Hmmm...both children napping. That hasn't happened in over a week, and I can't decide whether to drink coffee and read the paper, or seize upon the opportunity to update with what's been going on. Maybe I can do both if I hurry!

Gabe's still sick. He peaked this weekend, we think (and hope), and several times Eric and I debated whether we ought to take him to Urgent Care and have him checked. I was worried not so much about the fever, but about the deep, wet cough that developed around Saturday, which gagged him and occasionally stole his breath, and about the fact that he wasn't really eating or drinking anything but breastmilk. His congestion was making it hard for him to even do that, and his diapers began to seem lighter to me. Dehydration lurked in my fears.

We would have taken him in Saturday night, but he fell asleep just before we learned that the "urgent care facility" isn't open at night, and that they wanted us to go to the ER if we wanted help. The idea of waking up this exhausted baby and hauling him to the hospital on a Saturday night made me cringe even more, so I just tried to nurse him all night with the idea that if he was still rotten in the morning, we'd go then. After all, he was still having wet diapers, and he still was producing tears and copious drool.

Sunday morning, he seemed a bit better, so I was glad we'd not gone. He was active, and his fever was low, though he still had the horrible cough. Today, he's looking even more like himself, but the cough is just as nasty; in the wee hours of this morning, I was having to help him sit up in bed and to hold a towel under his mouth just in case the gag threw things into reverse.

And now, in hindsight, I wonder if we just weathered a bout with RSV. He certainly fit the symptom list. It's funny, too, in hindsight, how I can actually guess that the "nasty cold" Sam had at about the same age - the one that had us in my parents' Emergency Room - was actually probably the same thing. It's that fever, that horrible gagging cough, that nose like a faucet, that sudden refusal to eat that both boys had; I remember the panic that I felt, watching him in misery.

But he's better now, mostly. Gabe actually only puked once, and that was after taking a tumble off the back of his Thomas engine, getting hysterical, and generating buckets of mucus within seconds. We've gotten through the worst of it now, and hopefully that will be it for illnesses for a while. (You hear me? We're done!)

We checked out a fourth candidate for schooling for Sam yesterday. It's a "dark horse" candidate, not because it's at all bad, but because the tuition statement might as well read, "...or submit one kidney in an ice-filled cooler." I'm sure it's worth it, in all actuality, but without some sort of major financial assistance, we simply couldn't swing it. The only reason we went to the Open House was to check on that possibility in the first place.

Eric was cracking up at the Financial Aid form on our way out. He read part of it to me. "It says, 'Are both parents employed?' And then, 'If not, please explain!'" That's right, justify your role as a stay-at-home parent before we'll give you assistance! Yeah, yeah, I understand their desire to give help to people who really "need" it, as opposed to those who could reasonably be expected to pay their own kids' ways, but still. We weren't offended, but we did find it funny.

Oh, but the school was lovely, though. So many extracurricular activities, such well-appointed science labs, such a gorgeous library. The art studio is enormous, the theater is giant, and...is that a glass-blowing studio? Why, yes, I believe it is. Jeepers! It's the sort of school that makes geeks like me go all weak in the limbs.

Now Eric's all bummed, wanting Sam to be able to go there and nowhere else, but I tried to brace him back up. After all, I said, we haven't even seen the three magnet schools yet. They might be super, and they're free. We can always try for one of them and then see about putting Sam in the expensive school when it's time to enter middle or high school ("Upper School," in Fancy-Pants School lingo), should our financial situation be better then.

Sam, of course, loved the school. He loves his preschool. He loves schools that we drive past on the street, where he sees children cavorting on the blacktop. He loves schools of which he's only seen pictures. I don't think he'd object even were we to enroll him in a Kiddie Military School, complete with rock-hard cots and rifle drills, so long as he could make crafts and carry a lunchbox.

Here's one of the pictures we had done last weekend. They all came out just lovely, though you wouldn't know it from my crappy pictures-of-pictures (note: must get the scanner hooked up, if it will even play nicely with our computer at all). THe other shots are all over on Flickr; just click on this picture, and then you'll be able to see links to the others along next to it.

Here's hoping we can keep our full-family pictures a little more updated from now on. Sheesh, the last family shot we have features Sam at a little younger than Gabe is now. I don't want to have to produce more babies just to remind us that we need new pictures!