lazy toddler

Wife was telling RyanC that they need to clean up downstairs and solicited his help.

*suddenly clanking noises stop*
Wife: "Why did you stop Ryan?"
RyanC proudly claims: "I am too tired!"

Recovery

As it turned out, everyone in the house became sick except cousin Lulu, who had supposedly gotten over a cold right before she came to the US. We all have gotten over the flu but I still have this dry cough that I can't seem to get rid off.

The house is quiet again. Two cousins left last week for CA with mother-in-law for 70F+ weather and a bit of Sea World and Disney. Father-in-law left this morning to travel to Buuurffalo to join the brother-in-law there. It's just me, wife and the two kids... until Tuesday when the mother-in-law returns from sunny CA. The two cousins will be returning to Taiwan this Sunday directly from LA. They will return to the same routine of school + after-school classes till 10pm where internet will not be readily available.

In some ways it is more tiring to have to handle the kids ourselves. In some ways it's more relaxing not to have to worry minding others in the house. RyanC had picked up some habits from the cousins and have been jumping around the house whenever he can. He looks like a short-legged dwarf as he hops around. RyanC is also speaking better in different languages while forming more complete sentences. He still wakes up in the middle of the night so I have to check on him. Last night he had an episode of bad nose bleed so that was rather tiring. AidanC is getting better at sleeping but he still wakes up a few times in the middle of the night. He likes to jump in the Jumperoo but he seems to jump back and forth more than up-and-down compared with RyanC at this stage.

With the kids behaving better, I finally opened the iPod nano (1GB) that mother-in-law had given me months ago when she received it as a present for opening some account at Keybank. It was disappointing to see the iTune software having problem syncing with the iPod on Windows XP system. It seems to sync fine when I first plug in the iPod to the USB but it does not seem to recognize the iPod if I attempt to manual sync the iPod with iTune after adding more files. I googled around and found out that people have issues with iPod/iTune syncing too -- hmm, prior to this I had heard all good things about Apple's iPod (except their proprietary encoding of the music files). The user interface of the iPod nano is definitely simple and straight forward though.

iPod Nano is a hit with RyanC. He loves to play with the click-wheels. He will even try to grab it from me if I don't let him have it right away. He even turned down the cell phone as a replacement for iPod once he has it in his hand. I think he just likes to watch my reaction or the display change as he pushes the button. It, however, isn't quite as popular with wife since the gadget prevents me from hearing her when I had it on. ;)

Today I took RyanC to BestBuy to purchase "The Curious George" DVD on sale for $9.99. He wanted to play with all the phones/music players/cameras there - yeah! that's my boy!

sick people

We went to Denver on Sunday to stock up on groceries since my father-in-law was coming back to the US with wife's two 12-13 year old cousins on Monday.

Monday around noon, I started to have big headache and I couldn't tell if it was from dealing with the issues at work, lack of sleep, or being sick. . The top/back of my head hurt and I had difficulty moving by the end of the day. I could barely stay awake without being in pain so I couldn't really feel anything as I was driving home... Still, I was not coughing or sneezing so I thought I just needed more sleep.

Well, sleep didn't fix my headache. It was kind of difficult to tell from normal since I got up at 5:30am to get RyanC as he banged on the door crying for daddy. I was afraid he'd wake up his cousins so I took him downstairs to watch Moose on Noggin. I also started feeling a bit dry on my throat -- yet I couldn't tell if it was because the air was too dry or not (our humidifer does not always seem to keep the house humid enough). Since I had to make sure some important work got done to meet schedule, I couldn't just take time off so I went into work increasing the risk of causing others to get sick. By end of Tuesday I started coughing a little and that's when I heard about this flu that had been going around work... Hmmm.... I came home to find mother-in-law having sore throat and not feeling well... but she said she didn't have headache so it wasn't clear if we got sick with the same virus etc.

On Wed it became very obvious we both had flu. My phlegm started causing me to have problem sleeping that night - almost choked to death. My usually-happy mother-in-law seemed pretty out of it too.

AidanC got sick on Thursday. He coughed and sounded just like me and grandma. Poor little baby... He also had running nose too. I went to bed shortly after late dinner and AidanC was already asleep. He stayed in bed for more than 12 hours, which is a first!

As the weekend starts, we now have confirmed that grandpa is sick too. One of wife's cousins is also sick. I think they got sick from AidanC since they've been spending time with the baby.

RyanC, wife and cousin Lulu are the only ones remaining to compete for the healthiest body award. I get a feeling that they all will lose since they all love to hold the baby... It's going to be a long weekend!