On the Move

Hey - is there stuff up here I can get into trouble with?

Yesterday afternoon, Sam was not to be contained. I played with him on the floor of the nursery where he constantly pulled himself up using the handles on the hope chest that my Uncle Rich built me over 15 years ago. He raced around the house in his Tot Rider, following me to the laundry room and to the bedroom and to the bathroom before getting bored and going to watch birds out the dining room window and then spinning around in the middle of the kitchen looking for trouble. He played with every single toy in his little playyard in the living room, stopping only to pull himself up and then cry when he couldn't figure out how to sit back down. He giggled and laughed and sang along with his new singing frog that his cousins brought him last weekend. He sat at the top of the stairs and pulled at the base of the baby gate, knowing that was the way downstairs to the basement fun and the new Disney "bike" that Auntie Annie bought him last weekend. He couldn't move his hands fast enough as he shoved noodles and chicken and apples and pieces of bagel into his mouth at dinner time. The only time he slowed down was when I sat his exhausted little body into a warm bath and tried to entertain him with bubbles just before bedtime.

When I fell into bed last night, I actually turned the baby monitor down. The little white box that sits on my bedside had been broadcasting his rapid little breaths at maximum volume for three nights. I would hear trucks and sportcars speed along the road in the middle of the night, and the receiver amplified the sound of the heat kicking in or the pipes knocking after I flushed the toilet, but I could hear every single breath he took, even the quiet ones that puffed through his little mouth when he faced away from the monitor. Yesterday afternoon his breaths started to slow to a more normal pace and the hacking cough that I could almost feel scraping my own lungs had calmed, so when I crawled under the comforter, I turned the volume down just little and actually slept. Hard. And so did Sam.

Sam is definitely on the mend AND on the move. (God help me!) Here are some great pictures from last weekend.