One of those weeks

Whew. We just made it through one doozy of a week. Other than that awful, terrible, cursed MMR vaccine that made Libby sick and cranky for nearly a month, this past week was the most difficult of her second year of life (for me and her).

I noticed during her swim class on Monday that she wasn't quite herself - she was just unusually fussy and was shivering like crazy. That afternoon, I finally realized she had a fever. I called the doc just in case. They said not to worry; it's probably teething. That's what they always say. Anyway, her fever just got higher and higher, she had diarrhea, her eyes were glossed over, and by Tuesday night, I was pretty nervous. She was SO lethargic - I have never seen her like that. Wednesday, the fever started to go down and by Thursday, it was gone, but oh.boy. The crankiness. If I even looked at her the wrong way, she would collapse into a fit of hysteria. I'll admit, while she had a fever, I was much more sympathetic, but by the end of the week, I was just losing patience. I felt like I might break down at any moment. In search for a piece of sanity, I finally called to schedule an appointment for the massage Jared gifted me for Christmas. Selfishly, I went and got my massage on Jared's birthday (he should have been the one getting special treatment that day!), but I just had to.

Add to that stress my own general malaise, the thousands of miles between us and our family and friends, and a couple of big issues pressing on my mind and it made for one of those weeks when life feels just a little overwhelming.

Luckily, Sunday was a turning point. I heard some great counsel from our prophet:

Seek heavenly guidance one day at a time. Life by the yard is hard; by the inch it's a cinch. 

That was exactly the advice I needed to hear since most of the worry I was feeling had to do with the future. But today? I can handle today. It's just one day.

Monday morning, Libby woke up a different person. I couldn't be more grateful for her timing, since Jared is out of town all week and I could not face the idea of not having some relief in the evenings. We've actually had a very lovely past couple of days and I am so thankful.

And so no one gets the idea that our life is all doom and gloom, I leave you with a picture of Libby in her Rainbow Brite outfit.

18 months

Our stake president was visiting our branch last week and commented to me that church members get more excited about a child's 18 month birthday than their 1 year birthday. I'm beginning to understand why. Because holy cow, an 18 month old can be a lot of work. And to have a chance to drop her off at nursery so Jared and I can both teach our lessons in peace would be nothing short of heaven-sent. Alas, we have no nursery in our branch and will just have to continue with the status quo. Libby comes to class with me until she gets too distracting (she likes to climb up on the table, grab people's pens that they are writing with, etc.). I send her out the door and tell her to go to Dad. She goes to his class, where he lets her stand on a chair and draw on the chalkboard. This continues back and forth until church is over or one of us ends early. 

Of course, it's not Libby's fault. She just wants to be entertained, gosh darnit, and I don't blame her. I'm trying to find new and interesting things to do with her lately because I can tell she gets tired of the same old thing day after day. Recently, I let her help me with a Christmas craft I never finished. She LOVED painting, but it was a bit messy, so until I buy some washable paint, we're gonna have to put a hold on that. 

The artist she is, she loves drawing on herself. She's pretty good about not getting it on her clothes. She somehow knows to only draw on her skin, which is not hard to do when she's naked.

Libby's vocabulary is exploding and it's so awesome to be able to hear her speak and understand what she wants! Some of her words include: spoon, Elmo (she says which until yesterday she pronounced "uppo"), up (which she says to mean both up and down), milk, more, book, baby, eye, ear, boot, mine, hi, bye, mom, dad, yeah, bed, bread (sounds the same as bed, but we use our context clues). I'm sure there are more I'm not remembering right now.

She's so obsessed with yogurt, I have to limit her to 2 cups a day. Anytime the fridge is open, she darts inside and starts climbing the shelves till she find the yogurt. Or, she'll go the drawer where we keep utensils and will beg for a spoon, which means she wants to use it to eat yogurt. She also really likes to eat cereal and LOVES to share a bowl with me.

And since I'm sure I'll never get around to writing a post about our trip to Texas last month, I'll just throw this picture in here of me, Libby, and my grandparents at their house in Dallas in February.