I already posted this picture on Facebook, but I thought I'd add explanation and an update here for anyone who might be curious/concerned. Not that Anna hugging her horse is anything out of the ordinary, but this picture is just too sad for words. :( Anna's going to be admitted to the hospital tomorrow morning. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the last time that she was in, and yesterday she went to see her doctor because she has been getting progressively (but slowly) worse. She was expecting a change in her usual antibiotics, but I guess her doctor is worried enough that he wanted to admit her yesterday. She talked him into waiting until tomorrow. Anyway, we're all hoping it will be a quick in-and-out visit with no complications. But it is still sad. Every time. :( And as thankful as I am that she has had a fantastic, hospital-free year, something about making it so long in such surprisingly good health makes this one a bit harder to take. I know Lisa is having a really hard time with it too. But Lindy is on a cruise so I think she's probably taking it the best out of all of us. Ha! :)
Lily has still been sleeping relatively well, but it comes at the cost of my having to spend FOREVER rocking her every night to get her to fall asleep. I keep trying to just put her in her crib and leave her there (even despite the "oh woe is me" crying she is so good at), but nothing works except the rocking. I am constantly frustrated. And it's never quite as frustrating as it is when she wakes at 3:30 and won't go back to sleep until 5:15, like last night. She has done this off and on the past two weeks or so. So even though she is waking less often, she is so much harder to get back to sleep. I'm left wondering which is worse. I honestly don't know. And naps have been a similar battle. And I don't want to hear the cry-it-out recommendations because I have tried it. Repeatedly. It doesn't work with her. She is sweet and wonderful but boy does she seem to hate sleeping...
And there has been no shortage of little tragedies here this week either. Right now Lily is sporting a bruise on her cheekbone from where she ran into the edge of a table (awful), a bloody toenail from somehow/somewhere stubbing her toe badly while running around barefoot, some skin scraped off of the knuckle on her right middle finger, brushburns and bruises on both of her knees (these are her favorite- she loves to point out her "owies"), and just this morning while trying to put away the broom and dustpan I managed to close the door on two of her fingers on the hand that doesn't have the scraped knuckle. It was awful. She had been playing quietly in the corner as I opened the closet to put the stuff away and I immediately went to close the door and somehow she had gotten up from where she was playing and stuck her fingers in the hinge side of the door. She screamed and big crocodile tears poured down her face. I did the whole pick her up, comfort, make sure she still has fingers, consider taking her to the ER (hey, I'm a paranoid first-time-mom still), try to act like everything's fine for her sake, try to ice the fingers because I know it's what she needs, feel guilty for the icing because I know she hates it, feel guilty for having smashed her fingers in the door, question my sanity, consider calling the pediatrician to discuss the possibility of having damaged my daughter's fingers for life, go back to acting like everything is fine for her sake, convince her to play with icecubes in a glass of water, call my mom three times, etc.
Anyway, before I forget I need to be sure to publicly thank Elizabeth for the lily of the valley she sent. I think it may bloom soon and I will try to get a pic then. (Another fun thing about this week- my new phone is already not working, and it has been my main means of getting pictures on here as our regular camera doesn't exactly fit in my pocket. And I'm not about to start walking around with one of those camera straps around my neck like some kind of tourist or a certain Latvian grandfather we all know and love. :) ) But anyway- thank you Elizabeth, for the lovely gift. It was certainly appreciated and came at the perfect time. :) I knew that it was our birth month flower (yay May!) but I didn't know that it symbolized a return to happiness. So here's hoping the lilies bloom and next week goes a little more smoothly.
PS- About the finger incident- my mom finally called me back after things had calmed down. I told her what had happened, and after the initial "AAAAAAAAHHHHH THAT'S AWFUL!" reaction, she tried to comfort me by telling me that "babies are like salamanders." Really. She said "you know how you can chop off a salamander's tail and it can grow back? Babies have squishy soft bones and heal really well!" So apparently I could have chopped off Lily's fingers and they'd grow back. Thanks mom. :)
