There are several firsts every parent looks forward to with their new child: the kid's first smile, the first time they roll over, the first time they flunk their SAT exam (wait, that's much later). The next time, though, someone says they can't wait until their kid's first cold, punch them in the face for me.
Eden's been a sad, sad little girl for three or four days now, and while she's finally on the upswing I can't say I wouldn't rather have just taken a swift sharp kick in the groin than suffer through this, Eden's first sickness. Her first real sickness, at any rate; that ITP stuff it didn't cause multiple gallons of snot to continuously drip out of her nose, therefore it doesn't really count. She had all of a cold's usual funbag--stuffy and runny nose, fever, diarrhea, and a cough that sounded like her lungs were slowly crumbling in on themselves. A normal person can just blow their nose and be done with it, at least until the mucus cisterns fill up again, but Eden had to face the Dreaded Snotsucking Bulb Of Eternal Suffering, otherwise known as. . . um. . . I'm not really sure what they're actually called, but every parent knows the thing I'm talking about. If you don't know, just search your worst nightmares. Really hard. Way back in the back of 'em. It's still lurking there. It made Eden's life miserable and I know it made yours miserable, too.
Most parents, I'm sure, just dose their sick one with NyQuil and enjoy many blissful hours of relaxation while their kid sleeps it off. We were lucky enough to get a child upon whom cold medicine has the opposite effect. We dosed her right before her bedtime Monday night; 30 minutes later she woke up and stayed up until 6:00 the next morning (ah, now the title makes sense. Okay, so maybe not). Sarah and I couldn't hang--we had to platoon it, taking 2 hour shifts during the night as Eden's pupils dilated and she twitched and quivered and generally went nuts all night long.
Needless to say, the NyQuil went in the trash the next morning.
Fortunately, she's finally on the uptick, laughing and bullying and being something close to her normal self again. Unfortunately, the cold apparently only left Eden because it found larger game; Sarah is starting to feel the chills and tingles of an impending nastiness. Hopefully I won't have to stick a snot sucker up her nose, too.
Me-Maw lit up, too: "I didn't know what grand meant until I met Eden," she said after meeting Eden for the 1st time.
She also got to meet her cousins- Jenny and Jasmine...
As well as her aunt Pamela and Uncle Tom.
Eden also found a new toy- Me-Maw's walker. It had a little seat on it and really cool wheels. I am thinking about purchasing one for her for Christmas. It kept her entertained for hours (or maybe minutes, but that's a lot right now). She would crawl across the room to get it (oh yeah, I guess we're behind on posts- she's crawling, more on that in another post).
We also got to stop in Nashville on the way there and on the way back to give Eden a break. She loved playing with Lola, the granddaughter of an old family friend; I'm just not sure that Lola enjoyed having her hair pulled as much as Eden enjoyed pulling it. Mike and I have discovered that our child is a little bit of a bully. She has started shaking and making the face that you see in the above picture when she doesn't get her way--kind of scary if you ask me. Not real promising for the future.
I guess that's about it for our trip. It felt more exhausting than that (maybe it was the 12 hours in the car each way?). Here's one more picture of bath time at Me-Maw's. She loves her rainbow fish book, maybe that's a good sign??
Oh yeah and Happy Thanksgiving!
