Still Standing

Well, we're still alive and kicking.

As it turned out, Emily's "Christmas pukies" delayed our trip to visit family by a day, but she was the only real casualty of the stomach bug. She is doing better, but she's still acting pretty run-down and whiny. Oh...the whining. She's napping right now and did so without a fight, so hopefully we're headed back in the right direction. Now we just have to work on sleeping at night (without the battle) and eating properly once again. She's had no appetite since last Thursday evening and has developed the habit of spitting out her food without swallowing. I personally think she's a little scared that the food will "make" her sick again. Seriously, this child forgets nothing, so it's certainly a possibility.

We had a nice, though quiet and somewhat different than normal, Christmas. We spent time with my in-laws. My brother-in-law and his new wife ended up spending their first Christmas together as invalid and nurse, in that order, so we didn't get to see them. Then my Granny-in-law ended up in the ER on Christmas Eve night through yesterday, so we didn't get to spend Christmas with them either. But we're headed back this weekend to visit for New Years', so hopefully we'll all be healthy, or at least on the mend, by then. After all, we still have gifts to exchange!

Emily "gets" the present and Santa aspect of Christmas this year. She can open her own gifts, she visited Santa and told him what she wanted, (Clifford, the Big Red Dog), and she knows that Santa came to Grandma's house, ate the "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake and left her presents under the tree...including a big stuffed Clifford. The kid was spoiled rotten, but true to toddler form, her favorite gift of all came in a tiny purse her Aunt bought for her. The purse had a little pretend cell phone, compact, keys and 2 tubes of chapstick. It was one of the first gifts she opened and let's just put it this way....there was chapstick all over her face and many tears when we had to pry both tubes out of her hands. Lesson for next year....buy the simplest, cheapest thing I can find and let her open it first. She'll be thrilled!

All in all, we're doing okay. We're under a lot of stress due to some upheaval going on with Andrew's work. Lots of decisions and questions and worries and very few concrete answers. I like concrete. I'm not so good with the what if's...but otherwise, we're hanging in here.