Hallie and Travis

Gum and Gup got up before dawn yesterday to get down here by lunchtime. By the time Gum was reading Hallie her bedtime stories, Gum was pretty worn out. Apparently she got dozy on every page and Hallie had to keep nudging her awake. When they finally reached the end of the story, Gum thanked Hallie for putting up with her tired reading. “That’s OK,” Hallie sighed resignedly. “It’s usual. Mommy does it all the time.”

I guess what goes around comes around. I remember vividly having Gum doze off on me during stories like A Little Princess and The Secret Garden. I was so enthralled by the stories and eager to learn what happened next, I just couldn’t understand how she could be falling asleep. I imagine one day Hallie will be on the other side of this pattern, too. And then she’ll have some more sympathy for her sleepy Mommy and Gum!

Travis has started making up his own little songs, and you never know when one will pop up. The other day at Target I tossed a pack of turkey dogs into the cart and he started singing, “I love hot dogs, I love hot dogs!” Last night, when we put our carryout containers in a big brown bag he started singing “I’ve got a shopping bag, yes I do!” He’s had a few others I can’t remember right now, and I’m sure there will be more. I look forward to them!

The past two mornings Hallie has woken up around 5, grumpy and feverish. This morning I spent about 90 minutes in bed with her before she finally settled down again. Yesterday morning was simpler. I got Hallie some medicine, kept her company in the potty, and walked her back to her room. I felt like a tender, caring mommy as I tucked her in and leaned over to kiss her. My reward? “Mommy, you have bad breath!”

We had our second Christmas here today, thanks to Gum and Gup. We were supposed to go to Warrenton for the whole weekend, along with David and Anna and Wes. But I was feeling overwhelmed, Hallie was feeling crummy, and Anna and Wes were both sick. So Gum and Gup, terrific as they are, loaded up their car with gifts less than 48 hours after their return from Rome and headed south. An early morning stop through C’ville to pick up gifts to bring our way, and they were here before lunchtime.

The kids went bonkers when they saw them. They had a great time opening their gifts–the biggest hits are Travis’s grocery cart and Hallie’s cash register–and hearing some stories from Italy. After naps (Travis woke up saying “Gum, I need you!”), Hallie was really dragging. She finally perked up enough that we headed (on foot!) to our local Mexican cafe. It was great to see Hallie in better spirits–I’m not sure what made the difference–and we had a fun and lively dinner with much decorating of the tablecloths.

The kids enjoyed stories with G&G and settled down pretty quickly. Gum and Gup are heading back to C’ville for Christmas with David’s family tomorrow morning. It will have been a super quick trip, but one we so appreciate them making. We just need to line something up very soon to get us all together. We had too much fun with everyone all together last Christmas to miss that completely this year.

I’m so ready for Hallie to feel better! Both Thursday night and Friday night she was nearly hysterical, and it was obvious that she felt just rotten. We’ve started pumping the Tylenol and Advil more regularly. Is seems like she’s fine until one or the other wears off and then she melts down. So we’ve been trying to stay ahead of things. She definitely had a fever again today, though I don’t know how high.

The report from the CT scan was that “everything in there (her sinuses) is infected.” Fortunately the chest x-ray was fine. We started a different antibiotic yesterday and we have an appt. with an ENT doctor next Friday. I don’t know what they’ll do there–anything from just looking at her films to using a catheter to look around to finding a way to flush whateever’s in there. The last couple of days have been one of the few times through this whole ordeal that Hallie’s actually acted like she felt bad. I hate seeing her this way!

Twice in two days Hallie’s shown us how much she’s learning about numbers. Yesterday we were in the drive-through at Eckerd. I was trying hard to keep Travis awake at naptime, and I handed him one of my gloves. I danced it around and told him, “Pretend it’s an octopus–or part of an octopus.” Travis wasn’t all that interested, but Hallie was paying attention. She looked at the glove, thought for a moment, and then said, “To be an octupus it needs three more legs.” First she had to know how many legs an octopus has, then count the five fingers, then figure the difference between five and eight. Not bad!

Her second example happened this morning. Mark was expanding our table before Gum and Gup arrived. He had only brought down one extra chair. Before he headed up for the other, Hallie declared, “Someone isn’t going to have a place to sit!” More math just popping out of our girl!

We tried an experiment tonight. Hallie, Hadley, and Natalie all saw their first movie, Charlotte’s Web, with their moms at a 5:30 showing. It was an interesting evening.

The theater was almost empty and the girls were really quite good. There was a bit of wiggling and seat shifting and chatting, but they also paid a lot of attention to the movie. Hallie watched most attentively and seemed a bit bothered when Natalie tried to talk to her.

I had given Hallie a story summary and we talked a bit about how the spider would die and why when we first made plans to see the movie. We ended going two days later than we’d planned, though, and I neglected to do a refresher. I think that was a mistake. I could see Hallie getting concerned at the end, and when the movie was over she was starting to talk to me about how she felt. Just then Hadley took a tumble and conked her teeth on the seat in front of her. In the rush that followed to make sure that Hadley was OK, Hallie’s emotions got pushed aside.

As we checked on Hadley, who wasn’t very upset but did have a cut in her gums, and talked about taking her to WakeMed to check things out, Hallie got nearly hysterical. I think it was a redirection of the emotion from the movie. She wailed when she didn’t get to see inside Hadley’s mouth. And after they left she was barely coherent when she told me she didn’t want Hadley to leave b/c she had wanted to tell her she’d been born at WakeMed. Explaining it was a different WakeMed didn’t help.

Hallie wailed most of the way home. We started trying to think of things that would help her feel better. Getting ready to go to Gum and Gup’s house helped some: “that makes me feel a little better but I’m still going to be crying all night.” The idea of more Christmas presents at their house helped some, too, “but only if we go there right now and we open the presents immediately, as soon as we get there.”

But the big quote of the night came when we were talking about Charlotte’s death. I had explained several different ways about how spiders don’t live very long, she’d been a good friend to Wilbur, she had done her work by laying her eggs, etc. etc. At one point I said, “She had her babies and they will have babies and those babies will have babies and on and on.” Hallie thought about this for a minute and then, through her wails, articulately phrased one of the biggest questions of all time. “How did the first baby on the earth ever get born if there wasn’t any one else around?”

As I stumbled around for a response, her wails continued as she choked out “If I could just figure out the answer to that one thing, I’d be a lot happier!” So would a lot of people! And I have to say I didn’t address her question very well because I spent the whole second half of the drive trying to remember it so I could write it down.

She had a weepy dinner but by the time we got snuggled in for stories she was pretty much settled down. I haven’t yet decided whether or not it was a mistake to take her tonight. Some of that will depend on how she is tomorrow. I’m definitely not going to bring things up, but I’ll follow her lead. She’s been very open and matter-of-fact talking about death in the past–she’ll often refer to Monty (my parents’ Berner) dying several months ago in a sad but straightforward way–which is why I thought this movie would be OK. I’ll be interested to hear what she says tomorrow, and I’m eager to know what Suzie and Stephanie hear from their girls. Hallie’s almost a year older than Natalie and a bit more than that over Hadley. It may be that she understood enough more to make it a bigger issue for her.

We may finally be starting to get some answers about Hallie’s cough and other symptoms. A return to Dr. Bernstein today turned up an ear infection I never suspected. It makes sense, given the sensations Hallie was describing. But since she was on antibiotics when that started, I didn’t occur to me to consider that. Turns out there are also viral ear infections (who knew?) and the doctor thought maybe that’s what she’s dealing with. Or it could be something resistant to the other antibiotic. Goodness knows she’s been on plenty of them in the last year! He gave me a prescription for yet another antibiotic but said not to fill it unless her ear becomes painful. Hopefully that won’t become an issue.

We also got in her today for a CT scan of her sinuses and a chest x-ray. The chest x-ray came back clear, which was good news. The tech saw “lots of congestion” in her sinuses, so now we’re waiting for a call from Dr. Bernstein about how to proceed. This morning he mentioned possibly needing to drain her sinuses (how, I have no idea) if that’s what the CT scan turned up or sending her to an ENT or both. I hope we’re nearing the end of this journey! Hallie was a super sport through all the appointments and the waiting. She was a little frightened by the CT machine–mostly she didn’t like the noise, which she hadn’t been told about in advance–but she did really well and was quite proud of herself.

We spent much of today at Durham’s Museum of Life and Sciences. I’ve heard about this museum for years, and it’s absurd it took us so long to get there. It’s fantastic! Almost every exhibit has a hands-on component, from picking up real bones of cows and people to putting your hands through water vapor to understand what clouds feel like and so much more. There were lots of live animals inside, and an enormous outside area with wolves, lemurs, and a brown bear. It was really a combination zoo and museum.

We went with Hallie’s friend Natalie and her family. The girls had a great time charging around together. The spent a good bit of the end of the visit “breathing fire” on each other and everyone else, to their extreme delight. We decided to pass on the fairly pricey membership but I know we’ll be going back. It’s a great place to take visitors, too. And remarkably, both kids stayed awake on the return trip and took good naps this afternoon. A perfect ending to a delightful outing!

After naps this afternoon, all four of us were on the floor playing with Travis’s new collection of dinosaurs. We were continuing a game from yesterday, so most of the dinosaurs already had names and roles (baby, Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Joe, etc.) At one point several of the dinosaurs were lying on their sides, taking a nap. Mark had one of the others march up to Hallie and ask, “Can I sleep?” “No.” Hallie replied promptly. “She’s the mother. She should be getting some work done.”

Looks like Hallie knows how mommies, or at least hers, spend naptime and the mommy dinosaurs aren’t geting away with anything less.