First, let me say how awesome I’m feeling that Obama won the election last night! I couldn’t believe how early they called it, just three hours after the polls closed on the opposite coast. A landslide by any measure, just what I was hoping for! And kudos to McCain for such a gracious and unifying message in his farewell speech. I really think the country is ready to move forward and support the new president elect now.

And now, the long overdue Halloween photos! We managed to snap a few photos of Gianna in her elf costume before her cold really set in for the day and made her grumpy and feverish. Here they are along with some we took weeks before at a costume dinner party with all three of us dressed up.

We went to the doctor’s office yesterday, waited an hour and a half to be seen and then were told the source of the fever could be a urinary tract infection. Double take? Yeah, us too. 29 years on this planet and I’ve never had one myself but my baby? They wanted to do a catheter on her to collect a urine sample but I knew the nurses were chomping at the bit to go home since we were in there past closing time after waiting so long and I didn’t want my baby getting poked and prodded in the nether region by someone who just longed to be at home lounging on the couch instead of dealing with a cranky, sick kid. So we opted out and called her normal doctor today with the news that she has a runny nose and lower fever than yesterday. She told us it most certainly could not be a UTI since a baby generally runs a temp over 102 for at least 48 hours and is VERY cranky and fussy the whole time. Since Gianna’s fever has come down (and goes back up every night) it sounds more like a cold, that and the telltale runny nose symptom that appeared this afternoon and has since stuck around to stain every dark shirt I own.

So, score one for the baby’s parents and not letting them do an invasive procedure that would have been a major pain and completely worthless in the end. Now, let’s get this baby well again!

First of all, you never know if you’re getting an accurate reading with any type of thermometer so I’m constantly adding a degree just to be sure which of course means Gianna has a fever most days of the week. Then, when you think she’s a little extra warm, you obsess over how much of her clothing to take off though the weather outside would make it seem like you should be bundling not undressing. And to top it all off, the fever-reducers come in icky liquid form, causing a vomiting attack as soon as you go near her with the syringe, which in turn leads to the purchase of even ickier suppositories which I wouldn’t open unless the thermometer was hovering around 103 (thereby necessitating a trip to the E.R. given our previous discussion of the +1 degree factor). Ugh! So, I just hate fevers and everything they make me obsess about!

Gianna has had this evening-appearing fever for the past 4 days, the exact duration of our sleepless nights too. I think I’ll be bringing her to the pediatrician’s office tomorrow just to have them check out her ears in case she somehow let all that teething drool puddle up there and fester last week. Other than an ear infection, I have no idea what to think is going on. Benoit and I are ragged from not sleeping and I think I have the hearing of an 80-year-old from all her inconsolable screaming the past few nights. I’m totally at a loss. There’s no usual suspects, no runny nose, no cough, no eye goop, nothing. Anybody have any other ideas?

Oh, one more thing, she gets a diaper rash every evening when her temp goes up.

Three weeks after I first declared her teething she finally has her two bottom teeth! I think she cut the bottom left one last night because we all slept like crap, she wasn’t nursing or taking her sippy cup and she was running a fever, vomiting and had a little bit of diarrhea. By this afternoon the only symptoms remaining were a very tired, gray-eyed baby face and a little diarrhea.

It’s just so weird to me that a child can react so differently to each tooth as they come in. The first tooth only made her drool like a saint bernard and take shorter naps. The second one gave us every symptom in the book and made us wonder if she had caught some stomach bug on top of it all.

It also made me realize we desperately need to get some Tylenol suppositories for our medicine cabinet because when Gianna starts vomiting absolutely any foreign substance in her mouth will provoke her gag reflex, including the sweet-tasting syringe of Tylenol. Since we didn’t have any on hand and there aren’t any nearby drugstores in our neck of the Sierra forest, she had to make it through her two first teeth cutting experiences without the aid of modern medicine. Ok, we did have some Hyland’s teething tablets, but I think those do more to help parents feel they are doing something proactive than actually tempering any of the kid’s pain, and they dissolve so fast I’m sure Gianna didn’t even get the benefit of even a little taste distraction. Plus, the tablets have been given some bad press recently as some parents are suing over their children experiencing very negative side effects after taking them including febrile seizures. It’s supposedly related to the miniscule amounts of belladonna(a poisonous plant) in the tablets and the unregulated nature of the homeopathic industry. I learned about the pending lawsuit after I had already given Gianna quite a few so I figure, for better or worse, the batch I bought is safe. I’m not sure I’ll be buying any more bottles of it though, just on the off chance that I could end up with one containing more than just a little belladonna.

So, what about your kids? How did their teeth come in? All the symptoms in the book, the same ones every time? Or each tooth was a little different?

If I can get a photo of her two new chompers, which requires her staying still long enough and retracting her ever-protruding tongue, I’ll post them right quick!