what is this, Mom?

I feel like such a bad Mommy. Braxton started getting sick last Friday. I thought it was just a cold. He'd get started coughing and just couldn't stop. Sunday morning I was ready to jump in the car and take him to the hospital. Well, today was the first day this week I really had time to take him into the doctor. Yesterday he got on a coughing roll and since he couldn't talk because he was hacking, he starting signing to me that he needed to go to the doctor. I felt so bad. So, OF COURSE, last night, he didn't wake up coughing once. The whole way to the doctor - no coughing. I almost didn't take him in, but thought, the worst thing they could say is he is fine. So, I took him in. I heard from a few people that strep throat has been going around so that is what I expected to hear. The doctor looked in his ears and said, "Oh, his ears are jam packed with wax, we'll need to have them flushed out." Then she listened to his lungs and said, "uh-oh. We need to give him a breathing treatment, okay?" That surprised me, but of course I agreed. After the breathing treatment she came back in and listened to his lungs again. She said, "the right lung sounds so much better. I think he just has bronchitis in that one - but the left one is still not sounding very good at all, I'm sure it is the beginning stages of pneumonia. It's a good thing you got him in here when you did." !!!! What! Yeah, so we had to bring home a machine to give him breathing treatments for the next two weeks until our follow up appointment. I feel SOOOO bad.

Braxton does really well holding the nebulizer himself

You can see, though, that he is more entertained with the television

It was cute, every time he'd cough smoke would come out of the other end of the nebulizer and he would start laughing ...

So, since that was such a depressing story. I'll tell a cute one now. Whenever we go to the library we have to be sure to have enough time so that Braxton can do the puzzles over in the children section. There are like 20 of them and he has to do them all. When we first started going, Jeff and I tried to be real sneaky and say he did them all. But, he'd walk around and find the ones that he hadn't done. So, we can't fool him. He knows them by heart, I guess. Well, one of the puzzles has animals on it. He has put the puzzle together a million times. He picked up a cow piece and pointed to the udder. This is how the rest of the conversation went:

Brax: "what is this, Mom?"
Mom:"oh that is called the udder."
Brax: "another?"
Mom: "no, an Udd-er."
Brax: "Oh, an Udd-er. What's it for, hu, Mom?"

I just kind of smiled and thought to myself .... how is the easiest/quickest way to answer this question. Right at about that moment, he smiles at me and says, "Oh, I know, it's his belly button, right?"

"RIGHT!" (boy, that wasn't so hard after all.) I guess I'm still figuring out that simple answers are good enough for small children.