Illness.

Two nights ago, Josh came home from work with complaints of "ickiness," "achiness" and "tiredness". Unable to offer up anything more specific, I suggested a dose of Tylenol and early bed ("Good idea," he said, and then proceeded to do neither).

Lila was in a mood herself. While Josh and I ate a delicious dinner (lime marinated chicken breast & creamed fresh corn - thank you Molly O'Neill and Aunt Catherine!), Lila retreated to her fort in the living room and wept dramatically. Not an inconsolable, tortured crying session, more like, "I don't want any dinner and you can't make me." When she was finally retrieved and brought to the table, she curled up in my lap and whimpered, rejecting everything from chicken to applesauce. Bedtime rituals were further tear-stained.




When we finally got her to bed, I said to Josh, "that child is ill."
"You always say that when she has a bad night," he replied. "She's tired - nothing a good night's sleep won't fix."




Friends, guess who was right?

She awoke at 2 AM, as hot as a branding iron, and in a now-familiar manic state that seems to accompany her high fevers. As she spewed pronouncements ranging from the obvious ("We have a dinner table and red chairs!") to the delusional ("I like to hit Roan on Saturdays!"), I dosed her with children's Motrin and attempted to get her back to bed. About 90 minutes later, I was back in bed where Josh was moaning feverishly. As I strained to get a few more hours of sleep, my mind raced through every shared cup, licked fingers and wet kiss exchanged between me, my child and my husband over the past five days. Finally, I slept until Lila rose, feverish again, around 7.




The fever hung in, and the next night we put cranky-pants to bed at 7:30. This time she slept until 4, but woke again in a lather of sweatiness and mania, disgorging random thoughts ("Mommy, I ate clams! They were salty!" and "Mommy, thank you for the princess cups you bought me - I love them!" and "The Cowardly Lion is very sad. He wipes his eyes with his tail. But he is okay!") and begging me not to put her back to bed. We had some Motrin and read for an hour before I finally convinced her to get back into bed and give sleep another try.

She slept till 11. When she woke, I was out doing errands. I called Josh to see how she was doing and he said, "I know this sounds crazy, but she looks about six months older." When I came home, I couldn't help but agree. Not sure what to make of that.




So today she's still warm but not hot, still not hungry but able to eat treats like popsicles and extra cups of orange juice. Still making pronouncements, but this may just be her Irish heritage and not spiked brain temperature. We have tried to keep TV to a minimum, but she's gotten a little bit extra of that too. Mostly she is restless to see her friends, who have now had two playgroups without her. The timing of this bug has been quite inconvenient to her social schedule, but it does appear to be waning.