Just last week I was talking to my mom on the phone, telling her that after Tristan’s initial bout of illnesses from home day care inoculation, he’s hardly ever sick now. Spoke too soon, I suppose, since he came down with a bad fever (104 F) this Friday through Saturday. Thankfully, he was better by Sunday and could go back and be with his baby buddies today. Not sure what brought the fever on. He was teething pretty badly but the association between teething and “teething fevers” still puzzles me a bit. I know I should know, being an immunologist and all that. I know it’s inflammation, but it doesn’t seem to be “systemic” enough in my mind to cause the fever. It probably didn’t help that I gave Tristan a cooler than usual bath since the heat was sweltering over here. But most probably he caught something from somewhere.
It could just be coincidence or a side effect of sickness that he was being unusually cranky this weekend. This was actually the one time we brought him out that people weren’t cooing at him and complimenting him. Instead, parents and non-parents alike were averting their gaze from the unfolding conniption. Hysterical screaming, arm flailing and back arching over the smallest things. Please, please, please, let this not be a taste of things to come.
This got George and I to talking about whether the tantrums stem from his inability to communicate more precisely, and that maybe we should teach him more signs to expand his “vocabulary”. Although he mimics what we say sometimes, his “words” sound very similar. “Ba” for ball, back, and bump. “Baba” for bubbles. “Ah” for on AND off, up AND down (just different intonation for down. I know, we don’t understand why he won’t say “Da” either since he says “Dada” a lot.). I also realized that there were a bunch of signs I left out from my last post such as “hot”, “frog”, “rain”, “cereal/cracker/puff”, “hear”, “bath”, “phone”, and maybe more that escape me. Upon reflection, this seems a pretty impressive roster and one we hope to continue to expand. Now if I could only think of some signs for strawberry, corn, later, now, full, want, go, please, …
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