Kids Germs and Ills

Little Miss Talkalot brought a cold home from Daycare on Friday. All weekend long with the snotty nose and the bad mood, last night hardly sleeping at all. I know it is good for her immune system to have to handle all this and as long as it doesn’t give her an ear infection or spread on to the rest of us it is fine. Unfortunately in this case the Teenager and I seem to have caught it. I have a very sore throat and a fuzzy head right now. The head might be from the scotch I drank last night, but not the throat. Let’s all hope that this cold stays out of her ears. The last couple have had her howling and taking antibiotics. You know with the Teenager it always went straight to her lungs, a simple daycare cold meant at least a week of hacking and coughing and wheezing, herbal tea, ventolin and sleepless nights. Now it is the ears. Maybe the next kid will have a bad gut and it will be night after night of poopy pants.

Speaking of the Teenager she has celebrated her 17th birthday, and begun her in-car driving lessons. Congratulations to her. She is teaching herself all about chocolate making right now, so for her birthday I got her a candy thermometer and a book of fancy chocolate recipes. She is having trouble getting consistent results in the melting department and anyone with suggestions should leave them as comments on here and I will make sure she gets them. I took her out for Sushi and to the Symphony the night after her birthday. The dude in front of us was a total “shhhhh” monster. He was poking talkers, giving them the skunk eye and generally being an uptight killjoy. Oh well, the music was nice and neither of us fell asleep.

Speaking of speaking. Lord can that little girl yack. Not only is she trying out new words everyday but also she is occasionally stringing some together, and she is starting to get inflection. She uses a very different no when she is goofing around – sort of a nahhh! – than when she is serious – no! with lots of headshaking. If she likes you, or something you are doing you are a “good girl” or sometimes a “good dog”. Diaper, apple, bird, and book are the top 4 right now. This morning she tried out “wife”. She was close.

She runs now, and doesn’t fall too much. She does a little happy dance if she is excited and if she really wants to eat something you have she says “sit” sits down and crosses her legs. I guess it is a daycare thing. Her favourite food right now is frozen blueberries, but that is because you can’t get lychees at the moment. Her favourite activities are reading, nursing, kissing the dog, worshipping her sister and brushing her teeth. She has had her first haircut, walked around a farm, and, we discovered with some shock, that she drinks from a bottle. She never has at home, but her mom walked into the daycare last week and there she was boozing it up from a blue baby bottle.

N is going away for 3 nights 4 days next week and is very nervous about leaving the baby. I wasn’t at first but it is starting to rub off on me. Luckily the Teenager will be at our place next week, and N’s mom is going to help out by doing the afternoon pick up. I know it will be fine, but it will be N & J’s first time apart, and J’s first long period without nursing. I feel sorry for the two of them; it is going to be stressful.

I have included the last rather unattractive picture of the wee one leaving the daycare because if you look in the upper right corner you can see a picture of her sister when she was at the daycare. Circle of life or what?