Sweetheart's first flu

It's been too long since we posted, according to Uncle Tommy, so here's the latest bulletin from Chez Us.

Molly has had her first bout with stay-in-bed-groan-about-moving flu. It's pretty remarkable we've gone nearly three years before having this experience with her, but there you are. Let's hear it for China's ability to boost the immune system.

She was really tired when I picked her up from school Thursday at 3:00. By 4:00 she was demanding cuddles and feeling warm. After a short nap on a makeshift bed in the kitchen by my workspace she woke at dinnertime with a 102 fever. Yikes. Miserable, groaning, my head-hurts squinting eyes, and no talking - an extreme and disconcerting rarity with our girl. A long night of needing Tylenol and cold apple juice (also rare for our kid, she likes all her drinks hot even in summertime). Friday was a long day of needing cold apple juice, snuggling the refrigerated "booboo monkey" and comforting in our big bed with the tv on.

Then, ding-ding-ding, it was as if the time ran out on the 24-hour flu and she was her normal self again at 4:00, an instant later she said she wanted to go to her school Sweetheart Dance with Daddy.

A quick bath, pretty hair, some nail polish, jump into a cloud of pink fairy-like dress and ruby red slippers (her choice, not mine) and they were off. The flu? Nothing but a bad memory. The best part of the dance? They had watermelon and she shared some with her friend Aviva. Hopefully she didn't also share the flu germs. I don't want to think about that.

She's adorably into Valentine's Day this year, drawing sweet line-drawings of Mommy and Daddy Holding Hands and excitedly asking Daddy to be her valentine. She is currently using scissors and a purple glue stick to cut out and stick together pieces of a Daddy that includes cut out hair "like a wig for a girl," a crown, a "stinky sock" and a big boot. Now we're making "a blue clothes" for him. Daddy's face has a big smile with curlicues at the edges. Mols has a face full of glitter sparkles from her Valentine card from me this morning and wants to get dressed "in a pretty dress because it's Valentine's Day." Also worthy of note, she signed her name using a pink sharpie pen on 32 Cars and Disney Princess Valentines for her classmates this week - and then had to miss the class party Friday.

We're coming up on our Forever Family day, February 19. Three years since we met Molly. Three years of hugs and kisses. Three years of demands for hot milk and not enough sleep and not that outfit! Three years of paper snips and glue all over the counter with glitter embedded in it. Three years of constant motion, non-stop talking and singing. Three years of unspeakable joy. Three years we've been blessed with her in our lives.

There is health and love and happiness in our home. Not everyone has all three of those things at once and we know we are blessed and lucky. We are dipping our good fortune in chocolate and glittery sprinkles and leaving no crumbs uneaten.

C