Happy Mother's Day

I hope yours was a happy one; mine was. I got lots of sweet cards in the mail. Jen and Micah watched Roan on Saturday night so Arwen and I could go out to a nice meal and have some drinks with friends. We had such a good time that when we got to Jen's to pick her up we decided to make a night of it and have a sleepover in their basement.

On Sunday Jen and Micah looked after Roan again for a couple of hours so we could go pick out a new TV for the basement! It's kind of embarrasing how excited I am about it. But we haven't been able to watch a movie on anything other than a laptop since Jen & Micah moved out. Then we went to the zoo in the afternoon, and Roan got to ride the carosel and the train for her first time. I would say she is reserving judgement on the zoo as a whole, but she was a big fan of the monkeys and of the geese, who she chased all over the place. Then Sunday night Jen and Micah came back over (you'd think they'd be sick of us by now) and cooked us a fantastic dinner and helped us hook up the TV. All in all it was a great weekend.

Which was nice, because we had a couple of rough nights last week. On Wednesday night I put Roan to bed as normal, and two hours later BLAMMO she wakes up crying with what turned out to be croup. Her breathing was so wheezy and strained we called the urgent care nurse for help. We opted not to rush her into the emergency room right away (not big fans of the ER since her first appearance there), and instead kept an eye on her for a few hours by putting her in the pack n play in our room. At 2 am she was wheezing so badly we almost packed her into the car, but we tried one last thing - cranking up the humidifier - and that did the trick. The wheezing went away and she slept 5 hours interrupted.

The next day we got her in to see the doctor who identified her barking cough as a textbook case of croup and explained what that is - a cold-like virus that attacks the throat instead of the sinuses - and what they do to treat it - not much, mostly let it run its course. After those first couple of bad nights she's much better, now with just sniffles and an occasional cough. Bless her heart, I felt bad for her this last week. First she got the sniffles, then she got croup, and on top of it is teething molars. Ouch! Yet despite it all she really tried to keep her chin up. She's been a little more testy lately (I hear the word "no" a lot!) but that's understandable.

Oh one other Roan development: she "named" some one for the first time besides Mama and Dada - Uncle Micah. She calls him "ga ga". It is so cute; whenever she stays over at their house she always has to have "Ga ga" put her down to sleep. She has also added a lot of other words to her vocabulary in the last month. These are all things she says regularly:

• please (peas) - she also signs this one
• more (mo) - she signs this one too
• Sasha
• house
• outside
• open
• eye
• bird
• bottle (ba ba)
• bunny (ba ba)
• broccoli (ba ba)
• ball (ba)
• brush (bsh)
• no! (her favorite word, which she says with much enthusiasm)
• juice
• cup (bup)
• yogurt (guk)
• milk (lk)
• jacket
• cracker (see below)
• uh oh
• help (elp)
• banana (na na)

New words just starting to make an appearance:

• apple
• diaper
• thank you
• teeth
• yes (I would *love* to hear more of this one)

Regarding her pronunciation of "cracker." Yes. Well a few months back her good friend Audrey started saying "cracker." Arwen and I secretly thought it was hysterical that 1) Audrey pronounced it "caca" and 2) it was such a favorite word for her that she said it all the time in public to the point that perfect strangers would be compelled to ask her parents "Is she saying caca?"

Well I guess the karma wheel came around on us. Roan has her own twist on the pronunciation. She has shortened Audrey's version to just the first syllable, so it has an unfortunate and very striking resemblance to a profane name for the male member. And of course she loves crackers and asks for them all the time. Between that and her pronunciation of the word "ice" which sounds *exactly* like "ass" this girl is working on a sailor mouth like her good ol Aunt Jen. :)