It was a weird weekend.

Friday night, Penny felt a little warm before bed, but Matt and I both chalked it up to the warm weather and her high activity level.

Saturday morning, she slept in until after 6:30 - totally unheard of! When Matt got up with her, she was clingy and low-energy and after they'd been up for about an hour, she turned to him and said, "More?" and when he said "More what?" she threw up on him.

Matt left her watching Elmo and came upstairs to change clothes. "Okay, I'm getting up," I said.

"Nah, I've got it," he said. "You can go back to sleep." Of course I couldn't, but he gets Husband of the Month for offering.

I took Penny's temperature - underarm reading was 102.1, which is to say, 103, really. We gave her a slug of tylenol. An hour later, her fever was still 101.9 (102.8, really). Not much improvement.

She was pitiful and listless. Our normally go-go-go-go-go girl spent the whole morning sitting on my lap or Matt's, snuggling into our shoulders and dozing while she watched TV.

Our pediatrician is sort of open for sick kids only on Saturday mornings. What I found out the hard way is that they don't actually answer the phone; they let the answering service page them, and then someone calls back to determine if you're sick enough to warrant Saturday hours.

She was. Matt bundled her up and took her in, and came home about an hour later with the diagnosis: strep throat.

Oy. Poor little girl.

The doctor told Matt, "I can write you a prescription for a ten-day run of amoxycillin, or we can give her an antibiotic shot right here in the office and that'll be the whole dose."

Matt said, "Any problems I should know about with the shot?"

Doctor: "Nope. It's what I give my own kids."

Shot it is! Of course, when the nurse brought it in, she said, "This hurts. And it's very thick, so it'll take several seconds to get the whole amount into her." Harumph.

Still, a few minutes of crying beats the tar out of trying to remember to keep the medicine schedule and forcing it into her if she hates the taste and all the potential side-effects that antibiotics have.

And it worked fast. Not too long after Matt brought Penny home, we put her down for a nap. She slept for nearly three hours, and when she woke up, she was... not back to normal, but feeling better enough that she wanted to walk around on her own some, and do things other than watch TV.

By Sunday, she seemed much better - just ever-so-slightly tired and easily fussed, and with a slightly suppressed appetite, still. But since the antibiotic had been in her system for 24 hours, we felt okay taking her to visit my parents.

They all had fun, and Mom asked us to stay for dinner, which was nice.

Everyone but Penny and I were still at the dinner table when Penny walked up to the door that separates my parents' foyer from the rest of the house. Most of the doorknobs in my parents' house have been replaced with lever-style latches, because my mom's arthritis makes it difficult for her to grip a doorknob. But the foyer door is used pretty rarely - it usually stands open.

But Penny has this thing about doors being closed. She pushed the big old door decisively shut. My dad, who could see her from his seat in the dining room, turned to look, so I have a witness: Penny then grabbed the doorknob, twisted, and pulled, and the door swung open again.

Now we're in for it. (Though we've got a little grace. She couldn't duplicate the trick afterward, and she hasn't managed to open any of the doors in our house, yet - our knobs turn just a little harder than my parents'.) But Matt and I have started latching the gate at the top of the stairs before we go to bed, anyway, just in case Penny also learns how to climb out of her crib, like I did as a baby.

We were almost halfway home from my parents' when I said, "Oh. Shit. The pot of soup I started before we left? I forgot to turn the stove off."

Boy, did I feel stupid. I'm turning into my mother! Argh!

But I got lucky. The house had not burned down, and the pot had not welded itself to the stove. In fact, once the pot had cooled down enough for me to try to clean it out, it was fine. All the burnt vegetables just lifted right off the bottom in one big chunk and went down the disposal. Yay, teflon!

Monday, of course, I had to make another batch of soup. I figured, while I was at it, I'd make a double-batch, and freeze the extra. That way, I won't have to make another batch next weekend.

(It didn't occur to me to buy more of the disposable tupperware I use for the soup, though, so half my good tupperware is in the freezer, now.)

But we got a lot of really good Halling done over the weekend, and K.T. got some writing done. Me, I got sucked into NeoQuest. ("Am I a totally enormous dork if I'm envisioning a little romance between Rohane and Mipsy?" I asked Matt. "Yes," he said. "Yes, you are.")

So now I'm back at work, and I've got another deadline for the stupid proposal thingy tomorrow at noon, which means I've got about twelve hours' worth of work to do before then, on top of all my regular work that has to be done.

So if I don't want to be working too late this evening, I'd best get on with the day.

--Liz