An addendum of sorts

So it seems that my awesomeness was slightly overblown yesterday. At least in the dimension of being a baby whisperer. In the end, Max was lights out for 130 minutes, which in itself was pretty rocking. When I went to collect him, he was nice and toasty. I figured his heat was from being in the sun or under some sheets. It is summer, after all. I figured that kind of sleep would put him in the best mood. (editor's note: it's impossible to type a buzzer sound). He was cranky and didn't really feel like playing or crawling, just hanging on to mom and dad. I chalked that up to weirdness - not typical behaviour for Max.

So the bunch of us celebrated the first sunny Ottawa day in 4eva with a nice walk around the Market. Max drifted in and out of sleep in the stroller so the crankiness wasn't quite as evident anymore. But when I hauled him out of his car seat at home, he was on fire. Not literally, but you know . . . I took his temperature and he was a hearty 38.4 under the armpit, so not good. 9.5 months in and dude had himself his first good fever. Thankfully, our friend J is a calming influence and very knowledgeable about babes and Grandma H had a (long) lifetime of experience to draw upon. We hit Max with a shot of Tylenol, which worked pretty well at bringing the heat down.

His appetite was still in good shape and he got back to sleep OK, but it was slightly restless and featured some good moans. Eventually, he got up at 3 a.m. full of fever again. Out came the Tylenol again. This time, Max wasn't so interested in returning to sleep, so I threw him in the ring sling and had a little predawn tour of the neighbourhood. To help cool him off, I kept him in a diaper only. Yeah, we looked a little goofy, but he was comfortable and enjoyed looking at the porch lights and the occasional passing car. He conked out after a while and we got home about -30 seconds before it started to spit, but the drizzle didn't wake up Mr. Max.

P.S. When he woke up in the morning, the fever was gone and didn't return. He picked himself up a good rash on his legs primarily. From what we'd read, fevers are often caused by untreatable viruses that happen to also cause rashes, so this was no surprise. However, after talking to a few more parents, our best guess seems to be that he had an allergic reaction to something. Saturday, we had popped some sunscreen on his legs for the first time, so this fits. In any case, he's not bothered by it and is as pleasant as he's always been (see the next post for some visual evidence).

Here's feverish Max, playing like nothing's wrong at all...