Burcusa Family Musings and Adventures: 47 weeks

We got a message from the doctor Rose saw on Friday, and she reiterated that Rose does, in fact, have a urinary tract infection, and her blood tests also suggest that it had turned into a kidney infection. Apparently this can sometimes just happen for kids, but for some kids it can signal a problem with "urinary reflux" which can permanently scar the kidneys. Sigh. The "good" news (if there is such a thing) is that it turns out that the doctor Rose usually sees (and I use "usually" in a loose sense, because we've only seen her for about two 'well visits 'to date, whereas we've cycled through pretty much every other physician in the practice through all the 'sick visits' she's had) has a special interest in pediatric nephrology, so she's the provider they would recommend following up with anyway in order to get an ultrasound of her kidneys. So for now we'll just continue the antibiotic, we'll have a follow-up with our regular pediatrician in a week or two, and we'll talk at that time about scheduling a kidney ultrasound. I'm praying she doesn't have urinary reflux because "Dr. Google" suggests that the treatment is then 6 months to 2 years of preventative antibiotics! So please send some positive vibes our way because I would really, really like to avoid that!

Anyway, because Rose has gotten sick so often, so has missed a ton of school in the past few months, including four days last week. But we got a lovely card in the mail yesterday from all her friends!

Wasn't that thoughtful? I love our daycare.

In other news, we're also back to sleep training again. Apparently we (as in I) got in the very bad habit of letting Rose fall almost completely asleep while nursing and rocking before transferring to the crib each night. Now that she definitely has object permanence AND separation anxiety, this translates into frantic screaming when she wakes up and panics when she realizes a parent isn't holding her . . . and in her mind this means we must have abandoned her because we had been with her when she fell asleep! Now we need to re-train her to fall asleep on her own, so when she wakes up in the middle of the night she'll no longer be surprised that we're not in the room. In order to help with this, we're now going to do our last nursing before bathtime, and Mike is going to read her a story then put her in her crib drowsy yet awake. "Cry it out" was incredibly difficult yet worked incredibly well when we needed to wean her from her 4am feeding a few months ago, so hopefully we (as in I) can get through doing it again.

As a result of Rose having been sick and thus having terrible sleep, my sleep has also suffered. I believe I have complained to you before about how much I hate being sleep deprived, so I'll spare you my litany of woes. But I thought I would give you two examples of just how tired I was yesterday:
1. I made a *huge* pan of wild rice casserole for us to eat over the next several days. And when I woke up this morning, it was tight where I had left it yesterday, still in the oven. Ugh.
2. I have a pair of black boots that I've been wanted to get more use out of, so I've been on the look out for the past several months for a cute black dress or skirt that's winter-worthy. Yesterday after we went to the play area at Eden Prairie Center we walked through Sears on the way back to our car and I spotted a beautiful dress on the Land's End clearance rack. On a whim, I tried it on - usually fitted dresses look terrible on me since I'm so short-waisted, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. It was perfect - and only $22 (originally $98)! Woo-hoo! Except that when I put it away today, I noticed that it is very clearly "sable." As in not black at all. Ugh. (So how bad would it clash to wear a brown dress with black boots???)

But enough of my babbling! Let's get to the thing that you've all come to this blog for: photos of Little Miss! This week she has been all about books! She loves all of her books, including: