Weekend Days

Spreadsheet for Olive's daily intake.

Well we've had the past two days on our own. It didn't go as smooth as we had hoped. Saturday morning was great and then it deteriorated. Olive did a great job with drinking milk yesterday. She drank almost 22 ounces, which is awesome. But she had pretty much no interest in eating food with Dain and I at the helm. Polly told us to keep it light and positive and just offer her what we were having, but she wasn't very interested throughout the day. It is especially difficult to keep her focused at the table in our hotel room because we don't have a chair to strap her in to. So she is basically up and down, sitting on my lap, running across the room, and up again. You get the idea. She is a whirling dervish of motion and when there are so many other things to do (like turn her spoons into boats and float them across the table) she has no interest in eating. So it's really frustrating. Luckily yesterday she took enough milk that we didn't have to tube too much. I kept track of everything on a spread sheet from Polly so we had a baseline idea of calories in.

It is very stressful to be in charge of it all on our own. Obviously we will be the ones doing it long term so we need to get used to it, but when you're already exhausted, it's tough. It was going fairly well up until late afternoon yesterday. We tried a three quarter dose of her medicine, and she woke up from her nap in a fury. Grumpy and whiney and not at all cooperative. Then we tubed water, and she immediately threw up as I unhooked her extension tube. We were just doing what we normally do, but we didn't properly take into account that she had consumed milk orally a short while before. Obviously it made her tummy full so it was too soon to tube something else. That was the beginning.

Family selfie in the Rite Aid parking lot.

Then she took a bath and started to drink bath water. I told her no, but she kept sneakily doing it. Then she started to say "tummy" and look like she was going to throw up again. We avoided it by distracting her with a literal song and dance. She seemed ok for awhile after so we decided to go out to dinner. We obviously didn't think it through. She threw up in the car. It was a whole lot of hot mess to clean up in a random Rite Aid parking lot. We are so nonplussed by it at this point, but we did get a few sideways glances with our naked toddler trying to escape while I cleaned vomit off of her. But we cleaned Olive, put on fresh clothes, and cleaned the car as good as we can. We always travel with paper towels and extra wipes and bags for dirty clothes. You mostly can never have enough of those items.

Olive is also totally unaffected by her vomiting. She moves on like it never happened. She had a time of it playing in the car while we cleaned up. We still went to dinner, and she actually did a great job eating for the first time all day. Probably because she was actually really hungry. She drank three ounces of milk, and she tasted all kinds of things like crackers, pickles, chicken fingers, fries, and pasta. She did the best job with bread that we slathered with an ungodly amount of butter. Calories in. So that was nice to see. Then we hit the hotel for a good night's sleep.

Just drinking milk in her new favorite hangout.

Unfortunately Sunday didn't go well at all. Olive seemed a little tired in the morning. She drank three ounces of milk, but she wanted nothing to do with her food. She took a few very small licks of yogurt and Nutella, but it was like pulling teeth. Then she refused to taste anything for snack or lunch. On top of that she started to have loose stools while we were at the national park. So that wasn't fun for anyone involved. We ended up tubing a snack of bananas, which is easy on the tummy. She slept in the car, and she didn't want any milk when she woke up. We also noticed a very slight fever of 99 degrees. So she obviously doesn't feel well today. This didn't stop her from refusing a nap at the hotel of course. We went to the park to get her some fresh air, and we tubed her full lunch there as she didn't want any milk or anything to eat. She had a great time at the park and seemed to perk up. We decided to just give her a break tonight, and we planned to tube her whole dinner with her usual 60 ml of water first to keep her hydrated. Of course right after we gave her the water, she asked for milk and drank two ounces. So that left us with the conundrum of how much dinner to tube. We think Polly would say to just subtract the amount of milk so we went with 95 instead of her regular 145. But we are debating whether she needs anything else after she goes to bed. It's a lot of math for two not at all mathematically inclined people.

Push carousel on the downtown mall.

So that sums up her eating weekend. Pretty good Saturday and horrible Sunday. We really hope she isn't getting sick. She's done this before a few times where it is just a day long thing so we are praying that's what it is. Because it would be devastating if we had to miss out on the feeding clinic for any amount of time this week. We are heading to bed early in hopes that a good night's sleep will cure whatever is ailing Miss Olive. In happier news, we did some fun stuff this weekend. We really got out there and saw Charlottesville and the surrounding area.

Saturday morning we hit the farmers' market downtown and then walked along the pedestrian mall. It was a great time. We had donuts and a brat at the market. Olive even asked to taste the strawberry glazed donut, and she did. As a total aside, Dain and I have pretty much both gained ten pounds from stress, exhaustion, our hectic schedule, and eating all the things we see. It's like the feeding clinic 15. Oh well. The pedestrian mall was really neat. It's a closed off street for pedestrians only with shops and restaurants and water fountains and other fun attractions. Olive's favorite was hands down this push carousel we found. She could have ridden it all day.

We also stopped in a toy store where Olive picked out unicorn stickers, and there was a great art installation where you can draw with chalk on a slate wall. She jumped right in with the college kids and put her scribbles on the wall.  Olive also enjoyed stopping to see a group of people playing drums outside a coffee shop. She was dancing to the beat. After all that activity, we drove to another apple orchard, Chiles. This one was much less crowded. We picked our own apples, and Olive loved riding in the wagon.  We didn't stay for too long since we wanted to sit down for lunch back at the hotel and then get in a good nap. After lunch and nap, we hung out at the hotel. Olive took a forty five minute bath having a time of it with her toys and her plastic cup boats.We only ventured back out for a quick dinner at TipTop, rated Charlottesville's number one family friendly restaurant. It was like a diner, with affordable prices and fast service. Perfect for dining with a two year old.

Living the life at Chiles Orchard.

Today we decided that we really couldn't be this close to the Appalachian Trail and not hike a piece of it. It's truly one of America's great adventures for those crazy and awesome enough to attempt the whole 2,180 mile trek from Georgia to Maine. It crosses through 14 states. I of course sometimes overly romanticize things and was truly hoping to encounter one of those wild and wooly adventurers and ask them about it. Of course we didn't. It was mostly just tourists like ourselves looking for a short hike on the A.T. We didn't really have any other options with a two year old and without our Deuter backpack from home that we carry O in for hiking. Such is life. We hiked it. That whole mile. And we made it to Black Rock Summit.

The trail we hiked was in Shenandoah National Park, which was only about a twenty five minute drive from our hotel. The whole place was gorgeous. Skyline drive runs through the entire park, and it is literally a beautiful scenic overlook every half mile. It was a fabulous fall drive and short hike. We didn't realize how large the park was and were surprised that the official visitor center was 55 miles in from where we entered. Luckily the park ranger at the gate gave us maps of nearby hikes within the first 20 miles or so of our drive. After we officially hit the A.T., we stopped inside the park at a wayside rest with a restaurant and gift shop for lunch before heading back to the hotel. Olive slept the whole way back, making it hard to get her down for another nap an hour later for her regular nap time. It's hard to stick to a consistent schedule when you're not at home, but we had such a great time. The only other thing we did tonight was grab a Halloween costume for Olive for half off at Kmart and some dinner to eat back at the hotel. And laundry, necessitated by yesterday's events.

Olive chose to be a pumpkin. We honestly tried to steer her towards something else (world's cutest Clownfish?) but she stuck to her original idea all last week. We're pretty sure she picked it because she heard a woman at the hospital who brings her guide dog with her every day telling us that the dog was going to be a pumpkin for Halloween. But hey, a pumpkin is a solid costume choice for a toddler so we rolled with it. Thankfully Kmart had one. Done and done. We tried Walmart first. We didn't find a pumpkin costume but did get to hear one woman yell at the top of her lungs "I'm so fucking ready to go" and saw another woman smack her young child. So that happened. God bless 'Merica. Olive's first trip to Walmart was probably her last for awhile. We are just spoiled at home having a Target we can walk to.

A little jaunt on the Appalachian Trail.

At the end of the day, the weekend was ok. It could have been better, but I suppose it could have been worse. At least she didn't throw up today. That's a small win. Hopefully she will wake up ready to go, and we will hit it hard again with Ms. Polly.