On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a chest x-ray?!?!

Every year it's like the plague around here at Christmastime. One year it was head lice. Another year, chicken pox. Last year it was pink eye and double ear infections. This year we decided to start a round of Echinacea and Vitamin C beginning the day after Thanksgiving. So far, everyone is pretty healthy, except for Babymort, who obviously did not get the memo.

He's had this weird strainy cough that ends in him gaggy on his own phlegm until he can't get his own breath. Lovely, eh? And it's been over a week. At first I thought it was a weird reaction to cheerios or he was choking on his own teething drool. Then my imagination kicked into overdrive and brought out the big guns. He must have asthma. He's allergic to me. He has a lung tumor. Pneumonia. I had no idea.

We went to the doctor, who thought he might have heard some cracklings in his chest. Chest x-rays with almost-eight-month-olds are tres unpleasant. But the x-ray is clear and hopefully he will feel better soon. The doctor wrote a script for antibiotics ("This probably won't do any good since it's most likely viral, but just in case..." which I won't fill. I could wallpaper our bathroom with all the prescriptions they write and I don't fill. What I will do is nurse him tons, give him some Hyland's vitamin C, and run the humidifier with sniffletime aromatherapy in it. And if I need to, we'll cuddle up in the bathroom at 4 AM with the shower running on hot again and try to loosen things up.

Of course, I've also been bitten by the organizing bug. This is tough with a sick babe. I would say that at least 50% of our "getting out the door" issues (and oh, boy, do we ever have issues!) are due to hats and shoes. (In case you're wondering, in my estimation 25% of the issues are baby needs that can't be helped and the remaining 25% is pure unadulterated original sin and contrariness) I moved the changing table up to the bathroom--it's not beautiful, but it works--and am trying to create a "landing spot" for hats, shoes, boots, etc. I bought a shoe rack and brought down the coat tree from Katie Grace's room. I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow.

What I want to get done before we start school again:
Plan out the next quarter of school
Tweak the daily routine
Do some Waldorf reading to get re-inspired
Move the craft stuff to the basement
Move the extra food to the mudroom shelves
Move the bulk of the books to the basement
Rearrange the living room (after the tree is down on Epiphany)
Make a Household Control Notebook
Organize the kids' rooms
Finish this new "landing spot"
Add a play corner to the schoolroom/dining room
Move the easel

That's a lot.