The Light at the End of the Tunnel

February has been a tough month so far. Heavy snowfalls, bitter cold, drenching rains, flooding and lack of sunlight are enough to dampen anyone's spirits. And if that weren't enough, Maria got sick... sicker than she has been to date. Not only did she have a runny nose, cough, high fever and ear infection, but she also managed to have diarrhea, diaper rash and a terrible teething episode concurrent with the nasty cold/ear infection issues. I don't know how she managed it, but it appears our daughter is an over-achiever at the tender age of 10.5 months!

It was the worst of times in many ways. We sweated through sleep deprivation, ear-splitting wails and the dilemma of whether or not to go to the "convenient" care clinic to suffer the inconvenience of sitting in a germ-infested waiting room for more than 2 hours with a hysterical child since the high fever ironically made its first appearance on Friday evening! We decided to hang onto our remaining shreds of sanity and NOT go to convenient care.

Bright and early Monday morning I was able to make an appointment with Maria's regular pediatrician and he diagnosed Miss Cranky with a bad case of the ear-infection fussies! Armed with some liquid Amoxicillin and a medicine dropped I headed home with high hopes for a healthy child in the near future. These hopes were seriously endangered by little Miss Fussy, who does not like Amoxicillin despite the copious amount of sugar mixed into the liquid. With each dose the struggles escalated from head turning to trying to bat the dropper away to all out flailing and spitting. The medicine ended up all over her, the changing table, me, Mark and sometimes the wall. After a few days of this I was starting to worry that she would have an ear infection for the rest of her life because we, the incompetent parents that we are, couldn't get enough medicine in her!

Then along came my knight in shining armor. Since it is Valentine's Day after all, I'd like to say that I have an amazingly creative and talented husband and I am constantly thinking how lucky I am to be married to him! One morning he measured out the medicine as usual and then started to put it drop by drop in the center of some Cheerios, Maria's favorite food. He put the Cheerios on her tray and to my amazement she picked them up and ate them, medicine and all! It took a while, but she got the full dose that morning and every morning after that! Eventually Mark started putting some of the medicine on toast just to speed things up a bit.

Today Maria is finally done with her meds and has returned to her usual happy self. Sometimes she gets a little too happy and starts to scream at the top of her lungs apparently just because she can, but I'd rather have a happy and loud baby than a sick and loud one any day!