Fever in the morning

While Zachary's achievements and milestones continue to arrive nearly daily, the teeth remain elusive -- and the likely cause for late night wakeups. Last night was unfortunately similar to the night before, with nearly hourly crying - though miraculously the last time he got up, we were all able to get back to sleep until 9:30 am, woo hoo! And I'm not sure if this was a cause or effect, but this morning, Zachary was lethargic, listless, and warm - I took his temperature, saw that he was running a bit of a fever, gave him some motrin, and called the dcotor. Our practice is fabulously open on weekends and had an opening, so I brought him in. Either the motrin or getting out seemed to put the pep back into him; he was singing, talking, and cooing the whole drive to the doctor, and once more, he seemed to get healthier just walking in the front door.

We got another weighing out of the deal (updated on the right column of the blog); while he's only up 7 oz. since last time, he's definitely getting enough to eat, so I'm guessing he's taking a pause or focusing on mental growth at the moment. And the nurse confirmed that he was running a (now lower, but still above normal) temperature. The doctor, not one we'd seen before, was very nice, and she complimented his happiness -- I'd positioned him on the table facing the mirror, and he was laughing and talking to the cute boy in the reflection (all while repeatedly grabbing and basically shredding the exam table's paper cover) for much of the exam. All was good, the doctor suspects he's just fighting a bug. Zachary had a snack in the car before we headed off to pick up dinner for mommy.

I should mention that the word "ma" has entered his vocabulary, so you know that "Meh" likely isn't far behind, though I'm sure Meh would also accept "ma ma". Still "da da da" (yup, generally in threes) remains the favorite. And speaking of "da da da", today was almost another big breakthrough. As I said, we brought Meh dinner at work, but arrived a little early, so Zachary and I were hanging out in an office while mommy was still working. I was eating in between playing with him, and explained to him that the fish tasted yummiest with tartar sauce. He thought 'tartar' was another of the funniest words in the world, laughing every time I said it. And after a few times, he actually responded "da da", with what could have been the slightly hint of r's at the end of each. I tried to get him to say it again, but we were back to regular squeals and babble; the closest were a couple more "da da da" triples.