something I took for granted.

The weekend was definitely more exhausting than usual. And it was significantly less chipper as we were lucky to get only a couple of Drew's smiles and missed out on his amazing belly laughs. I never take those for granted--I always seek those out as often as I can to carry with me--but I hadn't realized just how much missing those abundant laughs and grins would bring me down. I find myself staring at the picture of his whole-face smile more often than usual.

This does not bode well for my psyche during the gloomy teenage years.