Words

Maddy said breakfast this morning. Really?

A few others that she is working on a bit more are circle, lunch, dog, shoes, fish, socks, miscellaneous body parts and yellow. love it.

Her doggies

This morning, Carson would not leave the bathroom. He only does this stuff when "the boomies" are about, but this morning there were none. And, just for the record, that drives me completely insane. I can't close the door which means kids can be chaotic in my room. Sigh...

So after a ton of coaxing, I had to pull him out of the bathroom.

This troubled the little Maddy a bit and she let me know.

Next was the bedroom. He just flat out would not leave. Hmmm.
So I went to my last resort of pulling him out again. This angered Maddy and she told me so. She screamed at me and immediately started crying. It was awful. I was shocked.

Not only did it make me stop, it made me realize how much she was connected to them and how much she loved them. Wow.

I stopped and he left. Nice.

Back to the doctor

I took Maddy back to the doctor today. The good news is that her lungs sounded okay. He said there was a bit of a squeak, but didn't sound too troubling. He felt she was on the road to recovery.

The bad news is she got an inhaler. Nice. She may not like that. We will see how she handles it.

He said she wasn't contagious at this point, but still watch her breating for any signs of distress. This was nothing to fool around with. Again, nice. :(

Reagan is pretending

Reagan's level of pretending has gone up a level. She really has embraced the Barbie element in her play and has started to make up her own games and jokes. I love watching her imagination at work.

Tonight, she made up this game with a bunch of Maddy's toys. It was called the Name game. I have no idea what we were supposed to do. She pretty much made it up as she went. But I had to just sit back and enjoy the ride. She just gets into it.

My parents came up and got swooped in as well. My dad and I played with her for a while. I wish I would have taken a picture of "the board". I did not. Maybe I can set it up again.

None the less, my little girl is expanding her brain and creativity.

Pills

Train your kids early on how to take pills. Tonight, I had to basically shove two pills from the first day of the zpack and yell at Jordan to swallow her pills. She has a huge mental block against pills for some reason. But I really didn't have a whole lot of patience for it.

After the whole thing, she hugged me a lot and told me how much she loved me. I thought that was worth mentioning considering how much a forcefully spoke to her and crammed food down her throat.

We tried water tricks, pudding, jello. The final thing that worked was jello. I put so much in her mouth she had to swallow it. She did eventually, but not before we had a volcano eruption of water (and jello), spewing of water and other things during the course of the event. I told her to think about her favorite things, including the possibility of kissing a boy. I believe that was the comment that made her like a volcano.  I also tried having her hold the spoon in her mouth to make her swallow (basically blocking her tongue from reacting). That didn't even work.

In the end, all is well. Jim is not too upset about my tactics.

She swallowed two pills.

Tomorrow, we have one more. :)

Moving furniture

Maddy loves to move things around. It doesn't really seem to matter how heavy the object is, she will find a way to move it. If it is light enough, she will pick it up and carry it somewhere, like her giraffe chair. If it is too heavy to carry, she will shove it as far as she can, like the kitchen chairs.

We're home again

Today we are home again. Maddy's cough is better, but I really still want to watch her. We visited Papa on the way home from dropping off Reagan. We did circle time. Now she is playing with her weebles. I just love watching her play. I think I'll be starting work soon, so I am grateful that I can just hang out with her.

I think a walk is in our future today.

Pneumonia is awful

I can't stand watching her be this sick. Ear infections, colds and scrapes are so easy compared to this. I hate watching her cough so much that it hurts. I actually wonder what she might cough up. I put her down for a nap today and she initially fell asleep. Once that happened, she almost popped her eyes open as fast and started babbling.

I put her down finally and thought she might just settle down on her own. It took her almost an hour, but she did. She woke up about an hour later coughing like crazy. She just couldn't stop. She eventually was coughing so much that she was almost choking.

When I got upstairs, she was on all fours, coughing and crying. My heart just hurt. She looked up at me like "mama help me" and all I could do was help her. She was so pitiful. So tired. So scared.

She seems to be doing better tonight. She is coughing, but it seems to be much better. Jim gave her a menthol bath and put the sudecare stuff in her room as well. We're hoping that really helps her breathing open up.

Prayers are being said. I know she will be okay, but it still is scary and sad to watch. I feel helpless.

Words like crazy

Maddy is popping out with new words today. They aren't super clear, but you can tell what she is saying.  She actually answered Jim "yes" tonight at dinner. He said "do you want the tomatoes" and she said "yeshhh" and shook her head up and down. We were amazed. She's been putting actions and words together much better too.

Oh, and her favorite word is Nooooooo.

Circle time

Maddy and I did circle time today. She still likes to do her "school schedule". It's cute.
I went through the animal cards and was pretty impressed with which ones she knew and some of their sounds.

She does the monkey motion; the cow, horse and elephant sounds and knows a bunch more. Love it.

Don't pick me up

For the last month, Reagan has been very strange about getting picked up early. We've noticed a bunch of behavior changes in her lately, but the one isone that I've had to manage differently. She doesn't want me to pick her up until the school closes basically. She doesn't want to be the first one to leave. She wants to be the last.

She has also started to not want anyone to leave at all. I have no idea why either. Is it because of the Christmas break - all the family and then none? I don't know.

I've started picking her up about 5:40 pm on most nights so she can play as long as she can. She enjoys it and seems to do better with me. We'll see how this works when I go back to work.

Pneumonia and circles

We took her to the doctor today to just make sure her lungs were still clear. She has been coughing more since finishing the zpack. I was right. :( She has pneumonia. And she said circle for the first time. Wow!

Eeeeeee

Maddy is extremely expressive and LOUD! She loves to scream and make tons of noise - especially sudden loud ones (that sound like shrills). It seems to be her way to get her point across. I'm not sure why, but it just gets the whole room going.

Her whole body actually gets into it. She will have her arms at a 90 degree angle, stand up on her tippy toes and shake her fists at the same time. Just such reinforcement.

Once she gets going, Reagan will inevitability join in as well. The two of them will play chase for a long time screaming the whole time.

Climbing over the dogs

Maddy has always loved the dogs. Lately, she's started loving on them and also climbing over them. Sydney will be laying on the ground and Maddy will crawl over her multiple times like a jungle gym. It's hilarious. She'll do it with either dog and neither one of them seems to mind too much.