10 months!

Remember my post from yesterday? Well, not 10 minutes after I woke from my afternoon nap, I got a call from Rose's school that she had spiked another fever. You've got to be f-in' kidding me, I thought! Seriously, we can't seem to catch a break in this house!

I went right over to pick her up and we cuddled for an hour or so until Grammy came over. She (Grammy) took charge for an hour or two while I continued to rest, then it was time for dinner (none of which Rose would eat), a bath (which lasted about two minutes), and bedtime...for both of us! Thankfully Mike was able to stay home with her today. Any fever requires that kids be out of school for the following 24 hours. At this point, I would simply like Rose to be able to attend a full week of school since we're paying an arm and a leg for it. I want to get my money's worth, darn it! Well, more importantly I want Rose to feel better! And me to feel better! (Let's hope Mike continues to escape this latest bug!)

Rose seemed to have a wonderful 10-month "birthday" with her dad today. She finally started practicing the "m" sound today, and he even heard her whisper "mama" under her breath!!!! I can't wait to hear her call me by name one day. That would make all the recent trials and tribulations disappear in an instant!

43 weeks

Sorry for the belated post! I'll explain why in a moment.

Mike usually plans his annual ice fishing trip for MLK weekend, but this year they postponed to President's Day weekend instead. He had been planning and looking forward to it for so long, so I decided to invite my parents to town for the weekend so I'd also have something to look forward to. I dreamed about long strolls through Ikea, leisurely forays into the Tea Source, and eating meals made by my dad. :) Imagine my disappointment when I started feeling a little under the weather last week. I tried to fight it off, but by Friday night I was exhausted. I was convinced that I'd feel better the next day, but Rose's poor sleep definitely made that an impossibility.

As much as I wanted to do something fun on Saturday, the reality was that I needed rest. I took a few naps and turned Rose over to my parents' care. She was so tired from crying (two hours overnight!) that she ended up taking naps totaling almost seven hours(!?!?). Thankfully Saturday night was slightly better (only one hour of crying overnight!), but I was still exhausted.  I once again slept most of the day Sunday, and was so relieved that Rose had turned the corner on her sickness and actually enjoyed playing with my parents while I rested. It's such a good sign when she finally gets her appetite back!

Since I was so sick, I only took a handful of weekly photos on Sunday. Here are my two favorites:

I pushed my way through work earlier this week, but still felt miserable. On Tuesday afternoon my left ear started getting clogged, then it started to get painful on Wednesday afternoon. While Rose was taking her bath on Wednesday evening I laid on a heating pad for awhile. But it was too late. There were daggers shooting into my ear by the time Rose was asleep, so I took the risk of going straight to Urgent Care. I say "risk" because, since it's a new calendar year, I'm back to zero for my medical insurance deductible...and I also always have an irrational fear that doctors are going to write off my pain and tell me it's all in my head. I would HATE to pay for an urgent care visit only to find out that I have a cold. But the pain was bad enough that I decided to take the risk. After a horrible visit with a triage nurse (who started ranting about all the errors she sees in eating disorder treatment, although clearly she didn't know what she was talking about), I finally got to see a wonderful doctor who took one look in my ear and said "Wow! That's definitely infected. It's bulging so much that I wouldn't be surprised if it bursts at any moment."

After picking up $75 (!) worth of medicine (ear drops and antiobiotic pills), I was back home still writhing in pain. It took a few hours before the pain started to dissipate, but I eventually got some good sleep. And after much agonizing I decided to use my PTO today so I could catch up on rest. I took nearly a two-hour nap after I dropped Rose off this morning, and it was the first time in weeks that I haven't dreamed about work. What a relief! So now I'm off for another nap, and hoping for truly restful sleep once again.

Hope you're all having a good week! Rose turns 10 months old tomorrow! :)

Sad Valentine's Day

I hope you all had a better Valentine's Day than we had!
1. Rose had to get eye drops every 4 hours, which she hates.
2. She got sent home early from school due to fever.
3. Usually Mike is on "sick duty" for Rose right now (because he has a far more flexible schedule for the time being), but yesterday I had the car and Mike was almost an hour away by bus, so I had to leave early to pick her up.
4. Mike is leaving for a weekend of ice fishing this morning, so I also had to frantically find coverage for today. (I cancelled my morning clients, and I am SOOOOO appreciative of Marsha and my parents for covering the late morning and afternoon!!!)
5. Rose was so tired that she slipped in the bath which scared her (and me!) and I had to cut her bath short to comfort her (and me!).
6. Then I had to give her eye drops and medicine again, which promptly riled her up once more.
7. As she was drinking her evening milk and finally starting to calm down, she started coughing and there was a toot sound. So I had to wake her up in order to change her diaper, but it turned out there wasn't a toot after all so it was all for nothing.
8. Then she went back to drinking milk. She finished one side, and just as we were switching to the other side she started coughing again. She coughed so much that she vomited all over! (And I do mean all over!)
9. In order to finish feeding her I had to make the difficult choice between stewing in her vomit vs. shivering in the nude. Not an an easy call to make.
10. After she finally got to sleep, I had a million work-related things to catch up on, so I was up until at least 10pm working. This may not seem late to you, but I am usually in bed reading by 8:30 and asleep at 9 (my alarm goes off at 5:15 on work days), so this was definitely late for me!
11. I've been so used to Rose waking up between 1 and 4 every night for the past month or so that I've now been wide awake since 4:30. (Yes, on the one work day that I actually didn't have to set my alarm, I still woke up well before it would have gone off!) I stayed in bed until 6 hoping that I would fall back asleep, but I had no such luck. (Yes, that means I'm running on 6.5 hours of sleep, which is WAY less than the 8-8.5 hours that I need to function optimally.)
But the good news from #11 is that Rose actually slept through the night!!!! So maybe the "Ides of February" will be the turning point for health in our household. Fingers crossed!

Canary in the Coalmine

Rose's sleep is turning out to be an amazingly accurate predictor of illness. Of course she has nights where she's fussy or she wakes a couple times, but the nights that she's had seemingly endless crying have all turned out to be due to bona fide illness:  the double ear infection at Thanksgiving, her influenza AND ear infection in early January, and the viral stomach flu AND upper respiratory infection in later January. For the past two nights Rose hasn't slept well at all (ugh!) and today she got sent home from daycare for suspected illness. Mike took her in to the doctor this afternoon and we found out that she has pickeye in both eyes! Poor girl.

Here is how painful her eyes looked this afternoon when I got home from work:

(it never fails to elicit a smile in our little narcissa when she can look at photos of herself!)

But in happier news, Rose mastered a new skill today! Check out this video!   :)

I am so incredibly thankful that Mike has a little bit of flexibility to his schedule so he can stay home with Rose tomorrow. (She's barred from daycare until Thursday.) My job has been SO busy as I'm trying to settle into my new role, so I'm VERY appreciative of Mike's ability and willingness to take care of Rose at home when she's sick. Thank you, Mike!

P.S. Mike and I have been obsessively washing our hands ever since Rose's diagnosis. Fingers crossed that no one else in our house comes down with pinkeye!

another milestone

Rose's first taste of (Great) Gramma's Hot Dish!

She also got tooth #7 in, and is teething hardcore again. But none of that is as important in my extended family as the introduction of hot dish. :)

42 weeks

Rose is feeling MUCH better now than she was last weekend -  no more vomiting and she finally got her appetite back on Friday. Unfortunately she started running a low-grade fever again today, but I'm hopeful that it's just another cold and it won't morph into anything more serious. (This has been a terrible winter of one sickness after another!)

The only fiend that's still be hanging around for the past few weeks, despite Rose's generally improved health, is a return of poor sleep! We figured it was pretty normal that she had poor sleep when she simultaneously had the flu and ear infection, but then we must have segued right into the nine-month sleep regression. Ugh! Luckily she's now back to "only" waking about once per night, but Mike and I are both looking forward to having uninterrupted sleep again one day. It's been a long time.

In addition to a return of poor sleep, we've also been dealing with some MAJOR separation anxiety.  Rose is so attached to me at this point that she will scream bloody murder if I leave the room, even if she had been happily playing with her Daddy only moments earlier. Furthermore, she would prefer to be held by Mommy at all times, and if that's not possible she I had better be within arm's reach of me. This morning I made the mistake of setting her down for TWO SECONDS in order to take her weekly picture.

I know this is just a phase that she's going through, but it's been pretty tough . Of course there's part of me that's reveling in the proof that she actually does love me (yes, I still do feel insecure about that sometimes), but a larger part of me is exhausted from either carrying a 20-pound weight with me wherever I go, or carrying the equivalent poundage of guilt.

Surprisingly, I didn't actually feel that guilty when we hired a babysitter last night! One of the teachers at Rose's school had offered a few months ago to babysit, and we figured we should test it out. We tried to hire her back in early January, but we all got sick so we had to cancel at the last minute. Finally we got to try it out for real yesterday. Rose had only had family or friends watch her before, so this was a big deal for all of us. And we all had a great time! Rose and Miss Sammy played and had lots of fun, while Mike and I (and Trula Anne) went to Carleton's annual alumni trivia contest! At $10/hr we definitely will be thinking hard before we ever hire a babysitter again (most expensive Buffalo Wild Wings night EVER!), but it's good to know that Miss Sammy is a great option if we ever need her.

"I'm in  my carseat!"

The other news of the house is that Rose suddenly morphed into a tummy sleeper! Every morning for the past week or so she's been on her tummy when we go in to to get her. It's pretty funny since she hated tummy time for so long, but now she seems to love sleeping this way. I think it's because she can get into crawling position so much more easily this way, and she is loving to crawl!

Finally, we got some more snow today. We don't have a sled so we pulled her around in a laundry basket instead. She was a little weirded out by it, but I got a few smiles out of her.

Little Miss, however, was not impressed by the snowman I tried to build for her.

"Get me outta here!"

With that, I'm off to bed. Have a great week, everyone!

Alma mater

I'm back on campus at my alma mater this afternoon, providing mentorship for current students considering a career path in psychology. I did this once before a couple years ago, but today it seems particularly weird for a couple reasons. First, I have been feeling old ever since I realized that I was in their shoes fifteen years ago. 15! Second, I miss my college friends. It's still sad for me to be on campus and not to be able to stop by to visit Anna in Burton our Jane squatting in a townhouse or Rachel at our apartment or Mitra in the library etc. (At least I can go home to Mike tonight and not have to visit him in Mudd!) Third, I had a mini panic attack when I thought about paying for college for Rose. And I am almost closer to the start of her college career than I am to the start of my own. Yep, I'm old.

Addendum:
(Oops, I published this before I was finished writing! That's what I get for typing on my phone.) I also meant to add that, despite the drawbacks of feeling old, I'm also so much more content now. Even though I miss my college friends, I wouldn't want to actually go back to those days. I'm so happy with Rose, with Mike, with my job, with my house, with Lucy and Mac, and with my own (relatively greater) self-confidence. Yay for growing up after all!