ALL CLEAR!

The pinkeye, that is. We have passed the 24 hour quarantine period (and actually, we're past the 48 hour period at this point) and Ellie is still letting us put drops into her eye (still a few tears when we do it, I'm guessing because the medicine stings, but not the kicking and screaming that we started with yesterday morning) and hopefully will for the next 8 days, but the redness is all gone, she's not contagious any more, and we don't seem to have caught it.

And you never notice just how much your eyes itch in a given day until you are avoiding touching your eyes *just in case* and washing and sanitizing your hands at every turn. Turns out my eyes itch a lot in the course of a day! Nothing too bad, just a twitch here and there that I never think twice about except when I'm trying to avoid pinkeye and paranoid about getting it!

PINKEYE!!

Yes, Leif just called from the Dr. office. (Thank you, to Dr. Benda and his staff for staying late so we could see you!!) Eliana has pinkeye. Apparently, it's not a good idea to rub your runny nose up into your eye. Turns out that's how infections are born.

Poor girl.

It doesn't seem to be slowing her down any, though, which I suppose is good. Or bad, depending on what sort of respite I thought I was going to get by having a sick daughter. Guess she won't be sleeping this one off....

Feeling better...

Ellie seems to be feeling better today, which is great! She's been playing happily since she got up from her nap this afternoon and has been just sweet as can be. Unfortunately, both Leif and I are starting to feel sick now. =(

Fussy

There's fussy, and then there's "Mom, I'm teething, I have a cold, and I have an ear infection, plus I didn't sleep much last night" fussy. I'd prefer the first kind today, but that's not what I have. No, the 2nd description pretty much fits Ellie today. Imagine what sort of headache you'd have after listening to the shrieks, cries, and tantrums caused by a day of feeling that way and you pretty much have how I feel right now. Blech.

One of the cute things our little sicko did the other day (before her ear was hurting her too badly) was climb up into her toddler bed to read books. We've given up on her sleeping in it until she feels better, but it was apparently a perfect place to read! Talk about cute...

It was obviously before she was feeling too badly, since she could still muster this cheesy grin!

(By the way, if you click on a picture, it will take you to the Picasa directory and you can see other pictures in this same series - I don't always post them all on the blog, so sometimes there are more there than here!)

Yup, She's sick.

Well, after a trip to the doctor's office this morning we've confirmed that she's sick. Poor girl. Dr. Benda is out of town on a missions trip right now, so we saw a different doctor from the same office. He had a 4th year med student observing with him today, and Ellie just stole her heart! When she left the room Ellie said, "Bye bye!" and blew her a kiss, which made her declare that Ellie was the sweetest little thing and her favorite patient yet. And really, Ellie did very well. She let them take her temperature (which was down from the 101 it had been all weekend) and look in her ears and listen to her chest and poke on her belly. She did very well and they said she was a perfect patient. It seems she's got a combination of a really bad cold (which has left a little gunk in her lungs, making her coughs horrible and her breathing raspy) and an ear infection. He said that if she didn't have an ear infection, he'd order chest x-rays to check on the congestion there, but since the ear infection has to be treated anyway, the respiratory junk may clear up with the antibiotics, too. If it doesn't or it gets worse, we'll go back, but right now she's on amoxocillin for the ear infection and we're hoping it does the trick on her respiratory gunk, too. The good news is that she's "dripping from everywhere" (in the doctor's words) so she's well hydrated. I never thought of that much snot and drool as a good thing, but I guess it's something to be thankful for!

Let it Snow!!

Finally, we are getting a real snow dump!! It's been falling and accumulating for over an hour now and it's starting to look like a winter wonderland out there!

In other news, Ellie just called me "Mommy". I think it's the first time she's called me that, not "Mama" and she pointed at me, smiled, and said "Mommy!" Yay!

Oh, and we're all sickos. The Wickland three are all congested and sore-throated, victims of the common cold. Ick.

Thanksgiving is just a few days away, so I've got the turkey roasting away and I was planning on making pie crusts today. I'm contemplating just buying the crusts, though, and enjoying the snowy afternoon with my daughter instead. I'm not sure I can forego the homebaked crust, though, so I guess we'll just have to see how it all goes.

The flu.

It's been a long time since Leif or I had the flu. Or it had been until yesterday. Apparently, Ellie picked up a bug in the nursery when I went to Bible study on Friday. Saturday night and Sunday afternoon she threw up, but that seemed to be the most of it. By yesterday, though, she had passed it on to Leif. He called me to come pick him up from work at 1:30 because he was sick. By 5:00 last night, I was sick, too. Bleck. Thankfully it seems to be a 24 hour bug and we are all but back to normal. I am looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight.