Kaden is sick. When he was first born we heard horror stories about newborns getting a fever. How if in the first six weeks there is some worry about bacteria or avian flu or something and you have to take him to the emergency room to.. get this, have a spinal tap. Images of that happening led me to simply err on the side waiting till the seventh week to take his temperature for the first time.

But our little Scrambles does not have a fever, and at seven months old he is long past spinal tap fears anyway. He has a cold. Just writing it sounds petty. It brings up visions of a cute little nose making cute little sniffles, perhaps him needing to cuddle a little more. With all my pent up fears about fevers, I hadn't even really considered the distructive possibility of the cold.

Why did no one warn me about colds? All the former smiles and happiness that we've enjoyed the last couple months are temporarily missing. He's pissed, he's sniffly, and he's tired - oh so tired. You see for someone who enjoys sleeping with a pacifier in his mouth, having a stuffy nose is like being caught between a rock and a pile of snot. Either he can sleep with the pacifier in his mouth or he can breath. Or, as Kaden has found, he can scream his head off like this decision is Sophie's Choice. Cujo is back.

And I feel like a total wimp Dad. This is just a cold? Cause this stinks. And it doesn't help that Megan has it too, so it's about as gloomy around here as the Boston weather.

Kaden + Start-Up Mom head to North Carolina with the grandparents while I'm off to Finland, so hopefully both will be nursed back to health by the grandparents. Get the chicken soup ready Leesie!

We spent the first three months just wishing Kaden would start, you know, doing stuff. Anything really, other than crying and looking blankly at the ceiling as drool formed on his chin. Now the pace is blistering and we are just trying to keep up.

He has now entered training mode, and I can hear the Rocky theme playing in the background. For instance this week he started crawling. Not just the injured soldier crawl that he used to do, this is the picturesque stomach raised crawl worthy of some photos (and you know I've got 'em). The only reason he stops crawling is to practice standing up. I was in New York one night (one friggin' night!) last week and I missed him teaching himself to pull up from a sitting position.



Kaden is so motivated it's like he's got a silent little drill instructor in his head. He starts some activity, such as learning to walk around the table, and just does it over and over till he has it down. His new favorite game is doing squats by dropping stuff on the ground while he is standing and trying to maintain balance while picking it up. He'd be walking by now if his feet weren't so rounded that it must be like walking on peg-legs.

We're calling him Scrambles because he is always active.. always. Frankly I think he's trying to show me up, and I'm feeling pretty lazy.

It's all wonderful and stuff, but couldn't he just chill and do something more mind-numbing like watch television. It's got me calling in the reserves just to keep him occupied, which in yesterday's case was the trendy high school staff of Abercrombie & Fitch.

With their aloof attitude to customers and rare interactions with children they are the perfect distractions for Kaden. Megan seems not to agree, and I think it mostly has to do with my tactic of just facing the stroller towards the register in a very expectant, "well, he's facing you - DO SOMETHING!" kind of fashion. Megan seems hung up on this whole idea of not imposing on other people.

But it is not as if the high school girls behind the counter care about the customers. Plus they love playing with kids. We've got a friend who has a kid the same age and sometimes feeds her child breakfast at the local Starbucks just so other people can entertain the baby.

Like most parents we started out overjoyed that he's so engaged and alert. But there's always a price. As Megan says, as soon as he learns to talk, he learns to talk back. And in this case, with the alertness comes the era of constant entertainment. He's just constantly filling his brain with new activities, and not a second to spare. Time to pull out the old Physics text books and get him started.