Clean-up, aisle six

Grandma has been visiting for the weekend, and we've been having a great time so far! Well, except for Zachary's ongoing cold. And me dealing with my first experience of him screaming uncontrollably early this afternoon. But we'll get to that in a moment...

So Zachary's early consternation with being held by that stranger -- who's likely held him more than any other non-mommy/daddy individual (other than mima) -- has quickly evaporated. Grandma is once more one of Zachary's favorite people, and he smiles, laughs, and makes loud happy sounds in her general direction when he sees her.

Grandma generously invited Meh and myself to go out on a date last night, which was wonderful. We had a nice leisurely sit-down dinner, enjoyed excellent food, and in general just got to talk and catch up. We both noticed that we were holding hands and realized that it had been some time since one or both of our sets of hands wasn't occupied with Zachary, a cloth diaper, a bottle, or a denim diaper bag. Thank you grandma!

This morning something was not quite right with the little man - he just could not get happy, and started hollering more and more as the morning went on, even when he was being held. When Meh headed to work, he got particularly mad, and I ended up rocking him to sleep (and napping with him) in the rocking chair in his room. When he woke up, he was still mad, and felt a little warm. I took his temperature, but there was thankfully no fever. With dual potential causes of that ongoing cold and his teeth being pretty close to erupting, I tried several tacts: one of those nasal aspirator things (a little suction ball that you stick up the nostril - fairly ineffective for Zachary, and it often makes him mad - today it made him madder, to quote daddy's favorite children's book Ferdinand), and then some baby tylenol to address both the cold and the teeth. The latter worked wonders, and by the time we headed out for our afternoon errands, he was back to his happy and talkative self.

Grandma, Zachary, and I went to Costco before heading to see mommy for Zachary's lunch. First grandma and I grabbed some lunch at what continues to be about the only restaurant serving kosher meat in this city -- the Costco hot dog stand. (Yes, yes, I know it's not even remotely kosher when there are cheese pizzas and ice cream sundaes being served alongside on the menu, but ah well.) And it was while I was grabbing condiments for said hot dog (a Sinai Kosher polish sausage, actually) that Zachary chose to demonstrate those improved grabbing abilities I mentioned in the last post. Yup, my soda was tantalizingly close to him in the baby bjorn, and before I knew it, Zachary's hands were out, and over it went, with caffeinated aspartame-y goodness sloshing everywhere on the condiment stand and concrete floor -- though thankfully not on Zachary or myself. I made a vain effort to towel up the worst of it, but it was quite a mess and I didn't make much of an impact on it. Short of going inside and purchasing what would've likely been a six-pack of industrial mops, there wasn't much more I could do, but I still felt pretty bad, particularly when it still hadn't been mopped it up when we'd finished our lunch and slinked away 15 minutes later.