Afternoon Ten

It has been a rough few days in our house. Last night was not a good night. Sam had refused to take an afternoon nap, and was exhausted. She was fast asleep by 6:30, but began to cry around 8:30. Waking up a few hours after she goes to sleep is not totally unusual - it happens sometimes, and often she'll cry a bit and go back to sleep. Other times, she needs to eat again. Either way, fine. But last night, she literally screamed for over an hour. She did not want to eat. She did not want to be put back down. We held her. She cried. We took her into our room. She cried. I laid with her in the bed. She cried. Ryan laid with her in the bed. She cried. We tried to get her to chew on the frozen teething toy, thinking it was teething. Nothing really helped. We felt horrible. She was obviously so unhappy and in pain. Poor little munchkin. Finally, Ryan decided he would just take her downstairs and let her play until she seemed calm again and sleepy. Luckily, it worked. I was able to sleep for a bit, and he brought her back up around 10:30. He said she was practically falling asleep while taking her toys out of her toy box. I fed her and she fell right to sleep. Phew. She actually had an OK night after that, but it was not happy times for a while.

We ended up taking her to the doctor's this morning, not because of the screaming, but because she had developed some lovely red blisters and spots on her hands, feet and elsewhere over the weekend. Daycare had told us that 'hand-foot-mouth disease' (not to be confused with hoof & mouth (or Mad Cow) disease!) had been going around, and Sam was one of the three little ones to not have gotten it yet. We figured this was likely what she had, but she had no fever and I hadn't seen any spots in her mouth, so we wanted to make sure they checked her out just in case. While 'hand-foot-mouth disease' sounds like something horrible, it's really just a virus, similar to a cold, and there's nothing you can do about it except let it go away on its own and help to manage the pain for the kiddos.

Of course, we took her in and she's all smiles. In fact, the doctor told us she was inordinately happy for how sick she was. That's our girl! :-) But seriously, the doctor let me look into Sam's mouth when she was checking it out, and boy was it red and yucky! No wonder she was crying last night, and hasn't been eating well. Must hurt like hell. Thank god for baby motrin and tylenol!

So long story short, all this meant I didn't get out for a run until this afternoon while Sam was napping. I headed across the street to run on the Cathance trails. In his fever-induced delirium on Saturday, Ryan didn't bring the Garmin home from Great Glen, so I had to rely on my memory of the three possible loops on the trails - 7, 9 and 10. I had originally penciled in 14 for today, but that just wasn't going to happen. I hoped I would be up for 10, but I was just going to play it by ear. I actually ended up feeling pretty good, and did the longer 10 mile loop, which was great. It was nice to be out on a cooler day, although it was super muggy, and I ended up drenched. I had decided to try out the new Nathan waterbottle pack that I had won at the Bradbury Breaker on this run to see how it was. However, although I am psyched that Nathan donated this pack to the race series as a prize, this is not a product for me. It drove me crazy for the first 20 minutes of the run. With both bottles full, it was just too heavy and created too much pressure on my stomach. I dumped one bottle out. That was better but the pack still bounced up and down. I adjusted and readjusted multiple times. Finally, I cinched it just about as tight as it would go, way up high on my waist, and it finally felt OK. But I don't think I would use it to run again. I really like my Nathan race vest, and I will stick with that instead. So lucky Ryan now has a new piece of gear!

And just because I haven't posted any photos of Sam recently, here are a few from this weekend:

Yum! Green beans!

Very stylish!

But I'd rather chomp on them :-)