What a week!

What a week this has been! Rose is recovering nicely from the hand, foot and mouth disease. She has been getting her appetite back and has been in a wonderful mood! We also decided that she is officially talking. For the longest time she would say something and we would ask each other, Was that a word? Or was she just playing with sounds?  We didn't want to jump the gun, but now we definitely agree that she is not only talking, but that she uses FOUR words! Her first word was cat ("ta"), and she also says mommy ("mamama"), daddy ("dadada"), and bottle ("ba")! The last couple days she has also been saying "yayaya," usually in a really loud voice, but we're not quite sure what that means yet.

Here's a video showing Mac being a sheister and Rose practicing her yayas:

Here's another video with Rose saying mommy and bottle:

(Note that we were cued into the meaning of "ba" by the fact that she will shove her face into my chest when she says it!)

In other news, we got a new car!!! Mike did a ton of research and we ended up taking home a Toyota Venza! I'm still quite intimidated by it (it's so nice! and big! and smells new!), but I think it will be great for longer car trips. We're definitely planning to continue using the Elantra for my daily commute and for our city driving, but I'm exciting to ride up to the cabin in it next weekend!

I have a habit of naming our cars. My first Saab was Eleanor, the Saturn was Audrey, and our current car is Lantra. We're still deciding what name suits the Venza, but so far I'm leaning toward Fernando. Yep, it would be my first male car. But somehow that seems appropriate from its appearance, doesn't it?

I'll take a better picture soon! (Notice all the gross snow we still have!)

Yesterday when I was at work Mike emailed me to let me know that our dryer broke. You've got to be kidding!, I said. Sadly, he wasn't. So Mike did a ton of research in a short amount of time and we bought a dryer yesterday. Thankfully, since we wash cloth diapers every 48 hours, we can pick it up later today. Sigh.

Finally, I had a terrifying experience at daycare yesterday. Mike and I had bought the dryer together, then he dropped me off to pick up Rose while he drove home to start making dinner. Rose and I were just hanging out for a little bit; I was chatting with her teachers and she was showing me her new favorite toy. I don't usually stay for more than a couple minutes at pickup time, but yesterday I felt some pull to stay. There were only five babies left at that time, and then another mom (who happens to work upstairs in the preschool room of the school) came in to pick up her son (who is only a couple weeks younger than Rose). We were chatting about how he still does an army crawl and will sometimes crawl right out of pants, and I looked away to start packing Rose up to head home. Then the mood in the room perceptibly shifted and I heard her say "What's happening? What's happening to him?!" I looked over and it was very clear that he was having a seizure (grand mal, most likely, in my non-expert opinion) - his limbs were jerking, his eyes weren't focusing, he started having bubbles in his mouth, and his lips turned blue. I was really proud that I remained calm in the situation, making sure that they were calling 911, that someone was at the door to bring the paramedics in, ensuring that he was lying flat and his head was protected during the convulsions, and reassuring his mom (who was understandably panicking!) that the ambulance was on its way and we were doing everything right. It felt like it took forever for the paramedics to arrive. Forever! I have no idea how long the seizure lasted because I was operating in (calm) panic mode myself. It was such a relief when it finally ended and the paramedics came in just seconds later. But as Rose and I were walking home, I lost it. I started to imagine how I would have felt if that had happened to Rose, and I started to feel guilty about joking that she "catches everything" that goes around school. It was just so incredibly scary. It's one thing to hear about how seizures are not so uncommon in kids (2-5% of kids will experience a febrile seizure), but it's an entirely different thing to actually see it happen to a kid you know. My heart goes out to him and his family this weekend. Please give the kids in your life an extra hug this weekend! Rose has already gotten a million extra hugs and kisses from me and Mike, and I know there will be many more to come.