Sleepless Nights and a Sick Baby

...and surprisingly, they aren't connected!

Yesterday, Matt's current satellite was launched. We've been waiting for this since August, when he was supposed to have his first one go up. That one got broken by the Russians. Then he got switched to this project, but it got delayed. So finally we have a satellite in space (er, he does anyway). This is great, but it means some big changes around here for the next month. Matt's company has to monitor their satellites (from the control room) for the first month they are in space. That's what Matt does. So for the next four weeks, he'll be working 3 or 4 days a week in 12 hour shifts. From 7pm-7am.

This means that he comes home in the morning, crashes for 6 hours or so, and then hangs out with us for the afternoon before heading back to work. I've been trying to adjust my own schedule to be able to stay up a little later so that when he isn't working, we aren't totally out of sync. Unfortunately, Henry has been moving his bedtime the wrong direction. He's been going to bed earlier, and therefore wanting to get up earlier. The end result is that I have lots of free time to myself in the evening, but then get very little sleep before I have to be up with Henry in the morning. Sigh.

Did I mention that he's sick, too? Maybe that accounts for the early bedtime for him. Poor kid. What started as a cold about two weeks ago took a turn for the worse sometime around when he got the flu shot last week at his doctor's appointment. I figured it was from the vaccine and was waiting for it to clear up. Instead, it got worse. This morning he woke up wheezing, pulling on his ear, and had a couple of nasty diapers. Eww. So for the first time, I took him in to the doctor's office for a sick visit. Turns out he not only has the beginnings of an ear infection (which we hopefully caught early enough that it won't get too bad), but he also has RSV. I'm not terribly familiar with this, but apparently it's a virus that looks like a cold in everyone except babies, whose little bronchioles can't handle the inflammation it causes. Hence the wheezing. They sent me home with antibiotics (Henry is not a fan) and a nebulizer. He did really well with this when I let him watch Veggie Tales during the treatment... just sat still on my lap and watched Larry the Cucumber sing and dance while I held the mask in his face. He's a little trooper. Now if only the aspirator (or booger-puller, as Matt calls it) went over so well with Henry.

Anyway, keep Henry in your prayers- hopefully he'll get over this quickly. Thankfully, he has not been too grouchy or miserable through all of this. In fact, he's doing his best to get himself mobile right now. He's starting to get the hang of balancing on his hands and knees, and I've even caught him pulling himself up on the edge of the couch to stand (briefly... before he falls down again).