We have experienced a lot in our first eight months of parenthood. We’ve been blessed with a happy and healthy child. Cam is not only off the charts for height and in the mid 90s for weight, he’s actually never really been sick. Sure he’s had a couple of runny noses, and maybe an upset tummy, but nothing that required a visit to an ER or the pediatrician. Until now.

On the day he turned eight months old we got our first helping of what its like to have a sick kid at home. It unfolded exactly like I always assumed it would. I am home with him all day and noticed NOTHING unusual. He was acting fine, happy, smiling, eating etc. Sara gets home and within 90 seconds discovers that he has a fever and that we should probably call the doctor. Going up against mother’s intuition, when that mother is also a doctor, is pretty unfair. In any case his fever was 103.5. A pretty bad miss on my part, but I will stress that fevers tend to get worse at night and she gets home at like 5! We treat with tylenol to get through the night and I call the pediatrician to get a sick visit on the books. Our first.

Cam is pretty good in the doctor’s office. He hates the shots and even the exams, but he LOVES sitting on the exam table and tearing the tissue paper that covers it apart. It doesn’t take too long for our doctor to discover the problem, an ear infection. In both ears. Yuk. Amoxicillin is prescribed and we are on our way. The doctor gives me kudos for noticing this and deciding to come in. I consider taking those kudos, but give Sara the credit this time.

He never really does “act” sick. He sleeps well most of the time and that continues. The only real difference is trying to work the medicine into our eating routine. He gets wise to the big syringe filled with pink medicine, so we resort to sneaking it into his spoon of food. It worked.

So that was that, until it wasn’t. He was pretty much full strength by the end of the amoxicillian. His fevers were a thing of the past and we were pretty relieved that we all survived his first illness. That lasted about 48 hours.

Last Tuesday night around 10pm he woke up crying, vomiting and what at first seemed like trouble breathing. He was hysterical and his parents were beginning to feel the same way. I always look to Sara for guidance when anyone is sick or injured. She has all the training afterall. When she looks back at me with a “I don’t what to do” look, we get in the car and go to the ER.

It should be noted that the weekend before we spent the night with my sister who now lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She has four kids, all of whom are either in the public school system or in daycare. If someone in your group doesn’t get sick after 24 hours with them, you just aren’t trying. I won’t blame this one on them, this time!

On the way to the ER everyone relaxes a little bit. Cam calms down and it becomes clearer to Sara what is going on. Croup. He wasn’t having trouble breathing so much as he was alternating between breathing and awful seal like coughs. The ER visit was remarkably quick. We got seen almost immediately and Croup was confirmed by the Peds ER doctor. They gave him an oral steroid and we were sent home. The “good” news with croup is that the treatment is pretty much limited to the oral steroid. No additional medicine required. The bad news? The steroid wears off in a couple of days and you have to hope that he’s over it by day three.

Here we are a week later and we have yet another sick visit scheduled for 4pm today. We’re pretty sure the croup is gone but an ugly cough and super runny nose remain. I think whatever this one is can be blamed on one of my nieces or nephews!

Moving is the gift that keeps on giving. We moved back into our Baltimore townhouse in late August. We spent most of September at the beach, and have managed to probably unpack and put away less than 70% of our stuff. That can be fixed with a couple days of motivated unpacking, but the minor details of moving continue to linger. The most notable of those is getting to the MVA to register our out of state cars in Maryland. I’ve moved twice in the last eleven years. First to Maine, then to Rhode Island. In both cases I moved for Sara’s school/career. And in both cases I end up changing my drivers license, while Sara never does. I’ve already made one trip to get my Maryland license back. I’m a sucker!

A trip to the MVA is something you put off as long as (legally) possible. It’s never enough to just go there. You almost have to take a trip out first to make sure you know what you need to bring when you really go. In this case, I needed to get both cars inspected first. I needed to get the lienholder of one car to send the title to the state. And I needed a bill of sale notarized for the second car we received as a gift from my grandmother. My hope was I could put this off long enough so that I wouldn’t have to go with Cam. Unfortunately that was never an option. In fact, I was only able to get enough done for one car at a time, so I’ll be going back again one more time!

My first mistake was doing this on the day after Daylights Savings. I’ve never really understood Daylight Savings. I get that it has to do with farming, but otherwise seems outdated to me. In my wilder days, I always appreciated the extra hour of “sleep” on Sunday. As a father, its a nightmare. I mentioned in my previous blog about the need for a routine. That includes finding activities to get out of the house, but the core of any successful day centers around feeding and nap times. This extra hour business has screwed all of that up. He had his worst nights sleep in months on Saturday. And Sunday was a mess. It quickly became clear that this isn’t a one day thing. Our routine won’t be the same for a while. With elections this week, I’d like to vote against Daylights Savings day!

The MVA is the worst. You check in quickly, which leads to a misguided feeling that you won’t be trapped there as long as you thought. Overhead there are constant announcements of letters and numbers, but none of them are yours. Not even close. It’s the world’s longest and worst game of bingo. But you can’t go anywhere because if they do call your number and you aren’t there, that’s that. Add an 8-month-old to the mix, and I really was dreading this trip.

Our closest full-service MVA is in Essex. If you are in the business of making fun of Baltimore stereotypes, get on up to Essex! Your job gets pretty easy from there! It’s located in a strip mall, sandwiched between a Rite Aid and a Korean restaurant. We park just before 9:30am.

The line for tags and title is always a little shorter than the one for drivers licenses. I get up to the front very quickly. Check in, present my folder of paperwork and get my number: C11. Cam hasn’t fallen asleep yet as I had hoped. My best case scenario had him falling asleep in the car on our way. With the time change I really didn’t know when he’d get tired. Usually he’s asleep between 10 and 11, so this was early, but not really. He was fine though, I came armed with enough formula to last the whole day, just in case. I brought extra toys knowing that even if nobody else was there, we’d be inside for an hour.

Number C5 was called right as we were finishing getting checked in, so I was a little optimistic that we wouldn’t be spending all morning there. It would at least 30 minutes before C6 was called. 30 more until we got to C9. Cam was getting restless with all the waiting. We’d done the formula thing, and he was full, but likes to play with the bottle anyway. Just to make a mess. He starts fussing around 10:00am or so, maybe 30 minutes in. As a “new” parent, I’m still very sensitive to my kid making a scene. Cam’s pretty quiet and will smile at everyone, but he has picked up a bad habit in recent weeks of just screaming at the top of his lungs. Not crying, or even fussing, but roaring like a Lion. He decided that the MVA was the place for him to practice some of this roaring.

The roaring often coincides with being tired, so I duck outside to get him some fresh air in hopes that he conks out for the remainder of this trip. Of course, my number could be called soon, so I can’t go far. Luckily I get him enough air that I can tell he’s starting to fade, we sneak back in to find a seat and try and get this done. He fell asleep around 10:15a, my number gets called 25 minutes later, and disaster is avoided. This time.

Like our airplane trip last Spring, the buildup was more stressful than the event in the end. Even so, I wouldn’t recommend taking an infant to the MVA. I wouldn’t recommend going to the MVA at all. And I certainly wouldn’t recommend forgetting to fax a form needed for your second car, so now you have to go back and do this all over again! Anyone want to babysit a week or so from now?!