AJ is on the mend, although I still have a long way to go. He was up all night Saturday night, and therefore so was I. I�m running on pure caffeine at this point.

He stopped throwing up around 1 in the morning, but we weren�t supposed to give him anything at all, even water, until his stomach calmed down, so he woke every half an hour crying tragically for water. This morning we finally gave him some, a little at a time. By the time he went to bed, he was up to Pedialyte and toast, bananas and applesauce. He was exceptionally quiet and snuggly all day, although he kept asking for �something to make me feel better,� a mysterious magic bullet to take all his pain away. If only it were that easy.

I managed to get out for a walk for a while this afternoon and discovered that in the recent sub-zero cold the streams have frozen into wild ice sculptures, including the waterfall, which looked as if it had frozen in an instant, arrested in time and space. A deer stood on the footbridge next to the nature preserve. We stared at each other, each trapped in the other�s gaze until we both flinched and fled in opposite directions, she back through the trees and I down the slippery pathway along the pond.

The cold air cleared the fog of sleeplessness from my head and helped me make it through AJ�s dinner, bath and bedtime routine without dozing off mid-sentence. But now, on the verge of collapse, I think it�s time for a glass of scotch, a warm pair of socks and a book that is not too interesting, lest I be tempted to stay awake and read it.

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