Terrible Teeth

I know I've been blogging about it a lot lately-- but Cate's teething has been terrible this time around. She's getting her incisors (I'm pretty sure that's what those pointy teeth are called) and it's the worst she's ever been. All of her other teeth popped in with relatively no problems (she got one ear infection in an earlier round of teething and usually has a runny nose). This time though, she's been crankier, fussier, pickier...everything -ier. Yesterday she started in with some messier diapers (I'll spare you the gross details), which led to bad diaper rash when she woke up. She's also been waking up with green "gook" in her eyes. In fact, this morning she woke up crying. Something she never does. Daddy was quick to comfort.
**As a side note, doesn't the antique photo-finish capture the sunlight well in this picture?

Anyway, during her diaper changed, she screamed like she was in the worst pain in the world. And then she continued to cry off and on through breakfast. I called the pediatrician since this is not even close to Cate's normal, bubbly, smiley, go-with-the-flow personality. Our pediatrician is wonderful and was very concerned about Cate, so she scheduled an appointment for later in the afternoon. In the meantime, Cate was distracted by playing with her friends Tessa and Anna at Gymboree class. She was okay during lunch, took a two-hour nap, and woke up screaming. She pretty much screamed off and on for the rest of the afternoon until we got to the doctor.

The doctor's diagnosis? Double ear infection that has also semi-infected her eyes with a bad diaper rash/yeast infection. Poor Cate. She's now on an antibiotic for the ear infection, eye gel for the eye "gook," a restricted diet (but only until her diapers aren't quite so messy), and some great home-remedy bottom cream the pediatrician told us to make (Maalox mixed with talcum powder to an icing like consistency spread on affected area and then covered with a layer of Desitin). She gets that lovely mixture at every other diaper change (the other diaper changes we're supposed to use Lotrimin, which is a remedy for athlete's foot).

I feel completely and horribly bad for Cate. I hurt with her. While picking up her prescriptions, the stuff to make cream for her bottom, Lotrimin, rice cereal and yogurt at Target, I also picked her up these: Color Wonder Markers with a doodle pad and...a little Thomas the Tank Engine set. While Cate doesn't watch a lot of TV, we've been trying to get her interested in a few little movies and cartoons that she can watch on the DVD player on the way to Hilton Head. She seems to have an affinity for things that go right now. She loves her Automoblox and gravitated right towards a board book about trucks at the library last week. We tried out a few Thomas the Tank Engine DVD's and she loves them. Each story is short, so it keeps her attention. The Color Wonder set (which she loved and which we will definitely be buying more of for our budding little artist) and the little train set (which set me back a whopping $12 since it's not the wooden-train-table type of train set) made Cate do this:
But just in case those teeth and ears were still hurting her after being pumped full of medicine when we got home, we walked up the street for ice cream too.Man that girl takes her ice cream eating seriously.

~Melody :-)