Herself

Lyla is feeling much better, so on Halloween, the day when kids love to become someone else, she was content to just be herself again.

And for about ten minutes, a chicken.

Well

You know when you're sick and you don't even remember what it felt like to feel well? You're pretty sure that you'll never get better and that your awful symptoms are actually your new permanent reality.

The same is true when your baby is sick: the happy, sane version of her, the version you secretly think could be in commercials or on magazine covers, disappears. It's replaced by a miserable creature with ooze shooting out of unlikely orifices and a disposition that suggests she might one day commit violent felonies. After a few consecutive sleepless nights, your brain temporarily blocks the memory of your perfect child so that you can deal with the poor beast she has become.

Days pass. It runs its course.

Remember how yesterday Lyla had zero naps but then slept through the night? Well, she woke up at 7:00 this morning and looked like a cocaine addict. That's a direct quotation from her mother. Lyla was up for one hour, ate food, drank milk, and went back down for two-and-a-half hours. Then it was up for another hour, food, milk, and down again for a second two-and-a-half-hour nap.

And then at 2:00 in the afternoon, triumphantly, Lyla woke up for real:

Spikes

For the first time in Lyla's life, she did not nap all day. It's because of her...drum roll, please...ear infection. She's fine when she's up, but when she's down, the pressure builds and she turns from Baby Jeckyl to Psycho Baby Hyde.

So yes, Lyla has an ear infection. The doctor is also fairly certain that she had the flu, though her fever is now gone. For those tracing the development of this fever, it started on Monday, peaked on Tuesday night just shy of 104 degrees, continued at around 100 or 101 on Wednesday, and was nonexistent today. The only way the doctor could explain the 104 was flu.

Which is totally bad-ass. I'd like to purchase for Lyla a black leather jacket with shoulder spikes. The back would read, "H1N1 Is My Bee-otch."

She's sleeping now. If you Google ways to help a baby's ear infection pain, you'll get a whole bunch of nothing. The antibiotics will kick in eventually, but until then it's Tylenol and hoping that once she finally finds a comfortable head position, she doesn't move. I'd like to freeze this moment in time and make it carry through until tomorrow morning. We need the sleep.

Oops: now I hear her. The moment was decidedly unfrozen. This might be a long night.


*Update*

I stand corrected. The sweet child slept all night.

Feverish

Lyla and I hung out together all day, she with her fever, me with my pile of ungraded work, and both of us sleep deprived. I spoke with a couple nurses about what Lyla's sickness might be. Her fever is going on three days, but she doesn't have the terrible cough that afflicts most babies with H1N1. She's congested and very fussy in the crib but generally happy and active otherwise. Drinking and eating are overall normal.

Our favorite hypothesis at this point is that she has an ear infection. There's no ear tugging or pulling--I think those Elmo photos I posted yesterday are a coincidence--but an ear infection would explain her other symptoms. The crib fussiness, one nurse explained, might be due to ear pain when she's lying down. We have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully we'll get some real answers.

Auntie Lori has agreed to be on Lyla duty tomorrow morning and early afternoon, which is a major assist and will allow Julie and I to keep our heads above water at our respective jobs. With all the effort and energy Julie and I have put forth with this sickness, it gets me wondering how in the world single parents do it.

Obnoxious

Any idea what's going on here? Lyla was home again today with a fever, and Julie's immediate thought upon seeing Lyla with her hands on her ears was that she had an ear infection. But after observing Lyla turn the pages, Julie determined that something entirely different was going on.

Lyla was imitating Elmo.

Every time she turned the page to find Elmo with his hands on his head, Lyla did the same. Here's another photo, and you'll see that it's also a different page in the book.


I've always tried to prevent this blog from becoming an obnoxious daily reminder of how cute our baby is, but this...this. I mean, don't you kind of want to eat her face?

I'm staying home with Lyla tomorrow. If she takes requests for her next feat of magnificence, I will ask her to lower her fever.

Convenient

Lyla was sent home from school today with a fever. We think she got it from a boy who was having his temperature taken when Julie picked Lyla up on Thursday. This is proof, perhaps, that Lyla and the boy had been making out.

The fever rule is that Lyla can't return to school until she is fever-free for 24 hours without the assistance of Tylenol. Julie, who is just barely on the cusp of feeling better herself, will stay home with Lyla tomorrow, and I'll stay home on Thursday if necessary.

I was just thinking about how inconvenient it is for us to miss work this week, of all weeks. What's funny is that the notion of convenience disappeared somewhere around Julie's third week of being pregnant, and yet here I am complaining about it like it's a new concept. You can't be the parent of a baby and get upset when life becomes inconvenient. It would be like buying a fish and getting mad at its gills.

After bringing Lyla home, she participated in the following activities:

- Spent 20 minutes emptying Mama's purse
- Ate cheese, ham, bread, puffs, yogurt, and bananas while I made dinner
- Practiced walking
- Chugged milk

Aside from actually having a fever, Lyla did not seem like a girl with a fever. And that, I suppose, is as close to convenient as we're going to get.

Mental

Lyla's watching an Elmo song on YouTube. It's about counting ducks.

Julie felt awful all day today, so I had to be Super Dad. It's exhausting to take care of everyone and everything; I pretty much suck at it.

The house is squalid. There's no way to stay ahead of it all. I made Julie soup and brought her little sandwiches. I bought her bottled water because there was a chance she might actually drink it. She promises she'll stay home tomorrow morning but might go in for the afternoon if she's feeling better. I might hide her keys.

Lyla was demanding today. I think she's simultaneously teething and experimenting with ways to assert her will.

Bottom line, no matter what the so-called experts say about keeping babies away from screens, sometimes you need an assist from Elmo so you don't go insane.