Phone fun

Here's a milestone, if you can call it one, that I would rather do without: Dominick made his first 911 call today. He didn't just dial 911, but those happened to be the first three numbers he hit. He plays with the phone a lot but never actually calls anyone. He puts letters on the display, changes the ringtone, pages the handsets, changes the language to Spanish, that type of thing. Today, however, as I was making lunch, he came into the kitchen holding the phone and said, "I called someone." Sure enough, I could hear a female voice, and it wasn't the one that says "If you'd like to make a call..." I wrestled the phone away from Dom and apologized to the woman, explaining that my three-year-old had gotten the phone. She said, "Well, this is 911, so you need to watch him." Ouch! How embarrassing. Then she asked if everything was okay here. I assured her it was and apologized again. From now on, if Dominick wants to talk on the phone, he can talk to Elmo.

It's always the roast beef

We have reached a blissfully quiet end to a long, miserable 24 hours (give or take). I now know why I got sick, after both Mike and Dominick began vomiting within about ten minutes of each other last night. We all ate the offending roast beef for dinner on Thursday, but for some reason it affected me first, and in the meantime, they ate it again and paid a much steeper price. (They probably threw up 35 times combined. Sorry if that's too much information, but now you know just how bad it was.) I had recovered sufficiently to assume the caretaker role, which meant starting the first of several loads of laundry, cleaning Dominick up as much as possible, and getting him back to sleep for a few minutes before the next bout of sickness. I stayed in his room all night, running back upstairs twice to feed Noel, who chose the worst possible night to wake up an additional time. Then Dominick decided he was ready to get up at 5:50 am. Needless to say, I got absolutely no sleep last night. Fortunately, the boys and I took a nice long nap this afternoon, which is why I'm able to function at all tonight. Dom seems to feel better and even ate a couple of small, bland meals today. Mike may stay home from work again tomorrow. When he gets sick, he gets really sick. This happened last fall when he ate some suspect roast beef at the cafeteria.

I called Sam's Club this morning to report the bad beef they had sold, and the woman in the meat department basically blew me off with a chipper "Oh, okay!" that really said, "And you're telling me because...?" When I asked about getting our money back, she snapped "You'll have to ask customer service about that." That was not exactly the response I was hoping for, so I called again and got the meat manager, who at least seemed to care somewhat and promised we would get a refund. He also said that there hadn't been any other complaints. Tomorrow, I will contact the county health department. If anyone else got sick, I hope they report it, too.

In the midst of the drama today, I did manage to feed Noel some rice cereal, which he seemed to like. Either that or he liked chomping on the spoon. Regardless, he ate all that I gave him. And later, I took his monthly photo. He'd been crying a minute before but gave me this great smile:

Noel's first meal

Thursday night Noel had his first taste of solid food. He was really tired and still feeling the effects of the immunizations, so it didn't go over very well. We gave him a very tiny amount of sweet potato, but most of it came back up, once during the feeding and later, just after his bath. We're going to try again tomorrow with something more bland. Mmmm, rice cereal!



Noel's less-than-successful first feeding foreshadowed my getting sick several hours later. Thank goodness Mike stayed home from work yesterday. He rescheduled a meeting after seeing me lying, quite miserably, on the bathroom floor, knowing that I was in no condition to take care of the boys. I slept most of the day and am feeling much better now. Yesterday, despite my sickness, I couldn't help noticing that Dominick went all day wearing his pajama shirt and no pants, and Noel's bodysuit stayed unsnapped. You can always tell when the daddy is in charge, can't you? Believe me, I am not complaining! I am so grateful Mike was here.

Mike has taken Dominick to the Science Center, and Noel is supposed to be napping, though I hear him kicking his crib, so I have a few more peaceful moments for recuperation and a shower.

Noel's six-month checkup

We went to Noel's appointment this morning while Dominick was at PDO. It was so nice not having to keep Dom from leaving the exam room every few minutes! The trade-off was that Noel's nap had to be delayed, but he went to sleep when we got home without any problems. He had three shots today, which left him a little tired and fussy. You can see in this photo that he was feeling out of it. Poor guy.

As usual, the appointment started with weighing and measuring. At six months, Noel weighs 14 pounds, 6 ounces and measures 26 inches long. While he's still in the fiftieth percentile for length and head circumference, his weight has dropped to fifth-tenth percentile from 25th percentile at the last visit. With all the eating he's been doing, this came as a bit of a surprise. The doctor wants us to start him on solid foods right away and come back in a month for a weight check. I cooked and strained some sweet potatoes tonight but didn't think Noel was up to trying them tonight. Maybe he'll feel better tomorrow.

The other concern is Noel's birthmark. The doctor doesn't think it's likely to go away. I can't remember the term for the kind of birthmark he has (it starts with a v), only the kind he doesn't have (capillary hemangioma). She pointed out that he has a patch of several small spots at the back of his head. I never noticed it under all the hair. Obviously, this was disappointing news. Still, the mark should fade, and laser treatments are a possibility in the future.

The good news is that, apart from these two issues, Noel is doing very well. He's right where he should be developmentally. Also today, the doctor's office set up Noel's follow-up renal scan at the hospital. It's scheduled for May 23. If the ultrasound shows that the kidneys are growing properly and the hydronephrosis has resolved on its own, we won't have to do anything else.

Here's another photo of Noel. He's just started sucking his toes. Everything goes in his mouth these days! He was even going after the doctor's fingers while she was listening to his heart.