The difference now that is that Wesley’s the one playing carnie games.

I don’t think Wesley’s changed too much since our visit last year, other than he’s maybe thinned out a bit…

He still showed zero interest in seeing the animals, but thankfully he enjoys disgusting/delicious carnival food as much as I do. And I think he’s already anxiously anticipating the day he’ll get to go on a ride.

For two, I pretty much abhor the way I look in photographs, so I try to stay out of them whenever possible. The sad side effect of this is that few shots exist of Wesley and mama.

At the moment though, I’m pretty much obsessed with Instagram and with taking photographs with my new Iphone; I took advantage of its front camera and managed to snap this:

I’m bummed that the quality isn’t as good as that of my other Instagram shots, but I’m happy that at least a small record exists of me and my boy together.

And aside from that first time, he’s cried his eyes out for every haircut since — until now.

It helped that this time, when we told him we were going to see Mario, he thought we meant the Super-plumber-Luigi’s brother-save Princess Peach Mario. And that Mario fed him two or three lollipops. And that he got to play a racing game with daddy through the ordeal. We’re not above subterfuge. Or bribery. Clearly.

We slowly settled into our new home. Then it was burglarized.

Wesley’s ear infections finally cleared up. Then he had surgery to correct his hydrocele.

In August he started attending a lovely new Montessori school.

Then he got hand, foot, and mouth disease.

And as it turned out, I was fighting a wonky thyroid all the time and didn’t even know it.

We’re both doing much better now. As you can see, Wesley is looking strong as an ox these days and sporting a healthy head of Donald Trump like hair.

With summer far behind us, Craig and I are enjoying fall and feeling thankful for many things, mainly our health — and our little turkey’s.

They cuddle in bed telling jokes, and throw themselves about yelling “timber,” play chase all through the house, make farting noises, hang upside down. And the whole thing is loud, and crazy, and sometimes too much and also always beautiful. And no one does a better job of getting to him to laugh or smile than his daddy.

Hello blog world. We’ve been gone too long. Trying to get back in the habit and maybe thinking of updating/moving the blog. I miss this record of our life too much.  Besides, look who’s only gotten cuter in the time we’ve been away:

This morning, our beautiful friends came over for a playdate and to see our new home. We ate delicious souffles and chocolate croissants (which I cannot claim to have made). We three took naps. We then drove around our new neighborhood and bought two 25 cent cups of lemonade from the girls down the street (I paid a dollar and still felt I hadn’t paid enough). We took our new remote control boat for a run in the pool. And maybe tonight Craig and I will get to sit back and watch a movie. In our new home.

We’ve been here two months and love it more each day.

It needs things, yes: a lot of work in the backyard, a lot of landscaping in the front one; more storage space in the kitchen; a new sink in a bathroom; a cleaner, not-milk-stained sofa and nicer furniture all around; some artwork. But it’s a nice large house with room for many toys and many books – with a pool to swim in and a yard to run around in. And a place where beautiful things have already happened, like Wesley’s first painting:

And where there is always a lot of light and a lot of love.

Trying to get back into the groove of writing regularly and taking more photographs (if I can find the camera’s charger) . We’ve been away, but we’re probably doing better than ever. Summer is almost here. We’re living in our first real house (still not having entirely unpacked). We were all three kids at Disney for a few days. We’re eagerly awaiting Craig’s school year to end and summer to really start for us as a family.

Wesley is a year older – and healthier. At the end of my semester in early May we went to see an allergist and found Wes to, for now, only have a small reaction to dust mite, then visited the ENT, who confirmed his ears were full of junky fluid. We stayed home together all this past month, my sweet baby and me, keeping away from the petri dish that is day care and staying clear of dairy for a while. The results are two clear ears and a passing score on the hearing test. He’s talking more than ever now and is fond of holding up his hand to his ear and stating in surprise “I hear _________!” – the telephone, a trumpet, crickets, a motor – the world. Looking forward to new summer sounds in our backyard and all around.

At the same moment I lay in that MRI machine playing word games in my mind to stave off panic, Craig was with our son at the pediatrician, trying to find out why the county health department had called that very morning. A few days before, we’d had to take Wes to the emergency room – for the first time – when the after-hours nurse practioner felt uncomfortable treating Wesley’s apparent “hyperacute” pink eye himself. At the hospital a swab was taken, and the results, although surprisingly common (he tested positive for Haemophilus Influnzae, a bacterium, a misnomer, as it is not the flu), still had to be reported to the proper authorities. H. flu in its most annoying form is pervasive but relatively harmless, but because type B was historically responsible for meningitis, it still raises red flags. Most kids get vaccinated against this type of H. flu now, as Wesley has been, but as eye swabs are not routinely typed, they need to know you know what’s up.

In other words, our boy had what y’all know as the “pink eye.”

Except this “pink eye,” this insidious and treacherous “pink eye” grabbed on to our son and simply would not let go. A month later, he was still testing positive for H. flu in his eyes.

We fought this H. flu for almost two months. We attacked it with three different antibiotic drops, a steroid, three oral antibiotics, and after a third trip to the emergency room – at the point when the capillaries in our son’s eyes started to burst and bleed from the swelling, and the doctor announced that the double ear infection that had apparently cleared three days earlier had returned, for the second time — two doses of antibiotics via injections. We coated his nostrils, and our own to prevent more spreading, with antibiotic ointment.

In the course of fighting this we’ve seen three different E/R doctors. Our own pediatrician. Our nurse practioner. An ophthalmologist. An infectious diseases doctor.

None of them can agree what the real problem is. Apparently, very possibly, sinusitis, which is rarely diagnosed in children as young as Wesley because in truth, their sinus cavities are rather small. But the point is his little head seems to keep cycling the infection from one area to another. The eyes clear – the ear infections pop up. The ear infections clear, his nasal packages seep with pus. The nose dries up, but the eyes swell and shut. Then the viral panel showed he was, at this same time, fighting ye common cold. And, because that wasn’t enough, he was also either 1. having an allergic reaction to some part of the treatment, 2. developing a true allergy to something at the exact time that the bacteria and virus invaded, or 3. mimicking an allergic reaction as means of getting rid of the crap in his system.

He’s doing much better this week, let me tell you that, before you continue to worry too much.

But to make matters worse, Wesley is scheduled for surgery to repair a hydrocele/hernia in about 3 weeks. Of course a surgeon won’t touch him with a ten foot pole if he’s still got all that funkiness swimming in his little noggin. And so he got one more injection of the antibiotic, (though we will not give him any more antibiotics at this point unless he develops an unsafe fever), he’s finishing a course of steroid eye drops, and he’s on an antihistamine to try to dry him up.

But the infectious disease doctor suggested something much more natural — and in some ways, much harder: he told us to pull him out of daycare. The man was lovely, I should say that, and so I feel I need to clarify that he did not make this suggestion lightly, nor in a I-hate-working-mothers kind of way. But he pointed out the obvious. When you look at his chart, you see the picture of health for Wesley’s first 16 or 17 months (the time he stayed at home with me), and a much uglier picture appear at about 18/19 months, the time he started day care. Whatever the yearly average is for ear infections, Wesley has more than surpassed it. He’s had something like 6 in the past 5 months alone – or really, what they assume has been one or two long ones that never fully cleared up. Everyone tells us “more infections means better long-term immunity,” or “they’ll catch everything now and be so healthy by the time they start Kindergarten,” but the sheer amount of time fluid has been building up in his still very young ears means his hearing  has very possibly now been compromised, and so now he’ll need his hearing tested when his ears clear up. And the number of infections he’s fought so young may very well contribute to the likelihood he’ll develop problems with asthma in the future.

I wondered why so many other children go to day care, get sick, get over it, and move on much more quickly than Wesley has. All the doctor could say is that he’s seen kids like our son, children with hyper-reactive systems who catch everything and who can’t fight it so much all at once. Children with sensitive systems. And really, we’ve known him to be sensitive in every other way. That his health is too should not come as a surprise.

We need day care for about one more month – there’s nothing much we can do about that. But May, June, July, and most of August, we’ll keep Wesley home with us (one benefit of working in academia). It’s a chance to let his system clear up. To let him breathe. And over the next couple of weeks, as course selection for the fall semester creeps up on me, we’ll have to decide what we can do long term, if anything.

For now, our boy is turning 2 on Sunday. We will to go to the zoo. We’ll sing songs in the car. We’ll roar like lions, eat cuppy cakes and ice cream. There will be twirling and head bobbing. There will be candles. We will open loads of presents. We will be silly in every way we know. We will celebrate that we’re a little healthier, and, best of all, alive.