PappaBear's First Post!

There are a lot of things going amok in little Kiss and Cookie's worlds right now.

First, Kiss and Cookie are, sadly, sick! If you remember, they got their first "cold" the first week of April (staff photo, below).

They recovered like little champs and without too much ado (aside from their Humidifying Dragon).

Now, they're sick AGAIN! Unfortunately, they're both suffering through their first eye, ear, and snout infections. Both are also on their first course of antibiotics, which includes a secondary eye drops and, worse, eye ointment!

Eye drops I get, but ointment for infants...really? Someone who didn't have (or like) kids (or maybe their parents) must have come up with that one. Otherwise, the eye drop vehicle was still on patent...

On the plus side, Kiss is reasponding really well and appears to be over her first ear infection (15 months without an ear infection isn't too shabby, thank you very much)! She seems to have regained about 95% of her craziness back and she is happily puttering (nearly running) about the house....


Cookie is still on the mend, however. His laid-back and easy going ways kept us from realizing that his ears were also infested with the baby plague. We were treating his peepers (see below), but he was delayed in exhibiting signs of a more generalized infection, so we held off in (false) hopes that he would get through it on his own...


Of course he looks terribly sick in this photo now that I'm looking at it/him in retrospect. I think he was just really sleepy there...he is in his crib after all. Live and learn....

Kiss was prescribed Amoxicillin, whereas Cookie was prescribed Cefdinir. Both are β-lactam antibiotics, but there are some pretty big differences between them. I'm not sure if Cookie is responding as well as Kiss did. I'm keeping my eyes and ears on them both, but am currently hawking over the Cookie. It's 9 PM and I can hear him coughing still...poor thing.

The second big upset is that Mamma bear has left the den. She won't be back for a couple of days. Even though they're sick, I can tell that they're also missing her (me too). Here's a picture of MamaBear (looking more like MamaFox!) struggling to contain the precocious Kiss....


It's not all bad news, however.

Even an ear infection isn't slowing Cookie down and he's still "a mess" as they say in Texas. He is showing some real interest in walking. Today he showed us that he's been working on his ballance while we weren't looking. He started pushing the ottoman around in a very serious way. Today is the first time that I've seen him doing it in a prolonged fashion with the clear intent of using it as a mobility aid!

As you can see, Kiss had to get in on the act as well...



I'm really very excited for him! He was very proud of himself (and I'm proud of him, too!).