It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks in the Scrivner household, not only because of the holidays but mostly because of Grant's first illness.
A week before Thanksgiving, we noticed that Grant was not acting like himself and had an elevated temperature (though not a fever). Shannon took him to our pediatrician who said that he had a little fluid in his right ear but that it was not red or inflamed. She said that as long as he was sleeping alright, still eating, and didn't have a temperature above 101, it was likely just a cold and would need to run its course. That night and the next morning he still was a little stuffy but seemed better, so Shannon decided to go ahead and go to a conference in Washington DC. It was a good thing that she had previously decided to only be gone from Friday morning until Saturday night (I guess she didn't want to leave Grant alone with me for longer than 36 hours) because the preschool called me at work on Friday and said that he had a fever and I needed to pick him up. I knew that Grant would eventually get sick and that this day would come at some point... but I guess I was hoping that he would be like in the third grade or something.
When I picked him up from school that day, his nose was runny, he was fussy, and of course he had a fever, so I called the pediatrician again. She said that she expected that it might get worse before it got better, but wanted to take another look in his ears in hopes that it had not gotten worse. I was very relieved to hear her say that there was actually less fluid than the day before. I felt much better about making it through the next day without Shannon.
However, it unfortunately did not turn out to be the fun, guys-night-in that I had previously planned in my head. It became very apparent that Grant was definitely not feeling good. He slept a lot (though in many short cat naps) and although he was still hungry he wasn't interested in eating as much as normal. So Grant and I passed the time with a lot of napping, movie and college football watching and luckily the time went by kind of fast without Shannon. Also, I'm pretty sure that he slept through the night (but I must admit, there is a slight possibility that I just didn't hear him wake up because I'm such a sound sleeper) though in my defense he had already slept the "entire" night a time or two.
After another fever in the wee hours on Sunday morning, we thought that he might be on the road to recovery. Unfortunately we were wrong and that evening and the next morning was filled with more lethargy and elevated temperatures. We decided that it was best to keep him home from school on Monday and take him back to the doctor. I have to say that I was pretty surprised when the pediatrician told me that his right ear was now actually worse than a couple days prior because the fluid had moved to the other ear as well, and that it was slightly red. She decided that it was time to treat, so she prescribed Grant amoxicillin to help clear up his ear infection. Shannon ended up staying home with him the next day, and he finally started to act more like himself. By Thanksgiving, we were glad to see that he was pretty much back to normal. He's still pretty congested but seems to feel a ton better. We're glad to have our happy baby back!
Over Thanksgiving weekend, Grant got to play a lot on his new exersaucer (thanks to Kathleen for lending it to us!) and perfected his skills at eating cereal. We're planning to start some veggies this coming weekend...
Happy 5 month birthday little guy! Boy does time fly...
