Spring Break 2012 - Cold and Colds

Whew.  No real blogging in over a month!

Last we really had personal news it was March 19th and Gallant was at his nine-month checkup.  At the doctor's office both boys caught RSV, what should be called "the other common cold", which has going around Oregon a bit later than usual that Winter.

(Tangentially, note the fascinating math in that graph from this website.  The visually intuitive blue line would be the number of positive test results, not the percent positive.  There could be high positive results on day with many, many tests ordered even if the percent positive was not maximal.)

Well, RSV has an incubation time of two or three days.  So it was the Wednesday of the week before Spring break when the boys became terribly congested and tired.  Poor little Gallant had never needed to breathe through his mouth before, which was incredibly upsetting while trying to relax and fall asleep.  He could not breathe well while nursing, or drinking from a bottle, or even when sucking on a finger in an attempt to relax after frustration while drinking.   Each time we put him to bed took about an hour.  So then my wife and I are also exhausted.

Well, two boys with colds at the same time is bad.  But not too bad.  Right?

Then our neighborhood suffered the worst freak snow storm of recent years.

(Our Picasa album has more snow photos.)

Wednesday night trees fell all over town.  Five thousand people were without electricity.  Our couple-blocks was among the last to have electricity restored since comparatively few homes were in our group.  Our power was out because Smiley's friend had two trees fall on his house.

We heat the house with wood anyway.  And our wood stove allowed us to boil water.  So for two days we enjoyed hot tea and ate a lot of fruit and oatmeal.  The boys continued to get worse; that weekend seemed like a B-grade horror movie named Invasion of the Mucus Lords.

That Friday Gallant did get his fourth tooth: his upper left front central incisor.

The boys suffered from RSV a bit more than two weeks.  Then some relief when 24 hours after the fever is gone and they are not contagious--we could have play dates again!  But coughing can last two more weeks.  It's a nasty virus.

So that explains most of my lack of blogging.  What a month! 

The silver lining was that Gallant was so exhausted, and having trouble falling asleep anyway, that he learned to fall asleep (and stay asleep) unswaddled.  In comparison, his brother outgrew the swaddle at nine months merely because he was so incredibly active.