Poop-related updates and videos

Last week in the letter to a 4 month old Moss, I described a very cranky baby and attributed the crankitude to about 20 different things, including teething, developmental frustrations, sleep regressions, the kitchen sink, everything.  While it's certainly the case that there is a lot of social/cognitive/motor/physical growth going on, I missed the boat on noticing that the fuss-monster was actually sick.  :(  His first stomach virus diagnosis explains everything I had been brushing off as symptoms of anything else I could think of -- the reappearing arsenic hour (nope, just evening abdominal pain), the seemingly random and sporadic fear-like responses to the changing table and blanket time (nope, just horrible GI cramps brought on by lying flat), the sleep regression (nope, just waking up every hour to feel icky), the green poop, drool and hand-biting I thought was teething (nope, just diarrhea, extra stomach acid and wanting to nurse more because ouch).

poor sick Moss right before the doctor told us about the baby-eating virus terrorizing the town

Oh and speaking of green poop, you're welcome for my lack of facebook postings about that.  I actually had to restrain myself on more than one occasion (once when I put two and two together and realized frequent green poop = GI bug, and once when he had his first normal looking poo after starting probiotics).  I've been told by more than a few people that my life would revolve around poop in a very strange new way during my first few years as a parent, but I was skeptical.  Nope, seriously my thought process when his poo was finally back to that beautiful mustard brown was "YES!  Oh man, what an exciting life event.  To facebook!  WAIT.  NO."

Anyway I'm both embarrassed and disappointed that I wasn't tuned in enough to my sweet baby to intuit his illness instantly, but at the same time I'm proud that I'm laid back enough not to FLIP OUT and call the doctor every time he cries 5 minutes longer than usual.  So I'm calling it even.

Now that he's feeling better, it's so obvious looking back that he was sick -- he's been so cheerful and energetic and giggly and content for a couple of days now, even given his huge and frequently exasperating developmental task list.

And of course, now that he's feeling better, tomorrow we're going to hop on a red eye flight from SFO to O'Hare for a 4 hour layover before boarding a prop plane to Knoxville, where it's 3 hours later and 40 degrees colder.  WHAT COULD GO WRONG?  Tune in next week for the next exciting chapter in the book of ridiculous Trofatter goings-on.  It's about time for the next Ben post, I'll see if I can prod successfully enough for that to be posted next Monday.

And now I'd like to sum up our week with a video about laughing and pooping.