May 20, 2012

Communication

Been remiss in my posts recently. A lot of stuff happening, but all at once it's summer! We had 27C yesterday and up to 36C today. We took advantage of it straight away and spent both days outdoors. The winters in Montreal can be far too long.


Work has been flowing. Still busy, but I submitted a paper to a conference in Africa. Let's see if I make it in. The work warranted a trip by car to the US to interview the founder of the NGO I'm using as a case. Hubby's passport came in just in time, 2 days before the trip. So we went as a family unit, rather than me having to do an 8 hour drive all by myself, and decided to overnight and also catch an old old friend on the way back.


It was a good plan except that toddler boy got sick. And I mean really sick. High fever, up to 39.8C. He never really gets that kind of fever so of course I was worried. He still tried to smile and seemed energetic enough in between the long naps, but the fever wouldn't come down. By evening it had spiked and then he also threw up. At which point we threw in the towel as non-panicky parents and headed straight to the nearest ER. Not necessarily where you want to be handing over your credit card while in the US, but really, we had no choice. Of course, the minute we walked through the door, our toddler decided that the ER was an exciting new place to explore even though (for him) it was in the middle of the night. He perked up, smiled at the nurses, charmed the other patients, and his fever dropped. No more throwing up. They diagnosed him with croup (we already knew that he had that), and gave a fever-reducer plus a prescription for steroids for the croup. We didn't bother getting the latter filled - he gets it all the time and the doctor said it was mild. But it might have been what caused him to vomit since his coughing can get quite violent.


We made it back the following day - toddler-boy was still recovering but acting like a true champ. I, on the other hand, had barely slept (since we shared a bed and I relegated hubby to the kiddy cot in the hotel room). Since then, kiddo fully recovered, only to catch a cold shortly after (more croup, naturally). This time, he managed to infect me too, and I'm suffering a major head cold.


Still, I can't complain since the weather really is so gorgeous and it's a long holiday weekend. Tomorrow I'm off, and will be cleaning the house for oma's arrival on Wednesday. Not much work on the horizon, I imagine!


Meanwhile, toddler boy continues to pick up more signs. This week, he nailed 'cat' and 'bath'. He also understood the sign for 'shoe' and copied it. Add that to his favorite 'hat', his ex-favorite 'again', and the other ones he knows: 'milk', 'sleep', 'music', 'dog', 'all done', 'up', 'out', and 'no no no', and 'drink', we're now coming close to 15 signs. And very occasionally, he'll say something really clearly like "Hello Velcro" (to the dog). Most of the time it's just nonsense lingo but semi-accurate signing. Not bad to have 15 signs by 15 months. 


My favorite, though, is when he decides to wear his hat (or helmet, which is also hat to him), and checks himself out in the mirror. For a while now, I've noticed that he likes to look at himself in the mirror. I assumed he couldn't yet know that it was him, even though he'd say hi to himself (adding his own name), but I'm now beginning to suspect he knew as early as 13-14 months. That seems young, to me, but then, he's also taught himself to whistle, and he can kick a ball while on the run. My little fella.