Maybe Jessie can learn how to detect a sick baby.

So I'm officially almost done with Christmas shopping. Which would be cooler if it was officially all the way done, because the stores are getting scarier. Trust me, I went to a lot of them today. Madeline didn't like that at all. Mostly because I don't let her crawl around on dirty store floors because I am mean and sort of hygienic. Madeline has been mad a lot lately. I think she is either a) getting more teeth, b) getting a really bad case of separation anxiety, or c) both of the above and maybe also being sick. You'd think as a mother I would have some inner radar that would start blinking red when my baby is sick, but I think my radar is broken. Aside from sticking a thermometer in her ear, which makes her mad and confirms her suspicions that I am a mean mommy, the only way I know to tell if she's sick is if she has a visibly running nose or a lot of excess crankiness. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that cause excess crankiness in an eight month old, so we're down to a runny nose and a thermometer that may or may not be reading the right temperature due to a wiggly baby. Probably she's had five colds and the flu and meningitis and hepatitis and tetanus and polio and the plague and I never noticed. Except the one cold where her nose was running. At least she's developing lots of good antibodies. And learning to suck it up, which will be useful later on, I'm sure.

I'm starting a new paragraph now for Jessie. He doesn't like when I write really long paragraphs. I think he needs to improve his reading level. Perhaps he already knows this, and that's why he's going back to school next month. So they can teach him how to read my blogs. And how to play Speed Scrabble better so that I don't smash him every time. I'm a little afraid of him going back to school, because he'll be working full-time and doing school full-time, and I'll have a lot more time to twiddle my thumbs and wonder why I'm not working on being more domestic. Maybe I'll use the extra time to learn how to write shorter paragraphs.