The longest fever in the world

Thing 2's fever continues to hover between 100 and 102.  I called the Dr's nurse on Thursday, she said the Doc wanted us to go get the labwork done to see what is going on.  It was 2:30, which meant I'd have to take both girls, but I didn't want to wait ANOTHER day to get the results. So after we picked Thing 1 up from school we all trooped up to the children's hospital and Thing 2 had some blood drawn. I deliberately hadn't said too much to her about it as I knew she'd be upset.  I just told her we had to go to the Children's Hospital to have a test. She didn't question it.  As she sat in the chair talking amicably with the guy who was preparing to draw the blood, it occurred to me that perhaps we should warn her what's going on.  She was visibly alarmed.  She was tense through the initial prep, she started to whimper when he put the needle in  her, and by the time he was done she had escalated to full throated sobbing. She later reported that what had freaked her out was watching her blood "go away through the straw."  Would they be giving her blood back later?  Because she wanted it back.
Later out of the blue she said she was adding "needles" to her "Things I Hate" list.

There was an ice santa with ice reindeer in front of the hospital before we went in.  They were mostly melted, but still festive looking.

By 3:00 yesterday (Friday) I called the doctor to find out the results.  They hadn't got to them yet.  By 5:00 when I called back, the office was closed and the incoming phone dumped me to voicemail.  I started to buzz angrily...  I texted everyone who was concerned about my trials, bemoaning the fact that her fever is still above 100 and I don't know why...  At 6:00 the doctor's nurse called to report the findings, apparently the front office closes but the doctors and nurses are still there.

Turns out there isn't anything particularly wrong, just a virus (endure it), a fever (treat it if it gets too high), and the positive strep test from last week (dose it).  Don't expose any other kids to her until the fever has been below 100.5 for 24 hours.  Apologies to my brother's kids who got a good dose of her last Sunday.

Sigh.

I was cleaning off the kitchen table, and found some old homework sent home before the Christmas holidays in the girl's backpacks.  Thing 2 is at that delightful stage of writing phonetically, and she is rather cavalier about things like spaces between the words and breaks at the edge of the page, which makes her essays kind of a bizarre code you must decipher.  She occasionally inserts a hyphen to acknowledge the end of one word and beginning of another.  Here are two short essays she wrote for Christmas:

My favritecoo
kie is a snik
rdoodl. We-ba
ke itwithsin
amimandmil
k that is ha
w we bake it.

And a treatise on her favorite candy:

My favritecan
dy isa ramboe ca
ndy kaing.I yoush
ly brake it inhaf
soIhafm
orethen-on
e peas. it isn
ot minty tha
t watma
kcsit good.

She wrote a whole story - her version of Jan Brett's The Mitten.

If you can get through this...

Wans a pon a time
ther was a boy.Itwas
the mitle of thedaywhen
the boys Grandmamadehim
amittens. Sothe boywent-awt
to play in the-snow. ps hewas
wering his mittensto.  Sohe
set off.  On hisway he droppe
d     One of hism ittens.
So...A  sQurelefawnd it!. An
d he went in t o  it and sed
my tose are worme naw!.
Then a rabbit came a long
then hesed canIcomein.
Fine. sed the squrele.
thenahole bunchof
animals askedtocome
in. And a bear. But the
n a poor muascame.
And asked tocomeinand
theysedno! No! No!then
theysed OK. so the-m
uas made himself cu
pndblon the bears n ose.

And the bearsneazd!

Then they all hadto
findaplace to worm
ugen.

(So, did you get the p.s. toward the beginning, and that the mouse made himself "cumpndbl," more commonly spelled "comfortable" on the bear's nose?  That one I had to have her explain to me.)
I have a couple letters from my nieces at this stage.  It is wonderful to try and figure out what they mean, and embarrassing to try and read it in front of them.

Hubby got home last night in time for dinner.  He leaves tomorrow for a couple days in the midwest somewhere.  He was lamenting that he comes home for 1 day and then between now and the 2nd week of February he's going to have about 36 hours at home.  He leaves Wednesday for 2 weeks in India, followed by a couple other domestic trips...

I finally took the tree down on Wednesday, and by Thursday had all the boxes stashed away into the closet eaves, the plywood door to the eaves wedged back in place, the wheeled closet storage bins pushed into their designated carpet dents.  Then I found two stray ornaments sitting on the dining room table.  Sigh.

The dog has been really restless without our usual long morning walks, as I have been coming back to hover over Thing 2.  He has been barking a lot more, and occasionally goes crazy, grabbing some toy and racing back and forth with it trying to get us to play with him.  He turned 5 months old a couple days ago, and is pushing the "big dog" 50 pound mark.  His house-training is very solid and I have been trusting him on the carpet in the front room now that the tree and its associated temptations are put away.  He really likes it in there and has staked a claim on the rug next to the coffee table.  I just turned around to find him gnawing at the top of a plastic bottle of juice I'd had put outside the pantry door.  He still thinks anything and everything is there for his chewing whims.  Based on his weight and reluctance, I have stopped carrying him up and down our extremely steep stairs each night and morning.  I'd been doing the "Pack Bonding" thing of having him sleep in a kennel in our room, but I figure he hates being carried up and down the stairs more than he likes being with "the pack."  One morning coming down with him in my arms, I slipped on something left on the stairs that I couldn't see over his big hairy self (luckily it was close to the bottom of the stairs and I mostly just came down  hard on my butt and slid a stair or two), and sported a couple of very large purple bruises on my hindquarters for several weeks.  Not to mention the space his kennel takes up in our room.  As his weight keeps going up and up, he earned his big boy status of sleeping on his own downstairs, and everyone seems happier with it.