Harrison's First Ear Infection :(

Poor little honey did not come through the move unscathed.

We noticed a fever on Sunday afternoon, so Chris stayed home with him on Monday. The little guy slept for 17 hours Sunday night (getting up twice to chug some water and then hitting the sack again!) and seemed to be feeling alright while he was awake -- the fever went down during the day on Monday but was back up that afternoon. I stayed home with him yesterday and was able to get an appointment at the pediatrician last night -- he still acted like he felt fine, but for the fever to hang around for a few days without any other symptoms worried us (for him and for his little brother). Turns out it's his first ear infection, so he started antibiotics yesterday -- cherry-flavored Amoxicillan, which smells so sweet it makes me sick, but Harrison didn't seem to mind. We'll have to be very particular about teeth-brushing for the next 10 days while he's eating so much extra sugar!

He'll have a good week -- Monday with Dada, Tuesday with Mama, Wednesday with Grandmama Higgins, Thursday with Grandmom Harper, then the regular Friday with Mama. Even if his fever stays down for 24 hours, we thought he deserved a week to sleep in and be pampered. He agrees so far.

Moved!

With much help from all of Harrison's grandparents, we successfully packed up and moved from one house to another -- and didn't lose anything (that we know of -- including Harrison) in the process!

For some bonus stress, though, we were dealt a snow / ice storm the weekend of the move. We closed on Friday morning with no winter weather activity and then watched it snow all afternoon. Wondered whether that would turn to ice overnight (temperatures were predicted to drop into the 20s, which they indeed did) but worried a little less when the moving company called to confirm our Saturday morning appointment in spite of the snow and freezing temperatures.

Turns out we should have kept up the worrying -- the scheduler from the moving company called on Saturday morning to tell us that he needed to reschedule our move to sometime Sunday due to the weather (alot of their workers commute using MARTA, and apparently the MARTA trains were not running). Chris told them that rescheduling would not work for us since we had to be completely out of the house by noon on Sunday and therefore needed to move everything on Saturday, so the scheduler said he'd see if he could find a crew for us for that day. That person called back an hour or two later to say that he had found a crew who was finishing one job and would be to our house "soon." Then he stopped answering the phone or returning Chris' calls for the next several hours. Eventually a guy from a moving crew called to see if we "still wanted them to come" (YES!) and got to our house around 4pm -- 8 hours after our scheduled time... By that time Chris had found a road-salting crew and salted our front steps, so the only ice anyone had to walk on was on the rooftop deck. The moving crew was a nice group of guys -- all really hard-working and possessing super-human strength -- so we did get everything to the new house in time to sleep there. It was a late night for everyone, but that didn't matter given that the alternative was sleeping on the floor of a house we did not own. Harrison could have started his life of crime with a trespassing charge at 21 months old.

I, of course, was a rock throughout the day -- except for a 9am breakdown. :) Chris held up better than me, but the star of the show was Harrison. What a trooper! The little guy even napped on a mattress on the floor in his strange new house while we all wondered where we'd be sleeping that night. He was very happy to go to sleep for the night in his hastily-but-safely-assembled crib and sleep for hours and hours in quiet darkness! His reward for being such a great kid all weekend? His very own hand-washing sink. The new kitchen has two sinks -- one facing a window on an exterior wall and one on the island in the center of the kitchen. "His" sink is the one in the island -- he has a little step-stool there that he can climb up, which lets him reach the faucet by himself. He turns the water on, checks to see if it's too hot :), then holds his hands out for soap (can't quite pump the soap dispenser yet, which is fine with us!). Soaps up, rinses some (but not all) of the soap off, then says "dry, dry, dry" as he dries off using "his" towel. We've already had to do two timeouts because of this new sink (one for yanking the temporary towel hook off the cabinets a few times and one for spinning the faucet around while the water was running and letting it pour all over the island countertop -- knew it was only a matter of time before he figured that one out!), but I think it will be great for him. Less great for my own hands since he wants someone to wash with him every time he washes, which was about 15 or 20 times yesterday -- just whenever he happened to remember that he had a sink now. So maybe we'll all have very dry skin but be very healthy in this new house?

I'm not going to put our new address here so that cyber-stalkers won't come and rob us, but feel free to send me an e-mail if you want to know how to send your housewarming gift to us. We are accepting cash in all denominations and currencies as well as valuable merchandise.

Like a true Southerner, he called for an umbrella

What a chubber in his snowsuit!

He liked standing in the snow but not walking in it

Didn't like his gloves but did like his hands in his pockets

Definitely His Mama's Son...

Harrison had already eaten a tray full of waffles, grapes, and bananas for breakfast (plus two cups of milk), but when he saw me pull out some frozen vegetables to thaw for him for later, he asked for some "ice" and has now had a frozen piece of broccoli, a frozen mushroom, and a frozen snap pea. Frozen veggies for breakfast when it's 40 degrees and raining outside -- can't beat it! :)

Moving!

After almost a year on the market (listed in pre-pre-preparation for this baby who is now due in under 4 months -- cutting that a little bit close!), our house is under contract. :) Our close date is scheduled for Friday February 12, so we're down to a week and a day before it's time to move...

I made a small attempt at packing one afternoon this week but realized that packing with Harrison roaming around is a bit counter-productive. I was boxing up the tiny baby clothes from his closet and spent as much time taking Harrison's contributions to the box out as he spent taking the clothes out. It went something like this...

• Mama puts a stack of nicely folded baby clothes in the box.
• Harrison puts whatever he happens to have in his hand in the box (a toy helicopter, a puzzle piece, a shoe, and his toothbrush are the examples that come to mind).
• Mama removes whatever Harrison just put in the box.
• Harrison removes half of Mama's stack of nicely folded baby clothes from the box.
• And the dance continues...

This weekend Harrison will be dumped (we use that term lovingly) on his in-town set of grandparents so that his parents can achieve something with respect to packing. Next weekend his out-of-town grandparents will come in to keep Harrison occupied while his parents close on the house (hopefully!), finish packing, and oversee the movers. The weekend after that, Harrison will do all the un-packing he likes -- it should take about 2 hours for him to get everything out of the boxes. We might never find any of it again, but at least it will be out of the boxes! What a good little helper.

Our House Is Haunted (By A Toddler)!

A list of the unexplained things we've come across recently -- we can only shake our heads and blame Harrison and giggle at how busy he is...

1. Wooden "coal" from his train set tucked into Mama's boots
2. Rubber bath trains parked (very orderly -- side by side, facing the same direction) in Dada's closet
3. The top of Mama's Sonicare moved from one bathroom bucket to another (took a while to find it!)
4. Toothpaste tubes stood on end instead of laying down
   
5. Lotion caps unscrewed and bottles returned to where they go (but fortunately no lotion smeared all over the bathroom)
6. Stuffed animals arranged on the microwave cart
7. Unopened drinks moved one shelf up / one shelf down in the pantry
8. CheezIts squirreled away under the microwave (Dada watched him do this)
9. Unnecessary recycling (of books and sippy cups and the artwork he brought home from school)

That kid! :)

Another BOY!

We did the same thing with this baby as with Harrison -- had the ultrasound technician print a copy of the boy/girl picture (and label it because we wouldn't know either way!) then put it in an envelope for us to open later. We opened our envelope this past Thursday night and were both totally surprised! I thought this one was a girl because I felt alot different than with Harrison. Chris says he didn't think it was a girl but then was shocked that it was a boy -- I had some trouble understanding that. :) Harrison does not seem to be surprised at all -- a "bay-bee" is a "bay-bee" is a "bay-bee" for him!

Wish us luck with two boys, two years apart! I can't even imagine the trouble these two will get into with each other. :) And also wish us luck with with naming this little guy -- Harrison was a few days old before we chose his name.

How long will it take me to dig back into Harrison's tiny baby clothes and see which outfits I'm putting on his little brother first?? Not long -- I'm on my way upstairs to do that now...

Harrison Self-Disciplines

We've been working on discipline and teaching Harrison the concept of consequences. He isn't seeing dire consequences like "because you did that, you have to stand outside in the snow ... barefoot" (yes -- there really is snow outside!); our consequences are more along the lines of "because you did that, I am taking the toy away and sitting you in the corner." It's actually going pretty well. Once he figured out that facing the corner with nothing to look at but beige paint was not a game (his first reaction was to get up, run back over to us, do what he had just done to get himself in trouble, and then hope we'd put him in the corner again), we could start to see a difference in his behavior. He still does naughty stuff (the worst is hitting -- gets this maniacal little gleam in his eye and then smacks you in the face), but the time-outs put an end to it (at least for a while) instead of it being a neverending cycle of hit-corner-hit-corner-hit-corner.

His behavior gets more irritating as he gets tired, of course, but I can see that he's trying to remind himself of what we do and do not want him to do -- even when his brain is worn out. A good example was one afternoon earlier this week when he and I were playing in his room. I was sitting on the floor, and he'd run around me in circles and then come hop on my back for a bouncy piggy-back ride. Sometimes he'd get over-excited and hit me on the back of my head -- it didn't actually hurt, but if it had been my face (or a little baby sibling), then it would have hurt. When he hit, I would put him on the floor, turn around with a stern face, point a finger at him, shake my head, tell him "no hitting," and deposit him in the corner. He would just sit there quietly, shaking his head to himself the way I had just shaken mine at him as if he was reminding himself that there was not to be any hitting. Because it was late in the day and he was tired, he did it once or twice more, and I went through the same routine. Then once when he did it, I put him down on the ground and he took it from there! He made a stern face, shook his head, said some disapproving baby talk, and put himself in the corner. I managed to say, "That's right, Harrison. You hit Mama, and there is no hitting, so you choose to have a time-out" before I turned my back and died laughing.

You'll have to imagine his stern face and self-disciplining talk because I'm afraid to take photos and videos in case he thinks it's rewarding. Believe me -- it is adorable. You just have to hope that he pops you in the face sometime so you can see him put himself in the corner. :)