How to Make the Arrival of D2 as Hard as Possible for Owen

Or, as Travis likes to call it, Single-Parenting-in-Tandem.

Owen celebrated the arrival of Katherine by getting a fever to 102. So he made his 3rd trip to the pediatrician in 1.5 weeks and no specific cause was found. He got labeled with 'bug of the week', not clearly flu, definitely not the ears or throat, and seemingly viral. Instructions? Keep he and the baby in different rooms and wash hands frequently. Frequent, borderline-obsessive handwashing? Check. I am a gastroenterologist after all. Keeping the baby and O in separate rooms? Extremely challenging, since she's the most interesting thing in the world to him right now.

He calls her 'Baby Kafrim' or 'Baby Kathu' and spends alot of time describing what she does in his O-style play-by-play speech. 'Baby Kafrim eating', 'Baby Kafrim sleeping', 'Baby Kafrim crying' sums up much of our day. Sometimes he gets extra descriptive and says 'Baby Kafrim eat mommy milk from mommy booby'. All these observations are being made from a distance by O, since we're trying to keep him semi-quarantined. This means that Travis wrangles Owen for the day while I wrangle babyKat (since I'm the only one who can feed her), my Mom helps with whatever she can, and essentially we single parent in tandem for the day.

So the recipe for upsetting an otherwise normal, mellow 2 year old?
1. Bring home a baby
2. Tell him he can't play with the baby
3. Tell him Mommy is busy with the baby and he can't play with him either
4. Add a temp of 102
5. Favorite nanny has the week off
6. Then add croup at night keeping him from sleeping.

Oh, and our power went out for 6 hours earlier this week. I can't believe how hot our house got. Not the best with the febrile todder and 5 day old baby. Thank goodness it got fixed.

Hopefully O will complete his 24 hours of no fever soon so he can start hanging out with BabyKat and I more.