How sick can one little kid get? I probably don't want to answer that.

Poor PF. He took care of her while I was in Jamaica on work, and apparently she just got worse and worse.

When they picked me up at the airport, she was listless, feverish, coughing with a rattle in her chest and barely able to hold her head up.

I rushed us to the ER stat. Poor baby. Her lungs were clear, but her ear/eye/upper respiratory/ and vocal cords were all infected with stuff. She ended up on antibiotic eyedrops and zithromax. We have also been giving her benedryl to dry up her poor nose.

You know you have a funny kid when her big joke is to blow booger bubbles and then "sneeze" (she says "ah choo." Not "aaahhh---CHOOO!" but "ah choo.") The cough is misery though. She will wake herself up at night crying for shhoosh (juice) or a ba ba (bottle). She is also still breastfeeding sometimes, especially when she's miserable.

PF is now sick too. I made him tea this morning and made him take vitamins all weekend. I'm pretty immune to the crap she gets sick from, but he's worn out.

Will this sick, sick year ever end?? When are their immune systems up and running?


Ugh.

I called her insurance. The ER visit is going to be quite a doozy since we haven't come close to her deductible yet. However, the bright side of that is, once we've paid it? They cover 70% of every visit after.

Still, it was worth it. I really thought she had RSV.


Poor darling beanie boo. Feel better.

Pobracita.

Yesterday we found that that beanie has Roseola. We found out because I had PF google "Torso Toddler Rash" and boom, every symptom from the last 10 days popped up. Heart that google.

She's doing great now that she broke out in the rash, but I've been wanting to scream for about a week "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, CHILD???" And now I know. She wasn't just cranky and teething and febrile, she was viral and contagious.

It started with a fever on Thursday of last week. The fever went on and off for about 4 days, peaking on Sunday night when her daddy climbed into the tub and we swabbed her down for about 10 minutes with warm water (she was still pissed off and acting like she was freezing.) The fever was pretty high, the highest we measured was 102.3 axillary, whichs is about 102.8-103.3 F and that's about as high as I will go with a fever before acting on it. She'd been getting prudent amounds of infant tylenol and baby ibuprofen, but it wasn't lasting as long as the dose recommendations listed (which is why we were switching off when it got unreasonably uncomfortable looking for her.)

I hate driving all the way out to the pediatrician, and I know PF does too unless it's shots or urgent. Fevers just aren't urgent. If she'd has a seizure, sure. We'd freak out. But for the most part she was just cranky and clingy and sad and hot. And we cuddled her and kissed her and walked with her and held her and tempted her with cold soothing yums and tried to get her to drink loads of fluids. Of course, all SHE wanted was to nurse. And nurse. And I think I may finally have my boobs back now.

And we were unbelievably stressed out by this virus, may she never come down with a pox.



Long, long, long week. Pf and I need a break.

Next week I go to Jamaica for 4 days for work, but no one is going with me. Don't get excited, it's just Kingston. Not even a beach nearby.

But I'll take the next Friday off and hang out with my familia.

Happy Valentine's Day, my valentiniest!!

My poor baby girl is sick. She's been running a fever and coughing, is listless/has malaise, and appears to have a slight cough (could be leftovers from a runny nose type cold, but I dunno.) We gave her medicine and a cool/lukewarm bath last night to break a fever, but she ran high until around 5 AM this morning when she got out of bed in a delirium crying in the dark, and calling for "mama". My poor precious beanie! All she wants are bottles and to nurse. I'm all dried up and tired. We're exhausted at the house. This has been going on since roughly Thursday night, with relatively normal behavior during the day for the most part (maybe a little crankier than normal and more assertive/screechy when she wants soemthing, somewhat less interest in eating, but she did just finish a growth spurt during a nose cold.)

Top this new fun with my mom has pneumonia and I haven't called her all week and the fact that we just got our cat's bladder reconfigured again due to a really horrifying bladder infection/(now he's making bladder balls instead of crystals), and I've have a very expensive, sleepless, guilt ridden, miserable weekend. The only thing keeping me going is the PF, who is equally as disturbed and sleep deprived as me, even if he can't nurse the beanie into sleepy hot oblivion.

Weirdly, half the time, you'd never know she was sick. She has just been radiating heat with rosy cheeks and glassy eyes and not eating and listless at night, slightly coughing. Most of the day, she runs around like her normal self, wanting to play.

We seriously don't think it's a panic issue yet seeing as how she hasn't gone past 102 or 103 degrees F (which is really not that bad for a toddler according to the books), but every time I google "fever and cough and toddler" I get RSV and Pneumonia and The Flu. Which all of course scare the bejeezus outta me.

Anyway, PF just called me with an update. Looks like the fever has definitely broken and we are on the mend. Unless there is something going around that I should know about, and then definitely someone email me with news because I'm ready to go to the doctor any minute, but I would hate going all the way there only to be told there is nothing wrong (anymore.)

~Beanie's Worried, Sleepless Mom

Yesterday on NPR there was a story about a Harvard professor who studies fungi and is studying the Death Cap that is really prevalent in California coastal areas right now (note to self: don't eat mushrooms in the woods)

And I liked her so much, just from her scratchy voice and the sound of her throwing a certain fungus that pops and explodes, and how she loves the little mushroom because it's like an umbrella for the spores...so cute. I now secretly want Beanie to become a Mycobiologist. This is really kind of a weird thing. I once grabbed two random books when I was pregnant, one called Our Lady Of The Forest and the other called Dragon Bones, and both of them, BOTH OF THEM, featured mycobiologists predominantly, with the story going deeply into fungus and mushrooms. Intersting, non? I have a knack for doing weird stuff like that, picking two seemingly random books. And now PF is signing his emails with "plate of shrimp".

Nothing is really random. Which is why I am slightly sure I will play and win the lottery one day.

I've decided Beanie is not so much "gifted", but she is fXXXing funny. Yesterday she was practicing her F sounds "phhhh phh" and I say words like "finger" and "face" and last night? She said "Phhh phhhhhhfart." and then burst into giggles. Seriously, is there ANYTHING funnier than a well placed fart? I really do not know. Maybe equally funny, but not funni-ER. I prefer comic to genius any day of the week.

I think my fear that she is smart is because my mother used to brag about me and my sister to my aunt, who had 3 kids of her own, and apparently my mom never noticed her eye-rolling from my aunt, who can roll with the best of them. All three of my cousins are smarties, but they never went to college, and my aunt always said that her kids "weren't college material". ??? (trust me, the kids I went to school with were not much more than preschool material, so I have no idea what constitutes "college material" in this day and age). However, my mom envisioned and expected us, no, DEMANDED, that we all go to college and to grad school (but we had to pay for it) And we all did. My aunts kids are in infinitely less debt than all of us, so who's smarter now I wonder? Anyway, I don't want to push my kid and have these insanely high expectations for her.

Mycobiologists and prima ballerinas and world leaders aside. Please just be happy when you hear a fart.

Beanie, be you and be my darling.

Beanie is a force of nature.

I stayed home on Friday because both she and PF were sick. Except her being sick? You wouldn't notice unless you realized her nose was leaking and her cheeks are rubbed raw from tissues. She can blow her own nose, but sometimes misses on the wipe-away. That's only truly exciting when you are eating eggs or something gloppy.


On Saturday I took her to Museum Day. We stopped into a big warehouse coffee place that's pretty new, and she LOVED how it echoes her ridiculously high pitched squeaks. It ain't opera, it's painful. But it's full of joy. How can you say "No!" ???
We say "Use your inside voice." I have no idea if she gets it, but she does seem to be overwhelmed with her own efforts in the car, so we are usually safe there. The coffeeplace? Echoed with Beaniness. I totally want to go back for their muffins too.

I also took her to The Discovery Museum. She loved it. I lost her about a million times because she raced around, doubled back, tripped up old people, and sat in little corners (like a miniature log cabin that I looked inside of 3X before I finally actually saw her grinning back at me by the little stove.) She's scary. I was thrilled for the plexiglass encased balconies, lemme tell ya. She tried to launch herself at stairwells and mannikins and cannon and museum case displays, but I managed to keep tabs on her for the most part. I thought she'd go to sleep.

Nope. So we headed to Hamburger Mary's. Where she ate only fries and stuck her hands in my salad a million times. She tried the burger, but I think my tyke is going to end up vegetarian or chickenarian. She just is not a fan of the Red, Red, Meat. I heart it mightily. Hamburger Mary's plumb tuckered her out.

She passed out in the car and we cut our Museum explorations short. That was fine, I was ex.haus.ted.

But the best part? Our friend who came with us and her son got to hear some of the Beanie Babble. Like her saying "cookie" and whining for a "sy-nack", or chanting "Ashes Ashes" and pointing out dogs and saying "eyes....fouf" for her eyes and mouth and the Wa wa wa Wheee she says like Borat. She has been running around yelling "e-i-e-i-oh" too, mostly because I like to sing that one. But Ashes Ashes....she grins and spins in circles until she falls down if you even MENTION rosies or posies. Hilarious.


We have also started time-outs.

Time outs are fun right now. She appears to really like them. Maybe we need to find The Uncomfy Chair. We've been using her little painted chair set and just moving it into the hallway for her to sit on for 30 seconds or more if she gets off the chair. She's got it down. She will sit for a minute or more and will ignore you and wave you away when you say "time out is over". Then, after awhile, she will peek around the wall at you to see if you are still there, and if you are? She runs back to sit on her chair. You basically have to lure her out with Ring Around The Rosie, and then she comes tearing out wanting to dance.

She's a kook.