Trying to think of where to begin is always difficult with the monthly entries. I always think of amazing things as they happen “Oh I need to put that in her next monthly entry” but then I sit down here to write and totally forget it!

I suppose we can start with her health. After those 4 months of sickness including the 2 months of ear infections we had about 3 weeks of healthy wonderful time. She gained more weight and said a million new words. Then we all got taken down by a cold with sore throats, and they put her on an antibiotic for 10 days. 10 days later she had a very upset stomach, throwing up and the other end of things. Not pleasant. So we will be spending all of this weekend getting shots at immediate care again because when she went on friday to the doc I didn’t expect them to want to give her shots, but she had an ear infection and if 10 days of antibiotics didn’t work I guess they wanted to get more agressive. We paid $2,000 in medical bills for her last month alone. I have decent insurance through a large corporate company with UHC and the bills after the hospital visit and various immediate care visits and multiple weekly doctor visits added up. She saw an ENT during those 3 healthy weeks and they said 1 more ear infection in a month and she will get tubes. She has a pre-op appointment tuesday.

So a report about the tubes will be in her 18 month post I am sure. Sickness stuff aside now lets focus on the happy stuff. The most exciting thing for me has been her vocabulary. I can draw the letter P and she knows what it is, she knows the letters A, B and C and will say them on her own if I ask her “what is this?” She also knows the numbers 9 and 2 and a few others but she likes saying those the most.

She knows a zillion words and I taught her how to say “help” when she needs help doing something, and then I can say to her “Do you want to get down?” from her high chair or other questions and she will shake her head no. She doesn’t use yes properly but she knows exactly how to use no! It’s really nice to be able to communicate with her and understand more of what she wants. She is SUCH a good sleeper, because of being sick of course some nights we have to go give her the paci once or twice but that’s okay. When she’s healthy she never needs for us to go in. Mostly if I do go in it’s because I want to and not because I have to.

The other night we smelled smoke very strongly in our house so I called 911 because the smell was so intense around our house. It turned out once the firemen came that it was someone up and over the hill burning leaves and the cold presses the smell and smoke to the ground so it came down the hill to settle around our house. I had to wake her up and take her outside at 10pm and she was perfectly happy seeing the fire-truck (a nice distraction from being fussy because she’s tired). She’s a hard sleeper. So right before they left i went back inside, popped her back into the crib and she went right back to sleep. Stuff like that amazes me because of the stuff I hear from other parents.

She also is a very good eater, and while of course she is picky and has things she won’t eat, there are lots she will. She just ADORES the outside, and it’s often a battle to bring her back in. I get a bit exhausted chasing her around as she likes to run so we stick to the backyard or we go to the tennis courts so she can just run like mad and I don’t have to worry about her being hit by a car or getting too far away. These entries are often more of a record for her and I then anything, but I do enjoy writing them. It’s so easy to forget the little things, and when they learn things. The past with her is all a blur. I don’t feel as if it has gone too fast, or too slow. It feels just right. I am very tired of her being sick because it hinders her from enjoying so many things and from us just relaxing a bit more. The barrage of needles, doctors and the worst being the little air tube I use when she coughs too much, it goes on the end of an inhaler. It’s just an air chamber to keep the air in so she can breath it in. We have to pin her on the ground and the only way to get the air is if she cries (easy if you pin a child on the ground and don’t let them up) and doing that 3 times a day just about kills me.

It’s not fair she has to go through so much, but I just remind myself of the children with brain tumors and cancer and remember how lucky we are. And then I buy her more stuffed animals (but don’t tell my husband).