Well, CRAP.  I strongly suspect that Miss T is on the verge of another ear infection (or really, a relapse).  She’s been off the antibiotics for about a week and a half, and as of yesterday afternoon she is once again a coughy little snot factory.  GREAT.  I mean, on the one hand I am very ready to have a referral to the ENT doctor so that we can just do tubes and get past this already.  AE’s overall health improved SO dramatically once he had tubes put in, it was incredible.  He pretty much completely stopped getting the sniffles and we certainly didn’t have any more trouble with his ears at all.

But on the other hand, wishing an ear infection on your toddler just seems mean and wrong no matter what the reasoning.

As I write this, I’m listening to her squirm and grouse over the baby monitor.  She was incredibly fussy all during the bath/pajama process, but I think that may have had less to do with feeling bad and more to do with the fact that I waited too late to get bedtime going.  (I swear, I just can’t figure her out.  Some nights she’s exhausted and ready for bath shortly after 6 p.m., some nights she’s still wide awake at 8:15, and it doesn’t seem to have any correlation to her afternoon nap at all.  But I digress.)

I’m running the hot steam vaporizer in her room, as that seems to soothe her coughing and help her sleep.  But I’ve already had to go in once and rescue her pacifier when she violently coughed it out of the crib.  So I figure tonight will be a long night, full of fussy outbursts and re-plugs.

I know, I know, I’m just whining now, and prior to her bedtime meltdown she acted like she felt just fine so it could be that I am just the mom who cried ear infection.  N has already told me as much.  BUT, the last round is still fresh on my mind and I don’t really feel the need to relive that so soon.  Because when Miss T is sick we are ALL miserable.  (That sounded selfish, didn’t it?)

I really really hope I’m wrong, but I have a bad feeling about this…