Smilin' Sam and Glossolalia Gus

Okay, no, we don't actually call him Glossolalia Gus -- though he does appear to speak in tongues sometimes. (Joke! Just a joke!) Gus loves to look deep in my eyes and proclaim (in a peculiarly resonant voice for such a small guy), "Awoooo! Guh. Guh. Rrxxxllrr... [sort of a growl sound there]. Ah, awoooo. Oooo. Oo." He says all this with such authority and conviction that he really seems to mean something by it -- though in actuality, I think he has simply twigged to the idea that the grownups produce interesting sounds, so why shouldn't he? Then he sticks out his tongue (which he has lately discovered) and looks pleased with himself. And then Gus smiles at me and his sky-blue eyes light up, and I completely fall apart and have to kiss every square inch of his exposed skin.

After all that, I finally get around to changing his diaper. And D wonders why it takes me twice as long to change diapers as it does him?

On the other hand, we do actually call our other little guy Smilin' Sam, because he has discovered that he has a killer smile, and loves to use it on every occasion. His beautiful little doe eyes seem to be turning a lovely hazel, and together with the smile, they make him completely irresistible. My female friends who come to visit practically trample me to get to Sam. Sam smiles at me, D, Grandpa (who has been visiting us for a couple of weeks), the cats, his toys, the ceiling fan, and the chandelier (a favorite, for some reason). With apologies: He liked whate'er he looked on, and his looks went everywhere. You would think that the star power of Sam's smile would be somewhat diluted by such widespread application, but it has the same effect on me as his brother's smile. I smile back until my cheeks hurt, and tell him how wonderful he is and how lucky and blessed I am to have him and his brother, and kiss his forehead (three times, that's our rule, thank you) and cheeks and nose, and completely fall apart.

Oh, yes, and then Sam gets his clean diaper.

In other news, the boys are sleeping for about six hours at a stretch during the night. Last night was very promising: we got them down about 8:30, and they slept until 4:30 a.m. Hallelujah! Unfortunately, that was also the night that my very old cat Georgina (who is blind, and basically lives in our bedroom, sleeping beside my pillow every night) decided to go completely dotty, and meow (LOUDLY) right beside my ear every fifteen minutes or so. In case you are wondering, a (LOUD) meow right beside your ear at 3 a.m. has about the same effect as a howitzer going off outside your window. One is unlikely to just sleep through it. So I'm a little short on sleep at the moment, despite the boys' cooperation. Also I'm concerned about Georgina. I think she has a UTI since she has a track record of same, and I started her on her usual antibiotic that the vet gave us for her, but if that's the issue, the Zeniquin doesn't seem to be helping yet. A visit to the vet is probably in the cards for tomorrow.

In still other news, the boys have had thrush for about a month now. We've been treating them with Nystatin, which helped a lot, but we could not seem to get a complete cure. I whined piteously via email to their doc, who then prescribed fluconazole, which is a systemic drug, but appears to be very safe. Fluconazole is, in fact, widely prescribed for thrush -- but you would never know it by the reaction from Our Humongous HMO, which acted as if their doc had prescribed gold dust pounded by dwarves and suspended in dragon's tears. They gave me a big song and dance about how it is a "rare" drug and that's why they couldn't get it to me for nearly a week. I finally got them to allow me to get it from a different pharmacy, but to get reimbursed for it, I had to go to Humongous HMO and pick up The Blue Form, THEN go across town to the pharmacy that actually had the fluconazole -- oops, I mean the pounded gold in dragon's tears. Three hours I spent on this nonsense yesterday, while dragging around my dad, who as I mentioned is visiting.

And that is happy news! (That my dad is visiting, not that I dragged him around yesterday.) He is obviously quite taken with the boys, and they seem to like him as well, bestowing smiles freely and letting him charm them out of crying (well, most of the time). My dad is wretched at anything approaching house work, so he certainly isn't doing anything like pitching in around the house ... but actually, just stopping the boys from crying has been worth a lot. And it has been so great having him here. Three generations under one roof -- I wondered if it would ever happen. But it has. And that makes me very happy.