AND ANOTHER THING...

Can I just ask, what is it that is so compelling about David Blaine?

I was absolutely GLUED to his damned special on Monday night. And as he hit the seven minute mark and started convulsiing and breathing in water, I stared in horror and started shouting "Oh my God, I am going to watch this man DIE on LIVE TELEVISION!" I was mortified, sickened, and yet I COULD NOT LOOK AWAY. In fact, when all was said and done I rewound the Tivo about five more times to watch that World Record slip dangerously away from him.

I like the guy, don't get me wrong. There is something fascinating about him, something intriguing and mysterious and sexy. He is incredibly handsome, and his street magic is crazy-good. Scary, too, though. (What was up with him ripping that girl's teeth out of her head until she bled and then miraculously putting the teeth back in, no harm no foul? That's just sick!)

But I don't understand his stunts. I don't understand them at all. They are intriguing and he gets exactly what he wants from them; I mean, the whole country was talking about him being in the fish bowl all last week. But I don't get it.

He is a magician.

But he does death-defying stunts? That are not magical, but rather are feats of endurance?

I don't get it.

Shouldn't he be doing something the likes of David Copperfield, like making the Statue of Liberty disappear, or something? I don't think David Copperfield ever encased himself in a block of ice for 65 hours straight. And if he DID, it would be a TRICK - he wouldn't really BE in the ice, it would be an illusion.

I guess I just don't understand WHAT David Blaine is. I always thought of him as a magician. But then he was talking to Evil Kenevil as though they were counterparts. So is he a daredevil or a magician?

Whatever he is, I want more. Even if I don't get it. But I also don't want more, because I really don't want to see the guy push it so far that he does actually die on TV in the name of entertaining a person like me.

Speaking of, he was supposed to do the morning show circuit on Monday, and could not because he was in the hospital with liver failure. Has anyone heard anything more about him? I hope he is okay.

GOINGS-ON

So, not much is new in our world.

Amanda is still very sick. However she is in remarkably good spirits and has decided today that she wants to talk, a lot. She spent the entire day making new noises and new sounds. She is so adorable.

I'm sick now too. Actually I have been for a few days, but had to put my issues on the back-burner the minute my little peanut fell ill. Now that Amanda's coming out the other side of her cold, I am realizing that, hey, I'm not getting any better, dammit! Mostly it is allergies due to the ridiculous pollen-count from last Friday.

Speaking of last Friday, what is up with the weather? It was eighty degrees last Friday, and for the very first time Amanda was outside in short-sleeves. Since then, it feels like winter again, with temperatures barely in the fifties and raw, wet, rainy yuck. And there is no end in sight - today the weatherman said it could be like this for the next ten or eleven days! Although, my sister's wedding is in eighteen days, so perhaps this is nature's way of getting the bad weather for May out of the way so that it can be beautiful for their nuptials. We'll see.

Ahh....the wedding. I can't believe it is in just over two weeks. I am getting so excited for it, I think it is really going to be a nice wedding and it should be a lot of fun. At the same time, I am a little sad, in a nostalgic kind of way. My baby sister is getting married. It is the last wedding for our family until either Amanda's or Kayleigh's, both of which better be a very long time from now! But it is also most likely the last "extended" family wedding on my side of the family, ever. THAT is a big deal. I am one of forty cousins. Yup, forty. And I have attended a good portion of those cousins' weddings. My sister Cheryl is the youngest of all the cousins. The majority of my cousins are married, and those that are not are also most likely never going to marry. (Or if they do, it would be a small, private thing). I have always REALLY looked forward to weddings in my family, because after my grandparents died we hardly ever see the extended family anymore. Weddings and funerals, that's the type of family we've become, and we never used to be that way. I always really liked getting together with my extended family, whether it was at Christmas or the fourth of July or just "for the hell of it." And the common gathering place was almost always my grandparent's house. Once they were gone, though, it just became harder for everyone to get together as often. My grandparents had ten children (which is where my 37 cousins come from), and as you can imagine each of the ten individual families is busy now doing their own family stuff. And my mother was the next-to-last of her siblings to become a grandparent, so for many years her brothers and sisters have been very busy with their own growing extended families. It is hard to believe that, with my sister Cheryl's wedding, we have doubled the size of our family, once a family of five, to a family of ten: my parents, me and my two sisters and all of our husbands, and the two little ones, Amanda and Kayleigh. It is crazy to think of it like that! Anyways, I didn't mean to get off on a tangent there, but I guess I am looking forward to the wedding with mixed emotions. Much like I looked forward to my own wedding, but was sad at the thought of it being over once the day ended. With Cheryl's wedding, it is sort of an end of an era.

As of two weeks ago, we thought my sister's wedding was the only wedding we had this year. Not true. We just found out that we are invited to a wedding in Boston on July 1, and we are also invited to Anthony's cousin's wedding on Labor Day weekend in North Carolina. We are going to both of these weddings, and we are making a weekend of the North Carolina one, without Amanda. It will be hard to leave her with my parents for three days, but at the same time we are really looking forward to this wedding AND we are going to consider it a "mini-vacation," as the wedding is five days before our own five year wedding anniversary.

Anyways, other than last minute wedding preparation and dealing with my own and my daughter's illness, not much is going on around here. I say that with a big wink, because honestly between the wedding and my sick child things are actually a little crazed, but I know we'll get through it all just smashingly.

Oh, and did I mention that I scheduled Amanda's Christening for the very weekend following Cheryl's wedding?

Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. Tell me something I DON'T know.

FIVE-MONTH FRENZY

My little girl is 5 months old today. Here is a picture of her from two days ago.



Today was not such a happy celebration, though. The photo was taken two days ago, when Amanda was still healthy, but exhibiting increasing signs of growing crankiness. We had no idea why she was getting fussier and fussier as each night passed over the last couple of weeks. And then, last night happened.

Amanda fell asleep the way she falls asleep most nights: in our room, in our bed. (We haven't quite figured out yet how we are going to break her of this habit!) On a normal night, after she has been asleep for about a half an hour, Anthony moves her very carefully into her room to her crib, where she then remains asleep for the rest of the night. But last night, within minutes of laying her in her crib, she started screaming a God-awful, blood curdling scream like I've never heard before. We went sprinting back into her bedroom and turned the lights on - she was screaming her head off, tears were flowing down her face, and her nose was all stuffed up, seemingly out of nowhere. She fell asleep with not a trace of nasal congestion. What had brought this on out of the blue?

Anthony picked her up as I ran downstairs to get a thermometer, and I heard her start to choke and gag and wretch. She completely puked all over herself and, scared, was now hysterical, not understanding what was happening to her. We tried to lay her down on the changing table, which only made her MORE hysterical. I tried to take her temperature under her armpit and kept getting a reading of 93. I knew that had to be wrong, because it was such a low reading. I had been warned that "under the arm" is not neccessarily the most accurate way to take her temp, so I had Anthony get me some burp cloths that I could put across my lap so that I could take her temperature rectally. I was afraid that putting her on her belly would make her throw up again, but I had to get an accurate temp before calling the doctor.

We tried once, which was highly unpopular with the little one, and the thermometer beeped at 94.1. I shook my head in disbelief and said to Anthony, "that HAS to be wrong." So I did it again. It beeped. 94.1.

Oh, shit!

I flew downstairs, two steps at a time, and grabbed the phone to call the doctor's office. It was a Sunday night, 10:15PM. The answering service told me a nurse would call me right back. I ran back upstairs and the two of us tried to get her into some dry, non-puky clothing. The phone rang, and I ran back downstairs because I wouldn't be able to hear the nurse above Amanda's shrieking. When I told the nurse everything that had happened, including the two temperature readings, she said "get her to the emergency room NOW." Just the kind of thing to tell two new parents. It didn't really occur to us that if the nurse thought it was life-threatening she would have told us to call an ambulance. All we heard was "ER" and "Now" and we were maniacs. And us running around like maniacs wasn't helping to calm Amanda down any. And so she puked all over herself again.

We finally got her dressed, got ourselves dressed out of P.J.'s and into normal clothes and of we ran to the hospital. I didn't care if I got pulled over for speeding because I figured then we'd get a police escort to the emergency room.

Once we were there, they took her temperature immediately and they got a 97.3, so I calmed down a little. Maybe I had taken the temperature incorrectly, or maybe she was warmed up a little bit. Who knows. But once they determined that she wasn't running a 94 degree temp, they sent us back out to the waiting room, to wait.

For two hours.

At 1:AM, they finally called us back. Amanda had finally fallen asleep, and now we'd have to wake her up so she could get poked and prodded. She was NOT happy with us that we woke her from her sleep.

Turns out, after examining her, that she's got an ear infection AND a viral infection.

Poor, poor kid.

She's now on antibiotics and the screaming has subsided...for now. Meanwhile, having arrived home at 3:AM, this little family is absolutely exhausted.

What a way to start the week.