Keeping Things Exciting

A plague has swept through our house, a plague of coughing, hacking, snotting, sneezing, not sleeping properly and going through industrial size boxes of kleenex as if they were candy.

See?  Ellie helped.

It is important to blow your ears.  It's actually very cute, though, because she has no idea of the mechanics of nose blowing, but she has a very good sense of the sound, so when she holds the kleenex up to her ear, she makes a "pppbbbbtttthhhh" sound with her mouth.

Anyway, to return to the original thread of my narrative.  We were all swimming in phlegm, and it was unpleasant.  And then Ellie, who thought, no doubt, that she was being too easy-going, woke up Sunday afternoon sounding like she had been sneaking out during her naps for the past 30 years and smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes each time.

And that's how we ended up spending Sunday afternoon in the ER.  They gave her a nasty dose of epinephrine, and then steroids, and it was all very traumatic.  So she snuggled down on my chest and went to sleep, since she had to stay there for two hours for observation.

Notice the tear on her cheek.  So sad.

And then, after she'd slept off her anger and irritation and what have you, she still had bunches of adrenalin coursing through her veins, so she was up and about and raring to go.  

The problem was, of course, that we were in a hospital, where God-knows-who had gotten God-knows -what on the floors, and so I didn't want her crawling around on them, and she certainly didn't want to sit quietly for an hour.

Luckily, she was willing to occupy her time by learning to walk.  She took her first steps in the ER.  On the 20th of January, which means that she took her first steps 1 day earlier than Margaret, adjusted for birthdate.

(Not that I keep track, mind you).