So, all early this week I had wanted to do a post about our fabulous time seeing Thomas the Tank and basically hanging out in Lancaster County last weekend. We had a great visit and Sophie, along with all the other throngs of screaming, crying passing out kids, just LOVED Thomas. You would have thought it was like seeing the Beatles live from the shrieks of joy and ecstacy coming from these kids everytime Thomas made his way back into the station to pick up the next batch of kids. Anyway, I'll get to that later because as always, something unexpected happened when yesterday morning Sophie woke up covered in her own pee. And, I mean COVERED. Her hair was wet, her jammies were wet, the bed was wet - it was nuts. At first I thought maybe I hadn't put her nighttime diaper on right (she is darn near impossible to change these days and I'm frequently changing her diaper while chasing her through the house or wrestling her down from standing up on the couch). But, I checked the diaper and it seemed to be on fine and covering all the right bits so why on earth was she so soaked???? Well, we called the doctor and got an appointment to have her checked out but in the meantime, our thoughts started to run wild because well, when you do a google on "toddler soaked diaper" all the hits lead to diabetes. So I start reading all these diabetes sites and forums and in no time flat I'm hysterical. I mean, HY-STER-I-CAL. (Just ask my sister in law or my friend Heather both of whom fielded panicked hysterical phone calls from me). Ok, so I get her into the doctors and she says basically "well, don't panic until we know the results of a urine sample." A urine sample??? How do you get a urine sample from an 18 month old. Well, let me tell ya, it's not pretty. Poor Sophie withstood two attempts in the doctors office and heroically and patiently dealth with having the first and then second urine bag removed (i.e., unstuck like the nastiest bandaid you ever had) from her poor little body. But of course, two bags and 30 minutes later and still no pee. So, they sent me home with bags which I attempted to put on her yesterday afternoon and fed her copious amounts of fluids and still NO PEE! Finally, this morning, we hit jackpot on the 5th urine bag which I drove to the doctors office and we waited for the results which thankfully came back completely and utterly fine. No glucose in the urine, no weird proteins. She just had a big pee or a defective diaper or who knows. Maybe in her sleep she undid the diaper and rolled around in her own urine and then meticulously put the diaper BACK on before we went in and got her in the morning. Kids. Go figure. Looking back on it now from the safety of a negative result, I'm embarrassed by my over reaction but when you start imagining a life of fingersticks and insulin pump sites for your baby, your mind and heart do awful things and go to very very sad places at the slightest chance of such a fate. Anyway, that's what my mind and heart did and I apologize to those who had to deal with me. In the meantime, she does indeed have yet another cold. Seriously, in the midst of all this she was sneezing again yesterday which inevtiably means a cold is on the way and sure enough she had a low grade fever this morning and is yet again, a walking projectile snot shooting machine. (If you've been keeping track that makes for two colds and one viral rash in four weeks but who's counting, really?)
Anyway so let me end this post on a funny story about our time in Lancaster County.... We're driving around through this beautiful farm land with horse and buggies taking the Amish to and fro and enjoying the simply gorgeous sunny fall weather. We pass this one Amish house and there is an Amish woman out front mowing her lawn. Sure, that's great. She's mowing the lawn, right? Well, then we pass the back of the house and there is a baby SITTING ALL ALONE in the backyard with a little black bonnet on it in the middle of the grass. I mean it. ALONE. This baby was the age where babies have to sit because they have just learned how to sit and hold their heads up and that is basically all they do. It was in the middle of the grass on a little towel or blanket SITTING THERE ALONE!!! Nobody was with it. The mom was out front MOWING. Now, I cannot even imagine having the hardiness, the strength of character to let my baby sit by itself in the middle of the lawn with absolutely nobody near it and not able to hear it's shrieks (because I was mowing) if some godawful thing were to happen. What if it fell over and rolled away? What if a large hawk came by and swooped down and grabbed it? What if it got stung by a bee??? What if some nasty tourists from Philly came by pulled over and grabbed it to take home and raise as their own? I was stunned. Just stunned. But, I guess that is how life is out in Amish Country. If you can't survive sitting in the grass by yourself at a tender young age of barely being able to hold your head up, then I guess you'll never make it to being able to tend the fields or mow the grass in your bare feet while your baby sits alone in the back yard later on in life, huh??
