Thanksgiving

Despite Kellen's "viral infection" and corresponding come-and-go fever, he's been in a relatively good mood for the past few days. As my last blog detailed, I got the phone call on Tuesday to come and pick him up from daycare, and we've been fighting this thing ever since. Matt took him to the doctor on Wednesday and the diagnosis - "viral infection" - which in my book translates to "we can do nothing for you...your life is turned upside down until his body can fight it on his own...tough it out."

Matt was able to stay home with him on Wednesday, as I still had a half day of work - and a schedule FULL of students needing to see me for registration advising, which would have been really tough to reschedule. Our original plan was to keep Kellen in daycare on Wednesday afternoon and for Matt and I to go and watch Walk the Line...a plan which obviously had been sidelined. Oh well! After work I ended up going out to eat with a professor and one of the students that had just defended their master's internship project, their final thing to complete their degree, as a celebratory lunch, then headed back home to relieve daddy from Kellen-duty so that he could go and run some errands. Kellen's fever came and went all day, apparently, with the highest spike being a little over 102, which ruled out the Rockdale Thanksgiving option for he and I on Thursday - there are too many kids there and I'm not taking chances around other kids with him running a fever.

So, Thursday morning Matt and I are up pretty early because he has to go to work, and lo and behold, Kellen wakes up around 5 AM as well, just as Daddy's walking out of the door for the day. He gets to see Daddy, but he's awake. I try, to no avail I might add, to get him to go back to sleep, so we end up watching the morning sequence on PBS, then Veggie Tales after Sesame Street is over at 8 AM. By 9, he had gathered all of the items from his bed and had carefully arranged them on his SpongeBob couch (which was salvageable, by the way), then he tells me, "Kellen go night, night."

"Ok buddy. You can go night night if you want to."

And within 5 minutes...he was fast asleep. He would have stayed that way for more than the hour that he slept if the dog hadn't started going nuts outside barking a who knows what. Much needed nap cut dreadfully short by Bailey. Big ARG on that one!

So we ended up driving to MawMaw and PawPaw Hapes house for Thanksgiving. It was relatively safe, as there were no small children there, so we hopefully lessened the chance of Kellen sharing his illness with anyone else. His fever had spiked to its highest Thursday morning - 102.4. When it's over 101, we actually give eiter Tylenol or Ibuprofen to bring it down. He slept the entire drive, and was a super cranky monster when we arrived...for about the first 30 minutes or so, at least. I couldn't leave his side...literally. PawPaw brought out the bed for him (a super cute, blow up, Winnie the Pooh, bed with attached covers and pillow-ish headboard) and he laid on it, but I had to be next to him so that he could hold my hand.

Now let me clarify some of my statements here...despite running the fever, Kellen has been acting JUST LIKE HIS NORMAL SELF. He's not telling me that his tummy hurts, his ears hurt, he's not throwing up, having trouble from the other end, nothing....The only things that we can tell that's a physical symptom of something being wrong is that he's running a fever and isn't eating as much. That's it. So I want him to rest, but neither Matt nor I think it's a big deal to take him somewhere since he's acting virtually normal.

Aunt Boo gives him a new Hermie video and stuffed Hermie doll, which to this current point in time I don't think has left his side. They proceed to watch this "New Hermie" for what will be the first of many times over the weekend. After waking up a little bit and getting used to all of the people that aren't normally at his MawMaw and PawPaw's house, Kellen overcame his clinginess and was fine. He didn't eat much, but then again, I didn't expect him to...other than rolls, of course. I think he had half a dozen of those!

I'll have to detail Friday's game day activities and Saturday's George Bush Museum visit and Basketball game later...Kellen wants me to come and watch the "New Hermie" with him...

But first...I have to share this...we were looking for his stuffed Hermie yesterday and he asked me where it was. I said, "I don't know. Kellen where is it?" His reply?

"I don't know either."

Gotta go!