This weekend was a rendition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Bad was Friday, and really, it wasn't all that bad. We took Penny to the doctor for her 4-month checkup. The doctor said she's doing just fine - head circumference and lenght/height are pretty much smack in the middle of average, and though her weight is up over the 95th percentile at 17 pounds, the doctor thinks that will level off as Penny starts to become mobile.

Then they gave her the shots - four vaccinations, two in each thigh. She cried, but was more easily comforted than last time, and we gave her a shot of baby Tylenol and I took her home. She pretty much slept for most of the rest of the day.

Of course, she didn't want to sleep when night rolled around, and when Matt and I dosed her with a little of her decongestant, to help her breathing, she threw up. So none of us got to sleep until after eleven. Good thing it was the weekend.

Then Saturday was the Good. Penny had recovered from her shots, and was as happy and content a baby as anyone could ever hope for. She even slept in - I got up at about 8, and both Penny and Matt slept until about 8:45. We took her with us while we ran some errands, and then we went down to my parents' house for a visit.

We made cookies and took turns passing her around, and she pretty much continued on with her happy babbling, though while Matt and I ran out to do a quick errand, she somehow learned how to make a new noise - something between a squeal and fingernails on a chalkboard. It's pretty irritating. I'm hoping she'll move on to another noise soon.

But the Ugly started that night. Once again, she didn't want to go to sleep, and then she had a flat-out hysterical fit that lasted almost half an hour. She eventually screamed herself to sleep, and Matt and I snuck to bed.

She slept until 6, and the morning started normally enough. She fussed, and I got up to nurse her. But she didn't want to go back to sleep after she'd nursed (sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't) and I was still pretty tired, so around 7 I asked Matt to take over so I could get another half-hour or hour of sleep.

It didn't happen. She had another screaming/crying hysterical fit on him, and there was no way I was going to sleep through that. I got up around 7:30, and fifteen minutes later I called the pediatrician's office and had them page the doctor on duty.

The doctor couldn't diagnose her over the phone, but hazarded a guess that perhaps her cold had given her an upset stomach, or maybe it had turned into an ear infection. He counselled us against going to the emergency room, on the grounds that it was likely full of people with the flu, and we don't want to expose Penny to that unless we absolutely have to. So he said we could give her our over-the-counter decongestant, and baby Tylenol, or gas drops, or whatever seemed to make her feel better, and that we should only go to the ER if she never had any normal moments, or if she started to run a fever.

Thus began the day of Ugly. She didn't scream the whole day, but she did spend most of the day in a pretty foul mood. She didn't want to sit down. She didn't want to lie on the floor and play for more than about two minutes at a go. She didn't want to be in the exer-saucer for more than three minutes at a time. She didn't want to sit in the bathroom and look in the mirror. She didn't want to be held, but she certainly didn't want to be left on her own. She didn't want to eat, except when she did.

Matt and I spent most of the day taking turns holding her and pacing around the house, as that was the only thing that seemed to even remotely help. We took occasional solace by putting her in the swing, where she would promptly conk out and go to sleep - but we couldn't put her in it and walk away, because the buckles don't quite fit and they're just next to impossible to adjust, so she wasn't fastened in. And there isn't a single spot downstairs that's big enough to fit the contraption. (We need to do some re-arrangement of furniture, and soon. But yesterday was not the day.)

I broke down crying at one point, and seriously wondered why the hell I'd ever wanted to become a parent. I wondered - quite seriously, though not for very long - if it was possible to give a child up for adoption at her age. I was ready to leave Penny in a snowbank for the wolves. Lucky for her, we're a little short on snowbanks.

I spent the whole day waiting for the evening. My plan - my beautiful and glorious Plan - was that I would give her a bottle around 6, then at about 8 I'd give her a shot of baby Tylenol (it makes her sleep) and then nurse her until she dropped off to sleep.

Ha. I say unto you: Ha!

At 6:30, she didn't want a bottle. When I put the plastic nipple in her mouth, she went from hungry-fussy to furious and hysterical. Finally, in desperation, I offered her the breast, and she clamped right on. She nursed for well over half an hour, and fell asleep. Cuddled sleeping in my arms, she was once again my adorable baby, and it was not beyond consideration that when she woke, she might be my sweet and happy daughter again.

She woke on her own around 8, so we gave her the shot of baby tylenol, and the bottle she'd refused at 6:30, and she slurped it all down quite eagerly. Matt and I waited for her to fall asleep.

Not only did she not fall asleep, she went back to being upset and crying and hysterical. At 9, I pulled on a jacket over my pyjamas and went to the store for gas drops.

She finally went to sleep around 9:45, though whether the gas drops had helped, or she had just finally exhausted herself, I have no idea.

This morning when I picked her up to nurse her, she refused to wake up. She slept through the nursing, and didn't wake up until I put her on the changing table for the day's clothes.

She was fine and normal and happy while I was in the shower, and even tolerated being put down in the playpen while Matt wrote the weekly check to daycare and put on his shoes. I was still only half-dressed when he went outside to scrape the frost off his car, and she started making fussy-angry noises pretty much the instant he closed the door.

Mind you, it's perfectly possible that she was getting fussy because she doesn't usually like being left on her own for more than a couple of minutes, and it had already been a good five minutes. But I didn't want her to work herself up into another hysterical fit, so I went downstairs, half-dressed, and bounced her on my knee until Matt came back in.

I don't know whether today's going to be another Ugly day or not. I hope not.

But - gods forgive me - I'm glad she's spending most of the day at daycare.

--Liz