5 on Friday

As always, here are 5 special reasons I am loving my boy this week:

5. Poor Marino had Hand Foot Mouth virus (Coxsackievirus) again this week. He kept telling me "I need medicine to feel me better. Take my temperature."

4. Marino always tries to get me to laugh. The other day he put together a huge stack of crackers and cheese and shoved it in his mouth. "Hey, look, Mommy! Its a burger!" he said.

3. I bought him Jello since his throat was bothering him. Apparently, this was his first time eating Jello, and he was very amused. He kept saying "Hey, look! It's shaking! It keeps moving! It's so silly!" He was definitely confused about the name, however. He asked me for "more jealous, please" yesterday.

2. Apparently, Marino had a very exciting dream the other night. He woke up and said "Mommy, there was a giant octopus behind your car. Its trying to catch up to us! It's going to scoop up the whole city with its giant arms!"

1. When I took Marino to the pediatrician the other day, he was so well behaved. When we left I told him I was proud of him and he said "Yeah, I was not shy with Dr. Rahman."

First Movie!

I was looking forward to this past weekend for a while but it started with a bang when I woke up with Coxsackie virus on Saturday morning. Marino had it a couple weeks ago and I noticed one small blister on my throat earlier this week. Well, but Saturday, my throat, tonsils and the back half of my tongue were covered in them. Those of you whose children haven't had it yet, let me tell you, when they do get it, feed them as many popsicles and italian ices as they want. It hurts so so bad. I have to take Tylenol every 3 hrs or I feel like death. It's pretty awful.

My dad and stepmom came to visit this weekend. Marino was in heaven - he LOVES his PapPap! My Aunt Kerry and cousin Samantha also came over and Marino had an early birthday celebration with all the new toys he got! Check out his new Mater shirt from my dad and Barb...

Perfect for this!

All of us took Marino to see his first movie - Cars 2! Marino LOVES Cars and especially Mater, so he was excited to go to the movie. I was a bit concerned with how he would feel about being in the theater but he was AWESOME! For the first half of the movie, he sat on the edge of his seat, completely engrossed in the movie. At some points he wanted to sit with me or his PapPap, and sometimes he wanted to stand (and dance), but he was really interested the whole time and well behaved. He even remembered to whisper (most of the time). It was really great and he was better behaved than some older children we saw there.

Here's Marino and PapPap playing with his new drum set from Aunt Kerry (he LOVES this thing).

It would have been a perfect weekend, were it not for this plaque!

5 on Friday

As always, here are 5 special reasons I am loving my boy this week. Some of them are a bit sad, since he was very sick this week, but precious nonetheless.

5. Monday, he told me "I need a Lightning McQueen bandaid [pronounced "banday"]." " Where should I put it? ", I asked. "Um...on my lips [pronounced "yips"]" he said.

4. He threw up on Sunday (everywhere, it was awful) and he was really disturbed by it. "I'm not going to get my drip [drip = throw up] out anymore because Daddy already cleaned it off the floor" he told me.

3. On Monday, he told Evan on the phone "I don't feel so good. I gotta go to the doctor and get all better."

2. One of Marino's favorite stories is "The Three Little Pigs". The other day, we were reading it and one of the scenes shows the completed house of sticks. On that page, there is a small bird in the corner, folded up in his wings and looking sad. Marino pointed to the bird and said "Oh no. Little bird is sad because the pig took away all of his sticks." I was really impressed with his insight there, that he would have put together that the bird needs sticks and was upset that the pig used the sticks he needed for his own house.

1. Sydney's birthday party was Sunday (post coming soon) and Marino was so excited to sing happy birthday. He was loudly singing the whole walk over to the cake (where we were supposed to go to sing). Can't wait for his birthday this year!

To say this was a rough week would be an understatement. Out of nowhere, Marino developed a fever and began vomiting on Sunday afternoon. His fever got up to 104 overnight, which is the highest fever he's had. I took him to see the doctor on Monday and she showed me a blister on his tonsil - evidence of Coxsackie virus. Coxsackie is self-resolving, so she told us just to keep him on a diet of liquids and soft foods and keep up with Ibuprofen. Tuesday, I bought him some Campbell's chicken noodle soup for dinner. Well, as he was eating it, he broke out in hives. Evan checked the can and the soup is made with egg whites!!

Evan gave him the Epipen shot and Bendaryl, then Albuterol and Pulmicort. All seemed to be calming down until he broke out in head to toe hives, and his eyes are ear lobes started swelling! So, off to the ER we went. There, they gave him Pepcid (antihistamine) and steroids and kept us for observation until 2am. He was absolutely miserable. If you had seen him, you would have cringed. His eyes were little slits and he had blotchy red hives over ever inch of his body. It was awful. He improved slightly 3 hours after the medicine was given, so they let us go home.

The next morning, he still had swollen eyes and some hives on his face, but they improved by noon. We are doing Benadryl every 6 hours, round the clock, steroids once a day and Pepcid twice a day for several more days.