sick sick sick and hotmail vs. gmail

thomas with his shaggy, 70's, bruce lee haircut.

mommy's putting the squeeze on his cute fat little head... :)


so thomas is sick again. again! he was sick from jan 22nd to feb 3rd, 2 whole weeks. he recovered but he had this really flegmy sounding cough, that never went away. on sunday he started getting a runny nose again. by monday it was a full blown cold, this time with a very productive sounding cough. only babies do not know how to hock lugees!! so yesterday night, thomas woke up coughing at 11pm, gagged as a lugee got caught in his throat and puked out his entire dinner. he was crying and it was so sad to see. i had just showered but i hugged him to me as close as i could anyways - he was crying in so much distress, yet trying to suppress his coughing because he was starting to realize that is what makes him gag. oh and wow - puck really smells terrible. the last time i puked was in college (LONG time ago)... i had no recollection of how terrible it smelled. so at 11 at night, we had to undress him, give him a partial bath and get him dressed again. he was sleepy but so miserable.

we are taking him to the doctor today to make sure that he doesn't have bronchitis or croup or something that can be treated. i am pretty sure that this is just a cold and that we just have to ride it out, get him rest, fluids, humidifier and keep him warm. but for william's sake, i am going to make sure that there is nothing else we could be doing. william (as many of you know) likes to have his bases covered. and you never know - it could be something worse.
from what i have heard, between 1 and 5, kids get sick a lot. after that it slows down b/c they have built up a little immunity. i think this is just part of parenting. but so william thinks i have done my due diligence, we are going to the doctor to make sure. i guess due diligence is a good way to prevent having to second guess yourself.

on a positive note, last month, thomas discovered blueberries and still can't get enough. he likes to stuff as many as he can in his mouth and will stop at nothing to get at them if he knows you have some. here he has partially climbed into dad's lap. we have to be careful about how many he stuffs in there b/c more than 3 and he tends to choke on the skins. silly piggy! not sure if you can see in the pic, but he has stuffed his mouth pretty full and is still reaching for more.

i can't really adequately describe what it feels like to watch your husband and your child snuggled together. but i read this little quip online and it was much better so ...
"A kind of fierce joy clutched at my heart. I would kill for them, die for them. The work, the constant, backbreaking effort, is nothing compared to the gift that is our small sweet family. This is what it's all about." (from babycenter.com, "tending violet")
and this is really what life is all about! :)


---------------------------HOTMAIL vs. GMAIL---------------------------------

on another note, have any of you tried the new hotmail office live beta version? i have an old hotmail account that i kept only for junk mail, online sign up and receipts (basically any site that requires me to plug in an email). i converted over to office live in feb and found it is pretty slick. it works almost like ms outlook now. plus william and i started using the calendar feature on hotmail and shared it out to each other. now, if we need to know if the other has something planned, we just check our hotmail calendar. pretty nifty! i have pretty much stopped using my palm. (sorry john...). then i discovered that for only $20/year, i can get rid of all those annoying ads on hotmail. it is like the whipped cream on top of a sundae! yes - you too can enjoy peaceful email time, free of flashing dancing pigs, blinking "low mortgage rates" and "hot singles waiting for you to call" for only $20 for the entire year. it is GREAT! the only reason i stayed with myway email for so long is because it had no ads.

my dilema is that i have this gmail account that i started a while ago and i really like some of the gmail features: the view, the way the threads tab, emails addresses on the left, the sort, search and label features. but the calendar is not as intuitive as the hotmail calendar. so switch all my email back to hotmail or switch over to gmail and just keep the hotmail for junk mail and calendar?? tough call.
i think i will ruminate on it a few more weeks. switching emails is such a pain and i don't want to have to do it more than once. i think the last time i switched was in 2000...