Many Things...

1. Miss M says "Hi" now. Said it to everyone in daycare today. Said it to the lunch lady, the teacher, the parents dropping off their kids, etc. Very cute.
2. After many kissless days (possibly weeks), I got a big ol' smackaroo when I got home from work last night. So nice to have my baby healthy again!
3. We sold our house!!!!! Well, technically we've only accecpted an offer, we still have to wait for the inspection and financing and stuff, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that it all works out well. FINALLY!
4. Miss M's new favorite song is "Wheels on the Bus" - she dances to it! It's like watching Pavlov's experiment with the dogs. She might be reading a book, or crying, or whatever, but as soon as you start singing Wheels on the Bus she drops what she's doing, goes into a trance, and starts spinning her arms and dipping her legs.

Do You Understand the Words That Are Coming Out of My Mouth!

Communication. The key to a good relationship. The key to successful negotiations. The key to getting your sippy cup. Miss M has many ways of communicating with us at this point in her development, although none of them seem to be very satisfying for her as of late. She wants words, I can see it.

She knows some sign language - raised hands for "all done" and hand to mouth for "more"**- but I don't, so that is clearly not effective for her. And she uses facial expression and vocal tone to state her mood - but telling me she's pissed off really doesn't help me figure out what she's pissed off at. So she's been doing a lot of reaching lately - pointing at what she wants, reaching her hands out for it, etc. I'm trying hard to give her the chance to hear the word she wants without constantly supplying it. Does that make sense? I'm trying to make sure she knows the word, but at the same time give her the opportunity to use it. Not that she does, but you know, someday.

**update - see, I told you I don't know sign langauge! Apparently hand to mouth means "food", not "more".

I Cried

I stood at the kitchen sink rinsing away the remnants of last nights dinner, loading the dishwasher while my sick baby lay sleeping in the next room. And I cried. In about an hour I was going to have to leave her, and her 102 degree temperature, at home while I went to work. She's sick, all she wants is Mommy to make her feel better, and I have to go to work, and I hate it. It's not fair to her, it's heartbreaking to me, and I wish I could just stay with her. I cried my frustration into the dishwasher while the dog stood behind me with her ears laid back, sad that I was sad. The house was quiet, I wasn't even dressed yet, I was waiting for a very helpful grandma to come take care of my baby, and I'm thinking "What is wrong with this picture?" Why would I be going to a job that is clearly not as important as the job I have here? Why would I be doing that? It felt so wrong, so out-of-whack. There is a crossroads up ahead, and I think I know which turn to take now.

The Joy's of Womanhood

Miss M is pretty sick today. She was recently diagnosed with yet another ear infection, and then last night she had a fever close to 104. Today the fever has slowly been going down, but we thought it best to take her to the doctor... just in case.

Our appointment began at 11:15am with the usual round of questioning, how long has she had symptoms, how's her appetite, etc. She made it through the first cut - on to the second round, blood test. "Oh! She squirted! She's a really good bleeder." These are the nurses exact words. I looked down at the table and saw the tiny droplets of "squirted" blood and felt faint. That blood just squirted out of my kid's finger. Gross. BUT... not as gross as what was to come.

Third and final round of our competition for America's Sickest Baby - the pee round. In this round we're looking for a urinary tract infection. So, how do you get a 14 month old to pee in a cup you ask? Well, you don't. A nurse came into the room and taped a plastic pee-pee bag to my daughters hoo-haa and suggested that I try to get her to drink as much fluid as possible. Um... what fluid? I really wasn't prepared for this, but after about 30 minutes of no-flow another nurse came in and offered up some formula. So here we are, sitting in the world's hottest exam room, both of us are falling asleep, Miss M can barely move she's so sick, and the nurses are all "just down the hall for lunch, just come get us when she pees". Fifteen more minutes pass, then another 30, finally Miss M wakes up from her snooze and gets down to business. She's so ready to win this round that she not only pees in the plastic bag, but poops in it too! I took off her diaper to check things out and THANK GOD the poo was actually on the outside of the bag. If she had actually gone inside the bag we would have had to start this whole ridiculous thing over again. So, like any momma that just wants to get her sick kid home - and knows via motherly intuition that her kid does NOT have a UTI - I scoop the poop out of her diaper with one hand and half a paper towel and do my best to hide it. Seriously, now Daddy isn't the only one that's touched poop.

The competition is over and the diagnosis is.... wait for it... it's a mystery! Yay! Just like every sickness in this family, it's just a random thing and should go away. The ear infection is clearing up with the antibiotics, just got to keep giving her Tylenol.

From Blah to Waaaa!

The day started out well enough - well, not really, but by some miracle I was in a pretty good mood most of the morning. But with each passing hour my cheery dispostion was chipped away leaving a morose, slightly comatose, disgruntled Mommy. A little chip here - poor feedback from a house showing. A little chip there - snarky email from a co-worker. A big chip - eating more than one of my new favorite cookies* and immediatly feeling cookie-guilt. Even bigger chip - just checked the bank account. Biggest chip of all - check in on the baby and here that she has been "lethargic" today, that makes me worried. I'm pretty much a blob of goo on the floor at this point, nothing solid left to keep me up today.

*new favorite cookie - Trader Joe's Inside Out Carrot Cake Cookies, so awesome!

Sneezle

We have a rare canine breed living in our house. Move over Puggle, the new must-have pet is a Sneezle! P - the sneezing weasel - is an active breed, requiring little more than milk bones, plenty of exercise, some calming pharmaceuticals, and a full box of tissues. She'll build you your own little race track in the basement, beat the living daylights out of anything in your home that contains cotton batting, and pee on your floor with vigor. Then she'll sneeze in your face. She's a pint-sized pure joy!

She's a maniac, maniac, on the floor...

Apparently Miss M was so emboldened by our praise for her dancing that she decided to show off for her daycare teachers. The note home from school yesterday said they were very happy to "see M show off her dancing moves today." Here is a picture of her next recital costume (ribbons from GiGi)....

Pa Pa!

Miss M's first Easter was a great one. Granny and Granpa came to eat ham with us. Good thing the Easter Bunny met up with them before they got to us, because Miss M was very pleased with her Easter Toucan Flashlight. After dinner Miss M decided to show Granny her moves and made Granny dance with her to her favorite song. Then impressed us all by saying something very similar to "Grandpa"...something along the lines of "Pa Pa". This morning Miss M. dug her new Toucan Flashlight out of the toybox before her jammies were even off - showed it to me - and said, "Pa pa!" I really think she was remembering, Grandpa gave this to me!

Happy Easter!

Thank You Easta Bunny!

I'm a Bad Daughter.

Today is going to be a long bad day.

Double Fisting

Miss M sleeps with three special "lovies" (small, silky blankets with animal heads attached). Not one, not two, but three - two Target variety, and one random. She adores her security blankets, and I must admit that I adore seeing her sleep clutching one, with the little satin ribbon wrapped around her fingers (something I used to do as a child as well). Cute! Anyway...

This morning I pulled her out of bed and she was a little cranky. She's been out of sorts every morning this week since we finally stopped giving her a morning bottle (she is not very happy about that). She pulled one lovie out of bed with her, took a little milk out of her sippy cup, and decided to walk around her room. She made a beeline for the crib and asked for her second lovie (almost identical to the first), which I freed for her. She spent the rest of the morning, and the car ride to daycare, and the walk to the classroom, and the time getting settled at daycare, clutching both lovies, one in each hand - the green one in the left hand and the pink one in the right. Breakfast was the only thing that made it OK to put them down, and even then she wanted to hold them in her lap as she ate. She's never done this before. I guess sometimes you just need to feel a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more secure.

Definitely Not The Mailman's...

"Hi, my name is Mini-J. I look exactly like my Daddy."

I'm Scared.

Finally putting the house back on the market (at a drastically reduced price unfortunately). I can't wait, but I'm scared. It is so hard to predict how this is going to go, we could sell in two weeks, two months or two years. I hate that. It's making me all stressed out, and it's going to be expensive. Closing, down payment, lawyer, realtor, movers, inspector... the list goes on and on. I know we have to do this for our family, we WANT to do this for our family, but I think we're going to be digging out of this one for quite a while.

Expanding Vocabulary

She said bye-bye to me today! Didn't just wave like usual, actually said "bye-bye"! We're working hard on "doggie", "Peyton", "Steve", and "up". We have "all done" mastered, she says that for EVERYTHING now. She'll pick lint up off the floor, look at it for a second, then hand it to me and say, "All Done!" So cute!

The Perfect Storm, Part Two

One Baby,
With one sinus infection and one ear infection,
Is taking antibiotics that taste like coconut... which she hates,
Therefore causing the worst case of diarrhea to date,
And of course the worst diarrhea causes the worst diaper rash,
So now she's taking antibiotics and probiotics (she's a flip-flopper),
And is using the most expensive damn diaper cream known to man,
We can't even begin to address the cough that has developed in the past 24 hours,
So it's a good thing she's also taking Tylenol right now as well,
For the four to five teeth she has cutting through.

Miserable baby = Miserable parents.