Cate appears to be feeling a little better today. The fever is still there, but she’s definitely not as miserable. I took her to our pediatricians’ after-hours clinic anyway, because she rubbed her ears a couple of times and I figured that it was worth a $10 co-pay to have the peace of mind of knowing that she doesn’t have an ear infection. And she doesn’t. Her ears are perfect, in fact. So is her throat (no strep! Yay!). The doctor told us to keep doing what we’re doing – using her Flovent inhaler twice a day, and the Tylenol/Motrin to keep her comfortable. Good enough for me.

Funny video time! I think all babies go through this phase, but Cate answers almost all questions with “no” right now. Case in point:

It’s kind of fun to twist the questions around when you know she’s going to say no all the time. The other day we were watching “Blue’s Room” and it was the episode where they were trying to get ready for bed, and Blue asked the viewers if we would help Sprinkles find a sleepy game to help her fall asleep. Cate looked at the TV, totally serious, shook her head and said, “nooo.” Sorry, Sprinkles. You’re crap out of luck.

Although she might just be biased against Blue and her ilk, because she doesn’t say no to all TV characters. This morning, we were watching “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” and Darby asked if we could see something that was behind her. Cate pointed at the TV and said “dare!” (as in “there”). I was impressed, it goes to show she definitely understands way more than we think she does.

I don’t understand how a child can go from totally happy and normal in the morning, to completely miserably sick by the time she wakes up from her nap. Poor Cate has had a rough 24 hours. And the change from not-sick to sick literally occurred over the course of her nap yesterday.

She has a horrible fever, she’s been coughing and snotty, she won’t eat anything (I’m still getting some fluids in her, which is keeping me from all-out panicking), she’s had several asthma attacks that required her inhaler (of which she is not a fan), and last night she barfed all over me. That was fun. She also woke up several times in the middle of the night, so Dave and I are both feeling pretty ragged and awful today.

Oh, and we learned that Cate is not a huge fan of fireworks. We didn’t go out to see any, but some of our neighbors were shooting them off, so we heard plenty. She didn’t cry about them, but she sure wasn’t happy about all the random loud noises keeping her awake.

She seems to be feeling a little better now, but I’m not sure if it’s the baby Tylenol that made her fever drop or if it was just some sort of 24-hour virus. I’m praying that the worst of it is over. And I already have my sweats on, so that when she starts asking to go outside, I can put her in the backpack carrier and take her for a walk, rather than worrying about her triggering another asthma episode by exerting herself too much running around.

Stupid germs. Boo.

Today my girl is 17 months old. And as much as I really want to write a well thought-out, articulate entry about her awesomeness, I have got the most unbelievable headache today, so this is the best I can do.

Monthly milestones:
* Cate has more words than I can keep up with, and my suspicion is that she has even more that we just don’t understand, because Dave and I still aren’t very good at speaking toddler yet. We’re working on it.

* Names! Besides Mommy & Daddy, she knows all the kids’ names at daycare – Faith, Mason, Travis, Parker, and since Scarlett is too hard to say, she just calls her “baby”. (Even though Scarlett is about to turn 3.) And Patsy is either Passy or Bassy, since her P and B sounds sometimes get confused. She hasn’t got the cats’ names yet, but she’s shortened them all from “kitty-cat” to “catty,” which I find pretty funny.

Which reminds me, since she’s getting good with names, and we’re going to be seeing my family in a few weeks, I’ve pulled together some pictures of them and I’m going to start showing them to her every day and explaining who they are. She might not be able to say their names next month, but at least their faces will all be familiar, and that’s good enough. Although, seriously, if she calls my dad “Pop-Pop,” I have a feeling he will melt into a puddle on the floor, so I’m really hoping she can at least get that one.

* Her food issues are becoming less and less of a problem, and she’s eating a much wider variety of stuff, which is fantastic. She really seems to love seafood – popcorn shrimp in particular, although I’ve made baked fish fillets a few times and she always seems to end up eating a good portion of my dinner (not Dave’s, since I make his spicy and mine with just a little salt). She even likes tuna fish, which kind of shocked me, since it’s pretty strong-tasting. I know the food issues are going to resurface soon, so I’m just enjoying this while it lasts.

* Forget walking and running, dancing and jumping are where it’s at, man. I need to get a video of her jumping, but she only does it when she’s holding onto me for support, so I’ll have to get Dave to film it. But for now, here’s a video of her doing a little bit of her stompy dance. The lids on our septic tank are like her own little personal disco platforms, she likes to run to each of them and dance on them. I think it’s because they make a cool echo-y sound when she stomps them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ_tzON5bxU
(Pardon the background noise of the air-conditioning unit. That’s what I get for filming behind the house.)

I know there’s more stuff, but I need to take another headache pill and go lie down before my brain explodes and oozes out of my ear. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

The other night, I was running Cate’s bath and she walked in carrying the rock that we use as a doorstop to prop open the baby gate at night. (I know that probably sounds sillly to some people, but after the cats woke us up at 3 a.m. a few times yowling for us to open the gate and let them in or out, we gave up. So, we now have a rock that lives in our hall. What can I say, it works.) The rock is about the size of a grapefruit, so it’s small, but large enough that it would really hurt if you dropped it on your foot. Cate walked into the bathroom with it and promptly threw it on the floor. I know she was doing it because she wanted to hear the loud noise, but I was worried about her hurting her toes (and also possibly damaging the floor), so I said “no,” picked up the rock, and put it back in the hall.

Of course, being her little toddler self, she immediately went back to retrieve the rock. When she came back into the bathroom with it, I warned her, “Don’t throw the rock.” And she did. So I said, “NO!” in my meanest, stern-mommy tone, and I sat her down on the bathmat. (I realize that eventually I’ll need a designated “naughty spot,” but I worry that she’d forget why she was being punished by the time I moved her there, so for now I think it’s better to just plop her down on the spot.) She howled, while I calmly put the rock back in the hallway. Again.

When I came back into the bathroom, she was still crying. She took one look at me, stood up, and walked out of the bathroom and into our bedroom. She calmed herself down (which took maybe 10-15 seconds), then came back into the bathroom and said “hi.” I said hi back to her, then said, “Come give me a kiss.” And she did! The funny thing is, I don’t think she has ever given a kiss on command before. She gives kisses sort of randomly, but never when we ask for them – although sometimes when we ask for kisses, she’ll offer up her cheek for us to kiss her. It seemed like she genuinely understood that we were making up after she got into trouble.

So what do you know, I applied discipline to my kid and it worked. And she was a total sweetheart for the rest of the night. I know this is going to happen about a million more times, but I was really excited that she seemed to “get it” so easily. I’m crossing my fingers that things are still this easy a year from now when we’re in the middle of the terrible two’s. (You more experienced moms out there can go ahead and laugh at me now, if you’d like.)