The Author of this post is Solomon Dejesus

When I got Security Choice my daughter was told she could get a dog since she’d been asking and I figured there was no better time than now since we were already kind of exposed out here on this farm. The lab she picked out was adorable if not flawed since he only had one eye and kind of walks with a limp. We named him Gimpy, of course, and now he is as big a part of our family as any of the people and we spend most of our days and conversations talking about him! He’s not exactly the most effective guard dog since he can barely see but he barks at pretty much anything and everything which is thankfully fine since we live out here all alone. He loves having all this farmland to run around on although with the limp he doesn’t do all that much running! Anyway, my daughter’s happy and if she is then so am I – I think it was the right decision to get a dog after all!

Mireya got to try candy corn for the first time today! We bought some autumn mix and I gave her some. She promptly ate all the white and yellow tips off of the regular candy corn, the brown off the chocolate kind, and the green stems off the pumpkins. She then handed me the sticky, sucked on orange pieces and asked for more. I have no idea why she refuses to eat the orange parts. Strange little monkey!

Mireya hates her diapers and her clothes! She wants to be naked all the time! As soon as you get her diaper off and her tooshie clean, she rolls over, gets up and dashes down the hallway before you can even blink. I have no idea how that little girl can move so fast, but she does. It has become the norm around here to see either me or Jason barreling after a half naked baby begging her to stop so we can at least put her diaper on. I thought we were in charge, but now I’m beginning to wonder! In fact, she’s now figured out how to take everything off all by herself. Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

I turned around and saw this...

Dad isn't too happy.

The offending clothes. (Notice I'm holding them. Daddy is chasing Mireya.)

What Mom?

Dad found you naked baby!

Dad's putting her diaper on...

...and she is NOT happy about it!

I told you so.

1. She asks to do something and then says “yeah” before you can say anything. It’s usually accompanied by vigorous head nodding.
2. She “gets” you. She will chase you while she has her arms out and she’s wiggling her fingers until she catches you and then she screams softly while she tickles you. It ends with everyone in a fit of giggles. (I’ll get a video of this and post it asap.)
3. When you change her diaper, she says, “Bum bum! Bum bum!” The way she says it is just adorable.
4. She spins in circles until she gets so dizzy that she falls over laughing.
5. She runs as fast as she can. Watching her run like that always makes us laugh.
6. When she sings, she gets very shy, so she does it softly and it’s extremely sweet.
7. She tells everyone we meet that I’m her mama. I feel so special!
8. She tells you about something and she gestures and changes tone and everything, but it’s baby talk. (I miss the baby talk.)
9. She tells another child in a store, “pretty,” as she’s pointing at them. They always look so tickled and surprised!
10. When you ask her to do something, like throw something away or put dirty clothes in the laundry and she does it with tons of enthusiasm.

Truthfully I can think of a million more cute things that she does, but these are some of my current favorites.Mireya just gets cuter and sweeter every day. We have entered into the terrible twos, and those are the one thing that I can say with conviction are NOT cute. The tantrums are NOT cute. The hitting is NOT cute. The screaming and high pitched yelling that makes Jason’s hearing aid shut off, are NOT cute. Her little face is pretty cute even when it’s scrunched up all mad, but I still would prefer to see her smiling and not freaking out. Thankfully, she’s happy WAY more than upset. It is always over something she can’t have or something she can’t do. I can see how it would be frustrating.

I asked her to smile for the camera...

Mireya has been very ill since Thursday night. She has had an ongoing fever that has been difficult to bring down. At one point, her temperature even spiked to 105 degrees, which had me terrified. She saw her pediatrician yesterday and he said that because she had no other signs or symptoms, it was probably a virus, but there was a chance that it could be a urinary tract infection. He said that to test for the UTI, we would have to put a catheter into her bladder to retrieve a urine sample. Deja-vou.

Ok, wait, flashback to several weeks ago. One afternoon as I was changing Mireya’s diaper, I noticed that it had an unusually strong odor. I had Jason smell it and he said he thought it just smelled like urine, but my mommy instincts were on alert. When I realized that every diaper smelled that way over the next day or two, I got concerned. I made an appointment with her pediatrician and I took in a sample diaper. I was told that it didn’t smell unusual to them and besides, the only way to get a urine sample was to use a catheter.

Absolutely not was my automatic response. She is tiny and I still remember how traumatizing it was when I was in second grade and I had to have a catheter. I negotiated until they let me take a cup home to see if I could get her to pee in it. That failed and everyone around me acted as if I had lost my mind: the baby was fine.

I decided to just take a wait-and-see approach, but I did continue to voice my concerns. Nobody else could smell what I was smelling and they didn’t have my motherly instincts that were going haywire. I even noticed within a week that I could smell it even if she wasn’t really wet. She had an 18-month wellness visit and I asked another pediatrician about it then too and I got the same response– She’s fine, quit worrying, besides she would have to have a catheter and be traumatized for life.

Ok, back to the present. When Mireya’s fever hit 105 degrees, I had Jason call the pediatrician while I got her immediately into a lukewarm bath to bring it down. Guess what? The pediatrician wasn’t concerned at all. EXCUSE ME!? She is running a very high fever and she is not acting like herself at all! How can you not be concerned!?!?

Today I had had enough of her being miserable and we took her into the Instacare. They said that they would have no problem retrieving a urine sample, all they had to do was glue this little baggie onto her. When she peed, it would catch it and we were to bring it back in and they would test it. Simple as that. SERIOUSLY!? Why couldn’t the other doctor have done that WEEKS ago? Well, we did it and it was positive. Mireya has a UTI. I had known it all along, but no one would listen.

I’m clearly frustrated at the doctors, but I’m also frustrated with myself. It’s my job to keep my baby safe and healthy and I knew something was wrong. I should have continued to push the doctors, even though they thought I was crazy. Mireya may only be 19 months old, but every single time my motherly instincts have gone off, I’ve been right. I need to learn to trust myself, even when the rest of the world disagrees. It’s hard sometimes, because you don’t want to come across as the over-bearing, over-protective mom who is paranoid about everything. Whenever you disagree with a doctor, they seem to lump you into that category. I just don’t get it.

Mireya always wants to learn how to do new things. I decided to teach her how to do a somersault yesterday morning. She wanted to show her Daddy, but she can’t quite do it as you’ll see in the video. Super cute though!!

Guess what Mireya just did. She brought Lane a diaper and said “please.” She had a poopy diaper and needed to be changed, and she knew it, and wanted it! It was so cute!

Mireya LOVES to color. I once posted about how she colors on EVERYTHING. Anyway, she has figured out that pens and pencils exist in the world of making art, not just washable, non-toxic Crayola crayons. UGH. Now she can color on herself too. How exciting! At least she thinks so. I’m not personally sold on the idea.

Where did she get a pen? I gave it to her. Why? She said, “PEESE!” and she signed please too. How could I refuse that cuteness? After all, she does really well with them when she is under constant adult supervision, so I figured, why not? How did she manage to color on her arm while under adult (my) supervision? Hey! Mommies have to go potty too! I thought maybe, just once, I could go into the bathroom without a toddler and a cat trying to help me. (They ALWAYS follow me in.) Apparently I am not going to ever get privacy in the bathroom again or I have to be ok with stuff like this happening in the two minutes I’m gone. Peachy.

***Update! Ok, you aren’t going to believe me, but two seconds after I posted this, I went to leave the office and I caught Mireya writing on her legs! I didn’t give her the pen this time. This one I can blame on Jason…