Sometimes You Scare Me!

You know, it wouldn't exactly be an accurate story if I only talked about your sweet moments, or cute mannerisms... Sometimes, little girl of mine, you scare the bejeezus out of me!

Take this weekend for example. First you started having a fever on Thursday - 101 degrees...not TOO serious, but enough to make me take notice. You were acting pitiful - not playing, sitting in my lap a lot, even falling asleep in Daddy's lap when he was holding you in the recliner. We gave you infant tylenol (which you didn't like much, but you took it better than you did the 'pink stuff' - a.k.a. amoxacylin) and the fever went away the next day.

Then you get this rash all over your body. Little pink spots on your arms, face, legs, butt.... Daddy immediately says "chicken pox" but I've had chicken pox, he hasn't and I don't think that's what it is. Plus you aren't scratching them, and they don't look as awful as chicken pox. I went through a gambit of possibilities. Measles? But your fever had gone away... Heat rash? But it didn't go away like heat rash normally would. I wondered if it was some of your umpteen-million new clothes that Grammy had bought you causing an allergic reaction of some sort because your bad mommy hadn't washed everything first (I ususally do, but there were just SO many new outfits!) before letting you wear it.

So we went to church Sunday night and you were walking around in the sanctuary like you always do when I'm tuning the guitars for praise and worship before service starts. And I look up, and you've vanished. I didn't really panic at first. After all, the church is like a second home to you and you often go get a toy from the nursery and come right back. But you weren't in the nursery or children's church or the fellowship hall, or Daddy's office or any place else that I could find. Cue panic....

After frantically searching every hiding place I could think of and enlisting some help from your adopted grandpa Monte.... we finally found you. One of the children's staff had taken you and a couple other kids out to the playground without bothering to tell me!! Needless to say, they were very apologetic, (especially after I told them if they ever did that again, I'd kill them!) and you were fine. I think I have a few more gray hairs after that and it took my heart a little while to get back in a normal rhythm again.

After church that night, one of the church ladies who is a nurse told me your rash was most likely just the residual effects of a minor viral infection - which was probably what had caused your fever a few days prior. She said her son had had something very similar before. That relieved my mind and we went home a little more at ease.

Of course, you had to pull one more heart stopping stunt before the day was through. After laying you down for the night, Daddy and I stayed up a little longer to have some time to ourselves to play on the internet and such. We were heading down the hall to go to bed ourselves when we heard you screaming. We both dashed into your room and you were crying and calling for me saying your head hurt. You said you had bumped it. Well, you had bumped it slightly several hours before when you were playing with Daddy, but not enough to cause this kind of hysteria. There wasn't even a mark on you. We soothed you and rocked you for a bit and you feel back to sleep, so we put you back to bed.

Not even an hour later it happened again - you crying out for us saying your head hurt. And of course, my 'mommy brain' starts running through scenerios....what if Jennifer was wrong and the rash and fever were something serious? What if you hit your head harder than we thought and you have a concussion and we let you go to sleep?!?!

We put you in the bed with us to observe you - something we never do - and you contentedly went right back to sleep. Eventually we got you back in your own bed and you slept the rest of the night, waking up this morning perky and cheerful and apparently having no rememberence of anything that had occured. Your head is fine and you act fine. All that scaring for nothing!

I know you can't help any of these things. But the saying is true, "Having children is like ripping your heart out of your body and letting it walk around in this dangerous world on tiny little legs."