Adventures in Parenting: Month 16 - Down with the Sickness

We'll keep this short. Life has been hectic.  It's winter, and we have a day care toddler, which means: we've all been sick.  Lil' Man has had a runny nose off and on since about Christmas.  Every time he seems to get better, he suddenly get fussy, has a low grade fever, and his nose turns into a spigot for mucus.  This past week was particularly horrible: he got a cold or some other kind of viral infection and had to stay home for a day (during which he got gagged on his own mucus twice and threw up all over our kitchen).  Then the vomiting went away...or well...actually, it just started coming out the other end (viral gastroenteritis was the doc's best guess).  Which resulted in six...maybe seven...#2 diapers in a 24 hour period. If you're not a parent--that's not normal, FYI. At least not for a toddler.  THEN he was apparently dehydrated because the following day he was essentially dry ALL day (again, not normal).  

Then on Thursday night, suddenly I didn't feel so good.  Thanks kid. I was out of commission all day Friday.  Meanwhile, even though he was no longer running a fever, poor thing had a horrible attitude all week, no appetite, and was just generally REALLY hard to deal with and try to make happy.  We finally took him to the doc on Friday, where she diagnosed him with an ear infection, gave us some amoxicillin (and a bag of Goldfish crackers, which seemed to make up for the hour of scream-crying he'd been doing thoughout his visit), and sent us home, where I promptly crashed, having used up my energy reserve.  I was still run down the whole weekend, which just sucked.  Luckily, the Hubs seemed to only get a mild case of it and wasn't nearly as wiped out as I had gotten.

Apparently the antibiotics worked, and now we have our happy-go-lucky little guy back, who just wants to explore and play and climb, and go outside.

Tantrums:
So, this is a thing.  He definitely understands the word "no", and this is what we get in response.  We're trying to work on the sign for "please" with him, to accompany his "want" (which in his toddler brain, he expresses via pointing and using the sign for "milk" at the same time).  Because at home, mostly what he "wants" is either to go downstairs where he can play with his super cool new climber, and then climb back up the stairs (stairs are VERY cool).  Or he wants to go outside, to walk around in the front yard or explore our back deck...and potentially throw stuff over the edge.

We're cool with doing either of these since the weather is getting nicer, but we really just want him to learn to ask nicely for the things he wants.  It's an uphill battle.  Trying to teach a toddler anything mid-scream-cry is next to impossible. And we may be kidding ourselves. I really don't know when a tiny human is capable of understanding "please". So maybe it's an exercise in futility.

Language:  
Still very few words and lots of babbling.  But he's using his signs ("milk/want", "more", and "all done") pretty regularly.   He's also learned to nod his head "yes" if we guess the thing he wants correctly, and he smiles at us, proud that he has broken through the language barrier.  

Music:
Music is fun, and we like to dance and shake our head to it in the car.  So I've busted out a VeggieTunes CD that I had from way back in the day.  We jam on the way to and home from day care. ...and then Mom turns on her podcast or audiobook as soon as he's out of the car. :)

Play:
Slides are awesome.  And now we have one in our basement, which he thinks is the greatest thing.
Well...the next greatest thing to his wagon, anyway.

He's getting better about wanting to be down walking, but still wants to be carried most of the time. We're working through that.

He still cares very little about screen time or TVs in general, despite his absolute infatuation with remote controls.