Over Thanksgiving Tim and I went down to Key West to celebrate a dear friend's wedding- and we decided not to subject ourselves (or James) to two 14-hour drives within a few days. My wonderful parents and sister, Krista, were up for coming to Atlanta over Thanksgiving to stay with James.
James actually came down with a high fever on Tuesday before Thanksgiving and we weren't sure if we'd be able to leave the next morning. Krista came Tuesday afternoon and was going to be on her own with James on Wednesday until my parents would arrive late that evening. I was hesitating leaving Krista with a sick toddler when I didn't know why he had a fever. But he was acting pretty normal and didn't seem to have any other symptoms, and the fever came down after a dose of Advil (he even had a wonderful bath in which he pooped in the tub much to Krista's horror as she was the one with him at the time).
James didn't have a fever in the morning so Tim and I went ahead and left Wednesday morning as planned.
The fever did return a bit that evening but Krista was fine dosing James with fever reducers and by night my parents arrived to help.
The fever was pretty much gone by Thursday was then a head cold...and then it turned into a rash on his hands and feet mostly- with some going up and down his limbs and some on his face.
By the time Tim and I got home Sunday evening James was acting and eating normally but the red spots remained - though Krista said they looked MUCH better.
Even though James was obviously sick with something over Thanksgiving he still had plenty of energy and was able to make the Christmas gingerbread train with Krista (my mom bought the kit a while back thinking James would really love it). Krista said they did have fun and James seemed to like doing it but mainly he really like trying all the different types of candy which had Krista a bit of a nervous wreck watching him enjoying all those potential choking hazards. She said James also was not discriminating on what he placed on the train- often licking or sucking on a piece of candy before adorning the train with it.
So the train was one of three holiday crafts James made this past season.
The first of the three was a pinecone turkey he made at Shelly and Christian's house before Thanksgiving. He really did a great job of stuffing the pinecone full of construction paper feathers and he LOVED the googly eyed head so much that once we got in the car off went the head and off popped an eye.
The third holiday craft James did was cinnamon ornaments at Elsa's house. Not too long ago I would have been worried that James would just eat the dough, but he did great. He choose to mostly make "starfish" (really was a snowflake cutout) and conceded to make a few other shapes I suggested. He thought poking the hole with a drinking straw (for stringing it with ribbon after it dried) was tons of fun and several ornaments ended up with multiple options. Only a few ornaments survived the holiday season as most were loved to pieces- literally. The picture above shows the lucky survivors.
Next year James will be three by the time the holidays start rolling around so I am already looking forward to getting to do many more crafts with him!
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