Our first real illness and other stuff

Since we returned from China, Emma has only had a few colds, that lasted no more than 2 or 3 days.  Last Sunday (Easter) she started sneezing and we thought it was allergies from playing in leaves the day before.  By Monday it was a minor cold and by Monday afternoon, she had over a 103 degree fever.  Tuesday morning, her temp was 103.8!  The high, high fevers only lasted about 2 days, but she spent the rest of the week with a 101 degree fever coming and going, then developed a nasty cold and hackey cough came on Thursday that she still has today.  Sunday she woke up a brand new kid, but still has the cough and some drippage.  It's crazy, but until the hackey cough, she was still eating and drinking while sick and sleeping throughout the night!  I expected a sleepless night last Monday/Tuesday and even showered with the intention of going to work because Emma was still sleeping soundly as I readied myself that morning.  When she woke up however, I knew upon just looking at her, we were staying home...her cheeks were fire engine red and she had the 103.8 temp...I don't know how she slept peacefully through the night!  As far as sick kids go, she had a decent disposition...there was some unreasonable crying a few times and lots of cuddling, but who wouldn't want to cuddle her.  She kept saying, "hug" and reaching her hands up in the air at us...awww.

 

We had a nice Easter, spent the majority of the day, just the 3 of us and listening to Emma sneeze.  Emma LOVES holidays, which is ironic, because I don't care for them much, but we do them up for her enjoyment.  She left carrots out for the Easter Bunny and went right to sleep, as we told her the Easter Bunny can't come until she's fast asleep.  The first thing she asked Easter morning was if the carrots were gone.  Emma jitterbugged down the hall to get Doug out of bed and we had some fun with her, pretending to go back to sleep and she kept yelling, "nooo, downstairs!".  She found all but one of her eggs (it took me a minute to remember where it was) and loved the clothes and mini Barbies in her Easter basket.  We stayed away from too much candy but there was a mini piece in every egg she found.  Emma wanted to open and reopen the eggs, trying to sneak bits of candy, so we had to dump the 10 whole pieces in a bowl and put on the counter top.  She was then obsessed with the counter, so we had to move the bowl out of sight.  I was ready to throw the candy away that day or just let her eat it all to be done with it, lol.

 

Emma is more verbal and physical at expressing what she does and doesn't want to do.  She says, "I don't want to" then lays on the ground, goes limp and plays like a dead dog.  The dead dog bit usually happens when leaving a park, teeth brushing and bedtime...yea, I was that mom carrying a screaming kid in one hand and a tricycle in the other hand leaving the park last week.  I had to peel her off the ground to get her to the car....we do the 5 minute countdown, so she knows that we are leaving the park but it doesn't matter, she loves the park and no amount of warning that we are leaving matters.

 

Ever since our Texas trip and D's business trip, E. only wants mommy to put her to bed and even though we tell her I'm taking her to bed, she doesn't quite believe us some nights, so she does her dead dog bit .  One threat of "Daddy is taking you to bed", has her scurrying.  We lowered the crib rail this week and are slowly working Emma towards a big girl bed.  At almost 30lbs and half my height, it is back breaking and cumbersome for me to hoist her over the crib rail.  Emma never tried to climb out and we warned her not to...we can see a lot more of what she is doing at bedtime with the crib rail dropped, so it's fun to watch the monitor even more than it was before.  There is lots of singing, (ABC and Twinkle, Twinkle), chatting and swaddling her stuffed animals with a blanket at bedtime.  The other night, we watched her work for 30 minutes, trying to get her swaddle around the puppy just right.  She would not go to sleep until the swaddle was perfect.  We have noticed, she has too much "work" going on in her bed for 30 minutes to an hour after we lay her down, so Doug minimized the amount of stuffies in her crib, but may need to eliminate more.  The other evening, she didn't fall asleep until 10:15 because she was "working".

 

Emma rats herself out on bad behavior now.  The other day, she pushed a kid at daycare and was put in timeout.  Emma told Doug all about the pushing and timeout in the car ride home and we confirmed the story was true with the other girls mom...you never know with a 2.5 year old what is true or made-up.  We don't think the pushing was done maliciously, but as a way to get the other kids attention.  We've been working on E. with this at home, because she sometimes gets Doug and I's attention in appropriate ways too, so I wish I had known this was going on at the sitters.  We spent some time this weekend, teaching her how to say, "please play with me" and "can I play with that toy?" so hopefully the pushing doesn't happen again.