Ava has another cold virus. This whole school thing is starting to be a little more trouble than its worth. I took her in today, because she woke up with a fever, and the doctor basically said that she had another cold, it was not pneumonia, and the fact that she was getting better between bouts of illness was good. It demonstrates her healthy immune system and he would be far more worried if she were chronically ill, never getting better. That would apparently illustrate a compromised immune system. All well and good, but it certainly did not make our present situation any easier. She did not shake the fever today—every time the Tylenol wore off, she went back up to 102+. This evening she really deteriorated—I told her to go lie down on the bed while I cleaned up Carter’s dinner mess, and when I came in to check on her she looked practically catatonic. Her eyes were ringed with red circles and when I checked her temp it was 103.4. I gave her Tylenol, tucked her in and she immediately fell asleep. Hopefully it will break tonight.

However, when her fever was held in check by the Tylenol, we managed to have a pretty decent day. I learned a lesson last week that rolling and cutting out Christmas cookies with a 1 and ½ year-old boy on the loose is really not a good idea—the flour was distributed from one end of the house to another, and it took me hours to clean up, primarily because just as I would get one part vacuumed, Carter would come tearing through, dragging flour from another part of the house through my nice clean part. Moreover, if anyone so much as sneezed, flour would sift out of every garment. It was a nightmare. White footprints and handprints on the hunter green living room chairs nearly sent me to the local asylum. Not only that, but after we had cut them out, I tried to decorate them with icing in a squeeze tube. The icing was impossible to squeeze, and would not come out. Ava’s solution was to suck on the tube. It came out that way, for sure, but obviously never made it to the cookie. After she managed to consume about 8 fluid ounces of icing despite my repeated admonishments not to (yeah, sure mom), I called it a day and put everything away. I was tired of saying “stop! Just stop! Stop absolutely everything that you are doing! Freeze!” Such a declaration is futile. Stop just means go faster to see what Mom will do. So I finished the icing later. However, we still had a batch of sugar cookies to bake as of this afternoon. Fearing a reprise, I decided to give them blobs of dough already on the cookie sheet, and handed them sprinkles to shake on the cookies. Round sugar cookies taste the same as cookies in the shape of stars and Christmas trees. Toddlers and preschoolers don’t care what shape they are. My main issue this time was with those stupid teeny tiny non-pareils. Not only do they roll to every corner of the room, but when you try to vacuum them they skitter wildly, as if they are alive, not following any laws of physics, so you have to pretty much vacuum on your hands and knees, chasing the little stinkers around. I desperately wanted to get them cleaned up though, because I had no intention of getting them in the new keyboard, our fantastic gift from Grandma.

There are lots of lessons to be learned as one plows through parenting (like the above: don’t bother with getting your Christmas cookies just so). The problem is, the practical solution often only manifests itself after you have thoroughly messed up, and more often than not, the opportunity to apply the lesson will not appear again. For example, next year, the kids will be older, and presumably Carter will not wildly fling flour all over the house, rejoicing over the sensory thrill. So, perhaps I can roll and cut out Christmas cookies. The challenge is in taking note of the lesson and applying it to the larger picture. This lesson is easy: perfection is unnecessary for happiness. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?