Incidentally, I've restored all the picture links over on the right side there. Each now feeds to a page of pictures, and clicking on each picture successfully loads a bigger, higher-resolution version of that picture, suitable for desktops, billboards, banners that stream behind airplanes, airbrushed t-shirts from the mall, and whatever else Reid's public demands of him.

Also going live tonight is a little bit disjointed collection of pictures from the month of August just coming to a close. Although Reid fought a fever for some of the month, the first few weeks of his thirteenth month was full of surprises. Reid tried corn for the first time, hung out at the Jefferson Memorial posing for pictures, and generally had a goofy great time.

It is important, however, to note that there may be an image on these pages so repugnant to fans of the University of Alabama that Reid and his mom can't be held responsible for the ramifications. Let the toddler branding wars begin: behind this link is a picture of Reid...in a University of Maryland footbal jersey!

[In keeping with NCAA guidelines for branding of toddlers, Reid will gladly accept clothing and other contributions from wealthy Alabama backers. But seriously, don't worry about the UMD thing. I'm sure it's just a phase.]

Enjoy!

At last our long national nightmare is over. Reid has broken the fever, and today, triumphant, he returned to daycare.

Two notes, of course, on this unmitigated success story. First off, I now have a 101 degree fever and sore joints, like an old man on a Celebrex commercial. Second, several veteran parents (one each at our respective places of employment) smiled half-snarkily at us when we reported Reid's stunning turnaround and ended our stories with a similar refrain: "He'll come home tonight with a fever."

Cynics be defied, Reid is still within the admirably safe body-temperature range of healthy babies. An evening of good fun playing with parents (this one's slight drag not withstanding) didn't budge the boy's cool demeanor, literally or figuratively. A quick pass through the tub, a few sips of milk and the young man was off to la-la land. At last.

Reid's fever is like a fickle houseguest. We could deal with it if it just came around with any degree of regularity, but its inconsistency just leaves us frustrated. Sunday, K did the cold bath with him, as the fever hit 103.5. Monday morning, there was no fever and he went to daycare. Monday night, he seemed a little warm, and after a much more expert use of the thermometer than this one, we learned that he had a slight fever, but nothing that the doctors take seriously.

Tuesday on to daycare, where he again came home slightly with a slightly elevated temperature.

Wednesday morning, no temperature, and Reid was happy go lucky by all accounts. Returning that night (last night) from daycare, however, he was again cranky and hot to the touch. Launching our alien experiment with the thermometer yielded a high temperature and an aggressive Motrin treatment again.

This morning, the temperature has finally deigned to stick around long enough to warrant a call to the doctor.

They think we're overreacting. Every conversation with the nurses at our pediatrician's office is like this. Its as if the true test isn't our child's actual illness, but our ability to sell it to the unshakeably skeptical nurses. This time, K pulled the pitch duties and sold the ailing boy admirably to the stalwarts at Dr. C's. (I sometimes believe that fathers, who are regarded chauvanistically by most baby-related professionals as fair-weather parents, much to my chagrin, have a harder time selling such matters to medical professionals. Mothers have a certain non-panicky urgency which from me sounds like belligerence and irrationality.)

We're headed to the sick baby waiting room for a consult. Wish us luck.

Reid has once again been lain low by a fever. He was running around with a cold for a few days, and we figured he was dealing with a little environmental bug, but nothing to worry about. There was no coughing, and no fever.

Yesterday, however, the other symptoms disappeared, but the a fever arose to take their place. He tried his best to weather the illness, but by today, he was downright miserable. Super hot to the touch, he would rest a while, apparently storing up energy, and then launch into play. This would run for a few minutes, and then he would wind down like a toy with dying batteries (something with which we have a lot of experience lately). After the wind-down, there would be the cranking.

Having a sick baby is torture in some ways, but there are strange, bittersweet perks. In the moments Reid has run down his batteries, he is cuddly and strangely needy. A parent is trained to respond to this, obviously, But I selfishly hoard the moments, greedily holding him and drawing him closer to me. Tonight, I'm feeling a little under the weather as well, so the two of us played off each other's infirmed state. When his batteries are out, Reid flounders around, cranky or not, drifting in and out of sleep, sometimes resting his little head on my belly.

When that happens, I can't help but smile. He's comfortable, he's relaxed, and I hope he's feeling better. I'm feeling better already.

The other day, perhaps unthinking, K and I picked up Reid's first set of crayons. People have previously tried to give us crayons for Reid, but we've politely declined, knowing full well that he would merely eat them.

That, unfortunately, remains the case.

However, he also drew with them, and you can see the results of his first foray into conceptual art (outside of the sometimes abstract patterns of spit, hurl and other bodily fliuds) here. What we did was, we grabbed a slew of paper on track for an ignominious death in the recycling bin, and toted it home for Reid-duty. Then we surrounded him with the paper, so he looked like he had just killed a paper monster. Then we stuck a crayon in his hand.

First he just stared at it. Then he began to stab wildly at the paper all around him, making for only a deeply damaged crayon and some extremely abstract little dots on most of the paper.

However, perhaps aping us as we surrounded him drawing meaningless squiggles, Reid got this stunning fusion of composition and form. Okay, purple crayon and discarded office paper.

Earlier this year, I unfortunately had to remove some of the larger photo files of Reid from the Hardlyborn because of limited server space. Now, with the new capacity afforded us here at Rizkerson.com, I can restore all the photos to their complete and orginal glory.

Although it is completely irrational to feel so, I'm very happy to be re-posting the entire picture archive of Reid's life thus far.

I suspect more pictures will be flowing onto the site now that I can post them almost no regard for server space.

This morning I completed the task of uploading all the new files. Next, I will edit the template here on the front page to point to the new files. While I do that, and upload some new pictures I've been sitting on, here's one from the first ever pictorial of Reid's life, taken when he was still in hospital, and less than three days old.

Okay, no pox on the house of Reid. In fact, Reid doesn't have the pox, but his parents have the paranoia.

We got the doctor today, and we went in through the back door like some kind of pariah patient. Hanging out among the archived patient files and spent fax machines from a bygone era, we waited nervously for a final diagnosis.

"That's not chicken pox."

Oh. Okay. We'll just be going then.

The nice thing is we got the chicken pox vaccine as part of the bargain. Dr. Nancy gave Reid a quick look over, and then sat back down. Dr. Nancy is about to become a mom for the third time, and Reid could very well be the last patient she sees before she heads to her maternity leave.

It turns out that, with no fever, no little red dots in his mouth or on his chest, no gross little blisters on the little red dots and not much else to talk about, Reid has a minor cold and some little red dots. That's it.

On the upside, though, since we had packed out for a trip to the doctor and found such pleasant news at the other side, we decided to get Reid some fancy new kicks. Certain to impress his grandpa (at least until Nike makes shoes with the Natural Motion support system for new walkers), we settled on the Stride Rite Baby Runaround.

Quite a day for a little fellow who thought he had chicken pox this morning by ten.

Reid may have the pox. We aren't sure, but we're going to see the doctor in a little bit to find out. Reid's grand-dad, who happens to be a physician with an excellent diagnostic record, listened to a brief description of his symptoms and said, "well, he has chicken pox."

Ulp.

When we travelled to Egypt, we were given special dispensation to get the one year vaccines early, since he would actually be out of the country on his first birthday. However, on the actual date on which the vaccines were to be given, our pediatrician balked, choosing only to administer the MMR vaccine, and not the chicken pox vaccine, known as varicella.

We were of two minds on this subject. The more serious diseases are undoubtedly the mumps, measles and rubella covered by the MMR vaccine. However, there was a higher chance of Reid getting chicken pox than any of those. In the end, we accepted the doctor's concerns and went with the MMR only.

Now, I'm regretting that a little bit. Still, everyone says (anecdotally, of course), that getting the actual pox is a lot better than banking on the varicella vaccine. I recall the chicken pox as a painful and annoyin experience, and I have a perfectly round scar in the center of my forehead to prove what happens if you scratch and pick at your pox.

We're going to the doctor in a little bit. They've asked us to sneak in the back door, like second class patients, because the pox is highly contagious. Here's hoping Reid's just had an unfortunate rendez-vous with a particularly aggressive insect.

After much consternation, I've switched Hardlyborn over from free hosting at Blogger to an incredibly cheap hosting solution with a forgettable name.

As a result, we are now live and on the air at Rizkerson.com. Yoy.

Little man Reid is a total whirlwind of activity now. The walking has accelerated into running. Each night is a riot of chasing, shouting and playing.

What was once a toy basket has now become a full-fledged toy box. In it, one can view a complete panoply of Reid's thirteen months of life as a toy-user. Humorous super-infant toys which once were a staple of his playtime now carpet the bottom of the box like relics from another age. Meanwhile, new, fantastical items like the Chicco Gazoobo and other wonderful things are on the top layer, as well as all over the floor, and everywhere else.

For his whole life, we've done our best to protect his toys from the regular dispersal that we've come to associate with the homes of infants. It's not easy, but the toybox has made it a lot easier. However, I have noticed a trend as Reid approaches either the 8 am deadline for heading to daycare or the 8pm deadline for going to bed. As if in a marathon, Reid attacks the toybox to quickly play with and discard as many toys as possible. One minute, it's legos, and then wooden blocks, then the drum, then the circus elephant and then who knows what. I know he can't tell time, but it's obvious that we're on a schedule that he understands. In his little head, he is urgently getting his daily work done, making sure that the toys have all seen him before he heads upstairs or over to Ms. Mendoza's house. It's interesting, and cute. You almost don't want to disturb him.

Anyhow, I've got the pictures from Reid's first birthday party up. They represent the end of an arc of birthday celebrations that spanned three continents and as many weeks (longer if you count how long we've been kicking around balloons who've long since lost their helium). When we tell Reid about his first birthday, we won't know which one to start with. In reality, Reid's first birthday celebration was really for us, and we understand that. But it marked a lot for him. His first birthday took him to Europe and the Middle East for the first time. His first birthday marked the end of a life frustratingly bound by his nonexistent or primitive locomotion system known as the commando crawl and the beginning of the thrilling, frightening, and liberating era of bipedal transportation. The first birthday ticked off the arrival twelfth tooth (and we've sprouted thirteen and fourteen in the time it took me to get around to posting these photos), the end of the formula era, the end of the conventional bottle in our house (we're a sippy-cups only shop now, thanks) and the arrival of a whole new host of gates to protect us from climbing up or falling down stairs.

I feel like I write this all the time, but it's a whole new world for us now. I know Reid is ready. I sure hope we are.