Archive for October, 2009
I’m not sure who liked these boots more. Black, suede, and fringe. What’s not to love?
But really, I think she liked them best. (Except for maybe my sister who I think had some sort of a 70′s flashback moment when she saw them.) The minute Ava spotted them she pulled them on and asked to go outside to try them out a bit. And test drive them she did. Sans pants, if you’ll notice.
Much running about with the dogs commenced…
with some ‘sibling’ rivalry surfacing when Sophie became way more interested in eating grass than in chasing the screamy toddler around. Ava tried to convince Sophie to come back out and play…
however Sophie regretfully (not!) declined. That effort was soon abandoned and Ava sought out alternative ways to amuse herself.
Like by trying to convince me (who had no shoes on and dinner on the stove) to take her out to her swingset. I couldn’t be persuaded so she opted to take matters into her own hands.
A prison break was attempted.
And failed.
So she rebooted (heh!) and tried again.
The new approach worked. “Mama, look (yook)!” she said – as she nearly reached the gate latch.
Good thing she still tells on herself. I’m going to hate it when she figures out that to be a successful escapee you need not bring undue attention to one’s self.
And the boots?
Really, they are fabulous!
(And yes, those are boys underwear that she has on. I bought the blue/patterned ones for daycare so I’d know which ones belong in her stash there.)
Let’s see – it was her first fancy dress party – given in honor of our friends’ son’s actual first birthday party. Since all the guests were told to come in costume it was our chance to bust out her first costume (#1 of 4) for the 2009 Halloween season.
She was a cheerleader, Virginia Tech, of course. J and I also dressed up as helicopter parents decked out in all of our (overbearing parental) VT finery. We’re hoping to brainwash her into becoming a diehard Tech fan, especially since I have no intention of paying out-of-state college tuition anyway so she may as well pick an in-state school, preferably one close to nearly all of my immediate and extended family.
We were excited to be invited, especially since Austin and family were soon (sadly) moving away to Alaska. I’ve known Austin’s dad for years and his mom for as long as they’ve been married (also years) and we will miss them very much. They, however, are incredibly excited to be heading north and west to live in the frozen tundra so this just illustrates how nuts (in my opinion) that they are. Hurricanes and Northeasters notwithstanding, we at least don’t have snow and sub-zero temps here in the mid-Atlantic and I, for one, appreciate that tremendously.
We got there a little late due to Miss Ava’s naptime so the party was in full swing when we arrived. We were too late for most of the food but I still managed to eat way too many of the (evil) Oreo balls that Austin’s mom made. We missed the pin the nose on the jack-o-lantern game but got there just in time for the pumpkin pinata.
Ava and Izzy were entranced.
All the kids got a whack or six at it – starting with the little ones first
and ending with Austin’s mom finally ripping it open since no one (adults included) could get it to break just by hitting it.
No matter. Despite the fact that Ava had no idea what a pinata was she sure caught on to the grabbing candy off the floor concept rather quickly.
(The birthday boy was in the puppy suit.)
She was pleased as punch with her haul.
Birthday cake soon followed the mad rush for candy.
The birthday boy tore it up.
We hung out for a bit longer while the kids ate, played, and generally just wore themselves out. We knew that it was time to go when Ava confiscated the (non-working) remote and kicked back in the closest chair.
She was clearly pooped so we sadly said our goodbyes (hate doing this when you know you may never see someone again) and headed out the door. Austin’s mom walked us out, with Austin in arms, and we said our goodbyes (again) on the front porch. I asked Ava to say goodbye to Austin and before I could even blink she’d leaned over and kissed him square on the lips. Twice.
So there it was. Ava’s first kiss with a boy, on the lips – and in full view of her parents.
Ugh. Maybe it’s good they’re moving away. (Joking! It’s not, really.)
October 10th:
The teething. It was, shall we say, intense and Ava had a cold on top of that so our weekend trip to see my mom on her birthday was postponed.
October 11th:
Happy Birthday, Mom!
Good choice to stay home, though. The sickness was worsening and we noticed an ear tug here and there.
October 12th:
J had the day off and had big plans to spend the day with Ava – although it didn’t originally involve spending a large portion of that day with the pediatrician. However, once I got her up and saw that she’d scratched her ears to the point of having raw and bleeding spots in and behind both ears the plans changed rather quickly.
Diagnosis was a combination of teething pain and the beginnings of a double ear infection due to the build up of fluid caused by the cold/sinus infection she had. Doc prescribed Amox.icillin, to begin that night, and we anticipated a quick recovery.
October 13th:
Or maybe not.
I woke her up and was horrified to see her little face swollen and with a rash on her cheeks, neck, and torso. Not only were her little ears still mangled she was now itching and scratching at her face something fierce. I freaked out, of course, and called J at work first and then the doctor’s office next. I refused to get off the phone until I spoke to someone that very minute so our favorite nurse came on the line posthaste. I 99.9% knew what was going on here so rather than go into the office for a walk in appointment I instead emailed a photo from my cell phone and got a response back straight away. Allergic reaction.
I had to get her on to Benadryl right away and heavy dose her (under doctor’s orders) every 4 hours (day and night) for 2 days. There was rapid improvement as soon as she got the first dose in her.
Light Bulb Moment:
When we met Ava in China she was sick. She had a cold and the orphanage director gave us two different types of medication – one was an herbal mixture of some sort and the other was Am.oxicillin. The antibiotic had only been opened that morning and she’d had one dose before they brought her to us. One of the first things we noticed was her flushed appearance and a slight rash on her cheeks. The orphanage director told our guide that Ava was super healthy and this was the first time she’d been sick (therefore I’m assuming it was likely to be the first time she’d been given antibiotics at all).
Because I couldn’t read the instructions on the bottle and no one translated them for us until the next day we did not give her anymore of the Amox in China. Well, that, and the fact that I believed she just had a cold anyway caused us to forego the antibiotics. We did, however, give her a teeny bit of Benadryl to help her sleep since her nose was running like a faucet and causing her to wake up coughing due to the post-nasal drip.
So the light bulb moment came when I realized that she’d had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic in China – we just didn’t know it at the time and we just happened to counteract it by giving her the Benadryl for the nasal drip. The possibility of this never even crossed my mind before and we’d not encountered it here since she’d never been on Amoxicil.lin in the nearly 2 years we’ve been home.
Aftermath:
The doc called in a new antibiotic to start after we finished a couple days of Benadryl. It played havoc on her tummy but got the ears better pretty quickly.
It ended up being a blessing in disguise that we kept her out of daycare for 3 days as two kids in her class ended up coming down with H1N1. This may have helped her avoid the flu – who knows?
And, most importantly, I learned to never, ever give the first dose of a new medication only hours before putting her to bed…despite following the instructions from the doc. It horrifies me – really, really scares me – to think that she could have had a much worse reaction and we would not have known anything was wrong. Even though we checked on her before we went to bed we didn’t see the rash forming due to the low light in her room and she never cried out to let us know she was uncomfortable or itchy or feeling poorly.
Poor baby. One more incident for me to add to the ever-growing stacks of things to feel bad about. Parental guilt – it is everywhere!
Q: Just how long does it take for a man to shop for a brand new 47 inch LCD TV and the associated ‘stuph’ that one must purchase to go along with aforementioned TV?
A: Long enough for the two females with him to give up and head back to the car to wait him out – and long enough for those females to get bored and silly…complete with photographic evidence.
You can see where we’re at, right? Yes, B.est Buy. The only store that J is capable for being in more than 15 minutes at a time without whining. And he was in there for waaaayyyyy more than 15 minutes.
So we broke out the purse camera for some self portraits. She actually took this one herself. Not bad for her first attempt.
Not that mine were any better what with the cheesy grin she was sporting and the sheer exhaustion that I was feeling.
But kisses make everything better – especially when accompanied by overly dramatic eye rolls and exaggerated mwahs!
P.S. Had to edit to black and white because the little purse camera just isn’t all that in low light so the colors/flash were a bit off, not to mention the shutter speed sucks leaving us with some not-so-much-in-focus shots.
P.P.S. He got the TV he wanted and called me into the living room about 9 million times in a futile attempt to show and/or convince me of how.much.better the picture quality or screen refresh rate or something or another is. Honestly, it must be a guy thing because it pretty much looks the same to me except it’s bigger. I’m just happy because I got my living room furniture rearranged as part of the deal.
NaBlewIt Post Date: 11/22/2009
Yeah, I know. Somewhere we missed tooth #18. It just appeared one day out of nowhere and I completely failed to notice.
Tooth #19, however, would be impossible to miss. This back (right) molar has been torturing all of us for weeks. Ava cries and tells us her teeth hurt, she pulls at her ears, and asks for her medicine (Motrin) so it is with much delight that I can (finally!) feel that this one has (finally!) pushed through her gums.
Only one more to go and we’re done with teething – for a while anyway. YAY!!!
