very interested in my skirt // she has a sassy lil walk // the face of a fever // sunbeamin’ // purple crocus // Sinful Colors in Pinky Glitter + Sally Hansen in Disco Ball + Deborah Lippmann in Stairway To Heaven // in the fresh air // blue sky // halo // I get a lot of compliments on this wolf pin from Sketch.Inc // plum tree & evening sky // moon // city over park
How was your weekend? Did you have a nice weekend? I did not, because this weekend my baby was sick. She developed a fever on Friday and was a toasty little hot pocket of a human all weekend long. Happily she was better by Monday morning, although she is still quite emotionally fragile. Here are three thoughts on my baby when she is sick:
1. What is it about kids when they are sick that makes them seem so very small? Gwen is a very tall toddler but give her a fever and it’s like she’s a teeny tiny baby again. How. How???? Is this weird size perception some kind of evolutionary instinct to make you want to look after babies even though they are gross and diseased?
2. Another thing about kids when they are sick is OH MY GOD BABY ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND???? You are sad and sweaty and your whole body aches and you feel yucky, so why don’t you come lay down in this comfy blanket with your cup of nice cool water- oh what’s that? You’d rather stumble around the house whining and tripping over things (or nothing…) so you fall and and start howling? Wow, great plan! Let’s do that for the next two days!
3. While she’s been sick we’ve let her have her soother whenever she likes, all day even. Usually we just give her a pacifier in her crib (and sometimes her stroller), and her having it all day made me think of that Vanity Fair article on RIE Parenting. The part I was reminded of:
“No pacifiers. ‘The pacifier is a plug,’ Gerber once wrote. ‘It does stop a child from crying, but the question is, Does an infant have a right to cry?'”
I invite anyone who actually believes that a pacifier necessarily stops a child from crying to come over and witness the miracle of my kid screaming and crying her face of with one in her mouth. Truly, she must be some kind of crying savant to have achieved such skill.
Of course I can’t have a post like this without a silver lining, and it’s this: if I could pick any weekend when it would be best for Gwen to be sick, up in the middle of the night, having short naps, second naps, sleep schedule all over the place, it would have been this weekend, spring ahead daylight saving weekend. The time change always messes up babies and kids, but with Gwen already being messed up we didn’t even really notice.