Doodle is 6

Doodle had a birthday and of course, that is never the end of any story around here. It seems that any holiday (Christmas, birthdays, vacations) must be marked by an accompanying trip to urgent care.
Thankfully, we've never had any broken bones and only once, stitches were required. Rather our result is usually in the form of an antibiotic prescription. Maybe I'm exaggerating. The last time Doodle had a prescription filled for her was 2006. But when I think of the major illnesses my kids have had, they all seem to fall on a holiday / celebration! I suppose I just remember those the most, anyway!

Doodle had her friend party last Saturday. She had asked for a surprise party. Now, keeping a surprise amongst 5 six year olds is like trying to keep all the Polly Pocket pieces from ending up in the sweeper. Or trying to keep the Littlest Pet Shops safe from becoming permanently embedded in your feet. It is impossible. But the parents of these dear girls are wise. They didn't tell their daughters when or where the party was going to be. In fact, Doodle came home from school one day insisting that, "Rachel NEEDS to know when the party is going to be!" But we successfully surprised her and didn't even have to tell any lies to do it!

The theme of the party was "True Beauty" and we based it on "Gigi-God's Little Princess". After Muffin read the story describing how we are all princesses and princes of the King of Kings (God) we talked about how a real princess acts using scripture as the basis. The girls had come to the party all dressed up and then we treated them to a pedicure (compliments of my mom's foot bath and Muffin's artistic abilities), a manicure (Muffin and I shared these duties) and a young lady from the cosmetology school at our local high school did some beautiful hairdos. Here are the resulting princesses...
Almost immediately after the last guest left, Doodle began to complain that her throat hurt. I figured she was just exhausted and put her to bed a little early. I gave her some Ibuprofen in the middle of the night and by the time we got up, she seemed fine. So we skipped Sunday school so that she wouldn't infect anyone else if she was sick. We did make it to church and had the big girls stay with us in the sanctuary. Doodle's meds wore off in the middle of the service though and I had to take her out. In my defense, you would never know she was sick when she had some ibuprofen in her. So we went ahead with the family party that evening at our house. Here is a picture with the cousins. The first picture I said, "Smile!" and then I let them take a couple silly pictures and then I said, "OK, no smiles." I thought it was pretty funny how they were trying so hard to be serious!

The rest of the week was a pattern of this....Give Doodle some meds at bedtime, she acted fine in the AM. Came home from school and had a fever, repeat. I kept her home one day and the nurse finally called me on Thursday whereupon I finally took her to the urgent care convinced that once we had paid the copay, the healing would begin. It turns out she actually has strep throat. This is the first diagnosed case of strep in our house in ten years! I had thought maybe we were immune. Alas, she is home again today and we are waiting to see who else might get it.

Mator Swims

Mator is about to finish her 12th week of swim classes and she has made amazing progress. Part of our ritual is for Mator to hide in a locker (she completely shuts the door) and then I find her. This is all well and good if I am in on the game. It's not really funny when I go to the bathroom and return to find her, well, missing!The first few weeks of class all she did was smile the whole time. I can't believe her cheeks weren't tired. She even smiled as she was swimming across the pool. Things got harder and she doesn't smile all the time but still has a great time. She can now jump off the side with no floaties, turn around and swim back to the side without any help. This will make me feel a lot better, especially after last summer's scare. We were at the pool and she took her life jacket off because she needed to go to the bathroom. As is the prerogative of two year olds (at that time), she quickly changed her mind and wanted to swim again. I left her at the edge of the pool while I went to get the life jacket. I gave her strict instructions: Do not move from this spot. Now, these instructions would have gone a long way with my older two children. I would have expected to find them in the same spot and they would have been there. Not this bird. I reached our chair, picked up her life jacket and turned around. She was gone. I surveyed the 25 or so feet between where I was standing and where I had left her. Mostly there was pool. I immediately looked down into the water and there she was, standing on the bottom of the shallow end, eyes as big as saucers looking up. All of 40 seconds passed between the time I left her side and the time I jumped into the pool and picked her out of the water. She started coughing and crying and spent the rest of that afternoon on my lap.

I wish I could say that it scared her so much she obeyed me from that moment on. But, I can't. I can say that I will feel a LOT better when she is old enough to be on the swim team and tread water and oh yeh-obey!