We took Alex to see another installment of Sesame Street Live today. This time the production was “Elmo’s Coloring Book.”

Last year we took Alex to see the “Out of this World” show which he really enjoyed so we figured he would like this one too, which he did. For the first part of the show he was a little afraid of everything that was going on, especially when the stage lights would shine into the audience. Lately he has been going through a phase where all kinds of stuff scare him that in past really didn’t bother him so we hoped this wouldn’t be too big a shock.

After the first five minutes he said “I want to go home” but I put him in my lap and managed to convince him to try and stay a little longer. He was pretty funny since whenever something happened that would scare him he would put his hands over his eyes but he would always leave these gaping holes between his fingers so he could still see what was occurring on stage.

After the intermission he was really into the show and things went much better. Whenever one of the characters would wave to the audience he would wave back and he started tapping his hands to the beat of the songs.

We were smart this time and before the end actually rolled around we prepared him so we wouldn’t have a repeat incident of the Winnie the Pooh movie.

Overall all it was a very successful show and Alex enjoyed himself.

We took Alex to the movies this afternoon to see Pooh’s Heffalump Movie. We didn’t tell him that we were going to see it since he didn’t take a nap today, (which seems to be re-occurring theme here,) and we had to run a couple of errands before going to the theatre and we figured if he was in really bad shape we wouldn’t go. We were pretty confident he would fall asleep in the car and sure enough, ten minutes into the trip he was out like a light.

The dilemma is do you keep him up and end up with a grumpy kid or do you let him sleep so he’s not so tired but when you have to wake him he always has a really hard time and is pretty much miserable for a period of time. So far we’ve always just let him sleep.

Once we got him up and calmed down he was pretty exited about seeing the movie. It was a good movie but we made the mistake of not preparing him for the end. I guess he didn’t expect the end when it did and he was really disappointed. He just kept saying, “It’s not over yet, it’s not the end.”

He figured it was just like the movies we have at home and we could just start it over whenever we wanted. He also had a hard time figuring out that we can’t rush right out and buy him a copy of the movie to watch at home. Despite all the heartache he really did enjoy it.

We decided to stay home on Valentine’s Day instead of going out since it has to be one of the busiest days of restaurant season and with Alex not taking a nap it wouldn’t have been a good scene. I could just see it now. Us standing in line waiting for table and Alex having a melt down.

We thought we would make it a little special and dimming the lights and put some candles on the table. Alex was pretty intrigued by the change of scenery and asked what the candles were for. We explained that it was Valentine’s Day which is special so we were doing something different. That seemed to satisfy him for a couple of minutes when he asked again.

“Why do we have candles on the table?”

“Well, what day is it today?”

“Oh, I don’t want to tell you.”

“Well, it’s Valentine’s Day which is special so we put some candles on the table.”

“Okay”.

We continued eating for another five minutes when,

“Why do we have these candles on the table?”

“Well, what day is it today?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

This went on for pretty much the rest of dinner.

Today while Alex was driving with Jen they had to stop at a red light. Alex piped up from the back seat that

“When my Daddy has to stop at a red light he says Scheiße.”

Jen thought this was an interesting development and had Alex relate the story to me over dinner. I figure what happened is that last week when we were driving around I had to stop suddenly for a red light and just maybe I let it slip out. Now it appears that I swear profusely for all red lights.

I’ve posted a couple of pictures from January. We didn’t take that many pictures so I’ve picked a couple of the better ones.

I was looking through the old posts and on January 12th the title of the post is “21 and 5100 in the pool”

Guess I still don’t want to admit it but it should be “32 and 5100 in the pool”

Yup, Alex has been sick since Saturday night. It started during the night when he woke us up with a dry hacking cough. After doing a little research we were pretty convinced it was a croup type cough and so we did all the stuff your supposed to do to treat croup. We put the vaporizer on in his room and had him in the shower to breath in the warm moist air but he kept getting worse throughout the day.

We called the nurses on call service and they suggested we get him to breath some moist air, put a vaporizer in the room, and take him outside for a bit to breath the cold air. After I told them that we had already done all that stuff they checked what the next course of treatment was and it was come on down to the hospital for a checkout.

Luckily the hospital has a referral clinic where only people who have been referred are allowed to go so we were in and out pretty fast. (We walked past the emergency room and it was just overflowing with people.) They said that there wasn’t a whole lot we could do for him but to expect it to get worse during the night.

Get worse it did. He got a fever at night and twice we had to change his clothes because he was so soaked through with sweat. We gave him some motrin and managed to get the fever back under control but it kept coming and going.

On Monday he was still coughing quite a bit and the fever kept coming back so we took him in to see the doctor. He prescribed some antibiotics which Alex needs to take for next six days which should help out. Now, only if we could get him to take it. One of the side affects of taking the medicine is “nausea and vomiting” and of course after the first dose he threw up.

I think things are starting to look up tonight. We managed to get his medicine down after much struggling and it stayed down and he’s showing more signs of energy then he’s had the last couple of days so lets hope we’ve turned the corner on the road to getting better.

We had a great Alex and Dad weekend. Jen left on Friday with Kelly and Amanda for their Austin weekend right after lunch and we just hung out like we usually do on our Fridays. Saturday morning hung out at the house for a little bit watching George the Fireman video we got at the library and after that we headed to the train show that was going on at the Plano Centre. If it had anything to do with trains then it was to been seen at the show. They had more vendors then I would have thought possible selling every type of train related stuff like model rail sets of every size, trains to run on every type of model rail set, pictures of trains, antique train parts, books about trains, engineer hats, train whistles, and on and on. The highlight for Alex was the large exhibits they had set up where people were running their trains. I think we could have spent hours and hours just watching the trains go by, whistles blowing, and smoke stakes steaming but eventually we were both worn out and headed home.

Saturday night we went out to eat to the Vienna Cafe and considering how tired he was Alex held up pretty well. He was dead set on having a hot dog, and to Alex a hot dog is a corn dog, and of course they don’t serve corn dogs at the German cafe. He made me ask the waiter specifically if they had a “hot dog” just to be sure they really didn’t have them but for some reason just kept them off the menu. I ordered him the knockwurst kids platter and he did reasonably well with that but was pretty disappointed about the hot dog. He said “Maybe next time we come they’ll have hot dogs.” We can only hope.

Sunday we watched the Fire Fighter video another three times and waited for Jen and company to return. I would have to say that it was a very successful weekend.

That’s right folks. Got up this morning bright and early and headed off to the pool for my regular Wednesday swim but today I went 5100 yards. Oh yeah, I’ve still got it. For a while now I’ve had the goal out there of going a 5000 yard workout but I’ve just never quite been able to get there. I can get to 4000 without too much trouble but anything beyond that has been pretty hard to reach.

Well this morning the planets were all in alignment and the conditions were just right and I managed to get the 5000, and then go a 100 extra.

One thing puzzles me though. When I got up this morning I two zits. Now exactly what is the deal with that? I mean come on, just turned 32 for crying out loud, not 13, I shouldn’t still be getting zits.

Yup, tomorrow is the day, another birthday. The last couple of years I haven’t been too keen on birthdays but to be honest I’m not sure why. It might have had something to do with turning 30 a few years back that kind of freaked me out but I’m over it now.

This week has been pretty busy with work and I’m really looking forward to the weekend since I’m going to be taking a vacation day. Jen, Kelly, and Amanda are heading to Austin for a girls weekend out so it’s going to be an Alex and Dad weekend. We’ll have our regular Friday that we usually have but on Saturday they are having a train convention in Plano and we are going to hit that up. I figure that should keep us busy for a good couple of hours and then for dinner I might try and head back to the Vienna Cafe. I might have to change those plans at the last minute depending on how Alex is feeling but hopefully we can get it in.