Cleaning up after Lex is like an easter
egg hunt. He puts his little toys in the most random places. At
the end of the night, just when I think all the toys are away,
I find a rolly-ball in the inner-workings of our rocking
ottaman. Or a teething biscuit in the dragon’s mouth
(seriously!). Or a plastic toy trapped under the crunched in
lid of the empty oatmeal contain (hard to explain, but he made
himself a rattle and loved it!). He’s the funniest, cleverist
baby. I love that I put him to bed and hours later he still
makes me laugh.

And boy are they happy. Alan
and I are mostly recovered (though Alan is having a bit of a
relapse due to lack of sleep), but Lex is 110% better and he’s
sooo happy. These past few days he’s been laughing so much more
and he’s extra playful and cuddly. And best of all – he’s
sleeping better! Yay!! Maybe, just maybe, he’ll make it all the
way through the night before his first birthday. We can only
wait and see.

Now that he’s feeling
better, its amazing how playful he is. He likes to crawl around
and lock all of the wheels on his highchair, and he is walking
everywhere with the help of chairs, the ottoman, his toy car
walker thing, and anything else he can manage to push around.
He also likes to get Alan and I to crawl after him, and he
peeks around corners at us, and he’s just so amazingly silly
and playful – and a total ham for the camera. Everytime he
hears the camera beep he makes a huge, open-mouthed toothy
smile and says “aaarhhhh”. I love it!

We’ve started planning his first birthday party. We went
to the party store last week and ordered a bunch of balloons
and we bought some decorations and stuff. It will be fun. I’m
excited.

PS> More pictures
online at photos.datdec.com

Alan and I went to the doctor today and
she prescribed the same stuff Lex is on (only $41/bottle
though, instead of $50, bringing our CVS bill for this week to
just over $200!). She said it should clear us all up. I’ve also
started taking an old family remedy (honey and cider vinegar),
which is doing great things for my throat and cough. Thanks
Mom!! Sadly, the doctor said I have to wear my glasses for 5
(!!!) days in order for my eyes to clear up. I said, “but they
seem fine now.” She said, “No.” :( I hate glasses.

I emailed our pedi last night (we have the
best pedi in the world!) and she wasn’t happy that the doctor
prescribed Amoxicillian for just pinkeye so she asked me to
bring Lex in to her office today. We couldn’t get an
appointment with her, but we saw another doctor at her office
who diagnosied him with acute octitis conjunctivitis (or
something like that – basically ear/eye infection) and she
prescribed a different medication (which cost me $50!!!) Our
pedi emailed later in the afternoon to check in and answered
some additional questions I had. Like I said – the best pedi
ever!

Unfortunately this morning Alan
started feeling sick too (sore throat, painful ears, etc.) He
called and made an appointment with the doctor for him and I
tomorrow. I’ve still been taking the pinkeye drops though,
because my eyes were definitely red and gunky and the drops
seem to be helping. I have to wear glasses for a few days
though – blah!!

So that’s the update.
Hopefully we get a little sleep tonight. The past two nights
have been awful.

However, on the up
side, Lex has become an expert at getting his nose wiped. He
used to hate it, now he sits patiently, almost expectantly. He
even watches me blow my nose then makes a little face and
sticks his nose at me for wiping :) I love him!!

Amoxicillian & eye drops ……….
$16
Two days of missed daycare ………. $80
Three hours in the “Immediate Care Center” ……….
$200
A solid excuse to work from home for two days
………. PRICELESS

But seriously. As
you all know, Lex has had a cold for many weeks now and a few
days ago his eyes started getting gooky (yellowish, sticky
stuff) and he sleeping has progressively gotten worse. I just
assumed it was all cold related (bad mommy!). This morning I
woke up and my left eye was puffy and very teary. Throughout
the day it got worse and the clear teariness turned to gooky. I
left work at 3:30 because my coworkers had self-diagnosed
pinkeye and wanted me gone. On the way home I called my PCP’s
office, only to learn that they don’t take appointments after
4pm and don’t have anything availble for the next few days. So,
I called Lex’s pedi’s office and was told a nurse would call me
back. I waited and waited and finally decided to go to a local
urgent care center (I guess more urgent than waiting a few days
for the PCP, but not urgent enough for the emergency room).
After we waited there for several hours (I scoffed at the irony
of the sign on the front door, “Immediate Care Center”), we saw
a doctor who immediately said “yep, pinkeye.” He did some
routine stuff, obviously was not a pedi, and sent us on our way
with prescriptions. He was nice enough to call it in to CVS
though, so I only had to wait there for a few minutes. Poor Lex
was exhausted when we got home (way past his bedtime) and then
I had to do the worst thing of the entire day – administer the
eye drops. He screamed bloody murder and clenched his eyes up
tight. I had to pin him down and pry his eyes open. We both
cried. It was awful. Then I nursed him to sleep. Poor baby had
a long day. Hopefully over the next few days things will get
better. Pinkeye – who knew!

We didn’t take any pictures (what’s wrong
with us??), but we had a great Easter nonetheless. We had lunch
at the G’s with Katie, Jack, and Woody. Lex loves those guys :)
Lex also got lots of little Easter presents, including a “Lex’s
first Easter” shirt and bib – which he promptly made a mess of.
We all ate a TON of food (yummy, yummy food) and then Grandma
brought out the super duper double chocolate frosted dipped
chocolatey cake. Wow! AND THEN Alan’s parents brought Easter
dinner. Like I said, we ate far too much :)

One of the presents Grandma and Grandpa gave him was a
plastic bath book with little activities. Lex loves it! Since
then bathtime has been so different. He now cries everytime I
take him out of the tub, when before he used to get bored and
was ready to get out pretty quickly. Now he loves the bath and
I get bored first :)

The only downside
to the weekend is that we are all sick. Lex has been sick (a
little better, little worse, and back again) since he started
daycare, but this weekend I got fever, cold sweats, and a
painful cough. Yuck! Now we’re all battling this one together.
They say the baby will get used to daycare and his immune
system will build, but man I need a good nights
sleep!

We have a busy weekend with lots of
company. Right now though, I find myself sitting in a quiet
house with not much to do – very unusal. Amanda is here
visiting. Lex woke up from a too-short nap about 45 minutes ago
and was very cranky. As Alan and I prepared him so food, Amanda
cuddled with him in the chair and they both fell asleep :) It’s
very cute. So now the house is quiet and I can’t really do
chores or anything, so I’ll post here instead :)

Once they wake up we are going grocery
shopping and to the party store. I’ve started thinking about
Lex’s 1st birthday party. It’s going to be on the 28th at my
grandparent’s house. Hopefully it will be warm weather so we
can grill. We’re going to stop at the party store today to see
if we can find anything fun :)

Tomorrow
we are having easter lunch with my grandparents and dinner with
Alan’s parents (they are coming up here, yay!) So we will eat
*very well* tomorrow.

Lex has started dancing lately. Whenever
he hears music his head starts bopping and his butt starts
wiggling. I think I said this the other day, but when we were
in Montreal I went into a store that had some good music
playing and Lex immediately sat up in the stroller and started
grooving. It made me laugh because he was so tired and almost
asleep in the stroller, then the music hi and he perked right
up. In the mornings he crawls around in our bed and the past
few days he crawled over to our alarm clock, turned the radio
on (big button) and started dancing. What a great way to wake
up!

Ok, so I finally found a way to post
photos easily – thanks to JAlbum. I love it. And now I can
update my photos.datdec.com site more easily.
So check
it out! I just added pictures from our trip to
Montreal and the other day I added Lex’s 9-month old pictures.
When I have time I’ll backfill the months in between, but for
now I’ll focus on trying to stay current going forward. Wish me
luck! :)

Lex was a huge hit in
Montreal. He was all smiles and dancing (we call him the big
bopper these days) and everyone that passed waved to him and
said “Hey bebe.” He loved it. Lex and I spent the morning
walking around Montreal and doing a little shopping, and then
hung out in the hotel in the afternoon. We had to check out at
2pm, so we ended up wandering/strollering/crawling around the
lobby and hallways for awhile. All of the hotel staff loved him
and so did the geeky people from Alan’s ARIN conference :)

Our trip home was uneventful. It’s only
4.5 hours, including our stops. Lex is such a good traveller
these days that we only needed to stop once each way. When we
got home we put him down in the living room and he got sooo
happy. He crawled all around, playing with all of his toys,
making sure they’re all still here. Alan called it a systems
check :)

As I sit here typing Lex
grabbed my cell phone and started playing with it. A minute
later I heard a voice coming from it – Alan’s dad’s answering
machine! Lex was calling to say hi :) (sorry for the late time
of night)

Anyway, I have to go to bed
now. Actually, I have to eat some cereal, change and nurse Lex
and then go to bed :) So I’m outta here for now!