Made it

Sylvie is happily ensconced with Gram and Grampian, and M and I are about to go kick it with some Republicans... Uneventful flight. Love antibiotics.

Much better

On our way!

Sick

When this is "playing" we know we have a very sick little girl. Just curled up on the living room floor, staring into space.  Day four and she woke with a 103 fever that is now up to 103.4 despite Advil. Poor kid.  Back to the doc this morning to see if she wants to revisit Tuesday's diagnosis of a cold.  Dad is thinking flu - colds barely slow her down.

Update: Not flu.  Our old friend the ear infection has returned, and he brought a pal.  Double ear infections - and apparently pretty bad ones.  Fast moving, too, since he ears were checked Tuesday and were clear.  Ditto her lungs, which this morning were gummed up enough to lower her blood oxygen to the point where they put her immediately on a nebulizer (which helped immediately).

Always better to know "what it is."  And ordinarily Sylvie's ears respond almost immediately to the antibiotics.  Which in this case raises a good-parenting question... we are supposed to fly tomorrow morning down to sunny Naples, FL, where good fortune has located a retreat that I have to attend for work.  Sylvie was going to visit her grandparents, while I schmooze and Melissa enjoys some much needed rest and relaxation at the resort hotel.  For a number of reasons (one of them being I don't know if I can take the guilt of jetting off to the Ritz and 80 degree weather while Melissa and Sylvie suffer at home), we really do not want to cancel the girls' tickets.  The doctor said she will probably be fine to travel tomorrow, if the antibiotics kick in, but that due to the ear infections the flight could be painful for her.  Not sure Mom and Dad could feel worse than we will if we put her on the plane and the landing process causes her pain.

Right now our plan is to see how she feels in the morning.  Ugh.

Update 2:  I am preparing for the best...

 

Evening Update:   Cautiously optimistic.  She seems to be feeling a lot better, and temp is normal at bed time...  Fingers crossed!

Kaa's night time visit

Melissa got Sylvie a series of Disney story books recently.  Her favorite is The Jungle Book, by about a three to one margin (measured in nights its reading is demanded before bed time). 

Like a great number of Disney stories, the Jungle Book contains some scary material - most specifically the part when Kaa the python slithers out of the leaves and hypnotizes Mogli, intending to "swallow him up." 

That never seemed to much bother Sylvie - until 3:38 a.m. this morning, when she started screaming at the top of her lungs.  "No!!  You can't come in here!!  Get away!!" 

By the time I got up to her room she was on the edge of her bed.  As I turned on the light, she looked behind her and very clearly still "saw" a vestige of her nightmare.  "DADDY!!  There's a SNAKE IN MY BED!!!"  (and so now I'll have nightmares derived from Sylvie's nightmare). 

I picked her up and she was like a little kettle stove - bearing out our suspicion, based on her cranky mood the last few days, that she is getting sick (again - love winter).  She was shaking and gasping and yelling for her "mama."  When I got her down to our room, though, she took one look at Melissa and screamed again - "Mommy!  There's a snake on her pillow!" 

We turned on the light and that seemed to help snap her out of it. Seizing the advantage afforded by the fact that both Melissa and I were by then a little freaked out at the hallucinating, she expressed a desire to watch Angelina the Ballerina.  Gotta love on-demand television. 

She had a 102.6 temp - which with the help of some Ibuprofen was down to 100.9 by the time I left for work 45 minutes later.  I have a feeling, though, that my girls are in for a long, tired day.  I myself am going to be mainlining coffee to stay awake during a 4 hour meeting I have to make it through today.

Anyhow, while it was freaky at the time I suppose this is something of a milestone: Sylvie's first articulated nightmare, and one of obvious and understandable origin at that.  I'd always figured her first night time bogeyman would be the "Bomable Snowman."

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sylvie was a little remiss about getting her cards out this year... an oversight made all the more embarrassing by all the wonderful gifts and cards she received.

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone Sylvie loves out there - you know who you are.

Alex channels Elvis

With the Liggetts in town, of course we busted out the karaoke machine.  There were some pretty spectacular - and pretty appalling - performances in our household this weekend.

But when 6 year old Alex declared he has a favorite that he likes to perform, never in a million years of trying would we have guessed what he was going to bust out with...

Childrens' Museum

First thing first: Tell me this isn't an Ipad commercial in the making:

"Swipe Tomorrow"

After some serious IPad play this morning, the kids got in their daytime clothes and we parents (including the O'Learys) heeded the call - apparently heard by every parent of a 2-10 year old in New England - to bring the kids forthwith to the Boston Children's Museum.  What. A. Zoo!!!

The kids seems to have a good time, between parental heart attacks brought on by the kids' propensity for blending in with their peers...   Afterwards we all had lunch at an Irish pub, followed by some fun sledding on the BIG HILL and an adults' night out.  Good times.

More in the February 2011 Gallery.  

After a long, tiring morning

My girls in the car...

Friends visiting!

The Liggetts arrived this evening.

Off to the Children's Museum in the morning.  I'll bring my camera...

Bad blogger

Apologies for the long hiatus.  Between a lot of work, an epic struggle with the massive ice dams on our roof, and the fact that Sylvie and her mom have been fighting off the same nasty cold/hacking cough, we just haven't been doing all that much worth reporting lately.  A few quick things:

1) Sylvie has entered her tattle tale stage.  The every day question, "did you have fun at school" is likely as not these days to elicit a non-responsive ratting out of one classmate or another.  "Sofie peed in her pants," "Edward stomped on my puzzle," and "Avery PUSH me!  I cry and cry." are three of last week's responses.  Sylvie seems to take great pleasure in these reports.

2) I fell off a ladder this weekend while hacking away at one of the aforementioned ice dams with a hammer and a screw driver (doubling as an ice pick).  With 4 feet of snow beneath me I was not worried too much about reaching a little too far to get at a stubborn hunk of ice.  As it turned out, a valiant rhododendron helped the snow break my fall.  Lesson learned, no harm done (except to the rhododendron).

3)  Do not see the movie Salt.  It is stupid. If a viewing is offered to you free of charge, before accepting calculate the value of two hours of your time.

4)  We went to a soup dinner Saturday night to benefit the Holliston Food Pantry.  State Representative Carolyn Dykema, the woman who beat me in my run for office back in 2008, came over and said some wonderfully kind and apparently sincere things about Sylvie.  So that's it.  We're friends now.

5)  Sylvie's red/pink bedroom is now dusty blue, having taken the first big step in its transition to Mommy's new office.  The big guest room is now pale yellow and filled with the pieces of the big bed that used to live there.  Mass Coalition for the Homeless is coming tomorrow to get the furniture, and then Sylvie is moving in to her new "big, yellow room."  She is very excited.

I am traveling through Thursday for work, so this will do it for this week.  I will try to get some photos and/or video up next weekend.