Spring Fever

It’s been awhile since the last entry because I’ve been sick and haven’t had anything on my mind but how miserable I’ve been feeling. Personally, I find the topic very interesting and worthy of describing in great detail, but I have learned that those who are not pregnant and are under the age of 75 generally don’t enjoy discussing the various ailments one’s body inflicts upon them, so as much as it pains me to let slip away so much good material, I have held myself back from writing about it.

Still, I feel I am entitled to complain about a few aspects of being riddled with a nasty, insidious head cold. First, I am 9 months pregnant. I am already plenty miserable on my own without the help of some virus. My body is plenty capable of producing pains, aches, and leaking fluids of its own without the added help of a virus. Not to mention, it is already being invaded upon by a foreign entity. I consider myself a decent hostess, but I can only throw so many parties at once. Second, and not that I am keeping a count, but this is at least the 14th cold I’ve had since September. And it must be the 900 millionth one of my life. How many variations of a cold virus can there possibly be? Haven’t I conquered all of them by now? Also, must these viral infections inflict themselves upon Adam? As terrible as I feel, I know he feels 10 times worse. He has gotten pretty good at blowing his nose, but I’m afraid he’s not capable of the more sophisticated aspects of handing cold discomfort like snorting in just enough to suction the mucous out of the airway and into the back of the throat while simultaneously holding back the epiglottis to get the blob into the esophagus rather than the windpipe, which is gross, I know, but when there is no tissue nearby, what are you gonna do? Instead, he has to rely upon the more pedestrian version of letting it voluntarily run down the back of his throat until it attempts to enter his windpipe (epiglottis didn’t know blob was coming because there was no cue of swallowing food, you see), whereupon he coughs and gags and sounds like he’s going to die. Also, the sicker Adam is, the more he refuses to swallow medicine (or food for that matter), so he must rely upon this uncomfortable system of dealing with heaping mounds of snot without the aid of good ol’ decongestants, anti-histamines, or even your basic analgesic. I’ll never know how so many of us OTC weaklings make it through childhood.

My primary complaint about this cold, however, is its timing. As soon as the weather is nice enough for us to get outside and enjoy ourselves, we are hit with this nastiness and there is nothing we need more than to be inside resting. Not an option with Adam, so we have still managed to spend a fair amount of time outdoors. With less than two weeks to go before Natasha is set to arrive the last thing I want to do is sit helplessly trying to conserve energy. But what little I have must be used on the baby that is already here, and more specifically, when I have to wrestle him to the ground and drag him back inside against his powerful protests. Not only do I have lots of gestating to do, I have procrastinated doing so many things to prep for Natasha until these final two weeks that it is now humanly impossible to accomplish more than 1/25th of them. And when I do expend a little extra energy, I start having contractions. Or my body just reminds me how pathetic it becomes during pregnancy by hurting for a full day after I just raked up dead leaves, grass, and dog poop for 15 minutes.

Still, I am thankful that March did leave like a pleasant, mewing little lamb. And despite its potential to be a bitch of a month (as if to not be outdone by March), April has been kind to us Minnesotans this year. Instead of teasing us with a glimmer of hopeful temperatures in the 60’s one day and savagely disappointing us the next with wind chills in the 10’s, our weather has been remarkably….unremarkable. Except for the tornado that touched down here a week ago and left us hanging out in our basement, that is. But I consider that normal spring weather and would happily trade in other weather extremes Minnesota is capable of producing in favor of the occasional storm clouds capable of producing heavy rotation (my new weather lexicon impresses you, no?).

So I woke up aware that today was going to be another gorgeous day. Despite the fact that I was dead tired from not sleeping, it left me sanguine and eager to see what could become of the day. I love the spring for being capable of producing wakings like that! Especially Minnesota springs. I think it reached the mid-70’s. The forecast said there was a good possibility of rain and thunderstorms, but I knew better. Funny how you come to predict weather better than the weatherman once you’ve lived in Minnesota long enough. “Nope, them bones ain’t achin’ no thunderstorms today”, well I don’t say that now, but I look forward to saying that someday. Actually, Desi, our Boxer proved himself quite reliable the day we had the tornado and walked around whining (very uncharacteristic) for about 2 hours before the tornado warnings started making their appearance. He also ran away from home that morning, the little turd (got a call 20 minutes later from a neighbor that wanted to keep him; I guess he just walked right into their yard and sat down beside them).

Immediately upon waking, Adam demanded to go outside (this is normal for him). His pleas start off cute by bringing us one boot and one sock, sure that once we get these items on him, we will let him run out the door and play despite the fact that he has on no pants and it’s still only 7 am (I am gaining a reputation in the neighborhood as the crazy lady who goes for 6 am walks; but I assure you, this is not of my own choosing). After we persuade him to put down his ONE BOOT and ONE SOCK, he’ll run and find a miscellaneous pair of pants or some other clothing item he is sure is all that is preventing him from freedom. When that fails, he’ll start knocking on the door to the coat closet saying “coat?!?” as if it might just come when he beckons. DH was dying to “go for a ride”, which can usually be translated into “go to Cabela’s”, “go to a car or recreational vehicle dealership” (which, thankfully are closed on Sundays, yet this fact does not stop us from loitering their lots on random Sundays), or just generally “go somewhere you really don’t want to go and is probably a long way away and requires traversing a really bumpy road which is going to hurt your majorly pregnant belly”. So, of course, I pushed my agenda.

I wasn’t dying to go for a walk. Given my druthers, I think I would rather stay home, be alone in quiet, read the paper, take a nap, have a nice luxuriously long shower without someone banging on the door, drink some coffee…but I knew that a walk would please at least 50% of what’s left of our family (we got rid of Dora which alters the equation from 60%, I’ll have to fill you in more later) so I suggested that course of action. DH, the ever good husband obliged and Adam, DH, Desi, and I took off for Silverlake. We ended up walking to the park, which I had never been to and now regret never having visited. It’s a toddler’s paradise and I’m going to have to bring Adam there as much as possible this summer. The kid had a blast. And Desi, with his gentle leader collar on was the perfect dog. After we wore Adam and Desi out, we ended up driving to Cabela’s. It’s about a 45 minute drive and both Adam and I caught some shut-eye. We ended up only buying stuff for Adam: a child-size life jacket, which he hated trying on and will no doubt protest wearing the entire time he is forced to when we finally make it out on the boat. We also bought some yogurt-coated pretzels, two of which he consumed and 4 of which he partially consumed and then threw into never-to-again-be-seen crevasses of the Excursion. But still, these two pretzels are the most the poor kid has eaten in days, so I’ll take it.

After we got home, DH decided that he was going to do take the wheel off of the Excursion to check out what was causing the horrendous noise that again made its appearance. So Adam hung out there with him. They were pretty cute together. Jason had to lay on the ground under the truck to check it out. I guess Adam thought laying on the cement on your back is a pretty good idea so he tried it out himself. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture since I was inside catching a nap, but I can definitely envision it. For not more than 20 minutes from coming inside, Adam demanded to go into the garage and listen to the wiggles. Poor little guy was so tired that he had to lay down on the garage floor for awhile.

Despite being sick, he had a pretty adventurous day. DH got his trip to Cabela’s, and I got a nice quiet afternoon nap, so we’re all pretty happy. Adam has been in bed for about 4 hours (went down at 6 pm on his own volition) and I have barely heard a peep from him. Perhaps I’ll hit the sack early too and we’ll both knock out the remnants of this cold so we can enjoy our lovely spring.