"she looks small again"

its been a long time. i had a successful trip to kansas and everyone survived back here without me too. as a final send off, madelyn decided that she wanted to spend some quality time with me at 2am the night before i left. after about a half hour and a little milk she went back to sleep, but i was exhausted going in to a very long day of work and travel. and i didn't really get much in the way of sleep while i was gone either because of long days at the office.

then i came home to an extra special treat - madelyn started running a fever of 104 after her nap on friday. she is always a little clingy when i first get back from a trip, but she was unwilling to let me step away from her for even a second so i knew that something was a little off. i got her started on motrin every 8 hours and it brought her fever right down. she also had some congestion but nothing too serious. it got much worse overnight and we had a very long and sleepless weekend. i finally decided to call the doctor's office this morning and get her checked out because the fever was still pretty high. turns out that she has a double ear infection! the good news is that she is not in any way contagious and she does not have actual pain in her ears - it looks like we caught it early. she is already doing much better and actually ran around tonight.

even though madelyn was pretty miserable we went to ikea on saturday. we had rented a minivan for the trip or we might have considered going another time. she did great when we stopped to have bagels and slept a little over an hour on the drive there so we were pretty optimistic about the day. however, she went downhill pretty quickly. the worse part was that she had to have me carry her the whole time - about 3-4 hours. she was very heavy (31.6lbs. a the doctor's today) and a strain on my body. she was heavy, hot from the fever, and wouldn't let me sit down with her - i had to stand and rock. when we were in the children's section of the store she had her head resting on my shoulder and kept repeating "play" as she was watching other kids play with all the toys. she wanted to play herself but just didn't have the energy to do so when she was feeling so bad. about the last half hour we were there i remembered that i had a lollipop in my purse and with that we were able to get her to sit in a cart while we finished up and paid. we couldn't get all the furniture in a single trip so maddie and i went to sit in the car while matt got the rest of our items. all in all we were at ikea for 6 hours! and that was with a list and moving through the store pretty quickly.

on sunday matt worked on putting together the furniture for the playroom so that we could empty some more toys out of madelyn's room in preparation for her new furniture to be built and moved in. madelyn was having a lot of fun helping daddy with the screws and giving him the tools he needed. she has about 1-2 hours of happy time after she gets a dose of motrin so we try to make the most of it.

she went down for a nap before we were finished putting everything together so she got to be excited when she woke up to see what was in all the storage bins. it was so nice to see her smile. they have been in very limited supply since i got home.

she was starting to melt down and i took her into her room for a diaper change. as soon as she went in the crying stopped and she let out an "oh wow!" upon noticing that her toddler bed was missing. she just kept looking at the empty space saying "oh wow" again and again. matt got her new twin bed built and into her room in time for bedtime. when we went in to check on her later that night matt commented that "she looks small again" laying curled up in the twin bed. i checked on her a few times because we have the bed so that the sides are not against any walls and in a different orientation than her toddler bed was in the room. i was a little worried that she might roll out and already not feeling well be difficult to get back to sleep. she stayed in bed all night but still woke up three times. she has been waking up for milk because she isn't really eating during the day and gets hungry in the middle of the night. she will only eat after her motrin dose. tonight she ate the most she has eaten since thrusday so i am optimistic that she might let me sleep tonight...

she really likes the new bed and getting under the "covers". today she kept getting into bed to read books or just going in to hide under the covers.

here are some more items of note to catch me up on posts:
- she got a wooden train track at ikea and it has become a quick favorite. she woke up after falling asleep in the car and asked for her "choo-choo" so that she could nap in her bed.

- she almost always has a noun/verb combo instead of single words. this was one of the most striking changes she made while i was gone. she says most things as complete sentences.

- she can solve her shape sorter so quickly now! matt and i were so surprised to see her solve it before i left. i will get some video when she is feeling better again.

- she has been so sick that she can't even open her eyes all the way. even when she is happy and playing her eyes don't open more than halfway.

sorry for the limited pictures. she has been indecent most of the time and i couldn't get pictures at ikea because i was carrying her the whole time. love.