The White House

We\’ve had more days at home recently with Quinn being sick.  The school doesn\’t want you to send your kiddo to school if they have a persistent cough and Quinn has had a pretty mean cough.  He\’s been pretty happy and seems to feel ok, but the cough is hanging in there.

We have a big spool of bright blue yarn that Quinn loves to unwind all over the house, up the stairs, around the corner, etc.  On Tuesday he wrapped the yarn around a couple of kitchen cabinets and asked me if I would get in the choo choo train with him.   We found a round colander as his wheel and a cuisinart part as his whistle.  It was quite a contraption.  Here we are chugging along….

Then we started digging deeper in to the cabinets and he found the salad spinner.  I explained to him what it was used for so he added some balls and puzzle pieces to spin around.

But he really wanted some salad to spin.  He was thrilled when I produced a small bag of spinach to spin.  Wahoo!

Now he takes it upon himself to pull out the spinner on a daily basis and grab a huge box of spinach begging me to open it.  Not sure where he learned this but he will say \’please, please, please\’.

That reminds me of one of Quinn\’s favorite phrases right now \”I eat it, but I don\’t like it\”.  I crack up every time.  Again, not sure where he learned that phrase.

We took Quinn to the Urgent Care Clinic on Sunday and they said he has a virus that is lasting a couple of weeks.  Fluids and rest was the prescription.  So fluids and rest it was.  You can see that Quinn has the buddy with him.  He has started taking the buddy to bed with him every night and will grab him first thing in the morning too.  It makes us smile.  The Boy.  Our Buddy.

Saturday.  \”The Boy\” has had a bit of a cough and it kicked in full force on Saturday.  He woke himself coughing early on Saturday morning.  This is what he looked like by 10 am.  Yaaaawing.  He had just opened a card from Mae and he thought it was funny that in the picture the wolf had snow on his nose.  

We were ready to do something fun and different and needed an indoor activity because of the weather.  We also wanted to celebrate the Chinese New Year.   We found a kids marionette show that featured a Chinese Dragon.  It was about 40 miles north but we were up for the adventure.  We also found a little place called Organic Tofu House which serves Korean food.  Even better!

We started with banchan, which are free little side dishes that are always different.   We got kimchee, beansprouts, a spicy salad, and a fishy thing.  We also ordered a vegetable pancake that is made with veggies and kimchee.  One of our favorites.   I got the Bi Bim Bop which was served in a sizzling stone bowl with hot rice, cold marinated veggies, and a raw egg yolk that cooked in the hot food.  You can see our pancake and my Bi Bim Bop in this picture.  Don got a spicy kimchee soft tofu stew which came out sizzling and bubbling like crazy.  As Rachel Ray would say:  Yum-O!

We had about an hour to kill before we needed to head to the marionette show so we ran by Whole Foods to get Quinn some cough medicine.  By this point he was coughing alot.  Alot, alot.  We did a little shopping then sat while Quinn had a sweet treat.  His coughing wasn\’t improving so we thought it best that we not go to the show.

We got home to find this scene.  What is up with Curious George sniffing The Buddy\’s butt?  The Buddy looks a little sad about it.  Don says they were just doing a proper greeting.  Disturbing!

Don ran out to get ingredients for Tomato-Politan Martinis plus some.   As you can see…

We actually only had one martini but we have the ingredients to make many more.

Quinn\’s cough seemed to be getting worse and since it was sounding a bit croupy we decided to do the hot steam and then cold air treatment.  I got the hot shower going and set up the sink with squirt bottles, funnels, cups, foaming soap, etc so that Quinn could play while we steamed his lungs 😉  After 15 minutes Don grabbed him, wrapped him in a blanket and took him outside.  Quinn was pretty upset to have to leave his fun at the sink, so we happily repeated the process until we ran out of hot water.    Unfortunately his cough isn\’t any better and we will be visiting an urgent care clinic on Sunday morning.

But, it was still a fun and kind of adventurous day.