In Sickness and In Health

A certain pink, bubble gum flavored liquid sits in our fridge. Yes, we have our first bottle of amoxicillin. After more than a week of Gracie just not being herself we took her to urgent care on a Sunday morning. Aha, ear infection. She's almost 15 months old and many people are surprised that this is her first bout with one of these. We were very glad that we knew what was causing her fussiness, but we were also feeling like bad parents for not bringing her in earlier. We'd attributed the non-Gracie behavior to teething for about a week. She also was drooling and had a runny nose. Then we attributed her semi-restless nights to the fact that she'd started day care and was around lots of kids and lots of new situations. A lot for a Gracie brain to process. Still, even with all of that, she usually she slept through the night with a dose of Motrin, so when we had a rare intense night waking, we rethought our diagnosis.

We were happy to have Gracie's sickness pinpointed, because right around this time I started coming down with something AND the swine flu news broke. (Given that both Jay and I work at health-care organizations, health stuff is a constant part of our daily conversations -- and now even more so. We're well-informed worry warts.) I haven't gotten fully sick, although now I have a bit of a cough, a persistent tickle in my throat. (Why do they call it a "tickle" when it's so dang annoying?) Jay is staying healthier but we're now wondering if we've just all got allergies. Who knows.

Being sick hasn't slowed Grace down at all. In fact she's a confident walker these days. She's got a few pairs of "real" shoes now. The first pair I had her try on were some that a co-worker gave us. They had doggies on them -- perfect for my daughter. As you can see, she wasn't quite sure what to think of these crazy things on her feet. These 101 Dalmatians shoes were a bit big yet so we were scrambling a bit to get her a pair that fit before she started day care. I looked online to figure out sizing and good brands. While I care about her little tootsies, I wasn't going to spend $40 on shoes she'd wear for a month, so we headed to Wal-Mart.

Before Grace was born I'd planned on not buying her items with movie or TV characters on them. Well the best fitting -- and best priced -- shoes happened to have Cookie Monster, Elmo and Oscar on them. Heck, these guys were around when I was a kid (well at least Cookie Monster and Oscar were), so they can't be that bad. No Dora or Hannah yet, whew. Even though she has her own shoes now, it seems like her favorite ones are still mommy's. She loves pulling all of them off the shelves in my closet and tossing them in to the bathtub. She also has started trying to put my shoes on her feet.

It's fun to see her mimic the things we do. (To clarify, I don't toss my shoes the tub : ) Sometimes these actions are just amusing, like when she scratches her belly like her daddy does. Sometimes the actions are useful. One of the earliest things Grace mimicked were the motions we do when we wash our hands. That one might be coming in handier than we thought.