Eventually Clever

Weekend Roundup

This was the weekend that Ben decided never to sleep again. Well, it wasn't that bad, but it was close.

Ben was pretty restless on Friday night. He fought sleep for as long as he could, despite having enjoyed a very playful bath right after supper. He just refused to conk out until about 9 o'clock, by which point Dina and I were both pooped from the effort of getting him settled.

My plans to sort out the apartment went right out the window after that. Dina and I decided instead to watch the first two painful episodes of the second series of The Office. Brent is even more pathetic two weeks after the merge than he was before. Almost every second he was on camera was cringe-inducing. I'm looking forward to the love quadrangle between Tim, Dawn, Gareth and the New Girl..

On Saturday, we made our first weekend trip to Sherbrooke to visit Lou in the ward. I hadn't seen him for a week, and he was looked pretty darn good! He was a little scruffy in the beard, but I soon learned that Tilly had put off shaving him until I showed up. Her bearded son-in-law was clearly the most qualified to shave her husband's cheeks. Lou and I had a big laugh over that.

Ben was in great shape for the trip, sitting on the hospital bed and charming all the nurses. We spent some time in the ward, and then Lou walked over to the visitor's lounge down the hall and visited with us there for about an hour. Ben sat on Tilly's lap and completely shredded a newspaper flyer, laughing all the time. He was the center of attention, as always.

When we arrived home, Ben again refused to go sleep at his usual time. He was slightly less of a handful than before, so Dina took him while I caught up on the apartment fussing: I put the carpeting down in Ben's room, which went a long way toward making the place look neater.

We drove back to the hospital for another visit on Sunday. Ben was unusually fussy in the car, so I had to ride in the back seat for half the trip in order to keep him entertained. He was also chewing on absolutely everything he could find, which leads me to believe that he's cutting another tooth. Perhaps I'll name that one "Biter." (If you think that I'm not about to name each of Ben's teeth, I'll take that as a dare…)

We had another good visit. Ben used his charms on one of the visiting nurses: She looked at him, said he was cute, but then said that she couldn't pick him up because she was covered with germs. Ben gave her the saddest look imaginable.

So she went out, put on a gown, disinfected her hands, and picked him up for a cuddle.

Ben has a way with nurses, let me tell you! No one can resist the charms of Ben!

( Looks like Dina and I are going to have our hands full when he starts dating…)

When we returned home, Ben fussed and fussed until he went to sleep at about 9:30. He fussed, a lot, but Dina and I still had a ton of things to do. I between Ben-cuddling shifts, I transferred boxes from the spare room to the dining room closet, hauled boxes down to the basement, and shifted things around. There's still more work to be done on clearing the spare room, but I made a huge dent in the project. A couple of more nights to go, and it'll practically be habitable!

Today, Dina and Ben are taking a break from the hospital. They both need a day of regular naps.

Posted by Stephen