November 12

Once again, Dr. Sus gets the diagnosis right. Who needs that medical degree, Dad? I called the doctor's office this morning and the on-call nurse confirmed the hand-foot-and-mouth disease. I wondered if it might be thrush, but h-f-m was my first thought. This diagnosis is better than thrush, for the simple reason of administering the medicine. For thrush, it involves about 2 weeks of getting a liquid medicine into this little-girl-turned-fighting-octopus. For the h-f-m, it involves getting her to put 1/2 teaspoon of Maalox in her mouth, then spitting it out. Hallelujah! A medicine that she's required to spit out! Luci's an expert at spitting medicine out. Luci and I practiced taking the Maalox a couple of times today, swishing and spitting, and so far it is lots of fun for her. Which means it is not a trial for me.

Here's Luci tonight, enjoying a Popsicle in the bathtub. She can't remember the word "Popsicle" and keeps calling them "pop-tarts" or "lollipops." You can see one of the blisters on her tongue (ouch, poor baby). Luci kept saying, "my teeth hurt," and requested a band-aid. It's there, on her chin, and it does help her feel better.

This was the view from our living room window today. John took several, and this was my favorite.

Last week John took Bryan camping in the Smokies. JT stayed home with Luci and me--he had an overload of activity last week and would have made everyone there miserable, so we kept him home. John and Bryan had several stories to tell, and I'm going to let Bryan do that on the kid's blog. Let's just say that on the first night, Bryan was super-hungry and ate about 3 night's worth of suppers. You can imagine what happened. I'm glad I wasn't there to have to take care of it.