Colds and mud puddles

I remember the first time Piper came down with her first real virus easily, as it was the day of her 1st birthday party. Since then, I feel like she's been sick a ton, especially throughout the fall and this winter. Over the past several months she's had strep, croup, coxsackie virus, scarletina, a stomach bug, and cold after cold after cold. To be honest, it was starting to freak me out. And when the same doctor walked into our room yesterday as we had seen just a short three weeks ago, I was actually relieved because I wanted to ask her how normal this was.

She answered my question for me when she walked in and said, "Well, it's been 3 weeks. You were due!" I asked her if she was kidding, and she explained that once kids start crawling and then until they are 3, it's completely normal to come down with a different illness once every three weeks. So, by the time they get over one thing, you have about a week and a half of good health, typically, and then onto the next. And as she's in the room, Piper is drooling like crazy and chewing on her finger so the doc added that it's usually worse during teething because they transfer all the nasty germs they touch into their mouths. Such a gross thought, but it made me feel so much better because I feel like I always have the sick kid out of my friends. Turns out, she's normal, and it's possible that she puts her hands in her mouth more than others. And I would guess that it takes her teeth way longer than normal to come in than the average kid, leading to longer periods of teething. I can't remember how long she's been working on her eye teeth, but I know it was well before Christmas and she still has the bottom two to go. And her molars took four months to come in. During that time, she had half of the identifiable illnesses listed above. This, to me, just doesn't seem fair. Teething sucks already, being sick on top of it can't help anything. If only I could keep her hands out of her mouth ... yeah, right.

Even though she was sick, Piper discovered how fun a mud puddle can be today. It was one of those glorious late winter days when the sun was out and it reached the mid-40s, which felt heavenly. We put our rain boots on and went out for a walk, which only lasted as far as the street corner because that's where all the puddles were. We played and stomped until Piper slipped and ended up on her butt, totally soaked from the waist down. It was fun while it lasted :-)