This time tomorrow, I may be hailing myself as a genius.

I bought Nora a Shark cordless vacuum cleaner-- one of those stick vacuums. She loves pushing things around, and she has blessedly inherited from her daycare lady a certain reluctance to endure filth , so I can't lose, right?

It has to charge for at least 20 hours before the first use, so we couldn't pull it out today. But tomorrow, tomorrow... my words trail off as I envision a life where my toddler happily keeps the floors dog-hair-and-cheerio-free. I really hyped this thing up at the store, and I keep talking about "Nora's vacuum," which makes her chuckle and shimmy up and down, so maybe she will develop a proprietorial attitude towards it. Maybe vacuuming will be, like running in circles around the ottoman and singing "Happy Birthday," one of those things she never seems to tire of.

Watch this space for an update. If anybody out there wants to start making kid-sized working vacuums in fun colors, please pay me millions of dollars first.

Freezer paper stencil (and mind-rending cuteness that will make you shriek with joy)

All of a sudden, my little girl knows how to smile for the camera, and wow-- what a difference it makes for her photography-challenged mom. I seriously cannot get over how cute she is. And what a big girl she's turning into.

If someone had traveled through time to show me these pictures while I was pregnant with Nora, I would have-- I don't know-- yodeled to the heavens and danced in the street.

She's just so stinkin' cute.

She practically sparkles.

And can't you just tell from looking at the pictures that she's super smart and funny, too?

I would have seen these pictures when I was pregnant, and I would have known that all those weeks of sleep deprivation and breastfeeding anxiety and general upheaval were totally, 1000% worth it.

I would have seen that parenthood just gets more and more fun.

Well, this one would probably have just reminded me to go take my prenatal vitamins.

***

What's that, you say, that's an adorable little tank top with an orange with little heart-shaped seeds? I MADE IT, FOOL!

Ok, I didn't make the tank top, but I did draw the design and paint it onto the shirt using freezer paper stencil, my new obsession.

Background: Every few years, I take up a new hobby-- painting whimsical patterns on flower pots or making my own lip balm or dog food-- and I become fixated on that hobby to the exclusion of all else. I start fantasizing about quitting my job to make doggy meatloaf all day. I create a g-mail account for selling doggy meatloaf to the masses. I gaze into empty storefronts and imagine where I'll put the cold case full of different varieties of doggy meatloaf, and what other sidelines my doggy deli will sell that might provide a higher profit margin, like cutesy embroidered leashes and orthopedic senior dog mattresses, to allow me to continue my mission of selling only the finest premium doggy meatloaf. I set up a table selling doggy meatloaf at a local dog shelter event, nobody buys any, and I lose all interest in doggy meatloaf and never make it again.

It had 17 ingredients, people. I don't cook like that for the fruit of my womb, much less my dog.

Anyway-- I can feel a freezer-paper-stencil mania coming on, because this craft is SO easy but comes out looking so cute and polished.

In case you're interested in trying it, here are some quick instructions.

Materials:

freezer paper (like wax paper, but with wax only on one side)

pencil

x-acto knife

cardboard

cotton t-shirt, onesie, or whatever

fabric paint (I bought Crayola fabric markers)

1. Using a pencil, draw a stencil-able design on the non-waxy side of a piece of freezer paper. The simpler the better. I think coming up with the design is the hardest part.

2. Put the freezer paper on a piece of cardboard to avoid damaging whatever surface you're working on, and cut out your design with the x-acto knife. Remember that the portions you cut out will be the colored parts; it's a lot like carving a pumpkin in that sense.

3. Iron your freezer paper pattern onto the garment, waxy side down. Put another piece of freezer paper waxy side up inside the garment to avoid paint bleeding through to the back of the shirt.

4. Erase the pencil marks so that they don't smudge into your color. I didn't do this and I regret it.

5. Use fabric paint to color in the open spaces in your design.

6. Let the paint dry, and then peel the freezer paper off. Run an iron over the colored portion for 4 minutes to heat set the color.

And voila! Pretty sharp, no??

Independence Day

Playing with cousin Abie the Baby.

This is what passes for a hug. She's clearly accustomed to being the huggee.

Pigtails and a pink Vespa.

We spent 4th of July at my Aunt Denise's, as we always do, cooking out and watching the fireworks being set off in all directions from Deni and Jack's house. Nora got to play with her cousins Abe the Babe and Big Girl Gwennie, and had a blast-- she was gentle and solicitous with Abe and was happy to be included in Gwen's games and play with her wonderful toys (like the Vespa, above).

But by far the best part of the evening was after we changed Nora into her jammies and pulled out her blankie and bottle, sitting outside with all the relatives, Nora snuggled into my lap starting to get drowsy, experiencing fireworks with her for the first time. True to form, she didn't gasp or squeal when the fireworks boomed and burst all around us, but every once in awhile when it got quiet, she would whisper, "More."

Will she be snuggly like this next year? Who knows. I know enough to savor these moments.

This week in hematology

This morning was Nora's weekly blood test to check her platelet counts. They've been up and down, but for the most part, the pattern is this: Her numbers go way down, so they bring her into the hospital to do the IVIG treatment, and then her numbers go up right away and peak the following week, and then the next week she's back down and needs the IVIG again. We've had 3 hospital stays in 6 weeks, all for a kid with basically no discernible symptoms.

I was feeling pessimistic about this week's numbers, in part because last week's were just barely over the minimum to avoid hospitalization at 21,000, and in part because I had a dream that (like any responsible parent of a toddler) I shaved Nora's legs, and blood started seeping from all her little follicles.

So, to cut to the chase, the nurse coordinator just called me to say Nora's numbers are up to 87,000 today! This is the first time they've increased on their own, without an IVIG treatment to artificially bump them up! In fact, her numbers are so good that we get to wait two weeks before testing her again, unless we start seeing lots of bruises and petichiae.

I basically forced the nurse to say that this could mean she's starting to turn the corner, that Nora's immune system is beginning to realize that it's got the wrong Lebowski, so to speak.

So I'm going to go ahead and get my hopes up, do a little dance, and revert to a more negligent approach to my daughter's physical safety for the weekend.

But she'll have to shave her own legs from now on.

Is there anything better than a sleeping baby?

You know there isn't.

What's that? Why, yes, that is our king-sized mattress on the floor of our living room. It lives there for now because our 1920s house has only a full-sized stairwell. Machinations are in place to get it upstairs, but for now, it's one more cushy spot where Nora's noggin can safely land. (Or, from Rich's perspective, it's one more raised item she can fall off of with potentially disastrous results.)

Because Nora has a bossy bamama...

... here are some photos.

Nora Rocking a Tankini

Nora Communing with Butterflies

Third time's the charm.

We just finished our third hospital visit and IV-IG treatment yesterday. The whole thing felt slightly unnecessary, but I know our pediatrician and hematologist have to be extra cautious when there's any question about something weird going on with Nora.

Thursday morning, Nora stepped down off of something low and complained briefly about pain-- and then refused to bear any weight on her right leg for the rest of the day. I, in true harried-mother fashion, convinced myself it was nothing and rushed her to the sitter's house and then to work, but when the sitter called me to let me know she still wouldn't use her right leg, I went to pick her up and off we went to the paradoxically slooooow Emergency Room at Children's to get an x-ray.

As long as we were there, they decided to take Nora's blood, which had been holding steady at a respectable 30,000 platelet count for two weeks.

Though the x-ray didn't show anything (which could still mean that she had a "toddler fracture," which is basically invisible), Nora's platelets were down to 19,000, just one measly thousand below the threshold for hospitalization. So after 5 hours in the ER they got us a room in the hematology ward and started the IV treatment.

They made us spend the night this time, because they didn't want to take a chance on this invisible fracture causing excessive bleeding.

In the morning, Nora hopped down off the "big girl bed" (see the post below for an idea of how helpful this concept was in getting her to bunk with me) and resumed using her right leg without commentary. Though it could still conceivably have been a tiny fracture, I'm going with my mother's intuition and diagnosing this as a bad case of bonking, resolved by 24 hours of being carried around by her mother.

Anyway, we're home now and hopeful that this latest IV treatment gives her a nice, long boost and that her immune system stops dicking around. While we were in the ER this time, I did something that I've been able to resist up to know-- I cried when they told me they wanted to admit her. Rich wasn't able to get out of work until later in the afternoon, so it was just the two of us-- and at one point Nora alternated between saying "Nora crying" and "Mommy crying." I hated feeling emotionally out of control when I needed to be reassuring for Nora, but this whole thing is obviously really draining. Enough already.