Here I am, back from my jaunt to Hawaii: aka rotavirus part 1

Okay, not really. I am back, that part's true, but not from Hawaii. We did do a round of mail visits for the holiday season, but soon after that we plunged into what we have been told was probably Otter's introduction to rotavirus.

While rotavirus sounds much like a medical gardening tool, or a gambling disease, it is instead a nasty little organism to be introduced to your digestive system. By "you" here, I mean a small child, as once you've met and conquered rotavirus as a child you are generally declared immune. But on that first date, you get pretty ill--vomit and fatigue and "so on"--by which of course I mean explosive diarrhea.

So for several days Otter lost fluids in various picturesque and messy ways, I washed many many many baby clothes and many many cloth diapers, and G and I traded spells with Otter in the living room. For the first day or so Otter wanted to be held whenever he was awake. After five or ten minutes of being held, he would go gradually go more and more limp and more and more heavy on us, and we would realize: oh, yay, he's asleep again--on my arm and my left hipbone and perhaps the TV remote as well.

So G and I took turns being the bed of choice for our small one, with the non-bed parent getting to do things like laundry and dishes and changing the DVDs in the DVD player and fetching snacks and beverages and blankets for the "bed" parent.

So went the first couple days, punctutated by attempts to get Otter to wait until at least a couple hours after vomiting to nurse or sip water, and by a couple visits to the pediatrician's for reassurance.

More later.