Lots to talk about, I guess, so everything will have to be brief.

Weekend: Very good. Jenn came down for a visit Saturday. We haven't seen her in person for a while, so she was quite overcome at how big Penny's gotten in the last six months.

Sunday we met the Brandts for dinner at La Tolteca, because I was craving fajitas. Penny was very good and cute, and kept reaching for Emma to give her hugs, which was unspeakably adorable.

Monday I had my surgery, which went better than I'd feared it would. The pre-op nurse got the IV in me on the first try, and the anasthesiologist turned out the be same doctor who'd given me my epidural when I was in labor, which was funny. I felt well enough after the surgery even that Mom and I went out for lunch before going home.

And then the fit hit the shan. Or something like that.

Monday night, Penny was up for an hour and a half - she did take a bottle, but slowly and without much interest. It seemed her reason for being awake was that she was uncomfortable. She wasn't crying as if in pain, but she kept stretching and twisting like her little muscles were aching. I tried to take care of her, but between lingering discomfort from the surgery and the effects of the narcotic painkiller the doctor had given me, I had to turn her over to Matt for the majority of that hour and a half.

Yesterday morning, she was feverish. It was only a low-grade fever, so we plied her with Tylenol and sent her to daycare anyway, and Matt made an appointment to take her to the doctor.

The doctor found - no, go on and guess! - ear infections. He gave us an antibiotic prescription and said that if she gets another set, we need to take her to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, who will probably recommend having tubes put in her ears.

About the time Matt got Penny back to daycare, he reported feeling feverish and queasy, himself.

He was definitely feverish and suffering full-blown nausea by the time they got home, so I tried to do as much of the baby-wrangling as I could, both to let him rest and to try to avoid giving whatever he had to her. But there are limits, as I'm still recovering from the surgery (I wouldn't say I'm having pain, but the discomfort gets more and more pronounced the longer the day goes on).

The good news there is that we've finally met Matt's insurance's stupid deductible for drugs, so we didn't have to shell out $50 for Penny's drugs.

As near as we can tell, antibiotics have one of two effects on her: Either they are so nasty that they make her gag and, frequently, throw up; or they give her diarrhea.

I'm not entirely certain which is worse. Whichever one I'm currently having to deal with, I suppose.

This seems to be one of the latter, as she woke up around midnight last night and probably would have gone back to sleep fairly quickly except that I had her on the changing table for a good half-hour, and we went through at least six diapers.

Once I got her to bed, she slept very soundly until about 5:45 this morning, when I went in to get her and found that she'd worked herself out of her chair (she sleeps in the carseat when she's sick) and was working on pulling herself to standing on the crib railing.

This morning had some good news, at least. I didn't take Penny's temperature, but she felt much cooler, almost back to normal. And Matt reported feeling much better, so maybe he was just suffering from sleep deprivation.

And our deck is going up! I'd say slow and steady, but it's actually happening pretty fast. If the weather remains half-decent (except it looks like it's going to rain today) the guy we hired thinks he'll have the deck done by the end of the weekend.

This is where things stood at about noon yesterday.

And this picture was taken this morning.

I'm looking forward to the deck, oh yes indeed.

Now, if we could all just get healthy...

--Liz