sickness

I think I have a tendency to slack on blogging when I have no pictures to post. I feel like it adds so much more to my entry. So just to give you a heads up this is a picture-less entry. I'm pretty sure I have no recent pictures.
We have been dealing with a sick baby all week. Monday night he threw up twice. I've never seen a child that young throw up before. I discovered on monday night that Daddy does not handle puke well because I was left to clean it up while he gagged haha. I called the doctors office that night and spoke to the nurse as well as my nurse/doctor/go to person, my mom :). I got a lot of good advice and hoped for the best. Eric went to the store and go pedialyte and he was able to keep it down. He slept through the night and the next morning I started him on pedialyte for the first hour. Once he held that down I gave him some toast. I kept every meal small and we stuck to pedialyte, no formula. He did well and seemed to be feeling better. So Wednesday I put him back on formula and regular food. He seemed to do pretty well. He spit up in the morning but it didn't seem like he puked, just spit up. He did great all day. His appetite wasn't what it normally was but he seemed ok. I decided on Thursday that he was well enough for me to go to work. I didn't want to drop him off at my parents house unless I thought he was ok because I didn't want to get my nephews sick. He did ok there, had some not so pleasant bowel movements but seemed ok, just again, not as much of an apetite. This morning he woke up really early crying. I brought him into our bed and discovered that he had a lot of gas so he must have had a tummy ache. Once he calmed down I put him back in his crib but he just played and never went back to sleep. I got him up and gave him some cheerios and pears for breakfast. He did ok until he started throwing up the pears. ugh! I thought this was supposed to be a 24 hour bug! Then I found out that my nephew Dylan caught it and I feel horrible! So I have not given Eric anything more than snacks and pedialyte all day and he seems to be doing better. It seems like every day of this illness, the morning has been the worst and he gets progressively better as the day goes along. So tonight I'll give him some formula before bed and see what tomorrow brings! If this doesn't clear up by monday we are going to have to make a little trip to the doctors office.

My plan this week was to get him on milk. On monday I decided to replace his lunch time bottle with a sippy cup with milk. I quickly discovered a problem. He does not like the taste of milk. Another problem is that although he's drank out of a sippy cup here and there since he was 6 months old, he only will take a few sips out of it and throws it or puts it down. I'm not sure how I'm going to transition him to a sippy and milk, both things he doesn't particularly like but it looks like I'm going to have to go cold turkey. All I know is that it's not going to happen until he feels better! I think he senses my stress about this. I used to work with a kid who was over 2 and still drinking out of a bottle. He refused to drink out of a sippy cup no matter what kind it was. It was a nightmare. We tried cutting him off bottles but he just wouldn't drink anything all day and his mom would have to cave at night and give him a bottle just to get something in him. I hope this doesn't become me! I am a behavior therapist after all, I can handle this... right? oh boy.

This week has been quite an eventful week. Besides the baby being sick, Eric got a job! He is back working for the union for a company called Century Drywall. They actually called him which is so rare in that business. He is so excited. He started yesterday and he loves it. We hope it is a long term deal because he's working for an actual company as opposed to out of the union office (don't ask me what the difference is!). Either way, any extra money always helps!

On another note I had a job interview that went really well this week. I have been working for my old company on the south shore one day a week. It is a long day and it's a lot of travel but it's extra money which is always nice. I like this company that I interviewed with and it is a part-time after-school position. There's also potential to work on the weekends if I want. I was really excited about it at first but my mind has been spinning about it every since. I have worked for the May Institute on and off for several years. It has been a rocky road but it's become like home for me. Before working at the May I used to switch jobs all the time. I even left the May a few times and they took me back. I was settled in there for about 2 years before I got laid off. I loved my job and was devestated when I got laid off. So I was so excited to go back to work there after almost a year of being laid off. There are definitely down sides to the job. There's always the uncertainty of the stability of the company. Things are not what they used to be. I don't know what happened but the company is falling apart at the seams. However, I feel an obligation to them. I also realize that if I leave there I won't go back and that's something that's really hard to deal with. This has been a constant for me for so long I just don't want to give up. I think it's a pretty good thing for me that I want to stay but I'm pretty sure there are very few out there who agree with me. The reality is that I am in grad school and when I get out I will enter the social work field. These next couple years will be my last years working as a Behavior Therapist. So is it worth switching companies now if I plan on leaving the business in a few years? I don't know... well I do know, I want to stay at the May, I just need everyone else to understand that :). It may be a bad idea but it's what I know and am comfortable with. I can pick up extra days of work if I want to and maybe some day I'll be a senior therapist again, who knows.

So that's the Hamelin family in a nutshell this week!