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!