Nursery Progress

I spent most of the day painting the nursery.

I got one coat of paint on the ceiling and two coats on the walls. I had been hoping to be able to get away with only one coat of paint on the ceiling, but I missed some spots and it would really look better if I gave it another coat.

I really like the way the color turned out. It looks more aquarium-y than I was intending, but I like it.

I had been sort of thinking of using butterflies as a loose theme for the nursery* but the way the paint looks now, I might rethink that in favor of an aquarium/fish theme. What do you think?


Mom is coming back late tomorrow morning to watch Emily and help me finish doing the transition between the walls and ceiling. I'm terrible at that part (I go too fast and get paint everywhere) and she does a much better job.


*Emily's theme was duckies. Her room is painted light yellow, with a pale green accent wall above her toy shelf. Her dresser has duckie drawer pulls, she got a bunch of duckies at her showers and had a ton of duckie clothes for the first 6 months or so. I am planning to put the dresser Emily is using now in Lucy's room and give Emily a more grown-up (read: wood) dresser we have downstairs. I'm going to go have a quick look around and see if I can find inexpensive butterfly or fish drawer pulls. That will go a long way to deciding what is happening with the nursery theme.

** The things hanging from the celing fan are garbage bags. I couldn't take the blades off the fan without removing the light kit, which is way beyond my level of expertise, so I covered the blades with garbage bags instead.

Early Intervention, OBs, & Nurseries, Oh My!

Wow! I have so much stuff to talk about!

You know, I think bullet points are just going to be simpler.

• Early Intervention: The Early Intervention Coordinator came over yesterday to explain how the early intervention process works. She was very nice and said that, in her opinion, Emily's speech was fine. They don't look for word-words to outweigh non-verbal communication (grunts, pointing, signs, Emily-ese) until a kid is 2 or 2 1/2. She said it sounds like Emily's speech is somewhat late in developing, but not so late that the lateness is a problem. However, the early intervention process is parent-driven, so she said it was my choice and decision how and what we do. I opted to have an evaluation done now to establish a benchmark and reassure me that everything really is ok. If everything is ok (and I really hope it is!), then the evaluation can be used as a benchmark to make sure that she is continuing to develop "normally". Beth (the early intervention lady) said that she would check in with me after the evaluation (assuming that everything is ok and Emily doesn't qualify for therapy) in September and possibly again in February when Emily is 2 1/2. The evaluation will be scheduled in the next several weeks, I guess. I'm waiting to hear from the company who will be doing the evaluation to know exactly when that's going to happen.
  
• I had an OB check-up this morning. I will be 29 weeks pregnant tomorrow. I gained 6 pounds in the past month, bringing my total gain up to 13. The baby's heartrate was 140 and, at the time of the appointment, she was in the launch position (head down). I definitely felt feet kicking around my ribcage this afternoon while I was laying down, so I think she's still there. She seems to have been rolling around a bunch, so I'm not expecting that she'll stay there. She seems to be starting to run out of room and when she moves, my tummy looks like a scene from "Alien". I love that part! I remember sitting on the couch when I was pregnant with Emily, with my shirt up, watching my tummy roll and move for hours. My belly button is starting to stick out, so I expect my roast timer will pop in the next couple of weeks. While I was at the OB, I was given my hospital admission paperwork and spoke with the doctor about nailing down the date for my c-section. I guess a nurse will call me in the next couple of days to discuss this. I have to remember to ask her what happens if I go into labor before my scheduled c-section date. I also scored a free diaper bag with formula samples and coupons and stuff. I'm pretty psyched about that. The diaper bag we've been using is another freebie and I like it well enough, but I am always fighting against the lack of room in it, so I'm hoping that this one will be a little better. I am scheduled to go back for another check-up in two weeks. I remember when they told me to start coming every 2 weeks when I was pregnant with Emily. It set off a huge bout of new-mom anxiety. I wasn't ready to be seen every 2 weeks. It just seemed like I was that much closer to actually having the baby and that fuh-reaked me right out. This time? Meh. Not so much. I think having been through it once before, I know more of what to expect and so its not as scary as it was the first time. Actually, I probably should be more scared than I am. I know that having 2 is WAAAY different than 1, but I'm still pretty blase about it. All you moms of 2 are going to tell me to be afraid, be very afraid and I know I should, but I just can't do it. You'll get to read my post-baby posts of "what have I done?!" later and tell me I told you so. :)
  
• Below is a "before" picture of the nursery. I tried to take other pictures, but they just weren't coming out very well. I went through yesterday and spackled what felt like 85,000,000 holes, including one very large one that Mike made when he was taking my sewing table apart. Hm. Guess you can't see it in this picture. It's going to take multiple coats of spackle, so I'll have to hit it again this weekend to be ready to start painting Monday morning. I have picked out a color. It's called "Spirited Green" by Behr. If you're in Home Depot, check it out. I think it is number 470C. It's kind of a sea-foam, minty green. Very pretty. I was going to do something more girly, but I am somewhat paranoid that the baby is going to turn out to be a boy and the carpet in the room is a blue-green, so a really girly color wouldn't have looked very good.

• Lainey, you were asking what the really big hooks were for. They were in the ceiling. I think my mother-in-law used them to hang plants in front of the windows. So not only did I have to patch the walls, I had to get on a chair and patch the ceiling. That was lots of fun, lemme tell you.
  
• I have also spent the past week getting estimates from painters to have our bathroom painted, too. We have 2 showers, but the one in the master bedroom has a crack in it, so we have been using the big bathroom down the hall for all bathing needs. This has exacerbated the moisture problem we already had in there, and there is mildew growing on the ceiling and a strange water mark running down one of the walls. I want to nip this problem in the bud, but I do not want to do it myself (especially because I want to have an oil-based primer used on the ceiling and I shouldn't be around that when pregnant, nor should Emily or Lucy). Mike is not a fan of painting, so I can't expect him to do it, and he's going to have his hands full with yard maintenance and painting the barn this summer, soo... I'm hoping that having the bathroom painted by professionals can be an early birthday present or something. We'll see. :)
  

OK. I think I'm done now. Have a great weekend!

Stuff I pulled out of my walls

My mom came over this morning to watch Emily while I worked on prepping the nursery for painting.

This is what I pulled out of the walls.

My mother-in-law uses whatever is handy to put stuff up on the wall. The two regulation picture hangers (upper right corner) are from me. Also pictured there are 2 roofing nails. She really likes using those because of the nice big heads on them. I'm not much of a fan because the spackling job I have in front of me is going to be ... challenging, to say the least.

My mom and I have a bunch of days blocked off over this week and next for her to come and watch Emily so that I can get the nursery painted. I will continue to post pictures of my progress. I want to get the remaining office furniture out of there before I take the before picture.

I wish my butt were that firm...

A couple of nights ago, Mike got into bed after I had turned the light out.

He reached over to rest his hand on my belly, and feeling fabric, he moved it out of the way.

Small problem.

I was laying on my right side, Mike was on my left.

And the fabric he moved? Was my underwear. He gave me a wedgie in his attempt to "feel the baby".

You can probably guess how well that went over with me.

***************
I spoke with the lady from the county yesterday (she was in the office trying to catch up after her unexpected days off). We have rescheduled Emily's early intervention appointment for this Thursday.

Dammit!

I just got a phone call from the county.

Apparently the woman who was supposed to come to the house tomorrow to talk with me about how the whole intervention process works is sick.

With an itchy eye bug.

She doesn't want to spread it to us (or the rest of the county) and I sure don't want her to, but DAMMIT! I've been waiting FOREVER for this appointment. (If forever is defined as 10 days.)

She's going to call me next week to reschedule.

Grrr. Dammit.

Thank God for Elmo

Mike had an early (7 am) meeting this morning, so he was out of the house at 6:15 am. I stayed in bed until about 10 of 7.

I got up, grabbed my towels and headed down the hall to close Emily's door and then get in the shower.

When I got to the doorway of Emily's room, I was very surprised to see her sitting up, looking at me.

Oookay. No shower for Mommy right now.

I got Emily dressed and gave us both breakfast and then plopped Emily in front of "Elmo has 2 Hands, Ears, Feet". I was able to get showered, dressed and my teeth brushed while Emily watched Elmo.

Seriously, thank God for Elmo. If it weren't for him, I would have had to wait until at least 12:30 to be able to take my shower and that just ain't my style.

Alligator Wrestling

I have recently reached the point in my pregnancy where I can no longer sleep comfortably on my back and sleeping on my side requires a pillow of some form between my knees.

My girlfriend Karen lent me her "Preggle" pillow during my pregnancy with Emily and was kind enough to do so again this time around.

I brought the Preggle to bed with me about 2 weeks ago and have been remembering why I have a love/hate relationship with this pillow.

I love it because it is comfortable and it allows me to sleep.

I hate it because rolling over while using it presents several challenges. It is not unlike wrestling an alligator, in bed, with covers at 3 am. I have found that the best way to roll from one side to the other is to actually slide under the pillow and then lay on the appropriate side.

As frustrating as it can be, it really does let me sleep more comfortably and for that, I will wrestle alligators any day.

************
As a side note, my MI parents just confirmed my suspicions. One of my cousins goes to Virginia Tech. He is ok, but say a prayer for him and the rest of that campus. I cannot imagine the terror he must have felt, nor the terror his mother must have felt, between hearing that there had been a shooting on the campus and hearing that Pat was ok. Like Linda, stories like these make me want to wrap Emily in bubble wrap and keep her safely at home for the rest of her life. Or maybe dig a shelter and hide out for the next 20 or 30 years...

So far, so good

It's a good thing I put her in the sleep sack,
since it looks like she didn't stay under the covers for long...

Thanks, God!

Wow. I don't really even know where or how to start this post.

Emily is sleeping in her big-girl bed for the first time today.

We had been planning to make the changeover on April 1, but she was running a fever and we (I) decided we (I) weren't(wasn't) ready. We decided to hold off until after Easter weekend, because of the visiting family and other schedule disrupters.

So, last night, Mike mentioned that we should think again about when we were going to make the big switch. After a little more thought and discussion, we decided that today's nap would be in her big-girl bed and we'd see how it went from there.

I spent some time in Emily's room this morning getting things ready for her to spend time uncontained and somewhat unsupervised in there. I also put a rail on the bed so she won't fall out.

This afternoon, after lunch I took her into her room, changed her diaper and put her in a sleep sack, just like I always do for naps. As I carried her over to her bed, I told her that she had to stay in bed until Mommy or Daddy came to get her and then I put her down, gave her a kiss, reiterated the "stay in bed" thing and left. She cried for about 15 minutes (maybe slightly longer than normal at nap time, but not much) and then there was silence.

Mike and I had been sneaking peeks through the crack in the door to her room to see if she was still in bed and we didn't see her (her bed is directly in line with the door, so when it is closed, we can't see the bed itself, but we can see the rest of the room), so we kind of assumed that she'd stayed put.

I gave her some more time to fall asleep (because God forbid I wake her up!) and then opened her door to see where she was. SHE WAS IN THE BED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sound asleep. (she looks so little in that huge bed!)

Thanks, God!

I had a plan all ready for the fight that I was sure was coming to keep her in the bed. So far, so good.

We are planning to do this changeover cold turkey, meaning that from here on out, she's in the big-girl bed for naps and at night. Mike will work on taking the crib out of her room this afternoon after she gets up.

I was awake at 3 am this morning, worrying about this changeover and what to do and how was it going to go and so on for at least an hour. I knew at the time I was being silly, but that didn't stop me from worrying about it anyways. And so far, my worrying seems to have been for naught. Hopefully, this will be an easy transition for everyone.

So sad

A 14-year-old boy died today after being hit in the back of the head by a lacrosse ball yesterday.

I can't imagine what his parents, friends and family is going through right now.

Since becoming a mom, these kinds of stories have hit me harder than they did BE (Before Emily). I can't help but imagine what it would be like for my child's death to be reported on the evening news.

Please say a prayer for this family.

It's a Major Award!

I just received an award from Elizabeth, over at Table4Five.


She had a very interesting post recently about feeling somewhat left out of the grassroots blogging awards that circulate. Actually, that post is just one of many that has resonated with me. This one did, too. Well, heck, maybe you should just go check her out! :)

I have more to post later, but I was so excited about my major award, that I wanted to be sure to get it up on my site right away. In a few minutes, I am going to take Emily to my mother-in-law's house to play with my nephew Tommy. AND she said I could leave Emily there for a while so I could go run some errands. WOO-HOO!!

Get Organized!

Alternate Title: I Might Be Nesting, Just a Little Bit

I have been on an organizing kick for the past several weeks. Not that the house has needed it, or anything.

It started with me implementing an updated version of my weekly chore list.

When I started staying home, I worked out a way to divvy up some of the chores that have to be done on a weekly basis. On Mondays, I start the laundry. On Tuesdays, I continue whatever laundry is left and take out the garbage (because we have a water softener, I only do 2 or 3 loads per day. Otherwise, we run out of softened water for the rest of the day. And after 2 or 3 loads of laundry, I'm about done.) On Wednesdays, I try to fold the clothes and put them away. That doesn't always happen. On Thursdays, I fold laundry if I haven't already. And Fridays are kind of my slack off day. I try to take the garbage in Emily's room out again because it starts to stink otherwise.

The updated version looks like this:

Monday: start laundry. clean bathrooms (toilet and sink)
Tuesday: continue laundry. collect and take out garbage. dust.
Wednesday: fold laundry. put laundry away (HAHAHAHAHA). vacuum/clean floors.
Thursday: special project (like cleaning the tub, dusting the moulding, cleaning the glass surfaces in the house, deep cleaning the kitchen, etc. Stuff that needs to get done, but not weekly.)
Friday: take out Emily's garbage. otherwise, slack-city, baby!

We also have been working on making the 3rd bedroom in the house, currently a sewing/computer room, into a nursery for Lucy. This kind of became one of those domino projects. We're going to move the stuff in the computer room downstairs. To do that, we needed to clean out the finished area of the basement. To do that, we needed to get Mike's parent's stuff out of the basement. I am pleased to report significant progress on this project. One Saturday morning, I dragged all of Mike's parent's stuff out of the basement and piled it in the garage. Mike's dad came over and kindly loaded it all up in his truck and took it home. Then I vacuumed, cleaned the walls and organized what was left. This past week, Mike and I disassembled my sewing table (an executive desk Mike bought for me from a surplus sale at work) and dragged it downstairs. Our computer desks and the two bookshelves that remain in the room will head down next, once my parents get back from Ireland. (we're dog sitting their dog and her crate is pretty much right where my sewing table will be set up. That needs to move before we can move the desks downstairs. Again with the dominoes.)

That whole project has set me off on cleaning stuff out and organizing what is left. I cleaned out both hall closets, setting stuff aside to go to Mike's parent's house, charity, recycling (did you know you can recycle computer stuff, like monitors and printers? search for "computer recycling" and you'll find something in your area.) I also went through the linen closet in the big bathroom and threw away a TON of stuff. There were medications in there that expired in 2001!! Yeah, that's real safe.

The decision to buy a new stove also set off a flurry of organizing. I used the top of our old stove as storage for some of my baking pans and a large stock pot. With the new stove coming in, that handy shelf went away (one of the very few downsides to the new stove). I puttered around in the kitchen and eventually came up with a new place for everything that used to live on top of the stove. And it looks much better in there.

We also had a large utensil drawer that has been slowly driving me up a wall. The drawer itself is quite large, but it only pulls out about 6 or 8 inches and my previous organization system failed within the first 6 weeks we lived here. What better time than now to come up with a new system?

I went to Target this morning and bought a bunch of different drawer organizers that I thought might work. With Emily napping, I headed out to the kitchen and took everything out of the drawer. But, not before I took a before picture!
Here is everything that once was in the drawer, now on the counter.
My kitchen is very small, so I am used to nesting and stacking things for maximizing storage. But, I was also trying to make sure that I could get to everything easily and make sure that things would get put back where they belong. I'm usually the one who empties the dishwasher, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

The finished product. I grouped similar items together, like the all-important ice cream scoops (what? you don't have 4 ice cream scoops?), things that will cut you (the bin on the right, poke around in there at your own risk), tongs and vegetable peelers and whisks and stuff.

Oh, and I think you all should know that the white meat tenderizer (shown standing up in the "everything on the counter" picture, and just barely visible in the "all done" picture) terrifies Mike. He says when he sees it all he can think of is it being used on certain, tender parts of his anatomy. When I bought it, I might have waved it threateningly in his direction after he told me that. Cause I'm sweet like that. :)

******
I also wanted to let you know that we had a small milestone in our house last night. Emily wagged for the first time.

What? You don't know what wagging is? My mom totally will get it, but its a family thing, so let me explain.

When I was about 12 (11?) we got an English Springer Spaniel. We named him Kirby (we lived in Minneapolis and Kirby Puckett was a big deal player for the Twins). His tail had been docked, so when he wagged his tail, his whole back end would wag. My parents (my mom especially, my first stepdad was still around at this point and I don't remember him doing much wagging) and I started imitating him when we were especially happy or excited about something. Basically, we wiggle our butts when we are happy.

This has continued through the years, even though Kirby has since gone to doggy heaven.

Mike and I wag sometimes, though we haven't been doing it as much as we did when we first started dating. My parents (mom and stepdad #2, I call him Dad. It's very confusing.) are big waggers. They have even come up wth an electronic version of wagging. It looks like this: <<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

Anyways, last night as Mike was putting Emily to bed, he asked for and received a squeeze (where she tightens her arms around your neck while giving you a hug). As he was getting the squeeze, he wagged a little. And then so did Emily! He came back out to the living room just to show me. So exciting! He said he didn't even have to tell her to do it, when he wagged, she did, too. It was so cute to see that little butt wiggling on his arm. :)

3 things that make me NUTS!!!!!!!!!

1. Bra straps that won't stay on your shoulders. I have drawn the short straw on this one two days in a row. I have been continually pulling my bra straps back up on my shoulders yesterday and today. Yesterday's bra was especially bad. Of course, I've had it since my junior year of ... high school, at least, so it really doesn't owe me anything. (Did you know that bras are supposed to only have a useful life of 6 months? I'm not sure if that is 6 months of wear or 6 calendar months, but in either case, I've WAY exceeded that with yesterday's bra. And most of my others, probably.)
2. My husband, my darling husband. Not all the time, just when he uses the BIGGEST spoon in the entire kitchen to dish out the stew for his lunch. And another HUGE spoon to serve the apple crisp last night. From my NON-STICK pan. The HUGE spoon? Not plastic. I guess this one has two parts. Part 1, people who don't respect the no-metal-on-non-stick-pans thing and part 2, why must Mike use the gigantic serving utensils when a regular-sized one would work just as well? And, why does this bug me so much?!
   
3. People who come to a full and complete stop in the 20 mph EZ-Pass lanes on the Thruway. Which makes me scream "IT'S 20!!!!" at them. If they want to stop, they can use the non-EZ-Pass lane - then you HAVE to stop. The 20 mph lanes are for those of us who like to slow down, but NOT STOP before getting on the Thruway.

No, the pregnancy hormones aren't making me crazy. Why do you ask? :)

Feel free to tell me what makes you nuts, either in the comments or on your blog (be sure to leave your blog (or email) address in the comments so I can come see if what makes you nuts makes me nuts, too!)

Ears...

I talked with Emily's pediatrician late Friday afternoon. She totally agreed with me and was very supportive of my mommy instinct. That was very comforting and one of the top reasons why I pink fuzzy heart our pediatrician.

The doctor gave me the phone number of an ENT in the area and also explained how to get assistance in the speech therapy area. Apparently our county (and everyone else's) is required by the federal government to provide early intervention therapies to its residents.

I called both the ENT and the early intervention department for our county today. Our ENT appointment isn't until May 14. At 1:30. That's dead in the middle of Emily's usual nap time, but I am anxious to get in to see the doctor, so we'll figure something out. I spoke with someone at the early intervention department and she is going to have someone else call me tomorrow to talk some more and set up a time for her to come visit us.

One of the questions that she asked me was how many words does Emily have? And by words, she meant actual words, not Emily-ese. I told her 5 at most. The majority of Emily's words are Emily-ese, not actual words. Talking about it with Mike tonight, we have come up with 3 real, actual words: ma-ma, da-da and na-na. I don't know if I should be worried or not. I guess I'll just have to wait for the assessment and take it from there.

I am really glad to be taking steps towards fixing the problem, if one exists. It bugs me to feel that something might be wrong, but not be doing anything about it. I think that stems from a rule my mom had when I was little, which was "If you aren't doing something to fix a problem, you aren't allowed to complain about it." I couldn't complain that my head hurt if I hadn't taken some acetaminophen and so on. This rule lives on in our house (at least among the adults) today. Mike's first question whenever I complain about something that is bothering me is "what are you doing to fix it?"

***********
I hope that you guys all had a wonderful Easter/weekend. Mine was very nice. My MI parents were in town and were staying at our house, which is a first. Mike and I had them sleep in our room since it didn't seem right to have them sleep on the couch or an air mattress. We slept on the hide-a-bed in the living room. Neither of us slept very well, though for different reasons. Mike was having cover issues because I didn't get out a queen sized blanket until last night. My issue was that my side of the bed was about 2 1/2 feet away from the coal stove and I was HOT! I spent most of every night sleeping without any covers.

It was very nice to be able to spend so much time with my MI parents. When they were here over New Years I felt like I hardly saw them. That certainly wasn't the case this time! My stepmom has an uncanny ability to annoy the hell out of me and she pushed a couple of buttons this weekend (why she felt the need to tear a diaper wipe in half and put the unused half back into the box is beyond me), but for the most part it was a very nice visit.

I took Emily to her library class this morning (we've been going to an infant/kid reading class for a couple of weeks at a nearby library) and then hit the grocery store before heading home for lunch and nap time. I spent almost all of Emily's nap tidying the house. I stripped our bed and remade it with clean sheets (I just love that first night after changing the sheets - they are so crisp), folded last week's laundry and put it away, started this week's laundry (my God, the sheets! and the towels! I think we used every towel in the house), cleaned the kitchen (for the 8,000,000th time this weekend), made apple crisp, cleaned the kitchen again, let the dogs in, let the dogs out, got the mail... I know I did more stuff but I can't think of it now. I know that when I did finally sit down, my back was killing me. It felt really good to get my house put back together. You know how it is when you have people staying with you. Stuff gets moved around and left in different places.

I will try to write some non-update posts in the next couple of days. I've had several milling around in my head for a while and I should get them out before I forget them.

WOO-HOO!!

{ahem} (please forgive the yelling in the next line.)

I JUST WON $50 ON BLINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOO-HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok. I'm better now. I just needed to get that out of my system.

****
I just called the pediatrician's office again because I hadn't heard from them after my call yesterday afternoon. The secretary said that she had a hard time finding Emily's chart. She eventually found it in our doctor's office on the top of the pile next to her phone. So hopefully I should be getting a call from the doctor soon.

Thank you all so very very much for the wonderful and supportive comments. It helped me feel that I am doing the right thing in following my instincts. And it also helped me feel less like I am overreacting. Hopefully we'll discover that nothing is wrong and she's just taking her time developing her words.

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend. I'm hoping to get a chance to go through my blog list at least once between now and Monday. My MI parents are on their way here now, probably somewhere East of Cleveland (they started out last night after work. they usually stop around Cleveland which is about halfway and then finish the rest of the trip the following day. I should hear from them when they get past Buffalo). They are staying with us, so my computer time will be more limited than it normally is.

Done

I am done. Finished. No more.

What am I talking about? Well... it's kind of a long story.

Back in February, I posted a list of the "words" that Emily was saying. At the time, I thought they were ok. I thought that Emily had a normal amount of words and was saying them somewhat as expected, not having been around a child who is learning to talk. As the months have passed, however, my feelings have changed. I went from feeling that Emily was on-track verbally and about to explode into speech to feeling that there is something not right.

All of Emily's words are some variation of "da-da". She says "wa-wa" for yogurt, "ga-ga" for cookie, "da-da" for Daddy, Domino, Cheerios, "ma-ma" for Mommy, "bug-ba" for chocolate, "muh" for milk, "guh" for goose and so on. Very few of her words sound like the intended meaning. I've derived most of the meanings through her pointing and frustrated crying when I don't get it.

I mentioned my concerns to Emily's pediatrician last month when we went in for an ear re-check. At that time, Emily had been off antibiotics for the double ear infection she had during the cold from hell for about a week and a half or two weeks. She still had fluid in one of her ears. She had been to the allergist for allergy testing the day before and received a new prescription for Singulair (which I just realized I completely forgot to give her this morning, along with all her other meds. WHOOPS!). Our pediatrician suggested that we give the Singulair/Zyrtec combination (she's been on Zyrtec for allergy symptoms for almost a year now, I think) some time to work and re-check her in a month. If she still had fluid and I was still concerned about her speech at that point, we could talk about going to an ENT and/or getting some speech therapy. That month will be up on April 18th.

But, I'm done waiting. Since that appointment, I have been watching every little kid we're around. I've paid close attention to Emily and to the other kids and something is wrong. This morning, we were at Gymboree with a friend and her daughter. My girlfriend was calling Emily's name repeatedly. Emily didn't turn and look in response to her name being called (to give her some credit, it took me a couple times before I realized Emily's name was being called, it was pretty crazy in there). I had to physically turn Emily's head before she realized someone was calling her. Emily doesn't talk. She babbles. Like she did when she was little. She's never really grown out of that. Other little kids have clear(er) words. They talk. They are developing sentences. I can have a conversation with Emily only if I ask her yes or no questions.

I can't explain it, but my instincts are telling me that something isn't right here and I don't want to wait ANYMORE. I want to get this fixed. NOW.

I called and left a message to have one of the nurses call me so we can talk about what to do next.

In A Pinch

Emily just pinched me!

She's currently sitting in time out for the second time in less than 5 minutes for pinching me on the arm.

I hate stuff like this. I don't mind the fussies, the crying, the middle-of-the-night wakings (much), and all the other parent stuff, but I hate that heat-of-battle-make-a-decision-right-NOW! feeling. I hate trying to work through what I should be doing to try to handle something. I always feel like I am going to make the wrong choice.

You read about how to handle a situation and then forget what it says to do when that situation presents itself. I think I remember reading in some parenting magazine that when your kid does something like pinching or hitting, you need to stay calm, and present consequences for the action. Does that sound right?

****

I mentioned on Sunday that Emily had a record-breaking (for her) temperature. She seems to be over all that now. Her fever dropped through the day Sunday and never really had another one after that. She has some killer diarrhea, but otherwise seems to be feeling ok.

In light of the feverish weekend she had, Mike and I decided not to move her into her big girl bed as planned Sunday. At this point, I think we'll wait until after Easter is over and think about it again. My MI parents are going to be coming out to stay with us for Easter on Friday, so this weekend is going to be crazy enough without adding in a kid who is no longer penned in a crib.

New Land Speed Record

Emily has reached a new record high fever.

She had a temperature of 105 this morning when she woke up. I took her to the doctor yesterday when it was 104.something and the doctor (not her regular doctor) didn't seem to be all that concerned. Especially since it was down to 100 by the time we got to the doctor's office. He said that her ears looked good (a good thing, since she still had fluid in them at her ear check last week), but otherwise poo-poo'd my concerns.

She has been the world's clingiest baby this weekend, which has been nice for the extended snuggles I've been getting, but kinda sucks for getting stuff done (like showering, peeing, eating.)

Stove is still not installed. Mike discovered that one of the leveling feet was broken Friday night. I went to the store where I bought it and got a replacement yesterday. Hopefully, he'll be able to install it today while I deal with the barnacle-child.

If she is still running a temperature tomorrow, we'll go back to the doctor and hopefully be able to see our regular doc.