Poor lil' sick dude

Yesterday, Liam woke up from his nap in tears. He does that from time to time - he's grumpy for 20 minutes or so when he first wakes up, then snaps out of it and he's fine. Except that yesterday, he never snapped out of it. He was grumpy for a good two hours. And then he started saying his neck was itchy, so we changed his shirt, but then his discomfort progressed upwards until finally he was saying his ear hurt. Every once in a while he would perk up for a bit (like when Diego came on TV), but then he was back to being miserable.

So when Chad got home from work, I packed Liam up and took him down to the ER, and 4 hours later we were diagnosed with Liam's first ear infection.

Most parents I know battle these things several times each winter, so I guess I should be thankful that Liam made it nearly 3 years before succumbing. Anyway, they gave us a painkiller for him at assessment, and he did really well for a poor little kiddo relegated to a waiting room for the next 3.5 hours. We killed the time by reading the few childrens' books we could scrounge and making a trip to the in-hospital Tim Horton's for a juice and a doughnut. When his turn to see the doctor finally came, he was calm as a cucumber to have his chest listened to and his ears checked. It struck me then that this was his first ever trip to the doctor aside from his well-baby checkups. In fact, his registration at the hospital came up as "Baby Boy Cook" - that's how long it had been since he was there last.

(I don't know how he ever got registered like that in the first place, because we had his name picked out long before he was born - it wasn't like we had to go home and think about it some more...)

Anyway, we got home at 10 p.m. and I left Liam with Chad to get ready for bed while I ran to the drugstore to get his prescription filled. So that pretty much took care of the entire night for us. Today is the Teddy Bear Picnic at Cindy's house and I made sure to check with the doctor that he's not contagious, so he did go to Cindy's this morning. I just hope staying up so late last night didn't leave him completely wiped and unable to enjoy himself today.