The Readiness Is All

Well, now that we've gotten through all of the medical craziness (including a relapse second cold that took us to the doctor again, but not to the hospital, thank goodness) CB is healthy, but gets to have breathing treatments ALL WINTER LONG. The doctors have determined that she has "reactive airways," meaning now that we have had a second incident, they think she's got an asthmatic element to this whole thing. Eric had the same reaction when he got sick as a kid and he grew out of it, so hopefully hers will go the same way.

In other news, CB is 15 months old tomorrow! She's so much fun. She's a little firecracker, still friendly and happy and curious (sometimes too curious, like when we're trying to take her to the store and she wants to touch everything and run everywhere). She's jabbering up a storm. She regularly says "hi," "doggie," "kitty," "daddy," "yum," "yup," and "duck." She's also started saying other random words, which is so much fun. My parents just got home from their mission, and I taught her to say, "Daisy," which is what my nieces and nephews call my mom (Grandma Daisy). It sounded so much like some of the other words she loves to say that it was easy. My other favorites have been "balloon" and "cheese" (which sounded like "bah-oon" and tchee-se" but were in proper context) and FINALLY "bye." She says Mama, but rarely in the proper context. (It's okay. I know she likes me best.) She also makes some awesome dinosaur/lion roars, and she is really good at whispering. She can point to her belly button on command, and just today she pointed to her nose on command, which was fun. When she can't say something, she just makes a jumble of conversational sounds and gestures, nods and head shakes. It's so cute when it seems like she's trying to tell her own version of events.


She loves shape sorters and can put the shapes into the holes if I help her figure out which holes are the right ones. She loves taking things out of their boxes/baskets/bins, lining them up, sorting them, and putting them back in. She also likes getting the boxes all loaded up and carrying them to other places to do the same thing. The other day she was loading my mom's basket of decorative eggs (after arranging them on the end table very carefully) and my mom tried to move the basket closer. She went and deliberately moved the basket further away and continued carrying the eggs from the table to the basket one by one. She loves arranging things. Earlier this week she took the gourds that we bought for our Halloween decor and placed them very carefully on the doormat. It was a stunning effect, but we had to move them so we didn't trip our guests. She loves, LOVES stickers. She puts them all over herself and everyone else, and when she puts them on your cheek, she's likely to pat it to make sure it's secure.
She loves opening and closing doors, yelling in places that echo, waving goodbye to people and blowing kisses. She loves telling you when there is a kitty on her shirt. She notices everything. When we put our our Halloween decorations last week, she was the first to notice all of them, pointing and talking about them. When she wants to touch something, she points and crooks her finger at it like when you want someone to come, but upside down, like she's waving with one finger.

Pointing to a grasshopper

My favorite game is when I hold out my arms and she runs over and hugs me, then walks away and does it all over again. She loves being tickled by my dad, who hovers his tickle hands over her belly for a few seconds until she starts giggling in anticipation. When he stops tickling, she sticks her hand up and makes tickle motions at him so he'll do it again. She loves her daddy, and gets a huge smile on her face when he gets off work. They played their first game of hide and seek the other day, with Eric running around corners and hiding, and CB coming behind him and giggling like a maniac whenever she found him. Eric likes to take her on long walks, and she gets excited when we go and get her jacket and hat so she can go. She loves helping Grandma, which is so fun to watch. The other day my mom was wiping down counters and CB pulled a rag out of the door and started standing on her tip toes to try to wipe the counter herself.

Helping Grandma

She just started understanding clothes, and sticks her arms out to help us put her jacket on and her feet up so we can put her shoes on. She's more helpful with these articles of clothing than any others, I think because she now knows they mean she gets to go outside. While she runs away when I try to put on her pajamas, she is nothing but obliging when I try to put on her jacket.


She's starting to get more picky about her food - less excited about vegetables than she is about candy (incredibly) but she is great at feeding herself . . . and at begging for food. I think we'll hang onto her a little longer.



All in all, she's just about the sweetest baby that ever was, and we love her more every day (especially daddy, who thinks she's a million times more fun now than she was as a newborn).


And a couple more recent videos just for fun:

Tuesday morning, CB woke up with a totally innocuous runny nose. She was a little grumpy, but we went to the park and played on the slides and she was fine. Wednesday morning she woke up happy and delightful, even though she slept a little longer than usual. During the day she got grumpier and grumpier, but I assumed it was just the cold running its normal course. That evening she clearly wasn't feeling great. She wanted to snuggle a lot more than usual and didn't have much of an appetite, so we put her to bed early and she went down without any protest.

Snuggling with my sick baby - totally normal.

And then she woke up every twenty minutes. All. Night. Long. As soon as she started getting into REM sleep she woke herself up coughing and started crying, and then she would start falling back asleep and the process would start all over again. Around 10:30, we decided to see if she would do better if we tried to let her sleep with us for a little bit. Eric gave her a blessing of comfort in the hopes that it would help her get through the night. She slept for a little longer at a time, but continued waking up (plus she was hogging the bed.) She also seemed to be having a hard time breathing, but it didn't seem too out of the ordinary for a stuffy nosed baby at night. After a couple of hours, we tried putting her back in her crib, but we were starting to get a little frustrated (plus we were sad she was so miserable).

Around 1:30, Eric called Teledoc, a service we have through our insurance where we can call a doctor whenever we want so we can check before going in to the doctor (since our insurance isn't amazing). They told us that her consistent waking up and heavy breathing were normal for a baby with a cold, so Eric and I decided to just ride it out and take shifts. (Side note: we will be cancelling Teledoc shortly. We found out that our pediatrician has a night line, and CB's own doctor was on call that night.)  Eric took the first one and snuggled her on the couch and tried to doze, and after a few hours I did the same. By the time Eric woke up, CB's breathing sounded awful, she was exhausted and totally lethargic, so we decided to take her to the doctor. Eric had a job, so he held CB for 10 minutes while I threw on clothes, and then we ran to the doctor while he got ready and headed to the Women's Tech Awards. (Both of us were in slightly exhausted stupors.) We thought she might have croup or something like that, and when we called our pediatrician, the nurse seemed to think we should come in right away.

Thursday morning, just before we went into the doctor.

One of many positions in which she fell asleep, then woke right back up after about 20 minutes.

By the time we got to the doctor's office, CB was making really audible sad noises with every breath. I didn't even finish checking in before the nurse had us in the back room to check her oxygen. She put a little band-aid with a sensor on her toe. After a minute she said, "I'm going to check her other toe. She isn't blue enough for her oxygen to be this low." And then she checked the other toe. And then the nurses started pouring into the room with oxygen masks and Albuterol.

At that point, CB's pediatrician came in and told me that the Albuterol (which is a medication they use for asthma patients) would hopefully help relax her bronchial tubes enough that her oxygen could get up to normal. But, she explained, if they couldn't get her breathing better pretty quickly, we would need to go to the hospital. And because her oxygen was low, we would need to take an ambulance, because that was standard procedure for respiratory problems. At this point, I started crying like a crazy person and the nurse offered to call Eric. (At some point they asked if there was anyone else they could call to be with me - Grandma or someone, and that made me cry harder because my mom and dad will be back from their mission in a WEEK, for crying out loud.)

Well, when they stopped giving her oxygen it immediately dropped back down, so the next thing I knew I was running to my car for the carseat, and when I came back there were 4 guys standing in the hall with one of those giant scary stretchers. They strapped the carseat to it while they asked me some questions, and then they buckled CB in and hooked her up to all kinds of monitors.

On the ambulance ride, the ambulance guys (paramedics? EMTs? Firemen? I'm just not sure, but one of them was named Roundy) tried to make small talk, probably because I kept crying. CB relaxed and fell asleep on the way there (probably because she was so happy she had air). My favorite moment of this ride (if you can say such a thing when you're in an ambulance with your 14-month-old) was when one of the guys said to the other, "Okay, now what's the most important thing to do?" And the other guy started saying something about checking her levels of something and the first guy interrupted him and said, "No. Get her a stuffed animal!" So CB got a teddy bear from her ambulance ride, which she wrapped her little hand around and held through most of her treatments.

We got to Primary Children's Hospital and they got CB started on another treatment of Albuterol. They explained to me that she probably didn't have asthma, and even if she did they wouldn't diagnose that until she'd had more than one episode and was over two years old, but since she was responding to asthma treatments, they were going to keep giving it to her until she was breathing better. They told me I would have to keep her mask on while she was getting the treatment because she wouldn't like it, but she was so exhausted and sick she barely touched it.

Albuterol treatment, ambulance bear, sad baby.

At some point, my brother texted me and asked what he could do, and I told him it would be nice if Eric could be there, so he went and relieved him from where he was filming the Women's Tech Awards. (Clearly we were not thinking like functioning people, or we would have come up with this solution earlier, since my brother is Eric's business partner.) Eric came up to the hospital about the time that the doctors came and told us that they thought CB was going to need to stay over night, which floored me. I knew she was sick, but it hadn't even occurred to me that she would be staying in the hospital.

They told us that they were going to the Rapid Treatment Unit (the RTU) which they use almost exclusively for cases like this - kids who aren't sick enough to be admitted the hospital proper, but who are sick enough that they need to be observed for about 24 hours, so they need a more comfortable, long-term room than the ER. (For the parents, that is. There wasn't anywhere to sleep in the ER room.) They wanted us to be able to have her off the Albuterol or off the oxygen because they didn't want to send us home with both, so until they could decide which was helping more, we couldn't leave. On the bright side, the RTU is cheaper than a regular hospital room because it's kind of between outpatient and inpatient care. It also has doctors in the unit at all times because their goal is to get the kids home as quickly as possible, so they get pretty intensive care.

Before they moved us to the RTU, they gave CB another treatment of Albuterol and my brother, who had finished his job, came by to give CB a blessing with Eric. The blessing was really lovely and helped me feel more calm about the whole thing. (Funny side note: in our church we use consecrated olive oil to give blessings of healing. Eric carries a little vial on his keychain, but he hadn't changed it out for a little while and it had gone kind of green. They were debating whether that mattered when our nurses and respiratory specialist came in, and when we asked if we could give her a blessing before they put in her IV, the respiratory specialist (Steve) asked if they needed oil. Because of course they had that at the hospital. Eric couldn't get over the strangeness of Utah and the prevalence of Mormons.)

We moved to the RTU and they put an IV in CB because she was dehydrated and too lethargic to drink much, and they said this would help loosen up her congestion and perk her up a bit. They did this by turning off all of the lights in the room and putting a flashlight under her hand so they could see her tiny little veins. The nurse who did this was so excellent and got it in perfectly on the first try with minimal fuss from CB, although that was probably partly because she was just so out of it.

Sad baby IV

We got settled, had some lunch (first food either of us had eaten all day at about 3:00) and then Eric headed home to pick up a few supplies to get us through the night. Poor CB had to have another Albuterol treatment, and she was much more distressed about it this time, which I assumed was because she was starting to feel better. It took a long time to calm her down. Weirdly, we found a station on the TV that just had calming music and fish (like an in-room aquarium) which she LOVED. She was more perky than she had been all day looking at those fish. She also ate a little applesauce and some cheerios, which made me very happy.

Watching the fish (Friday morning, not the day she went into the hospital.)  So happy.

The next few hours were rough. Lots of treatments, lots of calming, more treatments, more calming. None of us got much sleep through the night with people in and out to test vitals and give treatments, but the nurses decided to stop giving her Albuterol and try suctioning her nose out instead (which was HORRIBLE for CB and horrible for me to watch) and it seemed to help even more than the medicine had, so we kept on that route. In the morning, the nurse asked if CB was a light sleeper at home because she kept waking up when they came in. I told her CB has been sleeping through the night since she was 2 months old and bit my tongue so I wouldn't say, "Maybe she kept waking up because you kept coming in and flipping on the lights and poking her. Ever think of that? That wakes me up." (She really was a fine nurse, but this struck me as a slightly ridiculous thing to say. I realize you have things to do and need a light, but she didn't wake up when the tech came in to do vitals because the tech left the dang light off.)

The night was also long because the monitor on CB's toe kept falling off or coming loose, and then everything would start beeping and we'd all freak out and wake up, until it had happened multiple times and then I was just mad about all of the stupid loud instruments everywhere because I was so tired. Someone finally put more tape on her toe at like 5 am.

When we woke up the next morning and they suctioned out CB's nose again, she was downright perky. They gave us a toddler menu and we ordered her some scrambled eggs, a blueberry muffin, and a strawberry smoothie. She was delighted about the eggs, and it calmed her down very quickly post-suction.

After breakfast someone brought us a stack of books, and then CB wandered around the room a little. She was acting so much more like her normal self, and it was good for all of our souls. After she'd wandered around a bit I snuggled her to sleep.

Exploring her room

Oh hey!

Eric was calling around because he wanted to take care of our bill before we left. We have insurance, but we have a high deductible and wanted to try to pay in cash because we'd heard you could get a discount. After three phone calls and a trek to the financial office, he found out that if we decided not to have them go through our insurance at all, we could get a 25% discount, and if we paid it off within 30 day we got another 15% off. 40% off for not using our insurance. Our bill was pretty much our whole deductible, so we would have paid all of it anyway. Kind of still amazed about that one.

(We also told our nurses we would be paying cash at this point, and weirdly, suddenly we were on the fast track out of there and they were asking if we wanted them to give her tylenol or wait until we got home. Obviously they didn't skimp on care and we didn't ask them to, but the perspective is different when they know your insurance isn't paying it all for you. Nuts.)

One more suction and a check by the doctor, and by 2:00 we were on our way home - with an oxygen tank and an order to be able to go to the suction clinic as much as we needed for the next week. We all felt so relieved to get off the IVs and the monitors and out of the hospital. CB had a huge smile on her face as we pulled into our garage. She walked around her room with new delight and was especially excited to see the beads that she loves to wear all over the house.

Final check with the doctor

Heading home!

The oxygen tank has been fun - she's basically on a leash, and although she has been pretty tolerant of the cannula in her nose, she gets frustrated and tangled. It's hard to go up stairs, and if she starts to wander off, I basically have to jump up and follow her with the rolling tank or else she gets pulled back by her face. We've been reading lots of books (Eric even stopped by DI and picked up a stack of new ones for her), taking long baths to help clear out her nose, and taking walks so she'll hold still and rest without being frustrated. Tomorrow we go to the doctor and I'm hoping she can get off the oxygen. I'm so grateful that she recovered so quickly, and I'm so grateful she's been such a trooper through all of this, and that I had Eric to go through it with me. Initiation into the terrors of motherhood complete, I guess.

A couple of final notes: I found it weird that once we got settled in the hospital and the treatment started, I felt very calm. I knew that the doctors were doing what needed to be done, and I wasn't scared that CB wasn't going to come through it. I feel very grateful for this gift of peace, which I am sure came from my Heavenly Father.

We have had such wonderful support from our friends and family. I received so many sweet texts, emails, and messages sending love and offering help if they were near by. Once we got home, my sweet neighbor brought us her delicious cinnamon bread, and my sister-in-law sent us dinner Sunday night even though her own kids are sick. We are so grateful for the prayers and warmth we have felt from the people who love us and our little one.

And now some pictures of being home with an oxygen tank!

So happy to have this laughing little girl back.

Saturday afternoon walk to the grocery store for fritters.

At home church.

Daddy sure is hilarious.

Checking out some new books

Okay blog, it's been awhile since you had an update that wasn't a CB monthly, and it's time to at least be a normal record-keeping blogger. I'm going to take a page from my friend Melissa's book and at least try to keep a log of our general goings-on, since I'm also blogging elsewhere.

Eric is getting ready for his business partner (my brother) to come back to the business this month, and it's exciting. I think having more than one person who can do everything that needs to be done is going to be really beneficial, and I think it will also be more fun for him. They have a big job coming up at the end of this month in Wisconsin, so they get to start off with a business trip together. Meanwhile, he fixed our dishwasher last week like a boss, and now he's trying to figure out why the lawn mower won't start. Such is the never-ending stream of excitement that is our life.

I have started putting in more regular hours for Mustache Power, and have started working on some more regular blogging, some website tweaks (we put up a new website recently, but it isn't quite finished yet, partially because it went up and then everything got put on the back burner while all efforts went to InstructureCon). CB is taking more regular naps now and being generally more independent in her play, so it seemed like a good time to get back to a regular schedule, even if it's only an hour or two a day right now.

My parents will be back from their mission sometime in the next month and a half (!) so we've started thinking about our plans when they get back (or rather, we have been thinking about them but now have a better idea of what we're doing, sort of). We've decided we'll probably stick around here until the end of the year, and then we'll move into an apartment a little closer to the business partner brother. Of course, this plan has changed several times in the last few months, so we'll see if we stick to this one. For a few weeks we toyed with the idea of buying, but we decided we aren't quite ready for that level of responsibility yet. We'll give it a year or so. Meanwhile, I'm having fun thinking about furnishing our own place again, contemplating how well I could refinish furniture on KSL, making plans for organizing CB's room, realizing that it might finally be time to throw away some of my socks. (Seriously. I have a whole (not small) drawer packed full of socks. I'm not sure how this happened.)

CB is walking! It's so crazy to see her stand up and toddle across the room. Crawling is still her preferred mode of transportation, but she's walking more and more and seems tickled with herself when she makes it a long way without falling. I love that she makes herself laugh now.

Last night we were playing in her room, and she was just thrilled with Eric. She was giggling and stealing his glasses (and gloating about it) and just generally being delighted with him. I said, "CB, give Daddy a kiss!" which is something she has kind of been doing lately, but not consistently. She walked right over to him, leaned over and gave him a big, open mouth kiss on the cheek. Eric was so pleased he kept chuckling to himself for a couple of minutes after. It was a very sweet moment.

Church is getting harder with CB again. This week, it went like this: Arrive at church. Realize CB needs a diaper change. Change diaper. Go to class. Repeatedly try to keep CB from distracting the Relief Society by talking to the baby behind her ("Hi bebe!") and making him giggle. Finally give up when she crawls around to play with his toys. Smell a suspicious smell. Head to the diaper changing station again. Come back for Sunday School. Five minutes in, take CB to the mother's room to chill. Head back into class. Let CB walk down the row until two minutes later she falls down and bites her lip. Leave class holding a shrieking baby. Calm baby. Notice blood flow. Go back in a panic for husband. Calm baby and mama. Walk the halls with baby to calm her down and distract her. Go to Sacrament. Fight to keep baby on bench. After sacrament is passed, smell another suspicious smell. Diaper change. (Seriously, I don't know what she ate.) Finish meeting with lots of snacks, books, jabbering to the back row. Come home and collapse. Wonder if they'll take her into nursery 5 months early.

Luckily, this weekend also included a trip to Park City (we had an awesome coupon for a $20 gift card and a sheet of 20% off coupons) where Eric and CB both got new pants, and I bought myself a shirt and a pair of shoes, plus we bought some raspberry salsa. Didn't know such a thing existed, but it was tasty. On Friday night we went to dinner at City Creek and then let CB play on the splash pad, which brought her great joy.

Finally, we recently got our pictures from our Houston trip. We had one year pictures taken of CB and her cousin, and they are so adorable. Observe a few of my favorites:

Is it possible? Can you really be a whole year old today?

CB, my life has changed so much in the last year. I can't believe that the tiny baby I delivered one year ago is now such a delightful, funny, smart little girl.

Likes:

• Snuggles with Mama or Daddy, or both! 
• Having a big old bunch of people around to say hi to, which we discovered on our airplane ride to Houston. You made friends with everyone. 
• Music and dancing to it
• Ducks
• Grapes
• Reading books and bringing them to us (Spooky Old Tree is a favorite this month)
• Playing with your cousins
• Cake!
• Water, hoses, beaches, etc. 

HOW?? How are you going to be a year old in ONE MONTH? It's a good thing you just keep getting cuter, or I would be bawling at how fast you are growing up.
This month:

Likes:

• Playing in water, even when it's cold, even when she's being sprayed with a hose
• Eating whatever Mom and Dad are eating
• Reading books on Mommy's lap, especially Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, which warrants some air drumming and waving to some of the monkeys
• Dancing,  especially to "Rock Around the Clock," which is apparently the bounciest song ever. But she'll dance to everything, including the classical music on her Baby Einstein toy. 
• Daddy's new beard, which is SO much fun to touch
• Skyping with Grandma and Grandpa
• Unloading drawers at the speed of light

Dislikes:

• That moment when she gets set in her crib for naps (but she's getting better)
• Diaper changes
• Hot car seats
• Being pinned down, put on her back or otherwise restrained.

The one in the middle is you dancing.

Accomplishments and adventures

• Inventing her own dance moves
• Standing on her own without pulling herself up on anything
• Yelling, "Yay!"
• Saying "Hi!" when I walk into the room (or something that sounds like it but is more like, "HAAAA!"
• Nodding and saying something that sounds a lot like, "Yep," which is adorable. 
• First trip to Lagoon! 
• Tried the regular bathtub, loved it, scared the heck out of Daddy and went back to the baby bathtub.
• Sticks hands in the air to get out of the high chair when she's done
• Helped Daddy at the chalk art festival for the first time

It was so crazy on Mother's Day to think about the fact that last year on Mother's Day I didn't even know CB. Eric bought me a changing table that I'd been coveting and we set it up and sat in her room and dreamed about what it would be like to have our baby.

And now she's 10 months old and Eric and I have been parents for 10 months, and it's all very surreal.

On Saturday, my mom sent me a gift card and a sweet note, so I was browsing amazon for a sewing basket, which was on the top of my wants list because I am getting tired of digging through my fabric box for my scissors and seam ripper and such. After I'd been browsing on and off for a lot of the morning, Eric asked if I wanted one of my mother's day presents early (I thought I already knew what my present was because I talked Eric into buying balcony seats for The Barber of Seville this week). Then he went to the garage and pulled out an adorable sewing basket that he bought earlier in the week after I'd been working on a project and saying, "WHY CAN'T I FIND ANYTHING? I NEED A BASKET!"

Sunday morning Eric took CB so I could sleep in, then brought me some crepes in bed (on our wooden pizza platter, of course.) He and CB also gave me an award for Excellence in Mother-ing, which was fun, especially because they came in with CB holding it.



CB was still sick, so we decided that would just go to sacrament meeting. Church is always exhausting for her, and she had just been so miserable. And then of course she wouldn't go to sleep until about 20 minutes before we were about to leave, and I didn't have the heart to wake her up, so we just ended up home all day. (We were dressed for church though. That counts for something, doesn't it?)



We had dinner over at my brother's house with his family. Eric and I made some roasted potatoes, Eric made a salad, and Julie had some delicious ribs, rolls and dessert. Yum. It was fun visiting with them, and we picked up some new hand-me-down jammies for CB that her cousin had outgrown. (Just in time too - we'd just talked about needing to get her some summer pajamas because her room is SO warm.) Then CB got completely exhausted and we came home to put her to bed and she just collapsed. Poor baby.

CB, this has definitely been my favorite month so far. Why? Because you have started waving, clapping, dancing, playing the piano, making friends, and so many other adorable things. I feel like your personality has just exploded this month, and it is delightful. Let's take a look.

Likes:

• Exploring the house and unloading everything in sight
• Looking at books, turning pages
• Black beans
• Blowing her own zerbits
• Music (she always immediately starts bouncing your knees and smiling) and dancing with mommy, especially if I dip her (she starts leaning back again as soon as she comes back up)
• Feeding herrself
• Swimming and the socialization it involves
• Children, especially 10 year old boys for some reason
• Drawers full of things
• Sitting outside and crawling around in the grass
• Glasses (or "face toys" as I like to call them)
• Brushing her teeth

I swear that I thought you were teething about 12 times this month, and you probably are (your drooling had eased up a bit and then came back with a vengeance, plus you keep chewing on my knees and arms) but still no more teeth, and I can't even tell which ones might be coming in. It's a mystery.

Side note: baby clothes sizing is such a joke. You fit well into most 12 month clothes, but you're still completely comfortable in 9 month clothes, and even some 6 month shirts. It's ridiculous.

You love to drum on everything. You love to play the piano and crawl over to it all the time. You love to dance and bounce to music. You love to "paint" in your food when it's something that leaves liquid behind like black beans or pasta. I assume that means you'll be artistic in some realm or another (although it's okay if you aren't, because clearly you appreciate those things anyway).

I know every mother thinks their child is a genius, but I really am always amazed by how much you understand. I love it when I say, "Where are you going?" and you stop to wave at me before you carry on. I love that when I say "Come back here!" you usually do, and when I tell you not to drop your plate off the side of the high chair, you bring it back over the tray. (This doesn't mean you don't head off again or drop the plate a minute later, but it's cool that you understand.) Last night I was showing Daddy how well you turn the pages of board books, and you had your toothbrush in one hand, so you weren't turning it. Then I said, "Okay, your turn. Turn the page," and you were on it. Your Daddy was so impressed, which was fun.

On the day of your 10 month birthday you woke up sick (which is why I didn't get your post up until today) and although you tried to be happy, you had some pretty sad moments throughout the day. I took this picture in the evening while we were on a little drive:

So miserable.

 Today was Mothers Day, and you were in slightly better spirits, despite running a little fever and being all congested. You gave me a delighted smile when you and daddy brought me breakfast in bed and an award for "Excellence in Mothering." It's so sad when you're sick, but I love the snuggles. I'm so happy to be a mommy, especially when my baby is you.

Love,

Mama