Kiss My Knits!

Steve and Em on the caterpillar ride.

Em and me on the carousel. Just to prove I was really there.

We’re back, Steve with a headache and unhealed hand injury, Em with a tummyache and exhaustion, and me with a headache, exhaustion, and unexplained dizziness. Maybe from the last leg of the trip, which I rode as a passenger instead of a driver.

Anyway, we’re home again. We had a great time and are looking forward to next year.

Some days you get the wave…

Some days the wave gets you.

The hotel we stay in when we go to the beach has a little kitchenette, so we cook some of our meals and save a little cash. I made my famous chocolate chip cookie dough at home, froze it, then packed it in a cooler along with some snacks for the trip.

Eating from-scratch chocolate chip cookies while overlooking the ocean. Life is good.

You may remember Em’s tooth pain from Friday night. Em went to the dentist today. Turns out that cavity she had already had filled extended down so far that it had created an infection under her tooth. We’re continuing with the amoxicillin, which the dentist estimates has a 50/50 chance of knocking the infection out.

If the amoxicillin doesn’t get it, the next course of action will be a root canal.

Everybody keep your fingers crossed that the amoxicillin does the trick.

I love you all, but you people were zero help on the baby sweater. Half of you like lavender at the edges, half of you like a purple stripe. At least I don’t feel so bad for being indecisive myself.

For the most part, Em slept through the night last night. Weirdly, I am more tired after almost getting a good night’s sleep than I was when I was getting two hours a night. It’s like my body was struggling to get juuuust that little bit more that would help. The doctor gave us Tylenol with codeine but we didn’t have to use it. Apparently Motrin is the wonder drug that we hadn’t tried that helped. The doctor said he thought she was a little swollen along her jaw so there’s probably some referred pain there. She has a dentist appointment tomorrow right after school, which was the earliest we could get in. I’m not entirely satisfied with the level of responsiveness from the dentist’s office, so if you happen to know of a good pediatric dentist in the Charlotte area, send that info my way.

To give myself a little stress relief, I’ve purchased the Sims 3 and have actually found a little time to play. My two roommates, Pravmati Shah and Tiphanee McKenna, are getting along surprisingly well. It’s a fun game, but I have to allot myself a certain amount of time and then stop because it’s easy to get sucked in.

As part of a Girl Scout badge, Em and I put a sweet potato in water and watched it grow. It was doing pretty well before the raccoon started gnawing on it. Here’s a picture of one of its sicklier leaves. I took the picture because of the gold beetle on it. It was so tiny that at first glance I wondered how a jewelry bead had gotten on it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s very pretty. Hopefully it’s not out of a Poe story.

The good news is that Em didn’t complain about her tooth late last night. The bad news is that she did complain about her ear. This morning she even said, “I think I might have to get someone else’s ear.” So apparently it’s bad enough that she wants an ear transplant. This is troubling because we went to the doctor on Monday, so you’d think that in the course of a week it would have healed more. But no, she says it feels just as uncomfortable (she seldom uses “painful”) as before she went, and she feels like she doesn’t have any earwax. I’ve got a call in to the doctor’s office and am waiting for a nurse to call me back. They do have weekend hours so we might be seen today.

In non-sad news, I’m knitting a baby sweater from my handdyed yarn. It’s knitting up well and looking great for a nice traditional pastel blue sweater for a baby boy. The problem is that I don’t think there’ll be quite enough to make it as big as I’d like. I’m going to have to stretch it by adding something else.

I’m really tired after a couple of days of no sleep, so I don’t know that I trust my judgement. I knitted it too small at left and added this purple stripe to see how the colors looked together. Then I ripped it out and started it over again at the proper size, and am considering using lavender for a 1×1 ribbed edge at the cuffs/collar/hem.


In your opinion:

The husband has ventured out for a treat we haven’t gotten in a couple of years: Waffle House waffles. Em and I love these. It’ll be a nice comfort food for her. He just got back, so it’s waffle time.

ETA: We’re seeing the doctor today. I’ll keep you posted.

Em had a great time at the reading celebration yesterday. They moved the games indoors and the kids got to do things like root through a tub of sand using their toes, searching for marbles. They rotated through activities in different classrooms, including using the SmartBoard interactive whiteboards to show Toy Story and 101 Dalmations. She got cotton candy and even tried a hot dog.

Em: “I wasn’t crazy about it.”

At right: her after school. Obviously there was face painting. Her hair looks so lank because I’ve been washing it less often, trying to be sure her ear doesn’t get wet before it’s full healed.

It looks like somewhere in all the activity and food she may have knocked a filling loose. In the afternoon she started saying that her teeth felt uncomfortable when she “clicked them together.” She got to sleep with a little bit of trouble but woke up again at about 11:30 saying her tooth was “extremely uncomfortable!” She had some Tylenol and went back to bed and slept pretty well from midnight to 6am. When she got up, she was crying and kept asking, “Why is this happening? What can make it stop?” We have a call in to the dentist, but they don’t keep weekend, hours, so we’ll see how all this shakes out. She was pretty miserable, but the hubby went to the grocery store (thank you, big city store hours!) and got some benzocaine swabs which I rubbed on her tooth. And now she seems fine, if sleepy. Thank God.

All this illness is throwing my kit orders a little off because I’m spending less time winding yarn and more time just being with her, but what can you do? Em has had such a rough time of it lately. Ear infections, sleep disruptions, toothaches, allergies… it just keeps coming. She’s a sweet child and just wants to be feel healthy. Poor kid.

Right now she’s wearing her Snow White nightgown (which deserves its own avalanche of awesome entry) lying on the couch watching Little Mermaid and coloring a Disney Princesses Invisible Ink book. I may pop out later on to pick up a couple more activity books. Those are always very comforting to her when she’s feeling bad.

ETA: The dentist suspects an abscess from the filling in that tooth. I’m not sure I agree, but I’m not a dentist. On the other hand, at least I’ve actually seen the child in question within the last 24 hours, so I’ve got that advantage. Ahem. Anyway, she’s calling in a prescription for amoxycillin to the dentist’s office and we’ll try to hold on until Monday morning. Em seems totally fine now with regard to her tooth, so we’ll keep up with the swabs.