One of those days.....

Saturday was another one of "those" days. It was worse than Thursday, actually, if you can imagine that. I started fairly normally. We got up, made coffee, and I got Ellie her bottle while I got her solid food ready. I decided to make her eggs (just the yolks. The whites have the allergens in them). She devoured them, unlike the last time she tried them and wasn't so sure. She went down for a nap about an hour later, and Brian and I cleaned the house. When she got up, my parents were at our house, and we all noticed her face was red, right above her eyebrows and down along her nose. Weird. Then we noticed the inside of her ears were red. Then her back. Then her inner thighs. And it went on and on. She seemed to be feeling fine, though. We called the doctor just in case, and he said unless she has trouble breathing, not to worry about it. But, as the day wore on, the rash seemed to be getting worse, so we headed to the convenient care clinic. They agreed it was an allergic reaction to something, which is what we suspected, and agreed the eggs were probably the culprit, but it could be anything she consumed within the last 72 hours. Awesome. They suggested we cut out everything she had eaten and slowly add it back in. I can't even remember everything I ate in the last 72 hours (or the last 24, for that matter), and Ellie goes to daycare, so this is pretty much impossible. We're proceeding with he egg allergy theory, because it runs on my side of the family, and kids with eczema tend to have a higher incidence of egg allergies.

So we got home from the clinic, and within an hour these things happened:

* Ellie tried to eat a tiny pair of fingernail clippers.

* Ellie tried to pull a heavy tray off the ottoman in the living room onto her head.

* Ellie managed to tear off and eat a tiny piece of the wrapper off a container of puffs, which we obviously didn't catch right away, and didn't realize until she started throwing up, gagging, coughing, and screaming her damn head off. She obviously hadn't inhaled it, but we had no idea what the hell was going on until she finally puked all over the couch and we found it.

I swear to God, we were watching her this whole time. We'd glance away for 10 seconds, and she'd find some other deadly item to place in her mouth. Good thing there weren't any more eggs lying around the floor (you never know at our house).

The only reasonable explanation for all this was that she wanted one of us, or both, to die of a heart attack.

This new put-everything-I-find-lying-around-in-my-mouth thing seemed to coincide with her learning how to feed herself puffs and yogurt bites. For a while she didn't understand she had to let go of them when she put them in her mouth. Now that she gets it, she puts everything in there. This morning, Brian was changing her, and she somehow found a random puff on the floor of her bedroom (which we had just vacuumed), and ate it before he could even get the word "no" out. Then later this afternoon, she tried to put a chunk of cat hair she found stuck to the kitchen rug in her mouth. I caught that one.

This entire post makes it sound like we have a filthy house and we always have sharp, un-baby-friendly objects randomly placed around the living room. We don't, I swear! Don't call DHS on us!

***

As what I can only imagine was an apology for Thursday and Saturday, though, the universe handed me one of those moments tonight that you feel like you have to remember, even though nothing out of the ordinary or exciting has happened. We gave Ellie her bath, put her in her jammies, and she and Brian were playing on the floor. Her hair was sticking up everywhere because we didn't get a brush through it immediately after she got out of the tub, and she was wearing these bright, retro jammies. Her feet kept sliding out of the footy area, so she had random pj cloth flapping around. She and Brian were playing with a purple ball she love.s She was "throwing" it to him (just kind of letting go of it and letting it fall in his general direction) and he'd catch it and throw it back to her, and she'd try to catch it. She actually did catch it a few times. There were several moments where I thought to myself, "God, I wish I had the camera out," or, "I should go get the camera," but the problem with constantly photographing these innocuous moments in life is that you then don't get to participate in them. So I stayed put on the floor, watching them, and occasionally joining in, even if it was only by clapping and saying, "Yay, Ellie!" Then she'd clap, too, and laugh hysterically.

It was just one of those moments that I wanted to freeze time, because, no matter how stressful everything else is, and no matter how much some people in my life continue to be completely toxic, it reminded me that my little, humble life here in my tiny house on my tiny street is absolutely, completely, imperfectly perfect, and I wouldn't change one thing, past or present, even if I could.

We did manage to get a bit of photographic evidence of the evening. This is Ellie after she fell asleep on the couch watching Baby Einstein:

And a few more randoms from the past few months:

Her latest tricks include:

* Saying "cat" -- pronounced "dat," while chasing the cats around the house, then sitting up and clapping for herself and laughing hysterically.

* Saying "mama" -- pronounced "nah-nah." Unfortunately, while "dada" is all sweet and cute, "nah-nah" is, most of the time, kind of whiney and shrieky.

* Walking around furniture, sometimes taking a step between the couch and the next piece of furniture without holding on.

* Going from zero teeth to two in the matter of five days. The kid's a fucking prodigy.