While we were on our Christmas trip, Kate picked up a nasty cold virus of some sort. It never made her violently ill, but it has hung on for a ridiculously long time, in my opinion. At this point, she's mostly fine during the day, but at night she has these awful coughing spells that wake her up. I called her pediatrician a couple of days after we got home, because I started to worry that maybe she had a secondary infection, and we went through those diagnostic questions they ask you to determine if your child is really sick or if you are just being paranoid. (They are super nice about it, and they don't call it that, but I think we all know that's what they are doing, right?) They gave me some things to look for, said Kate will probably be fine in a couple of days, and that was the end of that.

Last night, Dan and I were sitting on the couch listening to Kate struggle through one of these coughing fits in her sleep, and Dan asked if I was sure we shouldn't take her in to the doctor. Well, maybe if it doesn't clear up soon, I said, but if you think about it, she's not running a fever, her energy level is fine during the day, she's getting plenty of fluids, and she's not suffering from any loss of appetite. And after that last one about loss of appetite, we both laughed, which leads me to the point of this post: I think Kate is going through some kind of ultra-ramped-up growth spurt, because she is suddenly a bottomless pit for food. She'll eat her food, demand more, eat off our plates, sign that she's all done, and then three minutes later be back signing "cracker" or "banana" or some other food-related message. This morning at breakfast, she snorked down a bagel, two containers of yogurt, and a piece of bread. Here she is checking to see if the yogurt is really gone.

And apparently, the little spoons just aren't getting the job done any more, so we're moving on to the serving ware.

I can already see the growth. She's definitely moved up a shoe size since our trip, and some of her clothes are starting to get a little tight. I think she'll be fine with me starting to put some of her bigger clothes into the rotation, since it will give her more material to work with when she's putting together her high-fashion outfits every day, such as this one, which looks like a cross between Rambo and Rainbow Brite to me. Funny, hungry kid.