Cold Season Comes Early

This week has been a rough week in the Grainger household.

The weekend was great, so let me start there. I had the chance to catch up on some sleep Saturday night, as Brooks took the babies to Greensboro for the night. As a result of my rare GDO (Guys Day Out) I had the chance to drive to Chapel Hill for the day and attend the Tar Heels’ 28-7 victory over Georgia Tech with Angus, Uncle Jim (aka the Trash Man from an earlier blog post) and his daughter, Winn.

However, this was the calm before the storm. I had to get up at 5 a.m. on Monday morning to catch a 7:30 a.m. flight to Chicago where I had business meetings until Wednesday. As luck would have it, Ike came down with a chest cold on Monday, so poor Brooks was stuck with a very fussy and irritable baby. The situation was alleviated somewhat when my parents stepped in to help out by keeping Mason on Monday and Tuesday night to let Brooks focus on Ike. Despite the help, those were definitely two rough nights for Brooks, as Ike was up coughing and crying almost every hour. Meanwhile, I was enjoying two wonderful and peaceful nights of sleep in my Marriott king-sized bed in downtown Chicago (it goes without saying that I didn’t dare brag about this to Brooks when I got home or mention how well-rested I was).

But I certainly got my payback on Wednesday evening when I arrived back in Charlotte. As soon as I walked through the door at home and put my suitcase down the fireworks began. It was my turn to handle baby duty and pay for my sins of taking a business trip and getting more than seven hours of sleep each night. During my first few hours of baby duty I thought I was going to get lucky, as Mason and Ike didn’t make a peep. But I was wrong. Soon after I went to bed at midnight the pre-crying from Ike began. You know, it’s the kind of whining that you lie in bed and pray will subside before you have to get up and go into their room. It’s kind of like turbulence on a plane (which I experienced on my flight back from Chicago). When you first start to feel the initial bumps you hope that it isn’t leading up to anything too violent, but you always expect that you’re in for something major. I was in for some major Ike turbulence. His congestion and gurgling really became discomforting and he couldn’t get comfortable in his crib. As a result, I was up until 3:30 a.m. trying to rock him to sleep. Thankfully, he finally closed his eyes in the baby rocker at 3:30 and I was able to grab about 3 hours of sleep. Like I said, I knew I would have some payback for getting to good night’s sleep in Chicago.

Mason and Ike had their regularly-scheduled four-month doctor’s appointment on Thursday and everything went great. Mason is still the plumper of the two. She weighs 16 lbs. 10 oz. and Ike weighs 15 lbs. 11 oz. They had their reflexes tested and each had to get a few shots, which produced some tears.

This weekend we’re going to try to get everyone healthy and hope that Mason, or Brooks or I don’t catch whatever Ike has been battling.