Holidays

Ruckus has been doing fairly well lately, in spite of a steady stream of illnesses to contend with.  We had a nice Thanksgiving at my mom's house, and he kept himself occupied playing with his ball.  It is about basketball sized and he enjoys bouncing it and throwing it, but mostly just chasing it around a room is great fun.  He was not too excited over Thanksgiving but maybe in the coming years that will change.  He is still so young that he doesn't realize the differences between holidays and regular days.

Shortly after Thanksgiving he developed an ear infection and we camped out at home while waiting for the antibiotics to take effect.  I really enjoyed our time together!  The following week I took him back to his pediatrician for a check of his ears and he was given a clean bill of health.  Naturally, this did not last long, and he developed a croupy cough two days later, which has lasted through this past weekend.  Oh well, he seems to be on the mend now. 

Yesterday we put up our Christmas tree and he watched all of the activity with fascination, biding his time.  A few hours later, he sprung, and began un-decorating the tree in earnest.  Luckily I had planned on this and had put the wooden ornaments within his reach and kept the glass ones up high.  We also tied the tree to a doorknob to keep him from pulling it down onto himself.  I am hopefully that these precautions will keep us all a little less stressed this Christmas.  Last Christmas he just laid there and showed little interest in any of the goings-on, so things are brand new again for us this year, now that he is walking and getting into everything he can.

I bought him some size 2T clothes for gifts, and a couple of toys, but have deliberately not gone overboard.  He will have plenty of other gifts to open when we meet up at my mom's house in about two weeks for our big family get-together on the 22nd.  His cousins will all be there, but  most of them are significantly older than him so they likely will not want to play with him much.  The closest to him in age is Marina, who is now 3 years old, and she may be more likely to want to hang out with him.