Doctor, check

Kiki had her surgery follow-up this morning. I took the opportunity to doll her up in a pair of denim overalls and since it's been cool lately, I even put socks and shoes on her instead of sandals.

The shoes were a shiny red pair that a friend bought her at a garage sale. There's a pair of black ones as well. They've got velco fasteners on the straps instead of buckles, but otherwise they look just like the dress-up shiny gloss shoes I used to wear as a little girl to church or on Easter.

So I put on her shoes, put her in the car, drove off to the doctors, sat in the waiting room with her for a while, then in the exam room for a while. The nurse came in to ask us a few questions and on her way out, she stopped to admire Kiki's handsome little shoes. "Oh," she said, "it looks like she's scuffed them."

I took a closer look because as she is not walking, it is unlikely they could get scuffed. Sure enough, they were not scuffed.

They were chewed. By a teething child who is hyperflexible. Have I mentioned she can stick her big toe in her ear?

So no more shiny shoes until she's cut all her teeth, that's all I can say about that. (GoddessKristin, I can only say that I am glad I did not put on her ruby slippers. I'm sure she would have gnawed off at least half of the sequins.)

In other news, she's healing great! I didn't take any pictures of her directly after the surgery because I didn't want to flash her poor eyes. But a week later, all the blood is gone from the whites of her eyes and she is looking straight ahead! The doctor was very, very pleased. My girl is a good healer.

She's getting ornery about sleep time. It used to be she'd go to bed without any fuss at all. Then there were those three weeks where she'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming and she'd have a fever. After that she didn't sleep through the night for a couple of weeks; she'd wake up, sit up, and scream and I'd run up there and comfort her and there was no fever.

That seems to have set a trend. Now she resists bedtime and today she resisted naptime until she was practically passing out on her toys. Honestly. I think it might be the teething. I hope it's just a phase.

We had gone without the nighttime routine for a long time, but now because of her resistance, I've gone back to singing to her before lying her down. It worked tonight, so maybe that's all she wants? If she could only tell me.

At least she's signing for "drink" now at dinnertime instead of bursting into tears whenever she wanted her milk. She still lapses occasionally, usually when I'm not immediately jumping at her request. She seems to have inherited her mother's patience; all none of it.

I don't know if it's related to the surgery or not, but she's become far more fascinated by objects and her hands of late and she bursts into laughter a hundred times a day over things I can't even identify. In the car when she's in her car seat, she bursts into laughter every time the sun hits her face. I can't wait to see how she reacts to rain.