Fly in the ointment

Michael has been up for the past two nights with various complaints, not the least of which is that nasty non-productive cough he gets whenever he starts getting congested. What's harder to deal with than a 3.5 year-old going trough a sibling transition, you might ask? The same child on Ventolin. His breathing is getting sketchy, but no actual wheezing yet, so I'm hoping we can avoid the true horror that is prednisone and *gulp* albuterol in the nebulizer. Of course I've been dealing with the post-nasal drip cough myself for several days and now Alexander is having sneezing fits and a little bit of a runny nose. I'm really praying it doesn't progress, I have no desire to start the baby torture that is saline spray and a nasal aspirator.

I am so happy that I started a family with the man I did. Alexander naps better in-arms and John just accepts that this is the natural order and not something that he needs to be trained out of. We were talking about how some of our approaches are different, but our core philosophy that children are humans that need to be respected regardless of age is something that we just took for granted that the other held to be self-evident, it's definitely not something that we ever overtly discussed. It's probably more of a reaction to our own upbringing more than anything - being treated like we were *just* children and didn't get any sort of respect for our individual needs planted the seed of what we wanted to do differently. He's also an incredibly hands-on parent - tag-teaming for the past two nights with a hungry Alexander and a semi-hysterical Michael (he *really* doesn't like coughing) was just natural.

All right - Michael needs to be wrangled and then Alexander needs to be fed so I must be off.