So it goes.

As I was starting a load of laundry earlier, I was thinking about Lila and how much I like her. I mean, we definitely have days when we aren't very fond of one another, but there are many more days when we have a lot of fun together. She is so sweet, and she is the funniest little person - I love to watch her play because you can see her learning right in front of your eyes!

Anyway, I was thinking about her and decided that she's my friend. I imagined telling someone that she's my best friend -- but that didn't feel right. As I thought about it more, I realized it's not true and I don't think it should be. She is not my best friend, or even a regular friend. She is my daugther. And that is something altogether different and more special.

I think maybe it's easy to start thinking of your child(ren) as your best friend and I'm not sure that's a good idea. A friend is someone that you lean on and turn to for support. A child is someone who leans on you and looks to you for support. You still have fun times together and, hopefully, can spend a lot of time talking, but they cannot give you the encouragement and perspective that we need our friends for.

I've only been a mother for 18 months and a wife for 4 years, so I know that I have limited understanding. But please allow me, with my limited understanding, to step up onto a soapbox for a moment. I believe that your best friend, if you are married, should be your spouse (i do recognize that takes the effort of two people and is not always possible). And, whether you are married or not, I think you should have a few close friends of the same sex.

Doug and I agree that we are best friends, but when we spend all of our time together and neglect our other friends, it begins to affect us. We need someone who can understand the part of us that only a person of the same sex can really understand. And we need an outside party sometimes to help us with perspective on problems, or just life in general.

I'm not really going anywhere with this. It's just something I was thinking about and wanted to share. And now I can hear that Lila has woken from her nap, so I guess I'll stop. :)

P.S. - Our oven died a fiery death last night. RIP

True.

My mind is a-spinnin' this evening with deep thoughts, but I'll try to keep my post coherent and under control. For starters, I'm feeling much much better this evening. I'm tired and my neck is stiff and sore, but I'm otherwise back to normal - mostly. Lila is improving too. She is still exhibiting severe symptoms of insanity, but we're beginning to see brief glimpses of the child that we remember.

I have felt, lately, that God is taking my ways of thinking and turning them inside out. As I said to some friends recently: The more I get to know people who are different from me, the more I realize that I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did. Truth is absolute. I believe that. And you would think that if something is absolute, then it's easy to understand, right?

But that's where the inside out is happening. Truth is unchanging and yet ever-changing. Truth is so deeply... true that it's hard to keep hold of. You think you have an understanding of something and then it changes shape, just a little bit. The substance doesn't change and the source doesn't change, but the way it looks is just a bit different. It's a very mind-bendy experience.

I wish I could express this better, but it's not happening this evening. I think I'll go watch Doug play video games instead. That I can understand! :o)~

Sick and Sicker

Well, Lila is s-l-o-w-l-y getting better, but now it's my turn to be sick. Yesterday was a rough one for all of us. Everyone got up early to get ready for work and BSF and daycare... and then everything fell apart. I ended up being overcome by nausea and all that goes with it. After about 15 minutes of torture, I climbed back in bed and fell asleep.

Doug woke me up at 8:15ish to tell me that he was leaving for work and Lila was already back in bed! She had been awake for a whopping 45 minutes before she started asking for "nigh'-nigh'". So Doug left and I went back to sleep until Lila woke up again at 9 a.m. At this point, I felt a bit weary, but otherwise okay. Lila seemed to feel the same and we suffered through another 45 minutes where Lila kept demanding "up? up?!?" while I calmly explained (over and over again) that she could sit in my lap or I would rock her or I would play with her, but I was not going to walk all around the house and carry her.

She then decided that she wanted another nap! Okay, this time she goes down and stays asleep for an hour and a half. Just before she woke up, I started feeling supremely nauseauted again. I couldn't even sit upright without feeling like I was going to be sick, so I had to page Doug out of a work lunch and beg him to come home. This he did, very graciously -- I love you, Sweetie!

The rest of the day was spent with me laying ill on the couch and Doug having the same endless conversation with Lila that I'd been having with her. Ugh.

Today I felt better, but not well enough to take care of Lila (because standing up and/or moving still did not agree with me), so Doug stayed home again. The good news is that Lila followed a relatively normal waking and sleeping schedule and was actually content to play with her toys for short periods of time, rather than following Doug around, "up"ing him to death.

I really really hope and pray that tomorrow is even better and that Doug will be able to go back to the office!

Meow!

Well, Lila is still a bit pitiful and extra sleepy today, but she hasn't had a fever in about 36 hours and hasn't vomited in almost that long, so she does seem to be getting better. Hopefully she'll be okay at daycare in the morning!

The weather has been so beautiful for the past couple of days that I've had all the windows open. It feels and smells so nice to have fresh air blowing through the house! It's also making the kitties a little insane. They always get jazzed by fresh air and this is the first time they've gotten any in months!

Charlie tried to start a fight with a big orange cat through the window screen yesterday. Today, Cordy tried to attack a bird through the glass part of the window. They just get so excited sometimes... :) And while we're talking about kitties, Lila has decided that she is the Kitty Enforcer. If she sees one of them doing anything that she feels they shouldn't be doing (like sniffing her toys or breathing the wrong air), she starts saying, "No! No! No!"

I've been trying to explain to her that we don't fuss at the kitties when they aren't doing anything wrong, but that's not working because she obviously feels that they are doing something wrong. Now I've moved on to telling her that it is not her responsibility to tell the kitties 'no'. [sigh] Poor kitties...

More Update

Well, Lila's fever persisted through the night and she even threw up again at around 4:30 a.m. When she got up this morning, she was completely lethargic and I was starting to worry, so we took her to the doctor. Turns out that she has a nasty double ear infection! No wonder the poor thing doesn't feel well! She puked on her Daddy after we got home from the doctor, but after another long nap, she seems to be feeling a bit better.

Update

Poor Lila is still sick. She hasn't thrown up since last night, but she did have a yucky diaper this morning. Since then, she's just been pretty lethargic and she's had a fever all day. She slept a lot during the day and she's already in bed for the night. If she still has a fever tomorrow morning, I'll call the doctor's office. 'Cause, you know, she hasn't been there enough lately... :oI~

Sicky-poo

The Baby Bean is sick. :( She's been puny all day and she's thrown up twice now. I never knew so much yuck could come out of such a little person! The second time, she threw up all over my lap -- oh yes, and I caught some in my hand. I don't even want to talk about it.

Please pray with me that she'll sleep well tonight and wake up feeling better tomorrow!

Good Ol' Lila

I didn't want to speak too soon, but it seems safe now to say that we have our normal child back. The popular theory (among Doug and myself, at least) is that the insanity was the indirect result of the oral albuterol that Lila was taking for a few days. The pharmacist warned me that it could make her hyper and she might have trouble sleeping.

We started giving it to her last Thursday night and she seemed to sleep fine. And then, on Friday afternoon, she turned into the devil. So we think that what happened was that the albuterol was keeping her from sleeping well and she, therefore, became severely over-tired. The rest is history. She was mostly back to normal on Tuesday and by today she is the same old Lila we used to know.

That's not to say that she has entirely given up on throwing fits, but she was already doing a bit of that before The Incident. Right now, she is gleefully playing with her Daddy's belly button and chest hair. I'm waiting for the day that she decides to pull the chest hair. Mwahahahaha!

Insanity and Ghosts

Lila turned into a real toddler overnight this weekend. On Thursday, I had my normal, laidback child. On Friday, I had a crazy monkey girl who would ask for food, then not eat it and throw screaming fits over anything she didn't like. We've considered every possibility from overstimulation (things have been pretty busy lately) to teething to constipation.

Really, all those things are still possible. But it's also possible that this is just a new phase. The weekend was exhausting and tumultuous, but today has been... better. Lila is just waking up from a nap, so we'll see how snack time goes. :)

I did another of my late-night movie adventures on Saturday. This time I saw 'The Messengers.' It wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, but I liked it. It scared me without being too gorey. In fact, it scared me so bad that I kept checking my rearview mirror all the way home from the theater because I was afraid someone was going to jump out of my backseat and grab me! If you like slightly formulaic ghost movies along the lines of Amityville Horror (only much better), then see this one.

Kronsche!

Lila bit my finger today. She bit it so hard that the whole tip of my finger was numb for half an hour! To be fair, I did stick it in her mouth...

She has been an absolute nutcase since sometime yesterday afternoon. I really think that she is teething and I was trying to get a look at her gums when this happened. She was too squirmy and tight-lipped for me to just peek in and see them, so I stuck my finger in her mouth to feel for teeth under the skin or swollen spots. I have done this many many times in her life. But that, apparently, was before she had molars.

She clamped down on my finger like a bulldog and I couldn't get it out until she let go. I still, seven hours later, have a tender red mark on the tip of my finger. OK. Lesson learned. :)

Doug and I got massages this afternoon. Instead of getting Valentine gifts for each other, that's what we did. We got a babysitter for a few hours and went out for massages and an early dinner. A very nice celebration indeed!

Potty Time

Lila has been doing some very amusing things lately related to her potty habits. The three of us were in Dallas this weekend and we went to my mom's on Sunday. My mom, my cousin, and I (or some combination of family members) were hanging out in my mom's room. Lila came wandering in with the box of baby wipes from the diaper bag. I don't remember what, if anything, she said, but I took the box away from her - she has a tendency to pull all the wipes out and fling them about - and told her she could have one wipe. So I pulled one out, gave it to her, and put the box back in the diaper bag.

A few minutes later, she comes wandering back into the room with a diaper that she has pulled out of the bag, saying, "Byepur? Byepur?" She then lay down on the bedroom floor and started trying to put the diaper on herself. When that met with very little success, she gave up and just lay limply on the floor. I, thinking that I'm just humoring her, asked her if she'd like me to change her diaper. And then I felt so bad because she had a big load in her drawers!

We had just changed her not long before and I didn't smell anything. Poor kid! She's trying, in not-so-subtle ways, to let me know that she needs a clean diaper and I'm just not getting the hint! Oh well. It made for a funny story. :)

Today, she followed me into the bathroom, as she nearly always does, and sat down on her little potty while I was on the big one. When she saw me getting toilet paper, she wanted some too [she points to the toilet paper and says 'nose' - she's a bit confused, but we get the idea] so I pulled off a couple of squares and gave them to her. She first gave her nose a quick blow and wipe and then started pretending to wipe her bottom with the paper. It was very funny!

She's been showing other signs of awareness of those functions, so she's on track for potty-training readiness. I'm not in any hurry though and have no intention of trying to potty train her for several more months (unless she just up and trains herself, which i wouldn't put past her).

Okay, I'm very sleepy and I'm not sure this is making a lot of sense, plus LOST is about to start, so I have to go now...

Behold the Mini-Grandma!

It's a bit hard to tell in these photos, but take my word for it...

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

Lila has always liked to rough-house and now she's learning to ask for it. A few days ago, I was tickling her on the belly. When I stopped, she leaned back across my lap and said, "Muh?" ("more") When I said, "More what?" she started pretending to tickle her belly. She was asking me to tickle her more!

Last night, we were playing in the floor - tickling and wrestling, etc. Eventually, Lila wandered away and I went into the kitchen. She came in a few minutes later and found me, then she started pushing me toward the living room. It was the first time she'd ever done that and I had no idea what she was up to. It feels very funny to have a small person pushing you around at knee level.

Anyway, she pushed me into the living room and then started saying, "Muh?" She made some other hand motion as well, but I don't remember what it was. Anyway, she was telling me she wanted to wrestle more! Funny girl!

Oh! I've been meaning to post a couple of photos to show you who my daughter really looks like. I'll do that now...

I'm not feeling well this evening, so I offer the cuteness of my daughter in place of a real post...