Reality Check

Annalee spent a couple of days with a fever, a runny nose, and seemingly more teething pain than ever. We think, but don't definitively know, that she cut one of her two-year-old molars. (She won't let us look or feel, but past episodes of this sort did coincide with the appearance of new teeth.) During part of her low-level ordeal she was more childlike, or simply younger, than usual, visibly thinking less, adventuring less, and letting us do more for her. It's not as though her mom and I needed a reality-check about how much we adore our princess, but we got one, nonetheless.

One of the highlights of the baby-is-sick episode was watching "The Price Is Right" as a family, which both baby's mom and dad had done when they were kids home sick from school. Sickness gives about the only free pass I've ever had to watch TV without guilt about wasting brain cells, and it is a priceless experience. I don't think Annalee took much from watching a gameshow about being a comparison (and effective) shopper, but she probably did gain something from being around her two parents when they were about as relaxed as they get, tickling her, wiping her nose, and just being a family.