Liam is a delight. Even when he's not feeling well, or perhaps especially then, his sweet personality shines.
On Friday he was exposed to pink eye from his gal pal Cora. She didn't develop symptoms until Saturday, but by then he'd already been exposed. Saturday and Sunday all he had was a snotty nose, and he wasn't sleeping well. Friday morning he woke up crabby and stayed crabby, alternately whining and crying for most of the morning. It just wasn't like him. At one point he climbed up on my lap, and sat a little ways out facing towards me. He leaned in and put his head down against my chest. We swayed together and I stroked his head and patted his little diapered bottom and sang to him. Mostly campfire songs from Camp Anokijig. We stayed like that for 15 or 20 minutes. It was a heart stoppingly beautiful moment. The kind of moment that I wish I could distill in a bottle so that years from now I can still feel its essence.
I wound up taking him to see the doctor, and by then he'd spiked a 101 fever and had goop oozing out of his eye. Apart from the NICU, this was the first time in his whole life where he was really truly sick, rather than just a run of the mill runny nose. He clearly felt awful, looked like a tired baby zombie, and all he wanted to do was snuggle. I would read him a book or make a silly face and he would smile at me, a little for the joke, and a little because he was grateful to be smiling.
We got him on some medication to take care of a double ear infection, sinus infection, and pink eye. Poor little man. Immediately he started sleeping better and the next day his mood was already improved. Because of the contagious infection both here and at Cora's house, it means no childcare until the infections are all cleared up. Terry has been great about splitting time with me so we can both get work done. But it also means that we get to both have some concentrated Liam time as well, which is also a wonderful blessing.
Today, still on the mend, we had a lovely day together. In the morning before his nap I was outside trying to finish planting a little bed I was putting together in a partially shady area of our backyard. He loves to see what we're up to and to participate in whatever Terry or I are doing. So he toddled over the grass and sat down next to me. I was using my garden "claw" to turn up the dirt, so when I set it down, he picked it up and started raking it over the dirt as well. Half the time he had it upside down, but he had the basic idea. He saw me working with my gardening gloves to pull up all the violet roots in the dirt bed, so he started to mimic me by patting the ground with his hands and digging through it.
He pulled up a small ball of our thick clay soil. I am generally inclined to encourage him to explore the world around him with his senses, and he was just a mostly naked baby wearing only a diaper and sunscreen, so I wasn't really concerned with him getting dirty. But before I knew what was happening, he'd popped the dirty ball into his mouth and was happily chomping on it! I couldn't help myself, I started laughing and took off my gloves so I could try to fish the remnants out of his mouth. Still laughing, I was trying to explain to him that we don't eat dirt. I would have thought it was self evident, because I can't imagine that dirt was very tasty, but right in the middle of my explanation he grabbed another ball of dirt and lightening fast popped it into his mouth and started chewing again. I fished it out again and took the muddy mouthed baby inside to rinse his mouth out.
Later in the evening, after Terry got home from work, we all spent some time out on the back deck. The evening was just spectacular weather. The baby has been better about talking again, so he regularly says "mama" and "ball" and it seems as though he may be saying "button" again, and possibly also "bump" (for fist bump, a little trick Cora's mom Ariana taught him). Terry and I started playing with the new ladder golf that we have set up on the back deck. Liam loved to take the balls (two balls attached with a string) and hang them around his neck and then parade around the deck proudly proclaiming "Ball! ball!" When Terry or I would throw the balls at the ladder, he would toddle over all ready to remove them. After he'd seen us throw them once or twice, he picked up a pair of the balls, toddled over to the ladder, and carefully hung them on the second rung. I joked with him that he was cheating by just putting them up there. But Terry and I spent a few minutes gushing to each other about how cute he was.
