A "Feel Better" card from Grandma and Aunt Melissa

At Rapunzel's birthday party

Check this out

Scarlett and I had a "girl's after-school out" today. (We'll save our "girl's nights out" for when she doesn't have a 7pm bedtime.) We went to Chocopologie in South Norwalk for an awesome pot of fondue and a cupcake as big as Scarlett's head. It was really nice. The waiter brought over a handful of markers and Scarlett was in heaven drawing pictures. Not thinking much of it, I casually asked her to write her name so the waiter would know what her name was. And you know what? She totally did. Observe: For the record, I did not help her at all with this. (I was eating awesome fondue, if you recall.) I simply suggested she write her name and I didn't even look at her until she said "I did it!" And she did do it. And despite the fact that we haven't even been working on writing her name - it's pretty damn perfect...if I do say so myself (and I just did). And when that proud little girl ran over to the waiter, without a second of hesitation he said "Scarlett!! What a beautiful name!"

And I'm quite certain I was shooting laser beams of pride out of my eyeballs.

One sick little girl

We had gotten a lot of snow recently. In fact, Scarlett's school was cancelled both Wednesday and Thursday of last week, so I stayed home from work with her. You can imagine the inconvenience of it all when she suddenly spiked a really high fever on Thursday night and we realized that someone would need to stay home with her on Friday too. (Joe's turn.)
As she tends to do when she has a high fever before going to bed, Scarlett vomited throughout most of the night. Friday came and her fever was up to 102.7 - it was controllable with Tylenol and when we called her pediatrician we were told that there is a stomach bug going around (which is true) and not to bother coming in.
But Scarlett continued to complain of a sore throat for the next two days and she wasn't eating or drinking much of anything. She was also complaining that her tongue hurt. Her fever got up to 103.7 on Sunday, and I noticed that she had broken out in a bit of a rash on her stomach. I called her pediatrician again (who, thank god, was open on Sundays from 9-12 for emergencies only) and they told me to bring her in immediately. Turns out, she had scarlet fever. And while that sounds really bad - it's not. Well...it could be bad if left untreated, but we're obviously treating it. Scarlet fever is a really bad case of strep throat with a few more accompanying symptoms. Scarlett's pediatrician told me that she wished she had one of her medical students with her because Scarlett was a textbook case of scarlet fever. From the rash to her tongue to the strep throat - she displayed all the symptoms perfectly (unfortunately for her). They did a quick strep test in the Dr.'s office which came back as possitive for strep in about 30 seconds instead of the 6 minutes she told me it usually takes, and wrote a prescription for an antibiotic that has worked WONDERS in the 24 hours she's been on it. So - Scarlett is doing much better and will be able to return to school tomorrow, but man. She was a miserable little girl for those 4 days.

Coloring Books

Scarlett loves to color. We've moved her coloring supplies to a reachable spot (that Holden has yet to discover) and Scarlett will go get them numerous times throughout the day, set herself up at the table, and color...for great lengths of time. It's absolutely wonderful because not only does it keep her busy, it generally keeps her pretty quiet too. (In case you didn't know, Scarlett really likes to talk.) And...she's gotten pretty good at coloring. She's not perfect at staying in the lines yet, but she's far past scribbling. She's also figured out that different objects should be assigned different colors...and sometimes many different colors (as is apparent by the lovely gentleman's suit below). In her recent pictures, objects' hair, jewelry, shoes and clothes will have different colors. And while they're not necessarily color combinations that would appeal to...say...95% of the world's population, she's starting to get that color combinations are the way to go.

And look out Betsey Johnson.

Just sayin'.

A bed fit for a king

This weekend we decided to move Holden to a toddler bed. The first night was fantastic! He crawled right in and made himself comfortable. He stayed in the bed for a whopping 3 minutes! I'd call that a success. (*side note - Just kidding. Holden will be in a crib until he flat out ASKS for a toddler bed.)