Bribery accomplishes so much

Respectfully considering Perry's privacy, I won't go into detail about his potty training, but I will say the whole family is proud of recent accomplishments in the bathroom. It turns out that Perry is quite willing to perform for a big enough reward. In this case, the reward is ice cream. I'm going to lay in a supply of inexpensive toys to use as non-food rewards, too, and for eventual days/weeks/outings without accidents we'll also give trips to Happy Hollow or the Childrens' Discovery Museum. But right now the ice cream is doing the trick.

Well, eew

It could be anything at all when Perry crouches in the grass and says "Mommy, what's this?" This time it was the hindquarters and liver of an alarmingly large rat.

"Is it your rat, Mama?"
"No Perry, it's Angus's rat."
"Is it broken?"
"Yeah, that rat's pretty broken."

And Perry ran inside to tell Jay "Angus mouse broken!" Perry was really excited when I threw the pieces over the back fence (with a big plastic bag to protect my fingers).

Pardon this entry for having no pictures.

It's been a long time since I posted. Sorry to everyone.

Perry's grandma Sandy came to visit and stayed with us. Unfortunately her luggage didn't join her until the second day, but she's smart and packed the essentials in her carry-on. On March 1 Perry turned 3. Hooray! On March 3 we had a party. Several kids from his daycare managed to show up, which was fun.

Grandma Sandy flew home on the following Tuesday, and has decided that going home to a foot of snow is for the birds, and will be celebrating Perry's birthday (or at least making her "birthday" visit) in May or some other nice time of year.

At the moment, though, Perry is sick. We got a phone call from his daycare asking that we pick him up. He had a fever and chills. He waited until he was in the grownup bed before he threw up (I'm going to learn someday, right?). He's spent the day mostly asleep in front of the tv or having stories read to him. I hope he's better before we leave on Sunday for a trip to Arizona.

Pics from Perry's party later.

Food Shots

Perry has recovered his appetite. Here are some pictures of him eating.



Bagel and cream cheese.

















Rice

















Baskin Robbins "Wild 'N Reckless" (sic) sherbet. It even tastes good!

crafty

This afternoon we're going to a birthday party for one of the kids from Perry's daycare. He's two, so the card we give him won't be of much interest, but I thought Perry and I could make one, anyway. Perry had a lot of fun glueing squares of tissue paper to the construction paper card, and picking out buggy rubber stamps for decorations. He even scribbled a little inscription. A masterpiece of ephemera.

and then uglier ... but not really

Okay, last post ended after we got home from the emergency room. By that time Perry hadn't had much to drink for about 6 hours, and maybe a quarter of a banana to eat. We got home hoping not to have to clean up any more vomit. The good news was that he stopped throwing up. The bad news that actually was kind of good news was that he began to show signs of fever. It was bad news because Perry wasn't over being sick, but it was good news because it means that all the vomiting was at least partly due to a stomach virus and not necessarily because of a terrible concussion.

Sometime in the middle of the night on Sat night/Sun morning the diarrhea started. Let's just say that over the course of the next 24 to 30 hours we went through 3 changes of sheets and about 7 different changes of clothes. In between Perry lay nearly motionless on the couch watching endless hours of children's educational programming. He's going to be a toddler genius after this, or something.

Monday and Tuesday have been spent recovering, and sparing Perry's daycare from the horror. But he should be just fine on Wednesday. We should be just fine shortly thereafter.

And then it got ugly ...

Perry settled just fine last night, but woke at midnight with shivers and woke again at 1:30 in a pool of vomit. He kept puking all night long and into the morning. We stayed up with him watching children's PBS programs (having 24 hour Sprout and KQED Kids on the rare occasions when Perry is sick makes our digital cable bill worth every penny). Perry only slept about an hour in 15 minute snatches, and Jay and I took turns out on the couch. But since it took two of us to deal with the barfing, neither one of us got more than 45 minutes of sleep at a time. In the morning I had an errand to run,, and I called up our hostess to let her know that one of the kids who had been at her party was now sick, and the other parents might want to know. She is in training to become an EMT, so she knew that nausea and vomiting after a blow to the head are a danger sign, and asked me to call a doctor.

The advice nurse at the urgent care heard the situation and told us that we needed to immediately go to an emergency room.

So, off we bundled to El Camino Hospital. They're the place to go if you don't need complex care, and the other times we'd been there Perry didn't have to wait long for medical care. Today, though, even though it was early afternoon on a Saturday, was a total zoo. We waited only 15 minutes before Perry was seen by a PA, but it was another 4 hours before he could get the CT scan the doctors wanted. Ambulance after ambulance kept rolling in with sick ("sick like dead or dying", said one nurse) babies and toddlers, and there was more than one old person who had fallen and banged their heads. Perry was relatively low priority for the scan.

After his scan we waited another hour and a half to get the results. It's frustrating to realize that if it were bad news they'd tell us quickly, but to have to wait forever to be told essentially "You're fine, go home". Eventually a nurse came in and told us "you're fine, go home. Oh, and here is a scrip for anti-nausea medication. Come back if he doesn't get better in a day or so." The scan came back normal, whatever that means. The discharge papers had a diagnosis of concussion, but they think the vomiting was likely because of a coincidental stomach virus. In any case, we did the right thing to take him in, and we're happy there's no swelling or bruising of the brain.

Perry had a little banana and a lot of apple juice and has kept it all down. Hopefully he'll wake up hungry in the morning.