Bad to Worse to Better

Oh, the end of last week was bad. Bad, bad, bad. Felix developed a 102°F fever on Wednesday morning, so I had to go get him from daycare. The fever persisted into Thursday, so I stayed home with him again and took him to the doctor. His pediatrician looked him over top to bottom, checked out his ears, eyes, nose and throat, and pronounced him fine… except for the fever. So we went home to cool him down and wait it out. Because it was so warm at night in our bedrooms, we slept in the basement on Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday night, Felix woke at 2:15 am fussing. We found his temperature had risen to 105.4°. That immediately put us into high gear. Instead of taking him straight to the ER, I called the nurse-on-call line through our health insurance. The nice nurse we talked to said that because he had just been to the doctor that day, the doctors in the ER were unlikely to find anything else wrong with him. She suggested we do everything we could to cool him down (difficult, since we were already in the coolest part of our house and Felix was only wearing a diaper) and keep him comfortable. Our sleep for the rest of the night was shot, since Felix fussed unless he was on/near me on the couch, and that wasn’t comfortable for either of us. He managed to fall back asleep a while later. The next morning, he had cooled down considerably, to the point we felt comfortable taking him to daycare. I had a field visit planned for that day, so I wasn’t around in case he really wasn’t ready to go back to daycare. Sure enough, just an hour after Nick dropped him off, we got a call saying we needed to come pick Felix up, since his temperature was back up to 102.7°. Argh! Nick picked him back up and stayed home with him. I was lucky enough to get back early to help out.

By Saturday morning, Felix’s fever had broken and he was doing much better. Then… teething struck. He started cutting what we assume are his top front teeth. Irritable, cranky, just plain unhappy. That was our Saturday and Sunday. Felix was back to his old pre-fever self on Monday (thankfully!), but he still hasn’t cut those teeth. I caved and went a bit granola yesterday, ordering a Baltic amber teething necklace from an Etsy seller in Latvia. Soon, Felix will be rocking his first piece of jewelry! I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that they work, and with a whole mouthful of teeth yet to cut, we’re willing to try it. Heck, it might even work!

Another new development yesterday - we have an official first word! Ball or “ba!” hasn’t been spoken again, leading us to wonder if it was just a babbling coincidence (he does know what a ball is, just not how to say it every time). Yesterday evening, Felix and I were crawling up the stairs. I pointed to the top and said “up!”. Felix took over the task, pronouncing “uh-puh” over and over (funny little “p” sound at the end). He still got it and said it today. Woo-hoo! First word! We can see the wheels turning as he figures out more about the world. It’s such a joy to watch him figure out something new - his face just lights up with a smile.

Felix: 13 mos