Sick Baby

The poor baby has quite the nasty cold. In fact, as I'm typing this I can hear a cough over the monitor that breaks my heart.

He's had an occasional cough and a stuffed up nose since last Thursday, but only yesterday did the cold seem to really start getting bad. His nose is now running like a faucet and he's having trouble sleeping at night.

He has maintained a pretty good mood through it, except for when you try to wipe his nose. He hates that! For a few hours today I was able to sneak it in through games of "Where's Nicholas," where I would "happen" to run the cloth under his nose while pulling it off his head. I think he's on to me, though, so I may stop that for a day so I don't ruin that game for him.

The other thing going on here is snow. I don't know what our grand totals were for the week because we had such bad wind with the last storm that depending on where you measure there is anywhere from 25-50 inches. At any rate, the piles of snow behind cars are now as high as any of us can reach, so we've been having to carry snow 30 feet away to an empty parking space as we dug out. And the hand railing at the stairs is completely useless since it is now buried under snow most of the way up.

But we have dug out. Joe even managed to make it to Maine today for an interview! Even this morning neither of us believed it was even a realistic possibility for this trip to go through, but he is there. However, despite the fact that our parking lot is clean and Joe said he was going full speed on the Beltway this afternoon, the city is still a mess and so Hopkins is cancelled again tomorrow and I'm cut off from everyone in the city. (Not that I probably should go visiting with the sick baby, but still.)

This snow has also put me yet another week behind on work because daycare was closed today, we haven't been able to get any babysitters up, and even when one of us was watching Nicholas the other couldn't go anywhere to get quiet to work. And most naptimes (and even some nights after he went to bed) were spent out shovelling. Tonight I made some real progress finally, but not enough.

The one positive of the snow is the community we've developed with our neighbors. We've been on friendly terms with most of the people who live in our building (11 apartments total), but it has never before extended beyond nods, hellos, and maybe a 2-minute conversation as we ran into each other on our way in or out. But all the hours out shovelling with them and being stuck together for days has changed that. In fact, a bunch of them came over yesterday for an impromptu birthday party for Joe. The kids played and the adults chatted and had cake. It was downright delightful.