Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Trains!

It all started with rainy day trips to Barnes and Nobles to play with their big Thomas the Train table. After several such outings, I finally bought him his own Thomas the Train engine, thinking he might occassionally enjoy pushing it around on the floor. Thus began the obsession. For the next several days he refused to relinquish the train. He even took it to bed with him. (Keep in mind, it is a wooden train. Ouch!) So David and I purchased a child's used train set from ebay as Christian's Christmas present. Apparently we aren't very good at hiding gifts, because he has now stumbled upon the bag several times, much to his excitement (Ahdah, ahdah, ahdah!!!) Each time he has taken a few pieces, so he now possesses five trains, a bridge, and one sad, straight piece of track. All day he pushed his trains down the length of track, then pushes them backward to the beginning. I'm sure he'll be shocked on Christmas to discover that tracks can actually go in a circle so you don't have to push your trains backwards! Here he is, happily playing with his one long track.



Christian's train obsession extends beyond the wooden variety. In November the three of us joined Atticus and Alison and their two sons for a trip to see the trains at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. For the holidays, the garden runs an electric ride-on train around their big lawn. We took a ride on it and Christian thought it was fascinating. A funny thing about Christian is, the more interested he is in what's going on, the less he smiles. He just focuses hard and tries to take it all in. So on the entire ride, he was speechless and expressionless. Here is a photo of him enjoying the ride.



The garden also has a model train exhibit which Christian and Finnan enjoyed watching.





For more train excitement, Christian and I recently took the commuter train to David's office to meet him for lunch. It was Christian's first real train ride. (Real, as in the destination was somewhere other than where we started!) He had an absolute ball. Once he adjusted to the new surroundings, he insisted on sitting on his own seat, not on my lap. He asked a thousand questions. (Ahdah? Ahdah? Ahdah?) He got especially excited when other trains passed by the windows. (AHDAH?! AHDAH?! AHDAH?! ) These commuter trains are usually silent because no one talks to each other, but on this day everyone could hear a little toddler voice screaming out his questions. I could see everyone smiling and laughing at his excitement and innocence. We plan to take many more train trips to David's office in the future.


Here is one last picture of our happy, train-loving boy.


Monday, December 14, 2009

A Tough Couple of Months

The Roberts household has been dealing with illness after illness this fall, which is the main reason I haven't posted anything in awhile. In the past two months, Christian has had three cases of what we thought was bronchiolitis. He would get a cold which would then move to his lungs and cause breathing difficulties. His breathing would get so labored that we had to take him to the ER twice and to the doctor many times. On our most recent visit, the doctor diagnosed him with Reactive Airway Disease, which I think is a catchall for kids who have frequent labored-breathing episodes. Christian now takes steriod breathing treatments that will help his lungs stay healthy for the rest of the cold season. We have an appointment to see a pediatric pulmonologist at the end of the month. It would be great if she could find a specific problem, along with a solution, but my guess is that she will see say this is simply something we need to manage. I just hope it is something that can be managed well and will still allow him to do everything he wants to do, now and as he gets older. It's been really hard to see him want to run around and play, but feel too sick to do so.

Before I had Christian I had no idea how hard it is to parent a sick child. It takes everything I have and leaves me completely exhausted! There is just so much to tend to with his meds, the doctors, trying to get him to eat and drink. And of course, when he's sick, he doesn't sleep well and just wants to be held all of the time. To make matters worse, I always get Christian's contagious illnesses, so I too have battled many colds this fall (and one stomach virus, yuck). Of course, in the end, the only thing that matters is that Christian stays healthy and feels like his happy little self.

So this is my official excuse for not having posted anything in six weeks. Tomorrow I hope to post photos of some of the fun we have had in the past few months.