Each week I post seven “quick takes” of things on my mind. Topics are typically related to our family happenings or things I’m into right now.

1. I apologize for the complete lack of posts around here. It’s on account of I was sick. You know how last week at this time I was all “thank goodness for next week, because I am so over being sick”? Ha! Joke’s on me!
2. Saturday I went to see “Saving Mr Banks” with my mommy, sister, and some friends. It was wonderful. Wonderful. You should see it. By the time we left the theatre, I was freezing. Like, the whole way home my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Within an hour or so I had a temp over 103. I felt just great otherwise. And so it went. Long story short, I became unbelievably miserable, Sunday night I went to the ER, they gave me fluids and potassium, which it turns out I sorely needed, and that helped, but I was still miserably sick until Tuesday afternoon when – poof! – it went away. It was not Influenza A or B, and it was not mono. The ER doc said it was an unnamed virus that was showing up a lot this season. So, I lost 72 hours and some moolah and am still extremely tired. BUT. No one else got it, praise God, AND I never vomited a single time. And to that I say woot.
3. The lingering sucky thing is that the whole basically-no-food-for-3-days thing had a very negative effect on my milk supply. I have been forced to supplement with formula. It’s not making Noah sick to his stomach, thankfully, but his skin is drying out, and I don’t want him on it. I’ve just started taking an herbal supplement, fenugreek, which is supposed to help. Fingers crossed…
4. I am sooo behind at work. We were closed right after we opened for the year because of weather. Then the week we all went back I had a couple days of being off for sickness, and then the following week I added a few more. Ugh! I have deadlines!
5. Since being officially well (Wednesday morning) I have done five large loads of laundry, unburied my inboxes, caught up on grading, cleaned out the fridge, gotten a filling replaced, done assorted work chores, and generally taken care of the kids. It’s exhausting to be a mom. Seriously.
6. The kids were fantastic while I was sick. It became increasingly frustrating for me as the days wore on and I felt so far away from them. They did impressively well with it. Now that I’m well they’ve both been clingy, but I’m not complaining. Today I realized all traces of baby Aria are gone. She is a little girl, and she learns more every day. She speaks in long sentences regularly (many of which are total gibberish). She remembers things you tell her. The other day we were discussing who in the family has an upcoming birthday, because she has a vested interest in birthday cake, and I was musing, mostly to myself, that Uncle Dave doesn’t eat birthday cake because he can’t have the gluten, so I’m not sure what he does for his birthday. I thought she had moved on to something else, because she appeared to be paying me no mind. Then, today, she suddenly informs me, “Dave…mmm…no birthday ceck!” with a decisive head shake. (“Mmm”, by the way, is what she inserts in a sentence when she knows there should be at least one additional word, but she’s not sure what it is. It is the most endearing thing.) She gives me lots of little hugs and kisses, and does the same with her brother throughout the day. Several times yesterday she gave me a hug and then tilted her head and smiled at me very tenderly, and her eyes got this soft look that I recognized as a reflection of the way I look at her. Oh my, make me melt.
   

   Aria has started taking pictures with my phone. Here is her first photographic masterpiece.

7. Andy switched sides of the bed with me while I was sick to take responsibility for Noah. The first night I was so relieved to be able to sleep without worrying about him, and the second night I was over it and wanted my baby back. The third night I took Noah-duty back, and he woke up at midnight and decided to be smiley and happy and awake as could be until 2:30am. And I wanted to give him back to his dad. I cannot be made happy. Wednesday evening we decided to have him eat with us. Now that he’s six months he can start eating solid foods. We had tacos for dinner, but the meat was too spicy for him and most of the toppings were cut too small for him to eat. So, we gave him just avocado. He smashed approximately half the avocado with delighted interest before deciding to try to eat some of it. He got some of it in his mouth, so it was quite a success. Eventually he became frustrated there was no more avocado to eat, so we gave him some banana, and he immediately took to that, eating bites. A lot of what he got in his mouth he just let fall out, but he was taking purposeful bites and doing some chewing. That’s an excellent start for the first time he ever tried food. He’s going to love exploring the new world of tastes and textures.
   

   Aria felt it was important we include a close-up of her sippy.