A roller coaster week

Zach experienced a lot of ups and downs this week. On the up side: his Grandma Cookie came to visit for a few days! That meant a lot of his favorite things - a trip to the park, an outing to the Mall to go on the roller coaster and other rides, and lots and lots of time playing cars, Uno, and whatever else with a very willing playmate.

On the down side: after he told us his mouth hurt, we discovered some telltale blisters on the roof/back of his mouth... hand, foot, and mouth disease once again. Sigh. (Our apologies to any kids who may have been exposed before we realized what was going on!)

HF&M usually starts out with a few days of a fever before the blisters appear, and if Zach had one, we totally missed it. But since hindsight is 20/20, a lot more things are making sense - why he seemed unusually whiny, and why he was waking up screaming bloody murder several times a night. I was quite concerned he was starting a nightmare phase, since that's apparently common when a 3-year old's imagination really kicks in. But coincidentally, he only experienced the nightmares for 3 or 4 nights (and naps too), which is about when he would have had the fever and the worst of the blisters. Whew. It was horrible to listen to him scream, and very difficult to comfort him. And, of course, it wasn't exactly pleasant for us to be woken up in the night by both kids. So we're glad that's over! The blisters have disappeared and he's his happy self again, sleeping just fine.

The other downer for Zach was the results of a tumble he took while running around after the parade on Sunday. He scraped both knees pretty badly; and to our surprise did NOT want us to bandage them up. He's been fascinated with bandages since he received the book Dan the Bandage Man, but despite that, he wanted his knees bare. Not even Lightning McQueen bandages could entice him! Worse than his knees, however, was the damage he did to his lip - somehow inside AND out. Lips bleed a lot, and the resulting scab was... yucky, to say the least. And it clearly bothered him, especially since it got in his way and was probably painful when he wanted to suck his thumb. Fortunately that has healed fast, but here's a lovely look at the scab near its worst stage (the scab is bad enough; you do not want to see what's behind the black rectangle):

Charlie, on the other hand, had a pretty "up" week - he got to meet his grandma, and have lots of snuggle time with her (mostly when Zach wasn't around to be jealous). And, of course, a bath from grandma - he loves those!

Do you ever get tired of naked baby in the bath pictures???