Post-Christmas Sigh

I've been a bit lazy with my blog lately, mostly due to the hectic nature of the holidays in general. Today I am taking the day to sit back and sigh. A sigh of relief that some of the craziness has passed and a sigh of joy and thankfulness for my family. I've already decided that Samantha and I will stay in our jammies again today. I think this is becoming a regular weekend occurrence.

On Christmas Eve, as I prepared to leave work early, Steve called me and said that Samantha had begun to throw up about a half hour before and wouldn't stop. Here I was, reading everyone else's blogs where they said they had sick kids at home, and thinking, "nope, not me. Glad we're all healthy now!" I left immediately and by the time I got home, Samantha was sitting in the middle of the floor, covered in vomit and looking pretty pathetic, with Steve giving the receptionist at the pediatrician's office an earful for not getting one of the doctors to call us back. He was rightfully infuriated that he'd called them nearly an hour prior and all they'd said was that the doctor would call him back and that the doctor said it's a little stomach bug that'll pass and that it's going around with kids right now. Well, that's really not acceptable, when they would make that sort of diagnosis over the phone with absolutely no information to go on other than that our daughter was vomiting. Absolutely no more information than that. How could they possibly know that it was a stomach bug, especially given the time of year when kids are ingesting things they shouldn't, etc. They never even asked Steve any questions to find out more. Okay, so it was just a little stomach bug, but for parents of a child who never/rarely gets sick, this is a pretty big thing. She's feeling better now, but her appetite hasn't yet returned. She was okay to go over to my mom's for Christmas Day, at least.

I didn't get any decent Christmas Day pics of Samantha, unfortunately, since a)she wasn't feeling all that great and b)I just got too sidetracked and forgot to really take any! This year was particularly fun because she really enjoyed ripping the paper off the presents and seeing what was inside. We gave her a chalkboard/dry erase/magnetic easel since she now, finally, knows how to hold a crayon and a piece of chalk, and she received lots and lots and lots of books! Perfect! It seems that she's become much less interested in toys and just likes to surround herself with books. For fun last weekend I took her to Barnes & Noble so she could play. They do have a train table there, but she loses interest in that quite quickly in favor of pulling books off the shelves to sit and read. She can do that for hours. I had to drag her out of the store.

We had a very nice time over at my parents' house yesterday. As always, it was pretty decadent. I won't go into the overwhelming generosity of my mom and Ray here and now, but will leave it at that. And thanks to them and to my wonderful husband, I am now the proud owner of a new Nikon D40 digital SLR camera! I am very excited about this, and can't wait to really start using it! I took a few experimental shots yesterday, and am very pleased with the results. Here's one, not of Samantha, however. Maybe later on today if we get some sunshine I'll try to get some pics of her. It's pretty grey and dreary out so far. The pic at the top of the page is from my folks' house yesterday with my old camera.

I'll have to write more later, but Steve needs the computer to listen to a Boxing Day soccer game from England via web-radio. Typical.