Cate’s back at daycare today, and definitely doing a lot better. Yesterday she was playing and laughing; she had a few meltdowns, but otherwise was pretty much acting like her normal self again. I probably could have sent her to daycare yesterday, but I wanted a little bit of buffer time to make sure that she was genuinely better. She’s still a bit snotty-nosed, and her sleep schedule is screwed to hell, but we’re working our way back to normalcy. My guess is that the sleeping will work itself out in the next couple of days. These things usually do.

I’m feeling better too. I doubt that the garlic had much (if anything) to do with it, but my cold seems to be mostly gone. Right now, I’m just feeling really frazzled because I have a ton of work to do, and I haven’t been able to do any of it because I’ve been taking care of a sick baby. I have a major deadline on Monday, and I’ve only been able to work in bits & pieces over the past few days. So I’m frantically playing catch-up.

Oh, for what it’s worth, this cold apparently made the rounds of every single kid at Cate’s daycare. I had a random Mommy Guilt attack about that. We went to the pediatrician on Wednesday to make sure Cate’s cold hadn’t evolved into an ear infection (it hadn’t, thankfully), and while we were waiting for the doctor, Cate fell asleep on my chest. She’d been awake and crying for hours, and finally she was just worn out. I got kind of teary while I was sitting there with her. She never got sick once before she started daycare, and it seems like the colds have been non-stop for the past few months. I feel like she’d be so much better off if I didn’t work and could keep her home with me all the time.

When I told my mom about it later, she pointed out that if I did that, Cate would just get sick all the time when she starts preschool. Which is true enough, I suppose. But at least by then, she could blow her own nose and there are some cold medications that she’d be able to take. I hate this right now when she’s so uncomfortable and my resources for comforting her are so limited. But whether it happens now or later, it just sucks.

Unrelated: While I was writing this, I stopped to go downstairs and grab a snack. The cats were all hanging out by the back door, wanting to go outside, so I opened the door and let them out. I went back up to my office, looked out the window in the backyard, and saw two coyotes milling around. I freaked, ran downstairs and outside, and screamed like a banshee. They took off (wisely – keep your distance from the crazy, shrieking human lady), and the cats are nowhere in sight. My guess is that they’re hiding under the deck. My hands won’t stop shaking. Holy freaking hell, I want to move away from here.