Call Ended

It's been quite a week!  It started out wonderfully- we took Papa on a few more adventures:

Here are Maia and Papa at a cool outdoor aquarium we visited:

Maia was fascinated by the cool creatures of the sea, particularly the gigantic lobster (who, of course, refused to be photographed!).  Cec was there as well, but decided the aquarium was an excellent place to nap: 

Maia really wanted the gigantic lobster to come a little closer, though I have a feeling she may have run screaming in the other direction if he actually had:
And then Maia decided to show us how to swim, on land...  It was awesome!:



Nonni joined us for the weekend, and the fun continued.  Our town had a lovely kids' fair on our Common on Saturday afternoon.  Nonni and Maia headed over, and they had a blast.  Maia visited no fewer than 5 bouncy houses, and visited each of those multiple times.  I think she literally bounced for over an hour.  She also got the thrill of her first... pony ride!  (Aside: Daddy grew up in a beautiful, rural town with animals and farms and nature.  Mommy grew up in a city.  When Mommy and Daddy were dating, Mommy said something about ponies being baby horses... Daddy was horrified.  Daddy's family was horrified.  Could he really be thinking about marrying this city girl who didn't know that ponies are absolutely, unequivocally not baby horses?!  Turns out this is a VERY COMMON misconception, and one that is quickly being passed on to our daughters who are, after all, city girls.)  Here is Maia sleepily enjoying her jaunt around the "track:"
We spent the rest of the weekend visiting and catching up, and then on Monday morning we were very sad to see Nonni and Papa head home with many promises to return soon.

Maia was exhausted, and so we scrapped our plans for a big adventure and spent the rest of the day at home- Maia and Daddy worked on our fence, Mommy made a yummy dinner, and it was an early bedtime for everyone.  And then...

Maia came into our bedroom around 1:45 am.  She crawled in between us and lay there whimpering.  It took me a minute to get out of my sleeping fog, and when I touched her I got scared, really, really, really scared.  The kid was on fire.  We took her temperature and found it to be 104.4.  It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't have kids what this kind of fear feels like, but it's fierce- and it kicks all those awesome instincts right into gear.  We got her undressed, gave her Motrin, called her doctor, and started cooling her down with as many cool washcloths as she could handle.  A very long night followed...  we were able to control the fever, but not to get it low enough for her to be able to sleep.  After a follow-up dose of Tylenol she (and Mommy) finally fell asleep.  

Daddy saved the day and worked from home on Tuesday so I could take Maia to the doctor and not have to drag poor Cec along.  A blood count turned up an elevated white cell count, and sent us to our local children's hospital for a chest x-ray.  And the chest x-ray showed pneumonia. Yikes!  The good news was that we knew what caused such a high fever, and we could now get it rid of it with some serious antibiotics.  The bad news was that our three year old had pneumonia.  As it turns out, it's not all that uncommon in kids this age, and not nearly as scary as it can be.  Maia has been a trooper through the entire adventure- she let the doctor check her out, didn't complain when they took a blood sample, and said cheese with bravado for the xrays.  She doesn't love the antibiotics, they make her belly hurt, but she knows they are getting her better and doesn't fight them.  She does, however, miss school like crazy.  She can't wait to go back, and that is a wonderful thing to this Mommy and Daddy. 

Amidst all of this, Nonni's Mom passed away peacefully, surrounded by her children and in the thoughts of her grandchildren and great grandchildren.  We're saddened by our loss, but relieved that Dotto (as she was affectionately called) is no longer suffering.  And we have many years of wonderful memories to share with each other and with the wee ones.  Here is a photo from Summer 2007 of our four generations: Dotto, Nonni, Mommy, and Maia:
Let's end on an up note... Background essential to the story: about two and a half years ago, Daddy finally caved to my relentless onslaught and agreed to get a new car.  One of the features for the car we agreed we couldn't live without is bluetooth for our cell phones.  It's a handsfree system that allows us to dial whomever we care to call, speak and listen through the car stereo, etc.  There's a very helpful female voice asking what number we want to dial, announcing she's dialing, and then declaring "Call Ended" when the call is completed.  We love her, and the entire system.  We often call Daddy at work when we're in the car.  More often than not, we leave a message and Daddy always calls us back and says some version of "I just missed your call, what's up?"  Now, on to the story-while Daddy was home on Tuesday, I took advantage and made a supply run to Target (or Tar-Zhay as we so often say).  I bought cheddar bunnies (healthy version of goldfish), The Princess Diaries 2, a gigantic coloring book filled with fairies to scribble over, and a toy flashlight and cell phone for Maia.  (There is nothing like a serious bacterial infection to bring out the credit card.)  Maia loves flashlights (she gets this from Grampy!), and has run all of ours down to mere flickers.  I saw a cute one with a toy phone and didn't think twice.  Maia has been having a blast since she discovered them yesterday morning. She loves to test where she is, and where she's not, allowed to shine the light (yes- on the ceiling, no- in Mommy's eyes.)  She's also been having fun with the phone, and her conversations have me cracking up.  They often sound a lot like this:

Bring- Bring

Maia (in her fastest speaking voice): "Hello?  Oh, I just missed a call.  Bye.  Call ended."