Well, that was unexpected.

Halfway through Thursday, while Matt was at the dentist, I got a call from daycare. Penny had a fever, and they needed someone to come and pick her up, please.

I had no real work to do, so I sent Matt an e-mail and went to get her, and I stayed home with her Friday, too.

Aside from the fever, she seemed fine, really. Tired - she was taking 2 1/2 and 3 hour naps, and going to bed early and waking up late for most of the weekend - but mostly okay. Yesterday morning her temperature was back down into the low-grade area, so we didn't dose her with Tylenol, and her naps dropped back into a longish but more usual 1 1/2 hours, so I think she's over whatever it was.

Which is good, because if she'd still been sick yesterday, we were going to have to take her to the doctor today.

Friday morning at 8:30, despite only having been up for a couple of hours, Penny was acting cranky and tired. Slightly irritably, I said, "Do you want to go back to bed?" I meant it as a more or less idle threat, the way parents do.

Penny stopped fussing and held up her arms. Yes, pick me up, take me!

Slightly dubiously, I picked her up and took her back up to her crib, where she curled up with her stuffed animals and her blanket and went right to sleep.

Since she was feeling a bit under the weather and mostly just wanted to cuddle on my lap even when she was awake, we watched rather a lot of TV. (Mind you, for us "rather a lot" means "as much as an hour and a half a day." And mostly, "TV" means "Baby Einstein DVDs.")

But now she knows that when I get out the DVD case, the TV's going to come on. Yesterday, she picked up the Baby Beethoven DVD and thrust it at me until I gave in and turned it on.

I still worry a little about the fact that she's not really talking, but I have no doubt that her comprehension skills are growing every day.

This was also Opposite Weekend, apparently, which was a little frustrating for Matt and I. Penny would get hungry, but instead of going to her highchair or reaching for the cookies in the kitchen, she'd point at our stack of gaming books and magazines and whine, and shake her head angrily and point again when we offered them to her. Or she'd go over to the coat rack and grab Matt's old coat.

The weather was nice, so I took her outside some yesterday to give her a little fresh air. She banged on the door to go back in, so I opened it. Then, when we'd gone in and I closed the door behind her, she burst into tears. So I took her back outside - and she ran back to the door and banged on it again, wailing at the top of her lungs. (That one earned her a nap.)

And this morning, when she was trying to communicate that she really wanted a bottle and not her sippy cup for her morning milk, she instead grabbed the Baby Beethoven DVD and was very angry when I wouldn't put it in and turn the TV on.

I really don't need the Terrible Twos to hit before 18 months... I especially don't need them to hit when she's pre-verbal. I'm just going to sit here and hope it's just a cranky side-effect of being sick, I think.

GRR. Matt just called to tell me that daycare called him. She's got a little bit of a rash that's either a reaction to the laundry detergent (we're trying to switch her from the Very Expensive baby detergent to our cheap regular stuff, but I guess that'll have to wait a bit) or else a delayed reaction to her MMR shot, but in either case I'm about 95% certain it's not contagious. But they want a doctor's note to that effect, so Matt's got to go pick her up and try to get her in to see the doctor. So he's probably going to wind up missing work all day today.

BAH. Thank you, Monday. Thanks very much.

--Liz