Friday domesticity

It's finally Friday afternoon and the weekend is in sight. Hooray! For those of us who don't have "real" jobs (ha! ha!) that tends to mean little more than a slight, but oh-so-significant respite from our usual days. For me, it means more family time, more help with the kiddo and more time to do things I want to do (I'll be honest. Usually that means take a shower sans toddler and something really exciting like mopping the floors or whatever I didn't get around to during the week).

I'm feeling pretty elated right now. Two days in a row I have forgone my usual routine of "nap while she naps" and have instead managed to get some stuff done around the house. It feels FANTASTIC. My new New Years Resolution is to nap less. I'm sure this will last all of a day, what with the third trimester quickly upon me, but I'll take it when I can. I was/am really starting to feel discouraged by how sick and tired I've been the last 22 weeks, and as a result, how sloppy everything around me (including myself & my appearance) has started to become.

Back to naptime. I've tidied up a bit, eaten some lunch and just popped a batch of granola into the oven. Here is the basic recipe I use. It's so much better and cheaper than the store-bought kind, and pretty customize-able. We have company staying over tonight, and I like the idea of having fresh homemade breakfast around which I can make the day before.

Needless to say, it's been a pretty long week. Last Friday Ellie started running a little fever, and by the weekend it was into the 102-103 range. When she's sick, this is a pretty typical range for her fever to hang out in for 24 hours or so, but by Sunday we couldn't get it down, despite piggy-backing ibuprofen and tylenol. Poor kiddo looked and acted quite sick, not to mention sounded absolutely terrible - wheezing, coughing, etc. On the advice of our family friend physician, we headed to Urgent Care on Sunday and waited out a chest xray, strep test, etc. Luckily, no strep & no pneumonia, but we were sent home with some antibiotics and an inhaler (side note: have you ever tried to get a 20 month old to use an inhaler? HA!) and a diagnosis of bronchiolitis (basically just inflammation of the bronchioles). She and I spent the whole week holed up in the house fighting her real fever, not to mention a serious case of cabin fever. Today she seems mostly better, which is great news. I think one more day of being cooped up and we both would have gone batty. :) (of course, it's 1:30pm and we still haven't left the house. Go figure!).

One last thought: I'm tired of reading about this crazy flu season. I'm even more tired about reading about people who think vaccination is ineffective or dumb. I want to yell at these people because vaccinations save lives, period. Are they 100% effective, always? No. But still. Get the darn shot. Do your part to help protect yourself, your kids, me, people with compromised immune systems and most importantly - my kids. That is all.