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.

Last night Jen and I went out and had a little early birthday celebration. We started off by going to the movies to see “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” with Bill Murray. Jen just hated this movie with all fiber of her being but I have to tell you, I loved it. It’s a really quirky film and I would feel bad if you went to the theatre and hated it so I would probably have to recommend that you wait for the video. (Jen hated it so much that when we left the theatre she said, and I quote, “If you ever spend our money to buy that on DVD I’m going to kill you.”)

After the movie we went to eat at a small restaurant we spotted some time ago in downtime Plano called Jorg’s Cafe Vienna. I’ve been wanted to try it out for a while now but we never knew if we could bring Alex with us or not so I thought that this would be a good oppertunity to try it out. They had some really fantastic food and great beer. Jen had the bratwurst meal and I had the sausage sampler with one knockwurst and a weißwurst. Both meals came with large helpings of potato salad, sauerkraut, and rot kohl.

I would have to say a most excellent birthday movie and meal.

The other night when we were at the mall Alex and I stopped in at Barnes and Noble while we were waiting for Jen. In the kids section they have a Thomas the Train setup that he likes to play with and it gives us a chance to sit down and look at some books.

Just before we went into the play area I stopped by to pick up a baby name book, no we haven’t started that yet so don’t even ask, and to keep Alex occupied I handed him a copy of the Illustrated History of Rail and Steam to look at. This may sound like a kids title it certainly was not. It was about three hundred pages thick all glossy with pictures and text. Alex started flipping through it telling me all out the pistons, connecting rods, steam domes, sand domes, smoke stacks, and wheels on all the trains he came across.

At one page he stopped and said, “Hey it’s the GG1!”

I got a little closer and read the caption over the picture and sure enough, it said it was a GG1. (You can see pics here and here.)

I just burst out laughing because only Alex, the two and half year old train whiz, would be able to point out the GG1 in a three hundred page book. He was right proud of himself too and while I was laughing he said,

“See, I’m a smarty pants.”

Can’t argue with that.

Trust that everyone had a good New Year’s Eve. We had a pretty low key night and took Alex over to Roy and Rhonda’s so he could play with Marissa and then we just spent the rest of the night relaxing at the house. We packed Alex off to bed just after 9:00 o’clock and then Jen and I watched “Lost in Translation”.

I’ve spent the majority of today updating the web site with the Christmas pictures and some other pictures that Jen took of Alex right after Christmas. You can find all that good stuff from the home page. We are also working on our New Year’s cards since we didn’t manage to get anything pulled together in time for Christmas so look for those in the mail some time soon.

Alex was coming out with the zingers today. When we arrived home after being out tonight we were heading upstairs, Alex was going up the stairs in front of me and I was following behind him. That’s when he blurted out

“Dad, don’t beat me.”

As in, don’t pass me on the stairs and be the first one up. Now, at home it’s really no be deal to come out with that but I can just see us out in public somewhere and he blurts out the don’t beat me line. “Ha ha ha, oh oh, your such a kidder son..”