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.