This turned into a long post about a stomach bug weekend. If you're looking for light-hearted stories and pictures of Collin, I'd recommend skipping this post!
Growing up . . . and still today . . . I celebrate birthday weeks. The week of my birthday, I would remind anyone trying to get me to do something I didn't want to do that it was my birthday week. Collin's birthday week started off great, but hit a big bump on Thursday morning and then took a nosedive on Saturday.
Thursday we went in for his 12-month check-up which I knew involved immunizations. But I didn't realize it involved a blood test for lead and iron. He recovered very quickly from the shots, and then we headed to the lab a few floors down from his pediatrician. They had to draw blood from a vein in his arm.
I was flying solo, as Cas was out of town with work. I had to give myself a pep talk. You cannot pass out. You have to take care of your son. I have been known to hyperventilate or have panic attacks over flu shots, so I should not have been the parent in charge. But I held my poor son and whispered comforting words in his ear as it took what felt like an hour to draw blood.
Saturday morning at 8:20, the telephone woke our whole house up. It was the lab company saying his results were all normal. Well thanks, but 8:20 - the latest Collin has slept for us in ages - and we could have gotten a few extra minutes of precious Saturday morning zzzz's.
I grab Collin and start to fix him a great yogurt and fresh fruit breakfast . . . but before he's had a bite he throws up all over both of us. So he goes into the tub and Cas gets woken up for a Pedialyte run. Now our doctor recommends this "pedialyte test" where you give 1 tsp of pedialyte every 5 minutes for 30 minutes, then 20 minutes of rest, and then they can have Pedialyte, breads, etc. But Collin was looking normal, playing and in a good mood. So Cas recommended we just give him as much Pedialyte as he'd like. Cas regretted that decision when he was puked on 20 minutes later.
After that, he failed the Pedailyte test twice. So we page our pediatrician on a Saturday night. He calmed me down, gave me some signs of dehydration - of which Collin didn't have - and after that he made it through the Pedailyte test and we put him to bed.
Sunday he wakes up, pedailyte, pukes, and into the bath. We go back to the pedialyte test, only this time our poor child is exhausted. He's had only a few ounces of pedialtye since Friday night. He would fall asleep on my chest after every 5 minute teaspoon. It was so sad and I felt bad continually waking him up but I knew he needed liquids more than sleep.
Things were looking up after his morning nap. He had a few pieces of bread, a few bites of potato soup, and a few bites of chicken soup. But he refused Pedialyte unless we held him down and squirted it in his mouth with a medicine dispenser. So that's what we did. We tried water and diluted fruit juice, but he kept refusing liquids.
So I decided he needed milk. Our pediatrician's guidebook said 1% or skim milk was okay. Big mistake. Though it was the most liquid he willingly drank all day, we think it was the culprit that made him lose his lunch again.
By then it was 4:30 on Sunday, we felt like he had lost everything he had eaten or drank all day, and he'd only had 2 wet diapers (which is a sign my doctor mentioned for dehydration). So we page our pediatrician again.
This time when he called us, Collin was in a rare talkative mood. He asked if that was the sick child and I sheepishly admitted that it was. He assured me that he was not dehydrated if he were happily babbling, even though he had not had his recommended number of wet diapers. When I mentioned he was refusing Pedialyte, he asked if we had tried the stuff, it was gross, and to get him Gatorade. So Sunday night he went to bed with a small bowl of applesauce and a few ounces of Gatorade in his stomach.
We're hoping Collin's first full week as a one-year-old is better than his birthday week! On weekends like this, I feel like I'm owed a make-up weekend. Though I'll be home with Collin tomorrow, I have a feeling we won't make it out of our pajamas all day. But as long as neither of us has been thrown up on, it will be a huge success.
And if that hasn't been gross enough, I was playing with Collin and saw that some of his vomit was on a book we were reading right before he lost it this afternoon. I asked Cas to clean it up and he couldn't find it. Then I realized that Bruno or Fergie must have licked it off the book. Bet you want to vomit now too, right?
The two good things about 7am on Saturday were my happy boy and this beautiful sunrise -
Collin was eager to explore the new toys -
Serious little reader - 
He drug the Superhero & Puppy Love book to Grammy and she patiently read them to him over and over. You turn the last page thinking you are finished, and Collin picks it up and hands it back to you . . . and how can you say no?
Exhausted on the way home -
After a nap, Collin was back up and ready to practice walking. Despite the 7 walker toys around our house, he thought the trash can worked just as well. 
