I know, I know, I already blogged but this house is just a barrel full of laughs and I’m afraid if I try and wait till tomorrow, I’ll forget and then…bammo…the moment will be gone. So for today, two posts.

Leina will only take one nap a day. Why is this important? Because it is literally true. She will only fall asleep once each day. As I have learned, a five minute snooze in the car seat is the equivalent of a three hour crib nap. Take your pick. Same with a two second head nod in the stroller or a ten minute snuggle snooze on the sofa. Once she has closed her eyes, that’s it folks. See you tomorrow. What you are left with is a kid who has had way too much fun and not enough sleep. And so, I am very vigilant about where Leina sleeps.

I am the master of the Oh-Dear-Lord-We-Are-Five-Minutes-From-Home-Don’t-Let-Her-Doze-Off-Now technique. This involves reaching behind my seat while driving and pinching her toes, throwing food behind my head in the vain home that she’ll catch and eat it (or, at the very least, it will hit her in the face and keep her awake) and the hysterical singing of every children’s song I know. Kevin has witnessed my power and is in awe.

So today, we had a free morning and Kevin offered to take the Munchie to Costco to pick up supplies. I hemmed and hawed. A Costco trip is very dangerous. Munchie does fine on the way to Costco, she has a blast shopping at Costco, but getting her home awake takes every last iota of my Oh-Dear-Lord-We-Are-Five-Minutes-From-Home-Don’t-Let-Her-Doze-Off-Now power.

I almost didn’t let them go until Kevin said, “come on, how hard can it be to keep her awake?”

Ten minutes later I was waving them good-bye as Kevin drove off with my child, my checkbook, and the list.

Two hours later, I watched them return. Kevin had this panicked look on his face and he jumped out of the car so fast I figured his bladder must be about to burst. But instead of rushing into the house, he open the back car door and pulled Leina out of her car seat.

“Hurry, hurry,” he cried, “you have to help me! I think she’s about to fall asleep! We have to get her moving STAT!” (OK, he didn’t say stat but I wanted to convey to you the urgency in his voice.)

Sure enough, Leina loved the trip over, she loved shopping, and elicited cries of “how cute” and “what beautiful eyes” from complete strangers. Kevin later admitted that he was secretly thinking, “pashaw, that Chrissie, what an exaggerator. This is a piece of cake.”

And then they headed home. They had only gone five minutes out of the twenty minute car ride when Kevin saw her head start to bob. Somehow, he managed to keep her awake. I suspect he used the throw food behind the seat technique because Munchie was covered in pizza sauce. But even though he fought the good fight, she managed to nod off.

How do I know this? Because at 2pm today, when my child should have been cuddling her blanket and asking for “nappie” she was, instead, screaming “HOP! HOP! HOP!” and bouncing after the cat. When Wicks wisely decided to head out the cat door, Leina began screaming and running in circles around the kitchen island in a game of imaginary chase.

“Well, look at the time,” Kevin exclaimed as he slapped on his pager and grabbed his badge. “Gotta go to work. Good luck with that nap, hon,” he snickered as he headed out the door.

The bum.

But this tale has a happy ending. Calling forth my Oh-Dear-Lord-It’s-Past-2pm-And-Leina-Is-On-Fire power I managed to slowly amp her down and get her into bed. Probably not for long but hey, beggars can’t be choosers, right?

Leina has fully recovered from her horrible illness. Kevin and I are still trying to catch up with her. Sometime during this whole ordeal, it appears that she grew a second stomach because she is eating like a fiend. Today for lunch she ate an entire slice of Costco cheese pizza. The whole thing! About every hour or so, she’ll wander into the kitchen with her latest food request. Soup, chips, grapes, white bread, O’s… the sky’s the limit.

I suspected she was feeling better the other day while we were eating dinner. With Kev on swing, dinner is just the two of us and a bit hectic. I’m usually trying to prep my food and Leina’s food with the dog circling about looking for scraps. So when we finally sat down to eat, I was a bit preoccupied.

“Mama,” Leina began “nose!”

I looked up from my plate and saw her pointing at her nose.

“Yes honey,” I replied, “that’s your nose.”

“Mama,” Leina repeated, “nose!”

“Uh huh.”

“MAMA MAMA! NOSE!” she insisted.

I put my fork down and leaned closer to see what the ruckus was all about. I mean, she’s known about her nose for months now. I was a bit puzzled why the sudden interest in this appendige. As I leaned in, I noticed somthing a bit off. There appeared to be something green sticking out of her right nostril.

“Pea!” my devious daughter exclaimed with glee. Sure enough, there was a single pee stuck up her right nostril. Leina was quite proud of this accomplishment. I was torn between horrified and amused. Having learned my lesson, however, I kept my stern face and refused to crack a smile as I pried the small legume from her nostril saying, “no no Leina, pea in nose owwie – pea in mouth please.”

I settle back into my chair, pleased that my poker face had held, and picked up my fork, ready to resume my dinner when….

Phweeet.

I watched in hilarious awe as me daughter exhaled sharply and a second pea came flying out of her left nostril. Leina seemed quite pleased at this feat. I managed to grab a napkin and cover the face splitting grin that was plastered all over my face as I once again attempted to correct this behaviour between bouts of ill-suppressed laughter.

Who knew that a nostril made such a great pea launching device?

Leina slept soundly last night. No wakings or blowouts. We awoke this morning to the sound of her little voice holding a long conversation with Elmo about Artie-dog. I was so relieved! Of course, she then had a major blow out but so far, we’ve seen glimmers of her old self.

She ate a whole piece of bread for breakfast and drank a little water. Yipee!! I called the doctor anyway because yesterday and today she’s been having trouble walking. She’s wobbly and falls down on her own and has started using props to walk – chairs, sofas or our hands. This worried me and the doctor was concerned too so we’re watching her today, counting wet diapers, and monitoring progress. If she is still stumbling and falling tomorrow, I have to call back and probably take her in. But, the rest of her symptoms are normal dehydration & diarreha related so we know how to fix that.

Drink. Drink. Drink.

I have every cup filled and placed around the house. The kid is never more than two steps from liquid and I’m practically forcing drinking her. She sees me reach for a cup and starts crying “no no no!” but it doesn’t deter me. We need a wet diaper and we need it now! She’s winding down for her afternoon nap which is good. She’s been up and playing since seven this morning. I never thought I’d be so excited to hear that dolly needed her diaper changed.

Here’s hoping the munchkin is on the road to recovery!

Leina is asleep.

No big deal, right?

Yeah, except she’s on this major sleep marathon. I mean, I thought I could snooze but this kid is in a class all by herself.

Yesterday, after a three hour morning nap, she fell asleep at 3:30pm. She didn’t get up until 8am this morning. She was awake for all of one hour during which time she was a screaming grump machine so I put her back down. That was at 10am. And she hasn’t made a peep.

I guess this is a good thing. She’s probably just revving up after her long illness but it makes me a bit worried. I mean, she needs to eat, right? And drink? How long can you go without food or water ’cause this kid’s testing the limits.

Kevin and I have given up trying to be quiet. After the first, oh, five hours of sitting quietly on the sofa we reaized that life went on and began running laundry and washing dishes. And through all that racket? Nada. The bambino slept on. And on. And on.

So here’s hoping all this sleep means she’s getting better ’cause this house is miserably lifeless without her terrorizing ways.

Leina is sick.

Sick seems so benign a word to try and begin to describe her right now. If I took every cold and fever and illness she has ever had since birth and rolled them all together, they still wouldn’t come close to what we have on her hands.

It started Friday afternoon. She was happy and playing and them….whamo…vomit. Lots of it. This was the first time she’s ever thrown up so both she and I were seriously freaked out. I stripped her down and threw her in the bath to clean her off all the while teaching her a new word. Vomit. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes while I rinsed her down and said in her serious baby voice….”mommy, vomit yucky.” I couldn’t agree more.

I chalked it up to something she ate from breakfast ’cause she seemed fine. Until she woke from her nap. I heard her, via the baby monitor, fuss up, cry, and then start gagging. I rushed upstairs to find her shaking and sobbing “vomit…vomit…vomit.” Once more we stripped down and headed for bath. Surely, I thought, this must be the end of it. Ha!

For dinner I gave her plain rice which she wolfed down. Of course, about three minutes later, up it came. It was about 6:30pm and I was getting a bit freaked out so I called Kev and he came home to a very sick child. From about 7pm until 3:30am she threw up every hour. It was heartbreaking. Kevin and I turned into the dynamic parent duo.

When we’d hear the gagging start, we’d hop from our bed and rush into her room. Kevin would wipe her down and hand her to me. I’d do my best to clean her face, cloths, and hair while Kevi stripped the crib and threw on new sheets. Then I’d rock her back down to sleep while Kevin ran laundry all to start the process all over in an hour. We were changing sheets so often that we ran out of fresh ones. All we could do was clean the messy area as best as possible and then turn her around so her head was on a clean spot. Once the sheet was soiled on both ends, then Kev would strip it off.

So, at 3:30am, I’m thinking, “wow, this is horrible. It just can’t get any worse.” Ha! The next time we rushed to the crib not only was our poor child covered in vomit, she had blown her diaper with the worst diareha I’ve every seen. Gross. And so it continued with the double whammy of vomit and pooing all over the sheets every hour.

Saturday dawned and Leina had a fever. The vomit had stopped but she was still blowing out diapers. And she was listless. She wouldn’t talk or walk or even eat. If you did coax a word out of her, it was in a hoarse whisper from a throat rubbed raw from non-stop puking. All she would do was sleep in our arms. Our house was so eerily quiet. I though, “man, how could this get any worse?” Ha!

Saturday night, no vomit. Yippee! Still changing sheets due to diaper overload but we were thinking she was getting better…..until we saw the wierd rash/blisters forming all over her body. They’d start small, then merge together into these giant hot welts. By now, I was beyond freaked out so I paged the on-call doctor to find out if an ER visit was in our future. She assured me that it was probably just a food or bacteria reaction and not to worry. Easy for her to say. Nevertheless, Leina did appear to perk up Sunday night and I thought, “phew, looks like we’re out of the woods.” Ha!

Last night, at 11pm, we heard her wake and start gagging. Yep, we had another round of vomit and blown diapers last night. Today, she has just given up on eating all together. I don’t blame her really. The rash is going down just as the doctor predicted. The newest twist is that every few minutes Leina grabs her belly and diaper area and starts to scream “OWWWWIE! OWWWWIE!” Best I can tell, she’s having some horrible stomach cramping and there’s nothing I can do.

She’s down for a nap right so. So far, every nap as ended with screaming from either vomitting or severe cramping. I’ve given up thinking this is going to get better. We are, after all, on day four of this horrible stomach bug and she hasn’t really improved at all. I keep telliing myself that this too will pass but it seems like a bad groundhog day to me. The same horror over and over. I dread what the night will bring.

I miss my girl so much. Her spirit is gone. She won’t eat a bite and will only lie listlessly on the sofa in a sort of semi-coma daze between stomach cramps. I haven’t had to put away toys or books for days. Dishes are minimal. Our washing machine hasn’t stopped running since Friday and the sound of the churning is the only noise in the house right now. My only consolation is the knowledge that Leina is not the first. Every mom in my play group has been hit by this bug. They all said the vomited lasted four days, the diarreha even longer. So I guess all I can do is keep clean sheets on hand and press the fluids but it’s hard, so hard to see my little lion without her roar.

This morning I went to take Leina out of her car seat. As I started to unbuckle her, she said to me, “do it.”

“Yes honey, mamma’s gonna unbuckle you,” I replied as I fiddled with the different locks.

“No, no, no!” Leina cried and pushed my hands away. “Do it!!” she repeated even more emphatically.

“Alright Leina,” I said tersely, “momma will do it!”

Once again my hands were shoved aside as I tried to remove her arms from the now unlocked straps. Leina looked right at me and said, in her most authoritative voice, “no momma, Leina do it!”

I sat back dumbfounded as Leina slipped her arms from her car seat straps, turned around and gently lowered herself out of the seat. Then she turned to me, face beaming and said “Leina big girl!”

Yes, my baby girl is gone. In her stead is this little force of nature who wants to do it her way. I have to restrain myself from rushing to help her. If I show up too soon, she shooes me away with a stern “Leina do it” and so I’m left to hover nearby, watching her stuggle on her own. If she needs help, she asks but mostly, well, she *can* do it.

I can’t believe how fast she’s grown. It seems like in just the last week she’s decided she can take on this world on her own. She wants to get on her scooter herself, get out of the stroller on her own, feed herself, and get the milk from the refrigerator without a helping hand. And she takes such pride from each accomplished task. We pretty much walk around the house beaming at each other, smiling together, and saying, “Leina do it!”