Birthday and a Haircut

So Gwen's birthday was yesterday. She celebrated with a hair cut! And cake.

First Haircut

Yesterday as I was trying to get Aidan to sleep we went for a walk. I decided that since I want to have my hair cut and I have been waitnig for my hairdresser to finally open her new salon we would go by the storefront and see if she was finally open.

Judith's is now open for business. Aidan and I went into her shop to make an appointment for me and we talked for a few minutes. I was absently playing with Aidan's bangs and Judith offered to trim them. Since I have been getting comments from you guys at home and the center of the hair seems to land right down the middle of his nose I said "yes, thankyou."

It only took about 10 seconds and now I have a small piece of Aidan's hair. It looks good and now there is no hair in his eyes. I will save a big haircut for when he has lots more hair. If Aidan is anything like me, that won't be until he is 2.

Messy, Messy, Messy!

This afternoon when I had an email to send Aidan found the Minigo that I had forgotten on the coffee table just minutes earlier. After saying "No!" and having Aidan throw the minigo on the carpet I decided that I would have to give up a bit of control and go with the flow. Well within reason. So I put Aidan in his high chair, put on his big plastic cover all bib and let him go at it. Here are the pictures to prove that Mommy will sometimes give up control of the sticky stuff. (Aidan was scheduled for a bath tonight anyway.)

Dr. Visit update

Today Aidan was finally healthy enough to get his 1 year check-up and shots. Of course there was a mix up at the doctor's office and the appointment I had made two weeks earlier to get his check-up was mistakenly cancelled. I think that the mix up must have been that the appointment I got for him on the 29th of March cancelled the one in April, though he still needed to be check from the illness and get his full 1 year check. This meant that they did fit me in, but we had to wait another 20-30 minutes. Aidan crawled all around the office, played with the bead and wire contraption, tried to eat some books and tried to get some of the open files off a shelf.

When we got into the appointment Aidan was pretty tired since he has been taking a nap mid morning for about two to three hours. He was very good though and we were able to measure him (74 cm, that is 4 cm more than last check-up, 25th percentile), weigh him, on the big scale this time, (a little less than 22 pounds, 50th percentile) and check his lungs (no wiggling on the table).

After weighing him Dr. Izen went to get the needles for his vaccinations (measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus and chicken pox) and I got Aidan ready to get stabbed in the legs. Dr. Izen is really good and fairly quick so Aidan didn't mind too much, but he did cry a little bit. He stopped immediately though when Mommy got her blood-pressure taken. Aidan was very interested to see what the doctor was doing to Mommy.

Aidan had a bottle and a nap when we got home and the vaccinations only affected him a little. I did give him a dose of Ibprophen this afternoon as he got some very red cheeks, but his legs don't seem to be sore. He is now in bed after falling asleep on Daddy's lap.

Back to normal

Alright then. Sorry for keeping you all hanging (both of you).

So, the ER on the 21st. After that, we had a few days of masks and antibiotics. His fever went away eventually, and he started sounding better.

Gwen and I continued to be miserable.

By Saturday (his birthday), he was doing pretty well, except ... when we changed his diaper Saturday morning, he had a rash. On his trunk, in front and in back. And quite a bit in back. Enough that we were concerned that they might be an allergic reaction to the antibiotics (which *did* have an awful effect on his ... output ...). So, we hoofed it down to the walk-in clinic, and saw a kindly doctor there. He took a look at the rash and told us that it was probably the tail-end of the virus and not to worry too much, unless his fever came back up, and/or the rash got puffier and itchy. Back home to prepare for the "birthday party", which had been scaled back considerably due to the illnesses.

We had a number of "virtual" visits with the grandparents, and some cake later in the day. We took quite a bit of video on Saturday, mostly with the video camera, and some with the web cam. In juggling the video camera, the web camera and trying to be involved in everything, I ... uh ... didn't get many actual photographs. We might resort to pulling some captures from the DV. Anyway, here's one I did get:



He sort-of liked the cake. He was pretty tired by cake time, so his appreciation was somewhat muted. :>)

Thank you all for the presents! He's enjoying playing with all the toys (quiet and not so quiet) and we've worn some of the clothes that fit him now and put the others away until he grows a bit more.

On the seventh day we rested.

In the intervening week, we've all been recouperating. By now, we're all feeling much better. Aidan had another doctor's visit on Wednesday, a check-up with our family doctor, who was brought up to speed with the ER visit and drop-in clinic visit. Dr. Izen told us to continue with the antibiotics (which ended Friday night) and that we could taper off the ventolin on the weekend, but to keep up with the pulmacort. Still keeping score? He has *another* doctor's appointment in the week to come, this one his scheduled Year One visit where he'll get his shots, etc. Hopefully he'll get a clean bill of health too.

So, I've missed the cherry blossoms blooming and some other good photo ops in the past few weeks. I toyed with the idea of taking pictures of The Boy while he was sick, but that seemed a little cruel, and frankly, required more energy than I had.

But, the weather's turning, Grandma Kathy and Grampa John are coming out to visit in two weeks, and we're all healthy again, so the cute quota will be met (hopefully) in the weeks to come.

I might a few more short video clips posted in the next few days. Any feedback on the video? It's pretty boring I realize (no music, shaky camera, etc) but at the moment we really don't have a lot of time to make things pretty. I can throw it quite easily to DVD if anyone wants a higher-quality version.

Cheers,
A>

A Birthday Video

Sorry for the spacing between updates. I promise that tomorrow there'll be photos and a "news" update (not that there's any news). But for tonight, here's a link to a rather dry video shot on Aidan's birthday. Warning: For family only ... it's pretty dry!

The file's DIVX encoded, and large (~100 MB). Be patient. If you don't know how to play the file, try to use the VLC media player, it'll play almost anything. If you don't have this program, get it free here: http://www.videolan.org

Here's the link to the video: http://www.anthonyfloyd.homedns.org:9100/Aidan_birthday_march_2006.avi. Enjoy!