As our little toddler quickly changes and starts pushing limits and making it clear what he wants (dramatic fits included), I find myself trying to enjoy and remember the sweet moments. He now comforts himself by touching his ears (and also ours) when he's tired, falling asleep or in the early morning when he's first woken up. I know kids develop all kinds of ways to comfort themselves, some have blankets or stuffed animals or thumbs, but Keelan is all about his "pappi" (pacifier) and his ears. It cracks me up because his aunt Heidi used to be into her ears as a child and would suck her thumb at the same time, maybe it's in the Denton genes.
When he was sick recently and I would have to rock him to sleep at night and for naps, I would sing simple children's prayers to him until he fell asleep. If I ever stopped singing or humming he would look up at me in his sleepy state and sign "more". This is so funny to me because he doesn't really use his sign language anymore now that he's speaking, so it seems so 'baby-ish' to me, but I think it's sweet ;-)
The last couple two weeks went something like this... Keelan gets a cough and runny nose, no problem normal cold stuff. Then he keeps us up late at night and is unable to go back to sleep, we spend hours rocking a conjested and crying baby in the rocking chair (memories of his infant days are flooding my mind). We begin to notice that he is running a little hot- but having recently returned a poor performing baby thermometer without bothering to bring a working one home we have no way to check it. The night we finally pick up a new thermometer Keelan wakes up burning, we check his temperature... 104! We of course feel horrible and start the rounds of meds to bring down his temp. Thankfully, it comes down to 101 and continues to drop. He stops being interested in eating or drinking and gets really low energy, cranky and clingy. We decide to take him to the pediatrician who says it's just a virus and not to worry, just keep an eye on his temperature and encourage him to drink as much water as he can. The next day the diarrhea and horrible diaper rash begin... ack! After two days of this we bring him back to the doctor who said the virus moved down into his digestive system AND he has an ear infection... great. Feeling pretty wiped out after over a week of this we were relieved that he was getting some antibiotics (his first) and that this should be done with in 48 hours or so. It took until yesterday, Friday, for him to seem really back to normal, but boy are we grateful! We went to nature babies with a friend and Keelan played in the water at lake Whatcom and we all felt like normal, healthy humans again.
Keelan has had colds and some stomach upset before, but never like this. I had moments when I felt like, "Wow, so this is what it feels like to be a parent..." holding a feverish out-of-it Keelan in my arms. I just can't imagine how difficult and intense it would be to have a child with a terminal illness. Two weeks of this and we felt wiped out emotionally and physically, I just can't imagine that being every day. I feel so lucky that we have a healthy child and I hope our second one is just as blessed.
A lot of big changes around the Denton household! Biggest one would be... we're going to have another baby! Currently I'm 14 weeks pregnant and starting to awake from weeks of sleepy ickyness. This pregnancy has been so much better so far than with Keelan and I feel so grateful for that. I was expecting it to either be the same, or harder and amazingly, it's been better! We saw the first ultrasound and listened to the baby's heartbeat, it was pretty wonderful.
Keelan looking like a big brother!
I know a lot has been going on when I have to put all the photos into one slide show cause it's too hard to pick and choose from all the options. Or perhaps it's a testimate to the fact that I haven't been feeling that great. Todd can sure vouch for that, he would come home from work and I would basically hand him Keelan and beg to take a nap... and then just make grilled cheese for dinner :-)
Here is the run down of the events from May through early July... First in a series of mini-reunions with old friends was with my high school buddy Ashley Bahney, her mother and three month old son Brock in Seattle, WA. Of course we were so busy hanging out and enjoying our time together, I didn't really get any pictures with her :-(
Next was our Montana road trip which consisted of A LOT of driving and a lot of good friends too. We stopped in Virginia City for my good college friend Angi's wedding. Angi and I became great friends when I was going to school in Missoula, MT. There's nobody quite like Angi ;-) It was a beautiful day and Keelan enjoyed dancing around and getting attention from everyone at the reception.
From there we drove to Bozeman and hung out with some of Todd's friends from his Montana State University days, including Dewey (his old Juneau buddy) who is living and working now in Bozeman. It was in the 90's when we were there and the aircon in our car didn't work too well and we didn't have it where we were staying so my pregnant self just about died in the heat! I am not accustomed to it at all. Keelan did pretty well, enjoyed playing with a friend's daughter and running around in his diaper in the kiddie pool.
Lastly, we went to Eureka which thankfully is the northern most part of Montana and was much cooler and comfortable. We visited our dear friends Sarah and Ben Quilling and their son Emil. We hadn't seen them since their wedding in 2007. Sarah and I became close friends at Berklee in Boston and have stayed in touch since then.
Oh, I almost forgot! When we got back to Bellingham our friends from Shanghai (all teachers at SAS) who all have connections with Bellingham area were in town and all came over to our place. It was fun to spend some time reconnecting and hearing about all the changes in Shanghai over this last year.
Whew... I hate cramming important life events into one blog post, but unfortunately if I tried to be too ambitious it wouldn't get done!
