In which a baby gets so mad!

So here's the thing - everyone around me has been sick - Rich has had, and is almost over, bronchitis, Ash has been sick and now his went into an ear infection, Rachel has been bravely resisting a cold because she has had to keep working, so she has sternly kept hers under control, but still, she has had one, and now Maddy is getting sick. Kim is the only member of my immediate family who has not been sick for the last three weeks, and that is only because she hasn't been here until just a week ago.

Through all of this, I have stayed healthy! I have not been around all these sick people very much, I have avoided contact with them and washed my hands diligently, but now, tonight, I am feeling the first little hint that I might, possibly, maybe, be getting a cold! Oh noes!!

I am not going to get sick! I am going to drink a dose of EmergenC every hour tonight and I'm going to take ibuprophen, and I'm going to ignore any incoming symptoms and I will be just fine!

Rich, Kim and I went to dinner at the Chinese buffet tonight so Kim could practice her Chinese language skills in conversation with the waitresses. Rachel met us there, with Maddy, who was a bit flushed and had a little temperature and a hint of a runny nose.

Dinner went well, with Maddy getting a little cranky toward the end, but she really held up pretty well, and would have been better if she had had a little baby Tylenol to take. I need to start carrying that in my purse!

Kim talked to the waitresses, and showed them a letter that a friend had written to her in Chinese characters, and the waitresses were pretty impressed that an American wrote that letter! Kim has been translating the letter into English, and now she is going to write back, so she can practice her Chinese writing. So that was fun. We told Kim we would keep going back to the restaurant often so she can practice talking until she leaves for Taiwan.

After dinner we all went back to our house so that Maddy could get some Tylenol and play outside. We took her for a walk - she rode in the stroller and Kim walked Sonny on his leash. We walked our usual two-mile walk, and then we turned to walk into the cemetary so that Maddy could get out of the stroller and run around among the tombstones.

Which was a good idea, because there is open space to run around in, and the cemetary is enclosed by fencing to keep the baby contained, but there was a yappy little dog on the lawn across the street, barking it's foolish little head off and Maddy would not stop trying to go over and get a closer look at the friggin' dog!

We could not distract her at all, no matter how shiny or interesting a tombstone we showed her, as soon as Yappy Von Fleabag started barking again, Maddy wanted to go over and cross the street to get to his miserable yapping self. Finally we put a furious baby back in the stroller and wheeled her tantrumy butt back to our house, where she walked around the yard and picked up sticks to give us until her fingers were so cold (and we were tired of our yard), that we had to take her back inside.