Why I may look 5 years older than I did last Sunday....

A lot of you may know that we had a rough week! It started last Monday when Joaquin had a fever so I stayed home from work with him. That afternoon when I was trying to get him to take a nap he had a febrile seizure. At the time, I knew right away that it was a seizure, but didn't know that febrile seizures are fairly common among young kids when they have a fever (and I later learned that I used to get them myself!). I was in a panic and called 911. His seizure lasted no more than 2 minutes. Count off 120 seconds with your child in convulsions and it seemed like an eternity. Paramedics came into the house and made sure he was stable and we headed off to the Emergency Room - my first ambulance ride. We were there for 8 or 9 hours where they gave him an IV, swabbed his nose, throat, took blood and a urine sample, and did chest x-ray. They weren't able to identify any sort of infection or flu in the testing, and just chalked it up to an unknown virus and sent us home.

For the next couple nights we slept with Joaquin in our bed - although he was so sick he wasn't really sleeping and neither were we. If he wasn't on a steady dose of Motrin/Tylenol, his fever would jump back up to 103 or higher. His fever finally got better after 3 or 4 days. Today is Sunday, and he is finally back to his normal activity level.

Joaquin still has a little bruise on his hand and a small dot where the IV tube was placed. He rubs it and looks at it because he knows it doesn't belong - and Joaquin is always very concerned when something is not where it belongs. He sticks his arm out with a whine and we give it a kiss and a gentle rub. We are very thankful that he is healthy and has only a little bruise left from that scary day.

Pumpkin Patch 2009

We drove down to Uncle Marc and Aunt Lindsay's today to go to a pumpkin patch. It was a beautiful day and it seems like we weren't the only people in Chicagoland who had this idea. Here's me and Joaquin with Uncle Marc and Ryan - and we are ready to conquer.

We did go to a pumpkin patch last year with Joaquin. He was wonderfully slouchy and immobile then.

Today we had to run around like aggressive paparazzi to get a shot.
His favorite place of the day was the gigantic haystack that kids could climb on. This was just a giant tower of haystacks - kids were digging holes in the middle of stacks and creating tunnels - and running around. Now that Joaquin is confidently mobile, we are very aware of how social he is. He will run up to any kid and try his best to keep up with their play. Art was in charge at the haystack, and spent most of his time doing this:


Joaquin was in his element.


Joaquin and I went on a tractor ride and Marc and Ryan were a few cars back. This picture was taken moments after I stole this cow car from a dad and a six-month old baby. That excitement on my face actually the look of victory. I'm not proud of my behavior, but this was another free-for-all at the pumpkin farm. There was no line - and the tractor would just come to a stop, and you just had to fight the crowd for a seat onboard. I was polite the first time, but we quickly learned that being polite would not get you a seat on the train.


And there were pumpkins here too! Here's a few other shots from the day.



Thanks for letting us come along to your pumpkin patch, Ryan!

Fall in the air

It was a very pretty fall like weekend around here!

Joaquin looks like he's really on the move in this picture..In another month or so we won't be able to hang out outside and I'm not sure what we're going to do. We keep trying to show Joaquin how cool TV is...we've tried all the good stuff--Sesame Street, Thomas the train, Elmo...nothing holds his attention. Maybe by the time winter hits something will stick.

And this is pretty typical behavior. Periodically, a bit of dirt or debris becomes troublesome to Joaquin so he will whine and hand it to you.

Potato

It makes me happy that in my life it is perfectly understandable why there's a raw potato next to the fireplace.

after bedtime

This boy just went to bed an hour ago, but I already miss him. So, what's Joaquin into these days? Here's a summary of his likes and dislikes

Likes:
Noodles! I think he likes noodles more than anything. really. He can eat a lot of noodles.

The washing machine! Still! But now he likes to turn it on and off. Curses. Why did I encourage this relationship?

Lids! Lids are so cool. Particularly if we have the lid and the container and can put the lid on and take it off over and over. But even if we just have the lid, that is nice too.

Doggies! Joaquin loves a tail wagging in his face and laughs and laughs at all the dogs in the neighborhood.



Dislikes:
Sleeves - Ugh...Long Sleeves are so bothersome. They cover his arms and almost touch his fingers. How disgusting. Joaquin will whine and stick out his arms until I roll them up.

Water - Water is so gross and slimy, as we have already established.

Dirt on the bottom of his feet - Joaquin will stop whatever he is doing to plop down on his butt, pick his feet up and contort himself so that he can get a clear view of whatever is stuck to the bottom of his feet. Then he will remove it, and give it to me. Problem solved.

Cold Milk - What kind of peasant do you take me for? I like my milk gently warmed please!

What we did on our summer vacation Part Deux

The next highlight of our summer was our trip to Michigan over the Fourth of July. It started out strong and ended up awful. It was my worst summer vacation ever. And that's not an exaggeration, and I know things could've gone worse-but in my personal vacation history, this was the worst.

Joaquin and I took the ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon - I love this ferry! It is pricey to bring your car on, so Art drove (happily and peacefully by himself). Here's Joaquin waiting to board:



And here we are somewhere in the middle of Lake Michigan:


We stayed with a lot of family on Duck Lake near Whitehall, MI. Joaquin was not a fan of water. You will not find a picture of him smiling near water because water cannot be trusted. We were able to get him to reluctantly stick his toes in the water, but that was about it. There was definitely no playing and splashing this year. Maybe next year! Here are the Guerreros on Duck Lake. Isn't it pretty?


Here's Joaquin tolerating water in his presence:


And, here's his cousin Ryan enjoying it just a little tiny bit more.


Ok...and this is one of the last photos we have of any of us on that trip...

Because not long after this photo was taken, Joaquin threw up that meal ALL OVER ME. I can barely look at that picture...it's so tramatic. We had to head straight to the washing machine and bath. He had a stomach bug and couldn't keep anything down, and couldn't sleep. We were quarantined in one of the houses feeding Joaquin saltines and water. We left a few days early so we could recover at home, and there is no place like home when you have a sick baby...lesson learned. The one bright spot was that after the saltine and water diet, Joaquin was officially done nursing, so there's the silver lining!

We are excited to give this trip another go in 2010! Hopefully we have made an appropriate sacrifice to the gods of bad vacations, and it will be an awesome trip.

What we did on our summer vacation Part I

We the staff of Guerrero Family News have been away for a quite a while. I'm not sure what happened, but once I got out of the habit of posting, it was hard to get back into it! But we've had a nice summer and made some good memories to share.

On May 30, we had Joaquin's first birthday party! Joaquin turned one on June 3, 2009. The party was a lot of fun--it was a beautiful day and we had lots of great family and friends there. We had a bouncy house that Uncle Marc really enjoyed. I think some kids were in there too at some point, but we really got our money's worth from Uncle Marc jumping around in there.



And we had a pinata that was as violent as pinata-hitting should be. It required 2 bats to bust open.


Joaquin enjoyed some candy.



Here's Joaquin in his crown wondering why everyone is singing and staring at him...





We gave Joaquin freedom to enjoy his cupcake, but Joaquin is generally not a fan of sweets, especially smooth and creamy treats like frosting, pudding, ice cream, whipped cream. So, true to form, he approached the cupcake very tentatively and was done with it after a few minutes. This is the messiest he got!



And Joaquin had a lot of fun.


Stay tuned...I swear I'll post more!