Those darn mosquitoes!

This morning I was rudely awakened by the baby monitor, that sits right by my head, going crazy. Rachel was squawking and screaming. I went to her bedroom and peeked inside.

She was sitting up and throwing a terrible tantrum--at her feet. They'd somehow offended her. She was pulling wildly on her socks, then screaming at her feet, then kicking them, then pinching them, then screaming, then kicking, then hitting. She was pretty much furious.

I picked her up and brought her to our bed and peeled off her socks to reveal two very swollen and mosquito-bitten feet! She'd been pestering the bites for so long that they were all swollen, even the ones from yesterday had flared up again.

She wouldn't calm down for anything until I offered her a shower. Thank goodness for that! She's always willing to take a shower. Or a bath. Or go swimming.

The water seemed to help her forget about her itchy feet and we went out and had a great time being girls with the sisters in our branch. Rachel was the perfect baby while we were out. She only threw one fit (when I took her off the wall she'd been walking on), let anyone hold her, and told me, truthfully, when she had to go potty. She even nursed to sleep in the taxi and didn't pee on me in her sleep (which I was obviously very afraid she would do but apparently she has more bladder control than I thought. Maybe I should start putting her down for naps in underwear instead of a diaper...).

When we got back home she started scratching again, though, and soon she'd made herself bleed and was all upset again. I sat her down on our reading chair so that I could bandage her up and then I remembered that she was wearing her cute, new sweater so I thought we'd take some pictures.

She kept goofing off and whenever I asked her to smile she would fold her arms and squint instead.


She thinks she's so funny! She kept laughing at herself in between squinting her eyes.


I asked her to show me which mosquito bites hurt her the worst and she started to point them out to me. Apparently that one, there, was a pretty bad one, although I think the one on her toe that had swollen up so much that she could hardly bend her toe was worse.

This picture does not do justice

I put band aides on the ones that were bleeding and then did my best to distract her. Because Daddy still wasn't home from school and Mommy was too scared to actually make dinner because of the spider lurking in the kitchen, Mommy decided to just pop some popcorn and have a movie party with Rachel instead of making dinner.

Sometimes I'm a responsible mom like that.

Besides I knew Andrew would help make dinner when he came home so it was technically I was only stalling, not neglecting. And Rachel acted so maimed after I put band aides on her that I didn't think she'd be able to walk all the way to the table, so we just had to eat our popcorn in front of the (portable DVD player) screen (since our TV doesn't work).

Here's Rachel stumbling along. She couldn't keep her eyes off of her band aides and had to keep bending over to touch them while she walked.



I distracted her from picking off the band aides by letting her wear her other new shirt while we watched Over the Hedge. Her attention span lasted as long as the bowl of popcorn did, and since we both only take one piece of popcorn at a time, she sat still for quite a while. When we started getting down to the unpopped kernels she put one in her mouth and started chomping on it. I made her spit it out and told her to only eat the white, fluffy ones. She is very obedient, but such a tease. After I told her that she kept periodically picking up kernels and holding them in front of her mouth while she danced in front of my face like, "What are you going to do?"


We sat on my Winnie the Pooh yoga mat. I had to get it because I had to start doing yoga again but my poor bony butt can't handle doing yoga on the wood floor. It's actually been a pretty good investment so far. Somehow Rachel knows all the Winnie the Pooh characters; don't ask me how because she's never watched Winnie the Pooh. I'd like to know who's secretly, and successfully, teaching my baby Winnie the Pooh characters when I'm still struggling with color recognition.

She'll say "Pooh!" when she points at Pooh, but Eeyore is her favorite. She just can't say his name yet. It comes out more like "Eeeeeerrrroght!"

One day I asked her where Eeyore was and she ran into her room and got a little toy that our crazy Polish neighbor gave to her back in September. I had totally forgotten about that. I don't know how she remembered, but I don't really care. She loves Eeyore and I love that she loves Eeyore.

Now whenever she's running around and driving me crazy I say, "Go sit on Eeyore!" in a fun, sing-song voice and she'll run over to my yoga mat and sit on Eeyore like it's the funnest game in the world. It's awesome.

Oh, and I can do yoga now, besides.

...Back to mosquitoes.

Andrew stopped by the pharmacy to get some calamine lotion (3 LE for a bottle!) before coming home from school. We made and had dinner, and then got Rachel ready for bed. That was quite the process.

I put on her diaper and jammies, which was normal, and then basically lathered her feet in calamine lotion. Then I put thick slippers on her feet, and sprayed the remaining exposed skin with bug spray. We put a treated mosquito net by her bed, but we don't really have any way to hang it, so it's just sitting there (hopefully) repelling mosquitoes.

I hope they leave her alone tonight or that she starts to understand the concept if "itching makes it worse." Either solution is fine. We're a versatile family; I have a Winnie the Pooh yoga mat.