Penny

So we took Penny to the doctor for her 2-month checkup this morning, which resulted in me bringing her back to work with me afterward.

How did that happen, you ask?

Well, let's get the facts out of the way first: She's 22 1/2 inches long - up from 20 3/4 six weeks ago. And she weighs 12 pounds, 6 ounces, up from an even eight pounds. Growth is good.

The doc said overall, she looks perfectly fine and healthy. Yay, little girl!

So why didn't she go back to daycare? Well...

They gave her a battery of vaccinations. Four shots, two in each of her little chubby baby thighs. As expected, they hurt, despite the slug of baby Tylenol they gave her to take the edge off beforehand.

Penny screamed and cried and cried and screamed and screamed some more. Matt and I were beside ourselves, trying to reconcile the "Someone hurt my baby - must KILL!" instinct and the "Vaccinations hurt but are important and necessary," rational thought. No fun for any of the three of us, though I'm willing to cede Penny the top prize for Sadness.

Anyway, vaccinations occasionally have side effects - little fevers, stiffness, and the very rare allergic reaction.

So, to keep an eye on her for a fever getting out of hand or an allergic reaction, (but mostly because I couldn't bear to let her go back to daycare after putting her through such misery, even though indications are that she'll pretty much sleep all afternoon) I brought her back to my office.

I'm pretty lucky that my office is fairly tolerant of occasional babies and children on the premises, as long as they're not interfering with work or running about unsupervised. And most of the women here are (of course) baby-crazy, so they're more than willing to help out with the little kids who need a bit more supervision than so-and-so's 9-year-old who's out of school for the day.

And, luckily, it's Friday and I don't have much work to do today. (What little I do have absolutely must be done today, but there's not much of it.) So I've got my office lights down low, and classical music running on the iPod, and I'm working at my desk while she sleeps in her carseat. I look over my shoulder at her every so often to make sure she's okay, and there's a bottle on the corner of the desk just waiting for her to get hungry.

It's not something I really want to do too often, but it does seem like this is do-able, in the case of emergencies. (Physical or emotional, as the case may be.)