The corner

What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of Luke's incredibly loud snoring here in the living room. And somewhere else, Zach is snoring. And somewhere else, Dave is snoring. It's been that kind of day. Oh, who am I kidding. It's been that kind of week. Luke has been SICK in all caps all week long - fever since Sunday. Suffice to say he's been a total basket case, unable to do anything, even eat a cookie (!) so he's been weak and tired and sad and cranky, which as you can imagine has been barrels of fun for me as well. Today's the first day he's been fever-free, though, so we might be on an upswing. Or turning a corner. Or shifting forward into some different kind of metaphor -- anything to get us out of this rut.

Zach, on the other hand has had a banner week. Laughing, playing, loving school, talking about everything, and even sleeping in past 6 am (till 7 am on Friday, go figure). Dave says it might be one of those dog-pack things where when the alpha dog is down, another dog steps in to be alpha dog. So I guess you could say that this was Zach's alpha dog week.

So, I know I haven't written much about this, but Zach is really starting to talk a lot these days. (Haha! Joke!) Yesterday he was sitting over in the corner playing and just kind of singing to himself, "...Thursday, Friday, Saturday..." What?!?! School is definitely giving him a lot to talk about. He also gets concepts across through full sentences: "Come on...everybody... downstairs. Come on ... Luke ... downstairs. Go outside." Most of the time he wants to go outside so he can 1) Look for the blimp ("Blimp hiding... Where are you, blimp? There it is!") or 2)Visit one of his cat friends on the block. There's one house around the corner that has two cats, plus one of those metallic garden ball thingies. The other day I said, "Zach - let's go around the corner and visit those two cats," and he said, "Garden ball!" So in other words, he knows exactly what I'm saying.

Oh, and here's a little non-verbal Zach-ism: When Zach takes a bath he likes to sit right under the spout of running water. When the water gets too deep, I turn it off. Lately he has started rolling his eyes when I turn off the water, like, "Why do you inconvenience me like this?" Then he stands up, turns on the faucet, feels the water, assesses whether it is too hot or too cold, adjusts the faucet, feels it, adjusts it, etc. until he is satisfied and then he plops back down. Sometimes I turn the water off too soon just to watch this little routine of his.

Today we pulled both boys in the wagon over to the St. Patrick's Day parade. It was Luke's first public outing since Sunday (he missed his first Little League game this morning) and my first trip somewhere other than to the doctor's office in several days. I guess it was among the better St. Patrick's Day parades we've been to. The kids were not in top form (Zach nearly had a fit over a balloon, Luke nearly lost it over candy), but as I told Dave, I set the low water-mark for St. Patrick's days in 2007 when I was in the hospital, and from that vantage point, all other St. Patrick's days seem pretty darned good.

Here's to Luke getting better, Zach staying good, and no one else getting sick for at least another week.