Dop

Tonight Jeff was rearranging Alex's food on her plate to optimize her choosing procedure, and I asked him (told him?) to stop. Alex also told him to "dop" while gnawing on a particularly unruly bit of pizza crust. And of course he did "dop", because what Princess wants Princess gets. :) She's already training the men around her. I like it.

She's feeling infinitely better. So much so that she ran around mostly noodle (naked) for about an hour. Oh, and she's got dual pony tails now. I had an epiphany and realized most of her hair was long enough, so I tortured her for endless seconds getting those darn microscopic pony tail holders in, but she looks friggin hysterically cute in them, so a new hairstyle is born. Until she tells me to dop doing it, in which case...That picture of her looking a little bit put out...well, I think she was, but she got over it real fast.

She also pointed out that the owl says "hoot". I had no idea that she knew that (I'm still not convinced that it wasn't just a really amazing coincidence) but she says it like she means it and very clearly, so she must know yet another animal sound!

More Counting

Alex has had a much better night so far - she stayed asleep for a half hour straight! But ultimately, her snotties caught up with her and she required a quick suction and much patting. That didn't work, so I resorted to the only thing I could think of that might calm her down - I counted verrrrrry slowly to ten. Several times. Whilst patting in time to the counting. Sucess! She's clearly as excited about numbers as I've always been. Yay math etc. :I

Anyhoo, she's still asleep, and it's almost been two hours now. I don't know if it was numbers, antibiotics or crispy noodles (my vote is crispy noodles) but whatever it was that is giving Alex actual sleep, hooray!

Alex counted in (somewhat) even numbers up to ten today. She skipped four because she can't say her "f" sound yet. Makes me wonder what she's really saying when we think she's saying "suck". Hmmm.

We had the extreme pleasure of visiting the baby ER this morning because her cough hadn't improved and our doctors were inexplicably absent from their office. We got special not-really-an-emergency-but-they're-here-so-let's-get-this-over-with treatment, and she's once again on antibiotics for an ear-ache which happened to accompany the miserable cold, cough and teething marathon. The upside? The Chinese buffet is next to our drug store, so we got Chinese takeout for lunch (and dinner, and lunch tomorrow...). Alex likes crispy noodles very much, even when she can't taste them.

Many thanks to Mom for suggesting that we try to get Alex to drink chicken broth out of her sippy cup today to make up for her not eating much with the cold. It didn't work, in fact, she spit it out almost immediately. Not what she was expecting, I guess. It's a little different from grape juice.

Also, many thanks to Lu and Cori for the Ta-Doodles, but we'll be waiting on using those since Alex has, a mere five minutes ago, discovered that her true artistic gift is to draw on walls. Though I did get a great crayon drawing in her sketch book before she discovered her love of crayon-dining-room-wall murals.

We also played outside today since it's in the 60's for some inexplicable reason. Alex was banned from the back yard after attempting to eat Nandina berries, then banned from the front yard for trying the same trick with the Japanese Holly. All in all a successful outdoor adventure considering that she didn't actually ingest anything.

Sick and...

Oh yeah, Alex is also teething. Like she has been for the last how many months? Tooth number thirteen has broken through today, with fourteen, fifteen and sixteen coming in close behind. And now she's finding her crayon-drawing skill on the cover of her classic Christmas videos. I should go.

Bleh, Alex and I are still sick. She coughed all night long, so no one got any quality sleep and we're all more than a bit cranky. Well, the cats are ok I suppose. But we've got to go out shopping today because Alex is bursting the seams of her footie pajamas. Only in the footie region, she's still not breaking any records for weight.

Well, I hear her screaming bloody murder upstairs. Her "showowower" must be over. Off to another day of snot wrangling! :I

Pity She's So Sick

Ok, so I had assumed that Alex has the same nasty cold as me - congested, runny nose, sore throat thanks to all the dripping - but she's also all coughy and sneezy. Even sicker than me? Perhaps. Does she care? Perhaps not.

She's run around the house with more energy today than she normally has. All she wanted to eat today was Christmas cookies. (Go figure, that's pretty much everyone's diet between Christmas and New Year's, no?) So the food choice coupled with copious amounts of juice could explain the energy level. But she was in a good mood too. WTH? She's tough, that we've known forever, but man, what a downer to be feeling awful and know that she feels the same way and can smile about it! Makes me feel like maybe I'm taking my exploding head cold too seriously.

She worked very hard on her pronunciation of "trouble" today. Coincidence? No. Sugar-fueled step climbing and cat harassing - the usual.

But I got time off for sick behavior today and squeezed in a tiny nap. Tippy helped by following my hands with her head. Sadly, she didn't get to plop on my chest to get scratchies since I need all the lung capacity I can get. Poor, neglected kitty. I'm sure she's laying mid-comforter right now lamenting lost petting opportunities today. If she only knew how much time I spent couch-bound because I had to save my energy for baby retrievals......

So, many thanks to Auntie Lu for the cookies that kept Alex alive today. And Jeff for plucking Her Tiny Hineyness from the stairs many many many many times. And thanks to him in advanced for being on baby patting duty tonight.