Gearing Up

It's almost Christmas, and we're trying to get Sadie through another cold before the holiday arrives. Well...I'm trying to. Scott's out of town again and won't be back until 2 days before Christmas. Bad timing, too; this is the worst cold she's had yet. I feel terrible for her because she's had major coughing fits for days now. Just an hour ago, she woke up with a coughing fit so bad it made her sick.

The doctor has told us no cough suppressants or cold medicine. We are allowed to give her as much honey as she wants to soothe her throat, but she doesn't like the taste of it and pushes the spoon away, which inevitably results in honey getting all over her, me, the kitchen counter and the floor. I finally started sneaking it into her milk before bedtime, although I don't know if it's helping much.

Next week we leave for five days in Vancouver, staying with friends of ours and a few other families. I've been looking forward to this New Year's celebration for a long time, and promised Scott I wouldn't stress about it the way I stressed about our Washington trip, which was mostly a blur for me because Sadie teethed, cried and went on a food strike the whole time. I'm doing my best not to stress, but I'm really hoping she recovers from this cold soon and that she doesn't develop an ear infection, like she did the last time she had a cold. Ear infection + baby + airplane = misery.

Now that she's 15 months old, I thought I'd post an update on some of the new skills she's been working on. Her newest skill is being able to walk across a room holding onto only one of my hands. She wobbles around a lot, and is rarely in the mood to practice, but a couple of times she's gotten going at a good rate of speed and then you can tell she's totally proud of herself. She can now also bend down to pick up an object without having to sit down on the floor to get it.

She's finding new words. "Ball" is an outright favorite; she can spot a ball across the room, outside the window, on television. Last week we were shopping at Trader Joe's and she yelled "BALL" like ten times before I realized she was talking about round ornaments that had been strung from the ceiling around the store.

"No" is another recent acquisition, and this presents a conundrum: she rarely has the opportunity to bust out a "no," because she's generally agreeable, but she loves saying the word, so as a result she tends to wander around the house cheerfully murmuring "Nononononononono." Only a few days ago, she busted out "up" for the first time and now that's a new favorite too.

I know it's trite and silly to say, but the amount of joy I'm getting daily from this kid is just ridiculous.