The Croup, the commando crawl, and the first words

Eli and I are having a sick day today (and yesterday, and probably tomorrow, and hopefully not Thursday) because he has croup. Or, as Justin likes to call it, The Croup. He woke up with it Sunday night, and then got some steroids Monday morning for his worsening breathing. It’s a one-dose thing and they gave us a pill and a syrup, both of which apparently taste nasty. The doctor said we could try the pill first, and that most people have success by grinding it up and putting it in chocolate pudding. She says, “Has he had chocolate pudding yet?” Us: “Um, I don’t think that was on the handout? Alongside the squash and the apples and the pears and avocados? And also we still feel kind of guilty for buying jarred food instead of making our own, even though the jarred stuff is all organic and fancy the ingredient list goes, like, ‘organic carrots, water’? So, um, no? Who do you think we are? Britney?”

Anyway. We bought some chocolate pudding. And we were like, “ohhh, man, Eli’s gonna love it. This will be the end of things. He’ll be wanting it every day now.” Eli: “Get that crap AWAY from me!” Long story short, he got the unfortunate hold-the-baby-down and squirt-the-nasty-syrup-into-his-mouth treatment. And that was probably his last chance at pudding for quite some time. Oh, well. The steroids worked like a charm (in 6 to 8 hours).

So, he’s made it past the intense seal-barking stage, which is good. Now he’s just hoarse and generally unhappy. But we’re having fun at home, and how else would I find time to blog while he’s playing with a stack of wooden coasters? Pardon the frequent interruptions as I drag him across the wood floor and away from the phone cord. Oh, and that reminds me, Eli has achieved locomotion, of a sort:

It’s like a combination of a commando crawl and … a lack of lower legs. He’s actually fairly speedy. He can easily get up on his hands and knees, but somehow he hasn’t put it all together yet, so he just drags himself along. Here’s the rear view:

Hilarious. There’s just so much else to report! His top two teeth are poking through, then receding, then poking through. I think we’ll see them for good any day now. And he talks. I swear. I think we’ll have to record his first word, officially, for the Internet record, as “kitty.” He is so in love with Stanley, and every time he or Scout walk by, Eli very clearly and repeatedly says, “Kiiih.” Also, the other day, he said “duckie” as he was holding his rubber duck. I said, “duckie,” and he said, “duh …. kee.” It’s amazing. Most of his other words are variations on “da” and “bot,” and he repeats them fairly constantly for long periods of time. We actually repeat the words “bad robot” to him over and over and he kind of alters his “bah bah bah” sound to more like “bahd wo baht.” So, if his first phrase is “bad robot,” I think he’ll be a worthy little junior geek.

Hopefully, he won’t be too sick to wear his little hot dog costume on Halloween, but we did at least get some pretty cute photos of him at our annual pumpkin-carving get-together this weekend. Daddy carved a little Eli duplicate:

The rest of the pumpkin-carving photos are here, along with some cute shots of daddy and Eli shopping and enjoying the new guest bed. Fingers crossed for a costume picture!!

UPDATE: In the course of composing this, which took most of the day, Eli just now managed to do some crawling on hands and knees. He was very proud and excited … and then promptly fell on his face and, since he doesn’t feel good and isn’t handling setbacks well, he cried his hoarse little laryngitis cry for about 10 minutes. Could be weeks before he tries that again. But it was awesome!