Weekend with the Fishes, Sickness, and 15month Growth Update

I haven't been blogging much lately because of my work trip and then general busyness, so apologies to the loyal fans/addicts...
We had a good weekend. Saturday we went to a pancake breakfast, and Eli enjoyed eating pancakes and watching the clown make balloon animals. He also clapped on cue during all the speeches, which tells you this kid has been to way too many political events. Then I went to the library for the day to work on my thesis, and we met at our neighborhood bakery for lunch and played on the playground, which is too big for Eli now, but he had fun going down the slide with some help.
Sunday we went with Eli's friend Eddie and his parents to the Baltimore Aquarium. The boys enjoyed the dolphin show, and then it was past naptime, so after some fussing (and some outright wailing through the rainforest) Eli fell asleep on my back while we walked around the other exhibits. See pictures and read more details on Eddie's blog.
Unfortunately Eli came down with a fever and some coughing yesterday. He seemed ok this morning, so we took him to daycare, but he was still a little warm with a runny nose when I picked him up to go to the doctor for his 15 month checkup. This was a pretty packed appointment for the little guy. Unfortunately he does have a pretty bad ear infection, so we had to start him on the antibiotics tonight. He also has a little wheezing which we have to keep an eye on, and excema (basically just patches of really dry skin) and athlete's foot (must be all that toddling he's doing), to round out the collection of odd diagnoses. So now his bedtime routine also includes a squirt of antibiotic, cortisone ointment on his scaly patches of skin, and prescription cream on his toes. He also got 4 more shots today, but the good news is he won't need any more shots (other than flu) until his 4 year appointment. I noticed while pinning him down for his shots that he has yet another molar. Tooth #11, one of the back molars, has already surfaced, which could explain some of his general fussiness lately, with the simultaneous emergence of Tooth #10. I think he is a shark -- he'll be working on his 2nd row of teeth at this rate. Other than all that he's doing great!
Eli is growing!! He weighs about 22 lbs (he wouldn't sit on the scale long enough to get an accurate balance, so the nurse had to do it really quickly), and he's 30 3/4 inches tall. That means he's around 20% in weight, and 40% in height! We were all pretty impressed with his growth, considering at the last appointment the doctor's goal was to just keep him on the percentile chart at all; hopefully it will stay consistant, although it's probably a spurt. Of course his head circumference is holding steady around 90th percentile at 19 1/4 inches (for an odd point of reference, he was 19.5 inches long at birth). Although skinny kids tend to walk sooner than chubby kids, I read somewhere that kids with bigger heads tend to walk later because their center of gravity is higher. Makes sense...
Tonight was the first night I put him to bed since I stopped nursing a week and a half ago. He seems to have gotten used to the new routine. He sat in my lap for Goodnight Moon, which he then insisted on taking with him to bed, and then I put him in his crib and he just rolled over and closed his eyes.