Indy, the Screaming Girl and Baby Jock

Paulie is really into the kind of play that I think is just great for kids - role-playing, imaginative play. He moves quickly from one obsession to the next, but it's always the same kind of deal. He loves to create dialogue and adventures for whoever is the guy du jour. Lately he's been really into Batman, Spider-Man, Legos, Indiana Jones and Star Wars. Ben got Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii, and Paul loves to watch him play. Paulie tries to recruit Ben into his kind of play: "Ben, you can be Indy and I'll be the Screaming Go-el!" The Screaming Girl, or "go-el" as Paul pronounces it, is a character in Lego Indiana Jones who screams whenever you press a certain button. Ben has never been much into Paul's type of play. He's always been a more structured kind of guy: games, sports, video games. I'm hoping that when Gus gets bigger he will become a playmate in Paul's adventures. Paul's working on getting him on his side already. He's taken to calling Gus "Baby Jock." Jock is another Indiana Jones character.

As a girl, my best friend and I used to play Barbies for probably eight hours a day, so I'm delighted to watch Paul play in his pretend universe. I don't care if he's calling himself the Screaming Go-el, or even Princess Leia ("Are you sure about that?" Mark asked him. "Yup!" said Paul.), as he's been doing lately, as long as he keeps using that imagination.

The terrible threes

I know everyone refers to the terrible twos, but for my kids I never thought 2 was that bad of an age. Now 3, that's a hard age. Take Paul - for a few hours, please. Bah-dum-bump. Seriously, this kid challenges me daily. Ben was a tough 3, too, but Paulie frays my nerves in a different way. Last week he came out of the bathroom and said, "Mommy, I like cough drops." I should have known to move them to higher ground after he had curiously watched me pop a lozenge into my mouth the week before. How many had he eaten? Just one, thank God. Now, Ben wouldn't have done that. He would have whined and badgered me to let him try one, but I don't think he would have just taken one. Of course this goes along with Paul's personality, and I should have known better. After all, he is the child who delights in being naughty, who learned to climb practically before he walked and who painted our basement walls.

Before I tried my hand at raising 3-year-olds, I didn't think it would be that bad. They're a little older, can talk fairly well and therefore I can reason with them, I thought. I neglected to factor in the boundary-pushing and defiant streak. When Paul was younger, I began strapping him into his booster seat for timeouts so he wouldn't be able to get up. When he turned 3, I decided he needed to learn to sit on his own without getting up. Guess what? He won't do it. We had a showdown Sunday night in which he refused to sit. Therefore, a favorite toy had to take timeout in addition to him finishing his own timeout. I shouldn't be surprised that the next day I caught him pushing a chair to the refrigerator in a valiant attempt to free Batman.

Thank goodness my sweet little boy still emerges fairly often too. Just nine and a half months until the terrible threes are over.

And the worrying award goes to ... me!

I learned in the wee hours of Saturday morning that 4 a.m. is not my best decision-making time. Paulie had been diagnosed with an ear infection Monday of that week. The doctor put him on antibiotics, but rather than getting better, he got worse. He developed a deep, barking chest cough and by Friday night he had spiked a fever for the first time that week. Before bed, Mark called the on-call service and talked to a doctor. He recommended we make an appointment at the Saturday clinic and if Paul's breathing became labored we needed bring him to the ER. (By the way, the Saturday clinic is a favorite weekend destination for the Thiel family!)

Paul slept fitfully that night. By 4 a.m. he was thrashing about uncomfortably in our bed. He was running a fever, having coughing fits and acting a bit delirious. Now, I know that kids run higher fevers than adults. Nevertheless, it's always unnerving to me. Even when I'm at my level best, my mind can conjure some truly fantastical worst-case scenarios. But at 4 a.m. after being awakened for the usual Gus feedings and then to take care of Paul, my mind was churning out some doozies. What if he has some kind of serious infection? I thought. I kept coming back to this book I had read a review of about a mom whose daughter is healthy one day and dies of a strep infection the next.

Mark, of course, was up too. Thankfully, he's more level-headed than me. Yet we were struggling to make a decision about taking Paul to the ER. He didn't seem to be having trouble breathing, but he was in sorry shape overall. His appointment at the clinic was just four hours away. But that four hours seemed like an eternity. I fretted and watch the minutes tick by until 4:45. "Take him," I told Mark. "Wait, maybe not." Blessedly, sleep overtook me at 5 a.m. and the decision was made for me.

Mark took Paulie to the clinic at 8:15. The doctor thought he detected a small spot of pneumonia on Paul's chest x-ray, so he upped his antibiotics. Waiting had turned out to be the right decision. I'd like to think I learned something from this, but I'll probably react the same way next time. I didn't win the worrying award for nothing. By the way, Paul's cough remains, but he is getting better.