Ummm....let's just say that this week isn't going to win my vote for favorite week of 2010.  It's not going to even make it into the nomination process.  And don't think it's one of those gem of a weeks that gets overlooked in the nomination process and that there will be a bunch of 4th week of January, 2010 lovers out there lamenting the fact that this week wasn't nominated.  Because, folks, overall, this week stinks.

Because I'm weird like I am, I'm saying this week started last Friday.  I don't know why - I can't think of any calendar where the week starts on Friday.  Let's just say that on the calendar according to Daphne, the week starts on Friday.  But, only for this week.  Normally, I align with the rest of this country about the first day of the week.  Which is to say, I have no idea whether the first day of the week is Sunday or Monday . 





Friday was Gracie's birthday and the start of the day was really wonderful.  Abigail went to school and I drove downtown to pick up the little cakes that my big girl had requested for her classmates.  Since she was a little bitty thing, Grace has had a fondness for the petit fours from a local bakery.  My personal preference and Gracie's too, would have been to make homemade cupcakes and take in to her friends.  But because of some fear that homemade food might posion children in public school, we aren't allowed to bring in anything homemade .  I am not a big fan of cupcakes from Walmart or the grocery store.  They're too big, too expensive, and well, they just taste yuck to me.  So, I asked Gracie if she wanted me to get "little cakes" from Jay's Bakery for her school party.  She readily agreed.  I had no trouble picking them up (unlike the time at Walmart where I'd ordered a cake and went to pick it up and they looked at me like I was from the Planet Idiot...are you sensing a theme here?) and even had time to swing by and pick up a bagel from my favorite bagel shop, make a quick run in Target, and field a few questions on a conference call.  The sun was shining and I remember thinking, "Wow!  I really love my life right now!"  (and even though it's been a rough week, I still feel that way).  I met Gracie at school and had lunch with her in the cafeteria.  She'd asked me earlier in the week if I'd come eat with her and she was so cute when I got there, jumping up out of her seat and running toward me.  I'm sure I don't have too many more years of the highlight of her birthday being her mama coming to have lunch with here, so I'm taking advantage of it whenever I can!  Here's a couple of pictures I took of her in the cafeteria and back in her classroom.

everything on the page is from the January BYOC at The-Lilypad

It was Friday night that everything started to go downhill.  I cooked Gracie her birthday dinner and my grandparents came down to celebrate with us.  About halfway through dinner, Gracie said she didn't feel well and wanted to go and sit on the couch.  Within an hour or so, she was curled up and crying because her ear hurt.  My poor baby...sick on her birthday!  We gave her some Motrin and some ear-numbing drops and finally she fell into a very restless sleep.  On Saturday morning, she woke up feeling a lot better.  I started to think maybe she'd just gotten water in her ears and that she didn't have an infection (I'm nothing if not hopeful!).  Steve headed to work and I went ahead and took the girls down the my grandparents and went to my scheduled photo session.  Steve thought I should go ahead and get Gracie an appointment just in case her ear was infected, so I called the pediatrician as soon as they opened to try and get her in.  Their appointment times are limited on Saturday and there was no way that I could get all the way down there at the time they needed me.  Their suggestion was to take Gracie to the Emergicare clinic if we felt like she needed to be seen before Monday.  Lovely, just lovely.  Have I mentioned that we don't have health insurance right now?  We're in the middle of a 90 day waiting period before the insurance at Steve's new job kicks in and the cost of COBRA from his last employer would have cost more than the car payment, the van payment, and our mortgage combined.  Sheer insanity!  So, we decided that we'd just ride it out and hoped no one would get sick.  Hey, Murphy!  Are you and your law laughing at us?

So, we debated back and forth about taking her.  Okay, that's not true.  I debated back and forth.  Steve was determined that we needed to take her.  I, because I'm a sucky mom, kept trying to convince myself that she really didn't need to go.  (In the for what it's worth department, Gracie was convinced she didn't need to go).  Finally, though, reason won out (and the fact that I don't generally let my six year old make medical decisions for herself) and the girls and I loaded up and headed to Emergicare.  I was afraid Gracie was going to totally flip out.  She flips out at her regular doctor's office and she's not a big fan of change either, so I thought we were heading into the perfect storm of fit-pitching.  Of course, she was a perfect angel and did everything that the doctor and nurse asked her to.  She explained all her symptoms and also her belief that she did not have an ear infection but simply had water in her ear from her bath the night before.  Fortunately, the doctor didn't just take her word for it and actually examined her.  He discovered that her ear was fire engine red behind her ear drum, a clear indication of infection.  So, an hour later, armed with a perscription for antibiotics (free from Publix, thank you very much) we left.  All in all, I felt like we'd dodged a bullet...the doctor's appointment was fairly cheap at $95.00 and after her first dose of antibiotics Saturday afternoon,  Gracie really seemed to be feeling better.  I breathed a sigh of relief....

Saturday night Abigail started acting like she wasn't feeling well.  She was more tired than usual and just seemed really run down.  By 11:00 her temp was over 104 degrees and she threw up.  Here we go again, I thought.   Even though ear infections aren't generally contagious, my girls tend to both get them at the same time.  Abigail said her ear wasn't hurting, though.  When we asked her what hurt, she'd just point to her tummy.  On Sunday, Steve took Gracie to visit with our family in Mobile.  I sat beside Abigail on the couch and took her temperature 27,000 times.  She was pitiful.  I called the doctor who said to just alternate Tylenol and Motrin and as long as she was still take liquids and acting alert to wait and bring her on Monday morning (Abigail has a history of running high fevers, so the fever in and of itself didn't concern the doctor).    Even with both Motrin and Tylenol, her fever was staying above 102, so at 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Abigail and I were sitting in the parking lot of her pediatrician waiting for them to open the doors to walk-ins.   (Did I mention we still don't have insurance?  Murphy, are you still there?)

Within two minutes of seeing Abigail, the doctor had diagnosed her.  Not an ear infection like I thought.  Not strep like I mildy wondered if she might have.  Nope, she has PNEUMONIA!  PNEUMONIA!  They gave her a breathing treatment in the office (that was fun, let me tell you) and an antibiotic to bring home.  Finally, today, four days later, she's starting to act a little bit like herself.  Her fever is much much lower (hanging around 100 degrees) and she has a little more energy.  On Monday and Tuesday, she barely left the couch.  Her cough, which didn't really even show up until Monday morning, is still pretty ugly.  It's deep and a little bit scary when she has a coughing fit and seems like she can't catch her breath.  Watching her be this sick has been pretty draining.  Worry can sure take it out of you!

And if I didn't have enough going on this week, when I woke up Monday morning, I realized that the second hard drive in my computer was dead.  As in it went to sleep Sunday night and never work up.  The drive with all my old pictures and my photography session final pictures and all of my scrapbooking supplies.  The one that I idiotically didn't back up.  I did a lot of research and it turns out the drive has a bug in it that causes this to happen.  The good news is that the data is still on drive.  The bad news is I can't access it.  The really good news is that the company that manufactured the drive can usually fix it.  For free.  The bad news is that I had to send it back to them.  So, on Monday I had to drive around town with a sick baby and find a place that knew what I was talking about when I said I needed to find an anti-static bag to mail it back in.  (I had no luck...apparently no one here's ever heard of one.  Luckily, I found another drive in the back of my closet hanging out in one, so I was able to package up the bad one).  The really nerve-wracking news is that I don't know yet if they can fix it.  They have an on-line status page and I've been refreshing it every 1.1 milliseconds for the last three days, hoping for some news.  It just keeps saying it's in the evaluation phase.  I have my fingers crossed that it is salvagable and that in a few days I'll have it back in my PC, where it will be backed up to multiple locations immediately. 

So, the picture at the top is Abigail on Tuesday.  She was sobbing because she couldn't write her A's correctly.  A sure sign that she's sick...she's rarely so melodramatic about things (she leaves that to her older sister).  We're trying to keep her from crying or getting upset because that makes her coughing so much worse!    I'll leave you with a picture of her from earlier in the month when she felt a whole lot better and a whole lot happier!   I love this picture....it just makes me happy!