Amazingly enough, Mallory has an ear infection. We started seeing “stuff” come out of her ear (I’ll spare you the details), so we assumed that they were “draining properly”. Well, I got a call from day care stating that Mallory had screamed and pulled on her ears when they laid her down to change her diaper. . . great. Johnathan called the ENT. Apparently, the tubes are not for drainage. They are for ventilation. If “stuff” is coming out, then there is an ear infection that needs to be treated. . . super. The good news is that we can use the post-op drops that we got from the ENT. Hopefully, we can avoid more antibiotics. We have been doing the drops for 3 days now. She seems to be getting better. The “stuff” has stopped coming out. She is sleeping very soundly. And she’s tugging at her ears less. That’s a good sign.
She’ll be 10 months this Saturday, and I can’t believe how fast it is flying by. It seems like just yesterday when she was this tiny thing that really didn’t do much. Now, you can’t take your eyes off of her, or she’s pulling the dogs’ hair and turning over plants. It’s funny for me to turn my back, just for a second, and hear these little hands slapping the hardwood floor because she’s crawling as fast as she can to explore the world around her. And man, is she fast. Our new favorite game is her chasing me around the couch. . . both of us crawling. It kills my knees so she’s actually faster than me. But she loves for me to jump out and say “boo!” She just belly laughs. The game she plays on her own is “Look, ma. No hands!” She pulls up on something, lets go and sees how long she can stand. She’s really good at this one. The funny thing is that she’s not cruising. No steps whatsoever. She doesn’t seem to care about walking yet. Just standing. And she still doesn’t have any teeth (that will be important later in this blog). She is gnawing on anything she can get into her mouth, even her own hand. But no teeth. I just know that, one morning, we’re going to get up, and she’s going to have a mouth full of teeth. But for now, nothing.
Johnathan had a birthday last week. That man is so hard to buy for. I thought about getting him a Wii. . . but his brother and his mother have one. And the only time that we really have time to play is when we hang out with them. . . so we’ll just mooch off of them for a while. Instead, I decided that a night away from home would be fun. I booked us a night at Opryland Hotel. Lindsey and Tonja offered to keep Mallory (I actually remember some begging and pleading in there somewhere). So I whisked my husband away for a night away from teenagers and baby monitors (although I did text with Kylie to make sure she made it home okay in the ice and snow). It was nice. Very nice. Every time I have ever been to that hotel, I have looked up at the balconies and thought how cool it would be to sit up there and overlook one of the atriums. So I made sure that we had an atrium view (we even had to sacrifice and take a handicap room where the only difference was a bigger bathroom. . . we managed to get though it). We got there in time to check in and have a glass of wine before walking to dinner at a restaurant in the hotel. Dinner was excellent. Then, we got to sleep a little late the next morning (any parent knows what a luxury that is when you have an infant). We thought it would be more fun to order room service for breakfast rather than get dressed and go out. We ate with the balcony doors open, listening to the indoor waterfalls. Then, we had coffee out on the balcony (ah, a dream realized). The only regret was that it wasn’t long enough. But it did make us realize that we need to get away more often.
Kylie has been working a lot and spending every second she can hanging out with friends so we don’t see much of her. That’s a teenager for you. She’s on Spring Break this week. She and I went to lunch the other day (sushi, her favorite). And today, I’m leaving work early to meet her. We’re getting pedicures (time to start wearing flip flops). She stays up really late. . . then, sleeps really late. It’s so funny. She spends a week screwing up her sleep schedule, then, struggles to work it out when she goes back to school. That’s a teenager for you.
I’ll close now with a funny Mallory story. I walked into day care one morning, and her teacher said, “You have a fighter on your hands here.” What?? It seems that the oldest child in the class. . . we’ll call her Elizabeth. . . is “bullying” the other kids. Well, apparently, Mallory got her fill. She was pulling up on one of the gates and Elizabeth started pushing her. Mallory went at her red-faced, claws out, mouth wide open, yelling “aaaaaarrrrrrrr”. She was mad (and not gonna take it anymore!). The teacher said that if Mallory had teeth, she would have hurt her (little blessing. . . thank you, God. . . because Elizabeth’s parents are lawyers, haha). When I picked her up later that day, I asked how things were between Mallory and Elizabeth. The teacher said they were “cool”. Elizabeth needed to be put in her place. . . and Mallory was just the girl to do it. So it appears that our little princess has no problem standing up for herself. And she has her dad’s temper – long fuse with a big bang at the end.