I went to bed last night at 8:30, and I'm still exhausted.

We had a good Christmas. Penny was pretty well-behaved for most of the time we were over at my parents', and it was really nice to have the whole family together.

Of course, the day after Christmas, she turned up with a fever. She was in reasonable spirits despite it, so Matt and I decided that if she was still feverish Monday, we'd take her to the doctor. But Sunday she had an inconsolable screaming and crying fit, so we paged the pediatrician, who sent us to the hospital.

Seven hours later, we headed home with confirmation of the flu and a possible "something bacterial" for which they gave her two shots of antibiotic and told us to take her to the doctor first thing Monday morning.

Monday, the doctor said he wasn't certain enough about the something bacterial to keep her on antibiotics, and told us to just keep an eye on her lest she take a turn for the worse. Though before we were admitted to the ER Sunday, the fever had disappeared.

So since we can't send Penny to daycare until she's been fever-less for 24 hours, and since she was being mostly pretty good, I decided I could get in a half-day's work if I took her with me.

Heh. She was pretty good for the first half hour, and then she screamed and cried for another hour before finally taking a bottle and going to sleep for an hour and a half, and then she woke up crying again. I gave up and took her home.

At home, she was still crying and fussy, though I could sometimes calm her for brief periods. But at least she wasn't disturbing anyone else. When Matt got home, he managed to calm her considerably, and she was more or less normal for the rest of the evening, except that she dropped off to sleep a good hour earlier than usual. (Which wasn't too surprising - she'd only had one good nap all day, and she'd spent a big portion of the rest of the day screaming and crying, which is tiring.)

Which didn't stop her from waking up twice during the night. Which, I suppose, is better than the three times she was up the night before. I shouldn't complain; Matt took both feedings last night. But it's still a bit jarring to be woken from sound sleep like that.

I just want her to stop getting so sick that she feels the need to scream for hours on end. She's screamed herself hoarse - her voice this morning sounded like a rusty hinge - and it's exhausting to take care of her. I want my mostly-content and happy baby back!

(We'd been planning on trying to start her on cereal again this weekend. It seems like every time we so much as think about starting solids, she screams for about 36 hours straight. Maybe we should just promise to keep her on a liquid diet until she's about two.)

In less-whiny baby talk, she's actually making some progress at Doing Stuff, which is nice to see.

I watched her for about ten minutes yesterday systematically pick up a toy, start to stuff it in her mouth, lose interest, pass it to her other hand, drop it, and then start the whole thing over again. The toy was right under her hand anyway, so I'm not certain if she was picking it up on purpose, or just by reflex, but the rest of it was pretty purposeful. I had put her in the exer-saucer to give my back and arms a rest, and she was still crying, but every time she realized there was something in her hand, the volume of the crying would halve while she played with it.

And after she'd recovered her cool last night, Matt had her on the floor. She was twisting her back - a move she's had down for over a month, without any sign of further progress toward rolling - and Matt tickled her foot until she kicked it over. She didn't actually roll over, but that kick is the next step. The next few times she twisted her back, she did the kick again, without prompting.

We're this close to having her entirely weaned. It sort of happened mostly by accident over the holidays that I dropped back to only nursing her twice a day, and not pumping at all. With the reduced feedings, my supply has dwindled so that she needs a little supplementary bottle after nursing. So I don't think it's going to be too difficult to drop back to just once a day, and then stop entirely. It could be done within the next week or ten days.

I'm not sure whether to be happy about that or not. I should be relieved. I hated nursing for the first two months, and even after I got to where I didn't mind it so much, my milk supply was stubbornly inadequate, which gave me some pretty big self-esteem issues. You'd think I'd be happy to have a good excuse to switch her over to the bottle. I'm certainly happy to be done with the damn pump.

But like everything else having to do with parenting, I'm surprisingly ambivalent.

--Liz