Sophie's World

9:26 PM Not a whole lot to report. Both girls seem to be doing well, although it would be hard to tell who is more ready for Elisabeth to return to school--her or her parents! Susan and I had a great date night last night, though, and probably had some of our best conversations in a long time. It's nice when you're no longer in "crisis" mode, how pleasant it is to just share your thoughts and feelings with another person.

Sophie was quite a pill this morning getting ready to go to school. She's typically less-than-thrilled about going on Mondays, since she has been at home all weekend and is not ready to leave us (that's what I think), but she was really, really angry this morning. Apparently (and she never helped us figure this out until it was too late), she wanted to wear her "hair" to school (a clip-on type thing with long, curly, purple-and-white hair). She was beside herself all the way to school and all the way into her school until Susan pointed out that her best friend, Tamar, was already in the classroom. In the blink of an eye, everything was sunshine and roses in Sophie's world. She's such a sociable kid, it's very sweet that she's got a special friend in Tamar (and boy, has Tamar come in handy when it comes to going to school!).

Tonight was one of two "dance nights" in our house, so we had the girls out to dinner and off to dance lessons. Sophie complained about halfway through that her legs were hurting, so she got to sit out the rest of the class. Of course, she had no problem running around the studio for the second hour while Elisabeth was in her class.

We had a bit of a scare tonight. It was dressing change night, so Susan took care of that after bath time. Sophie had insisted on having a piece of candy earlier in the night, and I promised her she could have it--a cherry Jolly Rancher. At some point, she kind of choked and got very, very upset claiming that she couldn't breathe. Her face got all red and splotchy, too. I thought at first that it was the candy, but she spit that out no problem, and continued to have trouble breathing. My next thought was that something happened with the dressing and/or cap change. When we worried once before that we had pushed a clot into her line, the doctors assured us that if we had, Sophie would quickly have trouble breathing, because the clot would go directly to her lung. We called the doctor and he reassured us that it was probably nothing, although it took some time for Sophie' breathing to return to normal. I suspect that she choked on some "candy juice" and it scared her. It's very scary when you lose your breath like that, and it takes some time to recover. By the time she went to bed, though, she was her normal self. All's well that ends well, I suppose.

Elisabeth, however, was quite traumatized by the whole thing. She was crying and asking Susan if Sophie is going to die and the like. When it was all over, I reminded Elisabeth that when she was very young, she swallowed a penny once and how she was very scared and very upset for quite some time afterwards. Then I told her that when I called the nurse to ask whether we needed to do something, the nurse first asked if the penny went all the way down (which it did), and then she said, "It'll come out the other end." When I asked, "But what if it doesn't?" She said, "They always do." Bodily functions are always good for a laugh in our household, so that seemed to cheer Elisabeth up. It's very sweet how concerned she gets about Sophie--it's clear that she loves her very, very much.