Yeah, it’s been a few. We’ve had a lot going on though. Let’s set the Wayback Machine for Halloween and just go from there.

So, Halloween. 

Daphne’s school put out a request for kids to dress up as a character from their favorite book for a little parade. But since we weren’t sure how well-known the tap-dancing pigs from “Moo, Baa, LA-LA-LA” were, we opted to revisit her Alice costume from last year and halve our cost-per-wear on that little investment.

Thing is, I wasn’t entirely sure if the ECAP kids were going to be allowed to walk in the school’s parade. There were quite a few parents with cameras lined up on both sides of the parade “route” (which was really just the sidewalk in front of the school) which might very well have constituted a sensory issue for some of the more sensitive kids. So, I didn’t stick around for any pictures.

Later that evening, we dressed Daphne in this year’s Halloween costume, which seemed perfectly appropriate.

Jen walked with her around the block and did the trick-or-treat thing, and Daphne did fantastically well. Obviously she didn’t say “trick or treat,” but she did pick up candy from bowls and drop it into her bag.

I stayed home and manned the door for the rest of the trick or treaters. 

Unfortunately the entire business was cut very short by inclement weather, but I think Daphne was done after about an hour, so it worked out well. Another successful Halloween.

The weekend that followed, however, was not so great.

A cool front came through on Friday night, and so the weather on Saturday was 72° and sunny, perfect weather for a trip to the Renaissance Festival. So we packed a day bag and headed out toward Todd Mission, Texas.

We’d been in the car for about an hour before traffic began to slow, and Siri informed us that, instead of it being 15 minutes to the Ren Fest, it was now going to be an additional 45 minutes.

So we sighed, accepted that as the cost of being out on such a beautiful day, and plodded our way along Route 1774 at 3 mph. 

Unfortunately, Siri was incorrect in her calculations, as she was assuming the side roads to the Ren Fest weren’t closed down to festival traffic. So after each intersection where we were unable to turn, she would recalculate the route and subsequently add 15 minutes to the total drive time. 

After an hour of waiting in traffic, and having our time to destination remain unchanged at 45 minutes like some kind of GPSisyphean torture, we decided to call it and head back home.

I did manage to get a bit of the traffic on video on our trip back:

As it turned out, however, going home would be a good thing.

We had just about gotten to our house before Daphne became really, really, really fussy. And she remained so for the rest of the day, despite a very long nap.

The following morning Jen checked her temperature, and found that Daph was running a fever of about 102. And no sooner had she settled her back into bed for a day of rest, when Daphne promptly threw up all over herself, Jen, and the bed.

Jen took a shower while I stripped the bed down and wrapped Daph in some blankets, and she basically slept the entirety of Sunday away. I don’t know how it is for everyone else’s kid, but for our 3-year-old to sleep through an entire day, she must be really sick.

Later in the afternoon her temperature began to creep up to the 102.7 range, and so we battered it back down with some Tylenol, which took it to a respectable 99.9.

Although that was not without drama either. Because Daphne hates Tylenol.

We have to hold her down and force it into her mouth with that little Tylenol Super-Soaker syringe thing, all while she turns her head, clenches her teeth shut, and fights us the entire time. Normally it takes 3 shots to get a proper dose of medicine in her; the rest of it ends up on her face, her pillow and in her hair.

It is unpleasant. But it worked.

On Monday morning when I checked on her she was back down to 99.3 and seemed to be feeling more like herself again.

 We stayed home from school anyway, just to be on the safe side, and spent a lot of the day snuggling and watching StoryBots.

And, as you can see, it was torturous for everyone involved.

That pretty much catches you all up to speed. Daph’s in school today and I’ve just finished working on my submissions for a potential writing gig. (Fingers crossed there.) I also have a lunch n’ learn this afternoon for my VR thing.

Speaking of which, I need to get working on some changes to the PowerPoint…

In my next post I’ll talk a bit about this past weekend, and our trip to see Grammy for her birthday.

Talk to you then.

j.s.