The most pathetic sicky in the world

Rachel ended up with a fever yesterday evening and was quite miserable. Daddy had gone to fix President McCallister's computer so we were home alone(ish...Josh and Carolee were over). I gave her some Motrin because that's what we had on hand and then we settled down to watch The Swan Princess. We only got about half way through it before she decided she was finished with it.

So she got up and wandered around the house aimlessly while whimpering to her heart's content and I worked on her bunting bag. She kept coming over to me and leaning against me and crying, so I finally just put her to bed. She went so willingly it was a little eerie.

When Daddy came home, he and Josh got all set up to play Starcraft, leaving Carolee and I with little to do, so we decided to go to an "eat our food because we're leaving to go home to America for a month" party thrown by Caitlin (she's actually leaving for good) and Lindsey (only leaving for a month). Right before we left I walked past Rachel's door and heard her pathetic whimperings.

I went inside and she was sitting up in bed, just whining and clutching her dolly. So I brought her out and took her temperature. It was up around 102°F and she was crying and whining so much that I couldn't figure out what to do to help her. Andrew and Josh gave her a blessing, and then I nursed her and put her back to bed.

Then Carolee and I went out to the party and Josh and Andrew stayed home to "babysit Rachel." Carolee and I were out until around midnight. We even did an ice cream run to Seoudi's and walked Sarah all the way to Kimo's in order to stay out a little later. When we got home our husbands were still playing Starcraft. They'd hardly even noticed we were gone. They played for like an hour longer before they finally heeded their wives' whinings and called it a night.

Just as we were getting ready for bed, Rachel woke up screaming. Of course.

I went in there and she was just muttering to herself, "Da, da, da, ba, da, da, da, da. Blah! Da, da! Da, da!"

"I think she wants you, Daddy!" I hollered.

Andrew came in and Rachel seemed a little happier holding his hand while she continued to mutter on and on about what was bothering her. She still had a fever, but it had already gone down to just around 100°F. We tried everything we could think of, but everything just made her scream louder. Finally she remembered that she could say 'yes' and 'no' and give us other hints instead of making us blindly guess what was wrong.

She put her hands on her head, "Ba, ba, wa, thwaka boo!"

"Does your head hurt, baby girl?" I asked.

"Yeah," she sniffed and then put her hand on her neck, "Awa, wa, wath, spinch toe!"

"Does your neck hurt?" I asked. Sometimes my neck hurts when I'm sick, like when my glands are all swollen.

"Noooo!" she wailed and clawed at her throat some more, fake coughing for dramatic effect.

"Does it hurt inside your neck? Where your food goes down?"

She nodded and sniffed and said as pathetically as possible, "Yeah."

"That's called your throat. You have a sore throat."

"Yeah!" she sniffed again.

I sent Andrew to make her some warm milk with honey. She started crying when he left.

"Do you want Mommy to hold you?"

"Nooo!" she preferred to just lie flat on her back. Everytime I tried to pick her up she screamed.

"Do you want Mommy to rub your back?"

"Noooo!"

"Do you want Mommy to sing to you?"

"Yeah," she sighed and stopped crying so I sang Christmas carols until Andrew came back with the milk, which she completely rejected.

We forced some baby tylenol down her throat and then I nursed her back to sleep. She woke up a half hour later. And then an hour after that. And then 45 minutes after that. And that's pretty much how our night went. It was awful. I probably nursed her 50 (okay, maybe only about 10) times during the night.

But she woke up in the morning feeling fine, with no fever and an incredible amount of energy, which was unfortunate because Andrew and I were a bit sluggish. Actually, Andrew was a bit sluggish and I was a slug. He brought her in to nurse at 9 AM and then I didn't get out of bed until the afternoon.

I suppose we're lucky that Rachel at least made an effort to communicate with us instead of simply screaming all night long. So even though I ended up nursing her 10 times last night things have improved slightly since she was 2 weeks old. Good to know, good to know.