good news and good weather

So she does have an ear infection (no, that's not the good news....). The doctor's appointment was an exercise in strength--she hollered and screamed while the doctor tried to look into her ears. Holy cow, you would've thought she was getting shots. I had to hold her down with my legs, arms, and hands, and even then it was a struggle. But even though she does have the infection, the doctor thinks her waking has to do more with wanting my company in the middle of the night than about being in pain. She agreed, though, that I can't let her cry it out while she's sick, so I have to wait until that's over before I can start getting her back on the right track.

She took her first dose of antibiotic yesterday afternoon. Last night I gave her ibuprofen, put Vicks on her feet (I wrote about that in a previous post if you're thinking, "Huh? Why?"), and gave her a very small dose of children's Benadryl. She had never had that before and I didn't know how she'd react to it, but I thought it might make her sleepy as well as having the benefit of drying up her sinuses.

So, here's the good news..........she slept all night!!!! Thank you, Mr. Children's Benadryl Inventor, whoever you are! Well, I should rephrase that. She sort of slept all night, actually. I hadn't heard her, so when I woke up abruptly at 4:00 AM I was worried because I thought she might've had some reaction to the Benadryl and that's why she wasn't waking up. I laid there worrying about her, so finally I went in to check on her. I very lightly put my hand on her back to make sure she was breathing, and immediately she jumped up and screamed, "Mommy!!" Stupid me!!! So we did the now familiar routine of sitting in the chair and she fell asleep in my lap almost immediately. I put her back to bed, but then I was wide awake. You'd think with all of the sleep I've lost in the last couple of weeks I wouldn't have any trouble sleeping, but it wasn't happening for me. I was up until 6:00, and then slept an hour more until she woke up at 7:00, and she was so happy when she woke up! It's amazing what a full night's sleep will do. She's still stuffed up, but she's in a good mood today.

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. We were supposed to go out to dinner and a movie and she was going to go play with Kaden and go to sleep there until we came to pick her up, but I didn't want them getting sick or her to have to try to go to sleep in a strange place when she's already having such a hard time sleeping, so we had to postpone our date. He was disappointed, but we decided we could still all go out to dinner. My parents are going to be here next weekend so we'll go to the movie then.

Today was a gorgeous day. My husband's been wanting to go down to the state park about an hour from us where there is nice hiking. We usually go at least once a year for a few hours. So even though we had a huge list of things we wanted to do, we decided to do those another day this weekend and take advantage of the beautiful weather and go down there today. On the way down we tried out the car DVD player we borrowed from my brother to use for our vacation (we leave two weeks from today, which is hard to believe!). It worked like a charm--our little one was entertained the whole way with The Wiggles and we had an adult conversation (with an occasional comment from the peanut gallery about Captain Feathersword wearing a hat or Anthony being dressed up like a cat!).

We hiked and saw waterfalls and caves. Our little one loved riding on Daddy's back and playing with the sand and rocks at the bottom of the cave.

And posing with Mommy wearing our glasses.

We ate a picnic lunch and drove back during her naptime. She slept the whole way. When we got home she woke up and played a little bit, but then asked if she could go nigh night! We were trying to pick up the house, so we weren't going to argue with her. I put her in bed and sure enough, she fell back asleep for another hour! We got our cleaning done and he started mowing the grass all before she woke up. It was a productive day. Now we're all ready for another good night's sleep.