Yes, that was my child screaming in the parking lot...

Wow, what a week. A few highlights for the little guy: he started clapping this week, as well as doing that thing that I don't think has a name, where you make a humming noise and drag your thumb over your lower lip over and over and it makes a noise like "bubb bubb bubb bubb"...? He went to the doctor Wednesday (unscheduled, more on that in a sec), and he's now 17 lbs 3 oz. Holy cow! In a lowlight, he went to his first wake, for Auntie Kat's grandmother. Sorry, Auntie Kat. :(

Wednesday, our cat Moose was headed for the vet for some dental surgery. As we're checking him in, the vet tech asks about a couple spots of dry skin that Li has on the back of his head. The largest one is actually in an odd shape - its a ring, with raised dry skin in a circle and regular white skin in the middle. She recommended getting it checked out because it looked like (oh, how my heart sank when she said this) ringworm. Apparently its something kids can pick up from cats. I call the doc's and get him booked a same day appointment... at this point, I haven't done any research, so I know nothing. We head to the doc's with "Snowmageddon" hot on our heels, and get in pretty quickly. The doctor doesn't know quite what it is on Liam's head... it looks like eczema, but its in an odd shape for it. On the other hand, he'd expect it to be redder and more angry looking if it was ringworm. He decides to treat for eczema and give me a prescription for the ringworm cream as a back-up in case it doesn't get better. He explains that ringworm isn't a worm at all (whew!) and its actually just a yeast infection of the scalp... the same infection on the foot would be called athlete's foot. That made me feel a lot better. On the other hand, he also said it was highly contagious, and we'd have to wash pretty much everything in the house in hot water if it was ringworm... and we have Grandpa & Grandma Wallen coming to stay with us this weekend. Fortunately, there was a big difference on even the first treatment of the cream for eczema, so we're in the clear!

So the title of this post? Liam and I went to Market Basket on Friday. He was entranced with the mylar balloons at the check-out... there was a big red and silver heart-shaped one that he just couldn't take his eyes off of. For two bucks, I figured this might buy an afternoon's worth of entertainment, right? We check-out, take our stuff out to the parking lot, and start loading it in the car... that's about the point when he seems to realize that the balloon's coming home with us. Uh-oh. He comes UNGLUED - crying, screaming, writhing in his car seat. People are staring, I'm flabbergasted. This old man comes up to me, obviously feeling bad for Liam (probably for me too, at this point), and tries to give us a stuffed rabbit to distract Liam... I'm a little creeped out, but I grab the rabbit and beat a fast retreat. He cried the whole way home... if we lived farther away from Market Basket, that balloon would have been finding its way into the atmosphere. Anyway, we've been slowly making friends with the balloon for two days now... he's now okay with touching it & even pulling the ribbon, but he still acts surprised sometimes and screws up his face like he's going to cry if it does something unexpected.