Bed

Well, my trusty computer is still in need of a new battery here at the Morillo household, but mostly the news for the past few days is:  TEDIOUS.

That's how Anika feels, if she could express herself in English.  Trust me, she's a pro at expressing herself. Right now I can hear her banging something against the foyer table and grumbling and babbling and grinding her teeth (four!  count 'em, four teeth!) like some kind of a forest animal out of a Maurice Sendak story.  I can only hear her because for the past three days I've been confined in bed with what can only be described as "mommy's tired, please, just two more minutes of letting me close my eyes" syndrome.  I think it's some sort of mutation of the horrid viral infection that Ani contracted just in time for the Schultz grandparents' visit last week/weekend.  Yes, we do seem to get sick anytime people come to visit.  I'm willing to keep testing the hypothesis, but it's not clear how much longer people are going to voluntarily come down to the ABQ if they're guaranteed a few sleepless nights with a feverish, screaming baby, several days of watching me hit my head against the kitchen table in desperation, and an hour of reading two year-old, ripped and dog-eared Parents magazines while one very freaked out mom takes her kid to the doctor and is told, for the umpteenth time, to keep on top of the Tylennol and Motrin and make sure she's getting her fluids.  (When the doctor said this, too, shall pass, I swear my mom nodded her head in the waiting room.  Why ARE our moms always right and it seems I am never sure what's going on?  Is there some mom gene that I'm missing?)  Anyway, it's a good thing social services isn't in the vicinity these past few days, because I've really let loose on the parental guidelines and am letting her do whatever makes her happy and allows me to lie in bed for as long as possible.  Like, currently, she's sloshing around the Listerine bottle and putting her stuffed animals systematically into the drawers in the bathroom.  You know, the ones that contain things like hair dryers, toothpaste, and random cleaning agents whose very presence in the store isles makes your nose itch and your eyes water.   She also hit a few buttons on the carbon monoxide detector this afternoon, eliciting an eardrum-shattering beep that scared her something fierce.  Poor thing.

One bright spot the past few days is that she's gotten really good at entertaining herself, bathroom chemical cleaning agents and carbon monoxide detectors notwithstanding.  Yesterday, she very purposefully crawled out the bedroom door, then slowly peeked her little head through the doorjam and gave me a huge, toothy grin.  "Peek a boo!" I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster from my mummy-like position.  She giggled.  She tried it again.  And again.  And I realized that for all my times of trying to entertain her with peek-a-boo when all I got was a bored look, she actually got it and wanted to be the one to scare ME.  Smart little cookie.

Speaking of, she's in need of a bit of TLC.  More later -- and more pictures of her soon, I promise.  We're planning to hit up the Apple store for one ridiculously overpriced laptop battery this week.