The Life and Times of Baby Gordon

Play-Dohs

A few weeks ago, Maddie and I enjoyed a "Maddie Monday" (a non-work day for me, no daycare for her -- probably one of the few we'll get together this year) and went to Studio Grow. It's been awhile since I've taken her, and it was fun to see how much she enjoyed many of the activities that she was too young to get last time. She particularly liked the arts and crafts room. At one of the tables, the studio had laid out Play Doh and cookie cutters, and we spent probably 15 minutes "making cookies."

A few days later, she and I were playing outdoors on one of our unseasonably warm afternoons, and I remembered that we had some cans of Play Doh that Maddie received as a door prize gift at a birthday party last year. She had been pretty indifferent to the stuff when we first brought it home, so I had stashed it in a cabinet in the laundry room. I pulled it out and got the Christmas cookie cutters that we had used to make sugar cookies together during the holidays, and we started making cutouts with Play Doh on the picnic table.

Thus began the Great Play Doh Obsession of 2009. Every morning after that afternoon, she came upstairs from bed and immediately went to the back door, asking to go "OUTside 'n' play Play-Dohs!" (even though it was still dark). Finally we allowed the Play Doh to move back indoors.

What has been so interesting about this "Play Dohs" obsession is that it's the first time I've seen her really use her imagination. She spent days making little cookies with the Play Doh, laying them out on her tea tray, and putting them in and taking them out of her little play oven – honestly, it's the most attention she's paid to that play kitchen since she got it for her birthday. Then she made us each birthday cakes and put her little birthday "candies" (candles) on them, singing "Happy Birthday" to us as she offered them up. She even made one for Bentley.

We started with one can of white Play Doh and one can of blue, and within several days we had a lot of funky, dried out light blue Play Doh because she had mixed it all together. With no end in sight to this Play Doh obsession (train set forgotten, all other toys sorely neglected, and her former obsession, "paintings" with the art kit from her grandparents, completely out of her mind), I went on the hunt for new Play Doh to replace the old stuff. I found a Play Doh Fun Factory at Longs, and I think I was as delighted to bring that thing home as she was to see it. Within an hour after its arrival the new yellow and blue Play Doh that came with the Fun Factory became one big green lump, and Maddie was making spaghetti and meatballs in her little pots and pans for all of us to eat for dinner.

The Fun Factory kit came with a little brochure advertising the other Play Doh sets available. Maddie got hold of this and pointed out everything she wanted (she was mostly enamored with an underwater themed one featuring a big purple octupus, as well as a Dora set and an ice cream parlor that costs $50), then spent the evening telling anyone who would listen about her wish list (including her grandma on the phone, who was probably confused as Maddie picked up the phone and greeted her in her bossy little voice: "I want oct-pus NOW, and Doh-wa, and ice cweam").

Luckily Maddie had some Amazon gift cards leftover from her birthday and Christmas, so that evening I got online and ordered her the octupus and Dora playsets. The Dora one arrived pretty quickly, and the Fun Factory was old news. (I got it out for her last night and she actually told me, "No, don't want this, put away!")

Play-Dohs are at the center of our universe right now. It's all she wants to do; sleeping, eating and going to the park are secondary priorities. Our biggest blessing is that the rug in our living room is already old and soiled, because now it also contains flecks of blue, green, and strange shades of purple that will be ground into it forever. I can't wait to see how long it will be before she moves on to the next big thing, or whether Play Dohs will always have a special place in her heart.

Life at 18 (months, that is)

Yesterday Madeleine turned 18 months old. It feels like such a big milestone! We are almost to 2, and it's starting to show. This headstrong kid not only knows exactly what she wants, but now knows how to express it.

Our half-birthday weekend has been full so far of pre-vacation errands as well as visiting with Aunt Stacey, who is in town from Denver. Friday, after she woke up from her nap, Maddie and I drove up to Berkeley to look for some "real" shoes. Lately she's only been wearing her red Crocs (her "shooz," or "zapatitos," as Clelia calls them), which are perfect for her days grubbing it up in the park. She loves them because they're loose and airy. I bought her some sneakers and sandals from Target but she has expressed a definite dislike for both, so knowing we're on our way to Europe where she'll probably be doing a lot of running around in piazzas and cathedrals, I decided to make an investment in some sturdy and comfortable shoes. We ended up with the Lola style of See Kai Run shoes (don't faint over the price ... Maddie's feet do not grow quickly). She's still not thrilled with them, so I know the Crocs will probably be our footwear of choice most of the time we're gone.

Yesterday we shopped for last-minute toddler gear for our trip, including a new changing pad, some little toys to entertain on the trip (she'll get a new one each day on car trips and on the airplane) and a portable booster seat that folds up into a tiny packet and then auto-inflates when you need it. After a good nap, Maddie was a charmer at dinner last night for her grandparents and Aunt Stacey, who hasn't seen her in months and couldn't believe how much she's grown.

A couple of new things that Maddie is doing these days:

When Andrew plays music on his iPod (especially the song clips from the upcoming Mudcrutch album ... which he's been playing a lot since we went to the concert this week), she shakes her rump and spins around. Anytime you mention "dancing" to her, she shakes her shoulders and head.

She's really into "riding the horsie," which started with riding on Bentley (climbing on him while he's sleeping and bouncing up and down) and riding on Daddy and me when we're lying on the ground. Yesterday at the toy store she found a stick pony and rode him around the store. And today she saw a picture of a unicorn on a block at her grandparents' house and bounced up and down.

Since I was away for five days last week, she's been going through a bit of a mommy separation anxiety, which means if I try to put her to bed at night she cries and carries on when I walk out of the room. (She does this in the daytime too, but it's most frustrating at night.) A trick that her grandpa discovered while babysitting the other night is that if you sit in the glider in her room and tell her, "I'm right here, Maddie. Lie down and go to sleep," she'll relax, put her head down and be asleep in a minute or two. I'm hoping it's a trick that will work in Italy too.

The kid is 100% devoted to books. She is a book freak. I've been working with her on how to express that she wants "more," rather than whining and pointing, but she's taken the concept a little far at bedtime. We sit down in the chair and she immediately points to her shelf and says "Book book book," and if you don't choose exactly the one she wants she gets very fussy, meaning we have to let her get down and choose the book herself. At the end of the book, she holds up one finger and demands "One more!" Andrew stops at three books, but I'm of course a sucker for the book-lovin' and read her seven or eight and wait until she's really rubbing at her eyes before I finally put a stop to it. She also demands books during breakfast, and again is very choosy about the titles.

We're getting really excited about Italy and can't wait for Maddie to see Eli again. Even though he's a little older than her, I think they'll have a lot in common. Maddie right now is very into "cahs" (cars), and I was proud that we finally bought her a little VW Beetle to play with, but the day after we brought it home we did a video chat with Sam and Caroline, and Eli showed us his gigantic Barbie Ferrari that they found in the storage space in their apartment. Maddie is going to have a field day with that car. I think they're going to have a blast together.

And of course, before we arrive in Italy we are doing a stopover in New York, where Maddie's going to meet our cousins for the first time, experience her first (and my first) Passover dinner, and meet her cross-country buddy Katie at the Central Park Zoo. She seems to do so well with new people and situations, getting over her momentary shyness to become the charmer and entertainer, so I think as long as she isn't floored by the jet lag, she's going to have a fantastic time on our vacation.

Running hot and cold

Maddie is beginning to grasp the concept of temperature. When I fix myself a cup of coffee in the morning, she walks up to it very tentatively, lightly touches the side of the mug and says, "Hot." She also knows when her own food is too hot to eat, and pretends to blow on it like we do.

She knows enough to know that temperature is causing the food to be unpleasant to eat or drink, but she doesn't yet really grasp the difference between extremes. The other day I made her a smoothie, a new attempt at getting different kinds of fruits into her diet. I blended it up with crushed ice and gave it to her in a cup with a straw. But because she's cutting so many teeth, drinking cold beverages is hard for her right now, so when she tasted it she looked at me, shook her head and said, "Hot!"

"No, it's cold," I told her.

"Hot!"

We talked for awhile about the differences between hot and cold, and eventually she said, "Co." But I am not sure she quite understood that the reason the smoothie hurt her mouth was not because it was scalding, but because it was ice-cold.

Help!

Of all the things Maddie is learning to say these days, my favorite has to be the word "help." She now asks for help whenever she gets into sticky or frustrating situations (which happens about every three minutes by the way). Usually it's when she's gotten herself onto a piece of furniture and can't get down by herself. Also, whenever she gets really overtired, she attempts to multitask: she tries to drive her Pooh car and push her baby doll stroller at the same time, for example. She was exhausted when I was giving her a bath tonight and was trying to retrieve two Tupperware bowls and her "fish net" all at the same time (the idea being that she would pour water from the two bowls into the net). She started to get angry and frustrated, then instead said, "Help!" So I held the net while she poured the water, and the crisis was averted. I love that she understands that she needs help, and knows how to ask for it. Andrew would tell you that it is something Maddie's mother never learned how to do.

Another funny story from this evening: she has a plastic "octopus" with lots of holes in its head that creates a shower stream when you scoop water into it. A funny game we play is calling Bentley into the bathroom during bathtime, letting water stream out of the octopus and laughing as Bentley drinks the falling water. Maddie has started preferring that she scoop the water for Bentley herself, and is finally pretty much getting the hang of it (for a long time she failed to turn the scoop upright, so that all the water would spill out of the top instead of run through the holes at the bottom). But she was getting upset tonight because Bentley got kind of bored with the game after 10 or 12 tries. As he wandered away, Maddie yelled, "Bad-ee! Agua!" When he didn't come back right away, she looked at me determinedly and said, "Mama! Bad-ee! Agua!" So it was my duty to make Bentley come back for another drink.

She's actually been pretty tough on "Bad-ee" lately. She tosses food over the side of her high chair, then yells at him when he comes to retrieve it. ("Nooooooooo! BAD!") When he's at the bottom of the steps she yells, "Go!" just like we do to tell him to head up the steps ahead of us. She wags her finger at him and gets extremely bossy if he goes near her toys. But she's also infatuated with him. She'll stand in front of him while he's napping and wait for him to wake up and give her a kiss. She brings him all his toys while he's eating breakfast, lining them up by his bowl so he can play with them when he's finished. And yesterday, she straddled him like a horse and bounced up and down. He is infinitely patient. That is why he gets to sleep on the bed - a big reward for a very loving dog.

One final note: she has a bottom tooth coming in, and life is a little zanier than usual. Despite the fact that we're doing everything we can to keep Motrin in her system, she has insisted on waking up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. for the day for the past several days, and hasn't been napping consistently well. Mommy and Daddy are tired.

An update, at last!

Maddie will be 17 months in five days, and her mama has been really bad about updating. I promise to be better. We are living la vida loca, and it has left little time for blogging. Seems like my regular followers have practically given up getting any type of Maddie update, sadly.

But so much is new! This is an incredible age. She is doing so much and saying so much. Our weekends and my "Maddie Mondays" are so much fun now; she has transitioned to one nap which means our sole purpose is to tire her out so she'll sleep well in the afternoons. The past few weekends we've been to the Oakland Zoo and the Lindsey Wildlife Museum (we are now proud members). And we ran into a woman at the farmer's market a few weeks ago, herself a mom of two little ones, who shared all her favorite toddler parks with us, so now I'm a big fan of Willow Park in Berkeley and Frog Park in Oakland, which have small slides. Maddie likes to slide by herself. She's easily the youngest and smallest kid at these  parks, and yet, she loves to climb up the steps, scoot herself to the edge, count to three ("uh, eh, teeeeeeeeee!") and slide almost to the bottom, when overprotective Mama catches her. It is easier with two parents because one can "spot" her on the climb up and one can stay at the bottom and catch.

She is now the owner of her very own plastic pail and rake (there was a shovel too, but ... well, thanks a lot, Bentley ... we don't have that one anymore). I am a certified mother now, because after our first outing with the pail and rake I wrote Maddie's name on both in Sharpie marker. (I used to think it was so funny that my mother wrote our names on everything, but now I understand why. A plastic pail in the park attracts toddlers like moths to the flame, and before you know it we're ready to leave and five 2-year-olds are in the corner of the sandbox building a small city with our 99-cent Target bucket ... and it's not like I have the heart to tear it away from them, so Maddie and I hang out and wait for them to lose interest.

In terms of words, she's saying a lot of things on her own and repeating a lot of what we say to her. She asks for her "ba-ba," "agua," "book," "bana" (banana), "apple," and "chee" (which can mean cheese or Cheerios, depending on the context). She knows what all the animals say: cow ("moo"), horse (a high-pitched "eeeeeee"), cat ("Mew!"), dog ("erf, erf"), sheep ("baa"), crow or bird ("caw caw"), chicken ("cuck cuck"), duck ("cack cack") and lion, tiger, bear, alligator and monster which are all the same ("Rarrrrr!"). She can point to her body parts (hair, nose, eyes, ears, mouth, teeth and tongue, and of course, the ever-popular belly ... she shows you hers, then demands that you show her yours). She hears a truck outside and says "tuck!" then makes a truck noise ("rrrrrrrr"), and also says "choo choo" when she hears or sees a train.

We all just got over a bout of stomach flu, and Maddie picked up "poo poo" pretty well this week. Whenever she would have an icky diarrhea poop (one night she pooped six times from bedtime to morning), she would cry and when we walked in to get her she would declare, "Poo poo!" Luckily she didn't seem  upset by it, just matter-of-fact.

We also love to sing, and she's now singing along to a few favorites. When I sing "Winnie the Pooh," she kind of fakes the words but joins me in singing the "Pooh" parts. During "Itsy Bitsy Spider" she works her fingers together like I do and sweeps her hands to the side when "out came the sun." She touches her head and shoulders during "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," though she has a hard time keeping up because it moves so fast. Also, during the ABCs, she sings along, pausing at all the right places and making the inflections in her voice as if she's actually saying the letters!

We just started a new nanny share with a 3-month-old baby, and spending time with baby Tzipporah makes me realize how very far we've come ... and how fast it's gone, even when it felt like time was crawling early on.

Monkey Tricks

I will now amuse and delight you, dear readers, with a few of the fun new things that Maddie does that make us laugh these days:

• When someone asks, "Cuantos años tienes tú?" (which means "How old are you?" in Spanish), she holds up one finger. (Clelia taught her that party trick.)
• She has these fun foam bath letters and numbers that stick to the side of the tub when wet. The ones that are in her bath toys collection right now are S, T and 8. One night I taught her the name of the T. But now she thinks that all the letters and numbers are called T. So the first thing she does when she gets in the bath is to find the S, T and 8, post them on the side of the tub and yell "TEE!"
• She loves to play Ring Around the Rosie. I stand on my knees so I'm closer to her height, and we walk in a circle while I sing. When we get to the "We all fall down!" part, I crash to the floor and pull her on top of me, and she laughs like a lunatic. And she constantly walks around the house singing "At-ez! At-ez! At-ez!" (Translated into Adult: "Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!")
• Bath time is a favorite time of day. When I turn on the water to run her bath, she stands on her tiptoes and runs her hand under the water to "test" it, like she sees me do. Then she goes to the cabinet under the sink where we keep her toys, opens it, and carries her bath toys one by one over to the tub to throw them in. That entertains her while the bath fills up.
• She's starting to get really into stuffed animals and dolls. In the morning when Andrew goes into her bedroom, he sits on the floor while she throws her animals out of the crib at him and yells "Uh-oh!" Then he tosses the animals back over the side of the crib and she laughs. She also carries her animals around the house and, when prompted, gives them big kisses and hugs.
• Here's her latest one, which I am proud to have taught her myself: she slaps herself on the chest and yells "ME!" Andrew added in one element to make this a true party trick. While she's on a roll, he asks her: "Who's it all about?" and she answers: "ME!"

Welcome to One

If it's any indication what life with a newly minted 1-year-old is like, I fell dead asleep on the sofa last night before I had a chance to blog about Madeleine's birthday.

Maddie turned 1 yesterday. There was lots of activity surrounding the event, though the real celebration is today, a party with about 16 adults and 7 kids. We have three visitors in town especially for the occasion: Grandma Hines, Great Aunt Elaine and Aunt Stacey, and we all had a big lunch yesterday, during which Maddie charmed the pants off everyone in sight. She was rewarded by the server with a free dish of ice cream for her special day.

As if she knew that she had reached new status yesterday, Maddie was doing lots of new things. She has started giving high fives and was trying to high-five everyone across the table during lunch. She waved a lot. And she talked up a storm, including some new words. She said "block" yesterday for the first time and imitated dog and duck sounds ("urh urh" and "cack cack"). When we gave her her gift, the Fridge Farm Magnetic Animal Set from Leapfrog (a toy intended for 12 months to 3 years), she got almost immediately how to snap the animal parts into their slots. And she's walking like crazy, and seems to have gained a lot of coordination over just the past several days.

Maddie, it seems, is a toddler.

I was reading my blog entries from the days leading up to Maddie's birth, the birth story and some of the early entries after Maddie came home. It's funny how much I had forgotten, and looking back I wish I had blogged even more. I remember it as such a tough time, those first months, but so much of it has faded away now. The whole experience has been transformational, and I have personally changed and learned so much in my first year as a mother. But mostly it's been a miracle, a joy and a gift to be able to watch this little person grow, change, learn, and love. To quote my sister-in-law Stacey during lunch yesterday: "I can't take my eyes off her. All I want to do is watch everything she does."

Happy birthday kiddo! I love you endlessly.

Dogspotting

Last weekend we took Andrew's parents to Napa Valley for a meal at Ad Hoc to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. It was Maddie's first meal at a "fancy" restaurant, though the restaurant is known for being family friendly (and lived up to that reputation -- the wait staff couldn't get enough of our little diner).

From the minute she sat down in the high chair, Maddie spun around to stare at the other patrons, flirting across the room at everybody who would make eye contact with her. Then, she discovered that just behind her chair on a wooden table was a small statue of a pig, like the ones present throughout the restaurant. I neglected to take a picture, but found a shot of the restaurant online to give you some idea:

She peered at this pig for a few minutes, then loudly announced, "Doggie!"

"No, sweetie, piggy," we corrected her.

"Doggie!"

For the next 20 minutes, Maddie remained fixated by the pig, chattering at it and reminding it over and over that it was, in fact, "Doggie! Doggie!"

Since then we've engaged in an ongoing game of doggie-spotting. The latest issue of Bark was endlessly entertaining; she flipped each page, pointed at a photograph on the page, and shouted, "Dog-ay! Dog-ay!" But now her dogspotting has gotten a little ahead of itself, and she's missing the target a little. A book of animal faces, whether they be ducks, pigs, bunny rabbits or foxes, become page after page of "Doggie!" The cats creeping through our neighbor's backyard, which Maddie can watch from her highchair, are "doggies!" And you certainly will never convince her otherwise.

This babe was made for walkin'

Last Saturday Maddie took her first steps. We were hanging out in the living room late in the afternoon. Andrew had just left for a walk with Bentley. I, admittedly, wasn't paying close attention; I think I was reading a magazine. Maddie was doing one of her favorite things, cruising along the TV cart, looking at her reflection in the TV screen and playing with the buttons on the stereo.

Then, she just went for it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her spin around and plunge forward. She took one, two, three, four steps, smiling at me the entire time. Then she tipped forward. She knew exactly what she had just done and was positively giddy, laughing like crazy and getting super excited and hyper, but then she seemed to get shy and wouldn't try it again.

We didn't see her do it again for the rest of the week, but I could see her thinking about it — the wheels were definitely turning. So when we got up yesterday morning, I said to Andrew: "I bet she starts walking today." Sure enough, Maddie was up pretty late last night due to a very good (but late-in-the-day) nap. About 9:30, completely hyper and overstimulated, Maddie started to walk. She walked back and forth between Andrew and me for a full half-hour, though she got so excited that she forgot to keep her balance half the time and kept lunging forward into our arms instead. Then, today, she practiced from time to time, and we even watched her figure out how not to fall: she stopped, regained her balance, and then stepped forward again.

She's still a little unsure of herself, but she's getting it quickly. I have a feeling it won't be long before we're chasing her everywhere!

Sick Baby

This past Tuesday, Maddie woke up with a 100.3 fever. She didn't exhibit any other symptoms, so we assumed it was teething, which was the diagnosis last time something similar happened, and Andrew gave her some Motrin and sent her off to daycare. We checked on her several times that day, and Clelia said she was doing just fine and seemed happy and not feverish.

But she woke up from her afternoon nap with a big of a wheezy-sounding voice, and by the time I picked her up she was starting to get kind of fussy. I took her home and we played quietly for awhile, but I started to notice that she was getting hoarse and wheezy when she babbled and laughed. I touched her forehead and realized she felt warm. Her temperature was back up to about 100.2.

Worried, i called the nurse helpline that we use when the pediatrician's office is closed. The nurse told me it sounded like croup. She instructed me to give her Motrin for the fever, to feed her warm apple juice to help soothe the swelling in her vocal cords, and to take her into a steamy bathroom and sit with her for 10 minutes to help with the coughing. Maddie by this point was starting to cough, a barking cough that sounded like a seal, and she was really tired and obviously not feeling well. She fell asleep on my belly and I held her for awhile. I had given her Motrin, but it was obvious when touching her that the fever wasn't breaking. Another check showed it was close to 102. 

Andrew stopped at the drugstore on the way home and picked up a humidifier and some juice. I tried the steamy bathroom thing and took her temperature again. It was up to about 103, even with Motrin in her system. I ended up laying her down in the bassinet in the bedroom and she didn't stir, just wheezed and snored away. Concerned about the growing fever, we called the nurse line again. The nurse was equally concerned and hung up to page the on-call doctor, with a promise of a fast callback. We waited for nearly 40 minutes, and when the nurse called back she apologized profusely. The on-call pediatrician had forgotten she was on-call and gone out of town. The nurse asked us to take Maddie's temperature again and held the line while we slipped the thermometer under her arm. Maddie was still asleep and the room was dark, so I couldn't see the numbers, but I stood there for a very long time, at least a couple of minutes, waiting for the thermometer to beep.

When it finally did, it registered 104.5.

Our helpline nurse, who had been friendly and chatty up until that point, was very abrupt. "OK, I want you to take her to the emergency department now. We'll send a note to say you are coming." And she hung up.

At 10 p.m., we scooped Maddie up and headed to Children's Hospital. We'd ordinarily be worried about keeping her warm enough on a cool Bay Area evening, but tonight she was wearing her sundress and was burning up, and the nurse instructed us to keep her lightly dressed. Part of me hated to disturb her, she was sleeping so soundly, but I reminded myself that that was because of the fever, not because she was peaceful and restful.

Luckily we live about 5 or 10 minutes from Oakland Children's Hospital. I'd never been there before, but was impressed from the first moment we entered. A new-looking facility, clean, quiet, with prompt and professional staff — it being a children's hospital, I'm not sure why I was so surprised, though I guess after our experience with the Alta Bates ER I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It was late at night and we were one of the few families there; in fact, there didn't seem to be much staff there either, only a handful of nurses and one or two doctors that we could see.

At Triage, they took her temperature and it was still registering at 104.3. The nurse gave her a huge dose of Tylenol. We didn't realize it, but you can give Tylenol and ibuprofen together, and we had only been giving her Motrin. The doctor later explained that they do two entirely different things, so it is safe to combine them.

Maddie was lethargic as we headed to registration, but sitting on my lap she looked up to the wall in the registration office and let out a guttural little laugh. I looked up to see what she was looking at. The office had a framed photo of a silly cartoon cow on the wall, and Maddie had looked up and noticed it; her sense of humor was starting to come back.

They got us into a room pretty quickly and gave us a little hospital gown to put Maddie in (open in the back, of course). By this point, Maddie was coughing from time to time but not enough for anyone to immediately diagnose it. And, the Tylenol had kicked in and her fever was starting to plummet. So when we put her down on the exam table, she perked up and started her favorite doctor's office game: ripping up the paper on the table. 

I guess word had spread that a very, very sick baby was in need of immediate attention, so within a few minutes a doctor walked into the room. She took one look at the ornery one ripping up the paper and said, "Oh, she's not that sick!" Then she left the room and we had to wait just like everyone else. Great timing, Maddie!

The pediatrician who eventually came in examined her but didn't hear the telltale croup cough. The fever had fallen by that point. She told us that while she was pretty sure it was croup, she was a little concerned that the fever was so high and that it could be a urinary tract infection. So poor Maddie not only had to get a dose of a steroid, which would help reduce the inflammation of the vocal cords, but had to withstand a catheter to take a urine sample. She was a good sport throughout the whole thing. While we waited for the test results to come back, she dozed in my arms.

The urine test came back negative, but the doctor told us they would continue to test it over the next couple of days. (Incidentally, the hospital called Thursday and said the results had changed and that a UTI was suspected, so Maddie is currently on antibiotics, and we had to collect urine samples at home using this horrible bag that goes inside the diaper, no fun.) Finally, at 1 a.m., we were discharged with the instructions to see our pediatrician at the office in two days.

Maddie had been sleeping hard on and off since 6 that evening, and now that her fever was gone she felt much better, so when we got back to the house she had absolutely no intention of sleeping. She wanted to play. So I let her play in her room for awhile, then pulled her into the guest bed with some toys and books and eventually got her to snuggle up in my arms and go to sleep. I slept in my clothes and contact lenses and managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of sleep.

The steroids seemed to do the trick, and her wheeziness and cough were less scary-sounding the next day, and her fever never came back. But she felt pretty awful for the next couple of days. I worked from home Wednesday, but the baby only wanted to be held all day, so we hung out on the sofa a lot. I applied the rule I always use for myself on sick days, that it's OK to watch daytime TV while sick, so I turned on "Barney & Friends" and "Sesame Street" and "Clifford" and let Maddie chill out to TV and drift off on my chest.

She was pretty contagious so we kept her away from the kids in the nanny share for the rest of the week. Thursday Grandma Gordon came over to help while Andrew and I worked from home, and Friday I went to work while Andrew stayed home and Grandpa Gordon and Clelia came over to help. By this weekend Maddie had fully recovered; the only lingering effect was her reluctance to go back to sleeping in the crib, especially since she had slept in bed with me two nights in a row.

We've had a stressful couple of weeks here; first I was sick, then Andrew, then Maddie, not to mention a busy work schedule and my dental surgery on Friday. I'm praying that we can keep everybody healthy for a little while now!