When You Wish Upon a Star...

A Cupcake's dream comes true.



This image taken by Disney Photographers.




We went to Disney World. It was R's second time going. You may recall how she missed meeting Pooh last trip. We more than made up for it this time around. She saw Pooh three times!! The first, captured in the photos above, was at Hollywood Studios. The second, below, was breakfast at the Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom.







The third was our last hoo-rah at the Magic Kingdom. We were on our way out of the park when I happened to spy this photo op right at the exit. We couldn't let R leave without saying goodbye to her dear friends.




It was a good trip.

This image taken by Disney Photographers.

Too far away

Tonight is a night when it's hard to be so far away from my family. I was going to say, "far away from home," but my home is here. The family I made, the house we bought, this is my home for now. My original "home," the house where I grew up in Maryland, has long since been replaced by new digs in Florida; my Mom and Dad, and Brother and his family all moved South when I went West.

I called Mom tonight because R has been feverish. She's had one or two fevers from teething before, but they always went away after administering ibuprofen. This is different. She woke up at 3 am last night, screaming bloody murder. I put teething gel on her gums before I noticed how hot she was: 100º. I gave her ibuprofen and held and rocked her for a half hour. She still felt hot so I took her socks off. Another temperature reading gave 101º. Crap, it's going up. I took her pj's off and held and rocked her naked self for another half hour. Still 101º. At this point I took her to the bathroom to give her a lukewarm bath with a cool washcloth on the back of her neck. She enjoyed playing in the tub. I took her out of the bath when the flush in her cheeks went away. It was 5 am. The readings after that came up as 101º, 98º, and 98º. I kept checking because she FELT cooler, so how could she still be 101º?? (It was a temple thermometer by ReliOn. I have since thrown it away because it is so unreliable.) Senpai was awake for work at that point, and he told me I should try to get back to bed. I tried, but she never fell back to sleep. I would calm her down, go back to my room, slide under the covers, and as soon as I got warmed up she would start crying again. That continued until 6:20 when I gave up and lied down on her carpet. She was walking all around the room, stepping over me, and making disgruntled noises. I admitted it was time to start the day at 7. Neither of us had gotten any sleep since she first woke up at 3.

Her temperature throughout the day was on the warm side but not feverish. I kept her in her pi's, I was still in my robe, and we spent the morning watching Winnie the Pooh. Time was moving so slowly. I was desperately hoping for the clock to strike 11. That's when I would make an early lunch and haul us both off to bed, but I couldn't wait; started making lunch at 10:30. She barely touched her food and only ate spoonful upon spoonful of beef broth. After the post-lunch potty routine I took her upstairs only to have her scream and refuse to get in her bed. I was beyond tired, having a hard time not nodding off myself, so I took her to bed with me. That never happens. She had slept in our bed when she was a newborn, but since she's become more aware of her surroundings, getting into Mommy and Daddy's bed means fun for her, she gets instantly wired. So I took her to my bed not having any idea if she would actually fall asleep, but I was hoping she would just play quietly enough for me to sleep. I sat on the bed and rocked her in my arms first as she was still quite upset from me trying to put her in her bed. When she calmed down enough, I laid us down together and curled around her. Her head on my arm, she fell asleep almost instantly. I followed not too far behind her. She woke up crying after a half hour. I calmed her down and we went back to sleep. She woke up after another half hour. This time I notice she's wiping her nose and having trouble breathing. I give her some Benedryl which puts her out for a heavenly two hours straight.

After nap time she was clingy and lethargic. Both of us were lethargic, actually. She didn't eat her dinner until I made Cup-a-Soup, which Daddy lovingly spoon fed to her. She looked beyond tired. I checked her temperature and it was back up to 101º. I gave Senpai explicit directions as I had to leave to go to bellydance class. I was worried the whole class. When I came home, Senpai confirmed that he had followed my directions. I went upstairs to check on R who was fast asleep, and was scared to see that her temperature had not gone down. I immediately called my Mom. R was asleep, and I didn't want to have to wake her to give her a cool bath, so I really wanted to know if it'd be okay for her to continue to sleep through the fever. Mom's reaction was, "Call the nurse line. And call your brother; something difficult for him happened last night."

I was calling the nurse line when Senpai went upstairs with a different thermometer, and it came up with a temperature of 97.6º for R. I was so relieved. I checked with another thermometer, got the same result, and that's when I threw the ReliOn one away. Not reliable at all. Senpai had angled her mattress to make it easier for her to breath, she does not have a fever now and is sleeping soundly, so after I cleared things up with the nurse I hung up and called my brother.

That phone call made me wish I was right there in the same room with him, giving him a huge, squishy hug. The feeling hasn't left yet. I am too far away to help him the way I'd like. It aches... the place in my heart where I hold him dear. We were so close as kids. We grew apart as we grew up, both through interaction and distance, and I don't regret that; it's just how it goes. The love was always still there. Now that he's going through this hardship, though, the distance feels like a million miles. And I know that if I were to hop on a plane sometime soon, tomorrow even, it would be too late. Right now. Scotty, beam me South. I'm too far away.

Vacation

In July 2009, we celebrated our honeymoon (belated by 2 years) in Hawaii.


In September 2010, with a 5 month old baby, we visited Senpai's extended family in upstate New York.


This year, July 2011, we visited my family in Treasure Island, FL.


I love the beach.

I grew up in Maryland, not too far from either the Appalachian Mountains or the Atlantic Ocean. Just about every summer my family would spend a weekend at Ocean City: walking the Boardwalk, riding carnival rides on the Pier, and hanging out on the beach, getting sand everywhere, and getting knocked over by the waves in the cold ocean. After Maryland, I went to Sarasota, FL for college, and moved into a house just 5 minutes away from Siesta Key. Some days after school I would take a detour to the beach, grab the chair, towel, and umbrella I always kept in the trunk of my car, and let the lazy lapping of the Gulf of Mexico tune out my stress for a bit. After a brief stint back in MD and then an even briefer stint in Las Vegas, I moved with Senpai to southern Illinois, far from both mountains and ocean, as landlocked in the flat Midwest as we can be. Our little town is quaint, we're close to the big city attractions of St. Louis, but I miss being able to drive-- whether 5 minutes or 2 hours-- to the sunny, sandy beach. Well, this summer we did just that.

We packed up the car and left on a Wednesday night, just after dinner. R had a hard time falling asleep with her carseat facing forward for the first time ever (it gave us more room in the car that way), but after we turned it back to rear-facing she finally dozed off. We drove all through the night and the next morning, pacifying R with the portable DVD player we had bought just for the occasion. At 2:30 pm on Thursday, we finally arrived at Oma and Grandad's house in Northern Florida. Thursday and Friday we got to enjoy lazy time in my parents' pool, and we even tried to take R to her first feature film, the new Winnie the Pooh movie, but she wasn't in the mood to sit through the whole movie. After lunch on Saturday we made the two hour drive to Treasure Island where we all spent the next week. My brother and his wife and kids would join us later in the week.


Somewhere in southern Georgia, driving to Florida.


Grandad acts as a high chair at his and Oma's house.


Group photo in the beach condo. SIL is on the left holding O-buddy and O-lady, Oma is holding C, Grandad, Bro, and I are on the couch, and then Senpai and R are on the floor.


It was so wonderful to meet my brother's fraternal twins, the O's, who had been born late February. O-buddy is just like R at that age: full of gas that he can't get rid of on his own so he always wants to be held. As soon as you pick him up, sure enough, out comes a fart, a burp, or spitup, lol. And O-lady is such a gentle soul, always looking after her brother when he fusses.


R and her cousins, C, O-buddy, and O-lady


This trip was R's first time ever seeing sand and ocean. She was not a fan of the shoreline where the waves splash, but she was a big fan of going out into the water and bobbing up and down with the current in her baby saucer.


She loved the water!


Daddy enjoyed himself, too.


How R got around on the sand. I'm so glad I had this Boba Baby Carrier. I even got to bellydance with R on my back when we encountered a drum circle on the beach. ^_^


Other random things that we enjoyed while we were there: a couple's massage at Paradise Spa (I highly recommend them!!!), Senpai got his seafood fix at Bubba Gump's, the Harry Potter Experience at Universal Studios, the Harry Potter 7-2 movie, driving to the Tampa airport to eat Baja Fresh(!!!!), a very interesting karaoke experience at a local bar, the Dali Museum, taking R to a Disney Store, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa. It was a wonderful trip. The drive home was hard (thank you, Senpai, for picking up my slack), but it was so very worth it.

Blizzard Warning

I've got the Weather Channel on in the background chirping out the latest news about the winter storm in St. Louis. I need the TV to tell me these things as I am sitting here in sunny Florida, missing all of it. I don't mind missing the snow, sleet, and ice. What I do mind is missing my husband because my flight home tonight was rescheduled for Thursday.

I'll write more about the reason R and I flew down to Florida in the first place when I get back to my own computer and can upload the pictures from the camera, but here's a teaser:


Senpai stayed home to paint R's room while we are away. An upside to our having to delay our return flight is that Senpai does need the extra time to finish the project. He sent me this picture earlier today:


It looks great. I'm happy that he had the day off from work today due to the storm, but I wish I could've been there to help. Before I turned on the Weather Channel, I kept calling him to get updates on the weather and the painting progress, and he'd report back how much he hurt. :-( Maybe he wouldn't have been so overworked if I had been there, but if I were there, that would mean that R would also be there, and the whole point of Senpai tackling this task on his own while we're away is to protect R's budding brain cells from the paint fumes (Senpai had posted a facebook update, "For the amount of brain cells lost painting with KILZ primer I'm sadly disappointed I didn't get a buzz. I guess I'll have to do this the old fashion way...BEER!" lol).

Loving being with my family, but also definitely looking forward to Thursday when I'll return home to snow, sleet, ice, and Senpai. ^_^