Random thoughts

Now that I'm feeling a little bit better, I thought I'd post an entry of random thoughts. Haven't done this for awhile, so here goes!

1. I still can't hear out of my left ear, which isn't funny at all except that Mike still only has about 25% of his smell (he lost it completely a few weeks ago, but has since regained some), and between the two of us I'm sure there's a joke about the five senses just lying in wait. (Dad? Carol?)

2. I'm re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series for the first time since elementary/middle school. Such sweet stories! And this time through it really struck me that all of Anne's friends (circa 1908) could seamlessly fit into Rose's class: Gilbert, Josie, Ruby, Jane, etc. Aren't name trends fascinating?!

3. I'm going to our Duluth office for work tomorrow. I never thought I'd be able to travel for work, so I'm looking forward this adventure!

4. Rose has very definitely become a stomach sleeper. She used to love sleeping on her back - remember how she used to refuse to roll? Well, now she'll do pretty much anything to sleep like this:

As a side sleeper, this does not look comfortable to me AT ALL!

5. Did you notice that Mike got her to sleep in her crib this afternoon? Score!

6. Mike got all excited about a "phase transition" that was happening in our driveway today. He also explained UV energy to me. Chemistry nerd! Seriously, though, he's going to be such a great science teacher. :)

7. Rose loves flavors - especially garlic, and now also LEMON!

This was after about the 5th time that she made that face. She kept going back for more!

8. We tried putting a barrette in her hair to keep it out of her eyes. It lasted about 20 minutes before she yanked it out, but we'll try to build off of that.

She LOVES her kid-sized camelbak that we bought her - she loves the straw; she's always been a powerful sucker!

9. Mike and his dad spent all yesterday slaving away in our basement. Finally, only six short years later, we have a BEAUTIFUL basement bathroom. In fact, it's so nice I don't think we can ever move! I had the best bath ever last night!

10. I've been missing baking so much, and I'm so happy to finish up this post in order to get some cookies out of the oven.  I'm off to read some Anne of Green Gables and to eat some Peanutty Fruit and Chocolate Chip Cookies!

For real this time, have a great week, everyone!  :)

44 weeks / 10 months!

Little Miss is growing up! She's finally starting to feel better and her sunny disposition is really starting to shine. She's so much fun to be around!

Last evening I took a couple photos before her nightly bath. Her little body is so cute, I could just eat her up! (I used to think it was weird when people said that about babies. Now I'm finally starting to get it! Well, at least about my baby...I don't want to eat anyone else's baby.)

This morning we started taking our weekly photos in the living room, but as soon as we started we had another photo to add to the "keepin' it real" files:

I quickly cleaned up the random spit-up, then Rose was off to play! I was having such a hard time getting clear photos because she kept switching from toy to toy. She's a little bundle of energy when she's feeling good!

"I love to read!"

Thinking about standing...

 
Well, she's a bundle of energy until the "tired eyes" suddenly hit!

We had some errands to run anyway, so we piled everyone in the car and Rose was out cold within seconds. Yes, the car is back to being the "magic sleep machine" once again. Like mother, like daughter.

After the errands were complete, we decided to check out Eden Prairie Center. None of us had ever really been inside it before, so we figured it was as good a place as any to get some walking in while the weather is still cold. And then we discovered Rose's new favorite place: an indoor play area!

Our little peanut, who had been looking so grown up at home, suddenly looked so small among all the other kids! But she absolutely loved it - she even pulled herself up to standing (which she has apparently been doing for weeks at school, but it was the first time I'd ever seen it)!

The other exciting part of the morning was that Rose drank a bottle that was 2/3 milk and 1/3 formula. We're coming down the home stretch on our milk stash, so we need to transition her to formula pretty soon. Every time we've tried giving her a formula bottle in the past several months she has flatly rejected it. Then Mike came up with the gradual transition idea and so far it seems to be working (fingers crossed)!

Speaking of food, after Rose tuckered herself out in the play area, we headed off to Biaggi's for lunch. Rose really must be feeling better because she ate three big slices of bread (dipped in olive oil and parmesan), she sucked all the flavor off my cucumber salad, and she ate all the avocado off my sandwich. And she was a delightful lunch companion in general - she sat quietly eating while we enjoyed our meals and conversation, and a wonderful time was had by all!
 

Have a great week, everyone!

Another milestone

Rose's first trip to Menard's!

This post is for Grandpa Fly. :)

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!