[Nicolas] Cooker Baby

we shot this as nicolas packed his suitcase for his trip to oxford last week:

A couple days before Nicolas went to visit his grandparents we drove over to the bayou to ride some beautiful Prospect.1 musical paddleboats. (Prospect.1 is the largest exhibition of contemporary art ever displayed in the United States, and it's all over New Orleans until Jan 18, 2009. 81 artists from around the world, over 20 different venues - amazing, beautiful works of art. And it's all free. See http://prospectneworleans.org for more info) Anyway, the paddleboats were closing down for the day, so we decided to just go to city park instead. Mary and I were talking about the tickets we'd need for the amusement park, and Nicolas let us know he had a few tickets already.

he's having fun with the grandparents, and we're getting lots of work done, but we're missing him. here's some pics we took last week:

mary and nicolas saw the doctor again today, and our cheery, chipper little monkey apparently has a really bad, double ear infection. the doctor was surprised at how happy and upbeat he seemed. so we're back on the antibiotics. he's off to grandma's this weekend for the rest of the month so hopefully we can stem this rash of bad bacteria and infections a little more naturally for a while.

sometime late last night nicolas started feeling better. I guess all the pressure in his ears released because he couldn't stop telling me and Mary how his ear didn't hurt anymore. He was so happy that he must have forgotten how late it was. He wanted to play and talk and stay up with us. We finally got him to calm down by letting him sleep in our bed. I slept on the couch so my coughing wouldn't wake him up. He got up around 5 am with Mary. The she put him back down for a bit. I took care of him when he woke back up around 7 - he was so tired he just fell back asleep in my arms. The bottom line is he seems to be doing a lot better than he was last nite which is a huge relief for all of us. We'll watch him close today and plan on a dr visit Mon or tues

shoot. i spoke too soon. nicolas started complaining about his ear hurting tonight before bedtime. we gave him some tylenol, but he woke up about an hour later crying and in obvious pain. his cold was all but gone, but i think we have another ear infection now. we may take him to a clinic tomorrow if he's still hurting. we're open to any advice on reducing ear infections in toddlers if you'd like to share. thanks!

Hey everybody, sorry for the lack of communication here. i caught nicolas' cold and have been out of commission for the past several days. the good news is, he's back to his old chipper self - a little congested but practically all better, and fortunately for us, happy to help out with a little housework: