In other news: The end of this vacation also means the end of my sabbatical. As much as I've enjoyed the time off, I really do miss the paycheck. On Tuesday, I go back to "work" - that is, I'll be at training for most of the next six months before we head to our new island home. Gigi will be at on-site daycare, so I can pop in on my lunch hour and get a snuggle fix.

Have I accomplished anything, or learned any valuable life lessons over the last fifteen months? Well, let's see:

I now have some idea of what people do from nine to five if they don't have offices to go to.
I now know that having all day to run the vacuum cleaner doesn't make me any more likely to do it.
I now know I'm better at this Mommy thing than I thought I would be.
I did acheive one goal: I submitted something for publication this afternoon (just under the wire!). Whoopie. It wasn't much, but I can say that I did it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Yeah, okay, I haven't posted in ages. Gigi went to day care the last time I posted. They called me at 1:30 and said, "She has a fever of 101, but we don't have a medical release from you to give her anything for it." (They never actually come out and say you're a negligent derelict.) When I picked her up, she was a little warm but otherwise seemed fine. The next morning, though, she had a full-blown case of preschool kennel cough. And the next day, naturally, I had it. And then her second tooth broke the surface. I was self-medicating (and not just the cough...) with some Polish honey herb liquor I bought on a dare at a conference in Warsaw many years ago. Damn if that stuff didn't work better than Robitussin.
But I didn't take it with me on the trip to the in-laws in New England, so I've spent most of the past week on cough syrup, bed rest, and the 900-page book about Henry VIII that my in-laws gave me. (Okay, last year it was Sylvia Plath; this year, they gave me a book about a guy who divorced, beheaded or outlived six spouses. Should I be nervous?)
The phlegm factory has finally shut down, Henry just married his fifth wife, and I'm not quite perfectly adhered to the sofa. It's been a lovely visit, but it's definitely winding down.

Hallelujah! A little white line has broken the surface. I believe we can honestly say there is a visible tooth.
Of course she's still caterwauling, off and on, 24/7. But I can at least be assured that she really does have teeth, and isn't just howling for no reason (or one that I can't guess).
This calls for a celebratory drink. Baileys and cocoa, that sounds good. Gentler than vodka, and suited to the snowy weather. It's all goooooood.

Pediatrician visit today. There is good news: she's now 18 lbs 14 oz, which puts her in the tenth percentile for weight. Doc is very pleased; I am jumping for joy. On the downside, no teeth yet, despite her best efforts and several sleepless early mornings over the past week. Ugh. I am looking more and more like a panda on quaaludes. The doc gave us the name of a pediatric dentist and told us to give them a call if those little nubs on her gums don't make any progress after a few weeks.
Then she got a TB test (my company requires it as part of the medical clearance before we transfer overseas again) and her booster flu shot. That was officially No Fun for either of us.
Tomorrow, while my husband and I get our pre-transfer physicals, Gigi gets to do a test run at her future day care center. They'll take her on a "drop-in" basis for fifty bucks a day in the weeks preceding her formal enrollment so she can get acclimated to the place. Nice of them, but dag, fifty bucks a day? It wouldn't hurt quite so much if I were not still on unpaid leave - and if our house payments didn't jump nearly a hundred bucks every time Alan Greenspan got a fart caught crooked.

Greetings from the house of pain. By the time this kid gets an actual tooth, she's going to be a vampire. Seriously, this is going to kill us both. Tonight she was crying so hard she puked. It took Orajel, Motrin, pacifier, and several verses of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" before she would even think about stopping the crying, and she would not fall asleep unless I held her. After she was finally out for about ten minutes, and I felt reasonably certain that all systems were functioning on the autonomic level, I set her in the crib. There was a brief twitch when I clicked the rail into place. I wish I could find a way to muffle that sound, because when it wakes her up, it's back to the beginning for the settling-down routine.
Thirteen months. Yesterday was her thirteen-month mark. We have a weight check at the pediatrician next Wednesday. If she doesn't have a tooth by then, it's going to be mildly embarassing. I'll tell the doc it's karma: she didn't want to come out either; we finally had to go in and get her when she was two weeks past her due date. But there's no such thing as a C-section for stubborn baby teeth. Poor kiddo. At least I'm allowed to soothe myself with vodka.
Serendipitously, I was at the dentist today. I went two weeks ago for the first time in, oh, too long. Drilling was necessary. So when I got home with novocaine-face, I guess I figured I'd be the one spending the evening dealing with twinges in the gums.
She's still asleep. And now for that vodka...