February has by far been the most challenging month of parenting yet in the almost 7 months that we've been parents. The primary reason for that is because we spent those long 29 days fighting illnesses. (I'm pretty sure that not one single day in the month had all three of us healthy. Hopefully March will be better.)

Last week Tuesday Abe's ear infection came back. On to the second round of antibiotics we go. Bummer. Quite a let down, but we caught it early so no big deal, right? Wrong.

Friday began the long drudgery of the most laundry I've ever done in my life. Abe got "the-24-hour-plague" (I'll spare you the details.) on Friday. (I got it on Saturday and Mike was hit with it on Sunday. What can we say - we're a sharing family.) I thought for sure that Sunday would be the end of it, but it turns out that "the plague" wasn't the only thing causing the food to not stay down for Abe. The poor kid just can't stand the taste of his new antibiotics. I know this is the case because one time I tried to give it to him he got just the tiniest of tastes, gagged, and it was all over - back up came his dinner. Yuk. The kid will keep food down, but not if antibiotics are either before, during or after.

At this point I have to take a brief break to give you a window into my childhood: As a kid I had strep throat. I can still taste the medicine I had to take for it. It was horrendous. Vile, vile uncoated pink pills that no child should ever be forced to swallow. If I wrote eight pages of how horrible those pills were it still wouldn't convey their putridness. Suddenly, those vile, horrible pills started showing up in my normal food. Crushed bits "hidden" in my pb&j, "dissolved" into my grape juice, mixed into my yogurt. What in the world was my mother doing? Had she gone insane? All she was accomplishing was ruining EVERYTHING I was eating!! Did she really think I couldn't taste them? That I could be fooled that easily? I was insulted, offended, disgusted and yet still forced to eat that poisoned food.

Back to Abe. Last night Mike had the wonderful idea of mixing the antibiotics in his cereal while feeding him. (Maybe this blog should be titled "Mike has become my mother".) I heard it went decent and he did the same thing this morning, since I had failed in keeping his medicine down before rushing off to work . So, this evening I made Abe's evening meal and did the same thing. I made his favorite: avocado mixed with breast milk and rice cereal. Then I added his antibiotics. The kid was hungry, had been fussy the whole time I was making his food and as I sat in front of him to mix the final goods together he eyed them with a luscious look. He took one bite and I knew he wasn't fooled. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and let out a mad, betrayed whine. I know that feeling; in those betrayed eyes I remembered with pain those horrible, horrible vile pink pills and I knew in that split second that the inevitable had happened: I had in fact become my mother. To make it even worse, I made him continue eating his food - this is the first video below (he's typically a much better eater). Don't worry though; he got us back. The second video is him getting stripped after throwing up all of the horrible food I just made him eat - notice how pleased he is with himself the little stinker.