24 Hours in York

Our train trip to York was relaxing, and I was pleased that there were a number of hen parties on the train with us (middle-age ladies festooned in tiaras and sashes that marked some rite of passage or occasion like “Bride to Be” or “30^th birthday” or “Yummy Mummy on Parade”). They were making so much noise that our fellow passengers didn’t notice our group, despite the students’ tendencies to be quite unaware of how loud they are and Leah’s lack of concern overall about both the volume of her voice and of the Peppa Pig show she was streaming on my tablet. Leah actually loved everything about the three hour ride…the sheep out the window, the enormous bag of baps and crisps and grapes that we brought along, and especially the toilet, which was a cavernous round cubicle that opened and closed with a flashy push-button. This she requested to visit about four times, though by the time we traveled down the aisle and through the adjoining car, then push-buttoned the door open, then closed, then open again, then closed again, then finally locked, she no longer had to go.

She had been a real trooper all morning, despite the last-minute flurry of activity in our house as we packed and loaded our car, checked and double checked train tickets and email confirmations, and counted students and tracked text messages about who was on which taxi to where. Once we had everything sorted and were driving out of our car park behind the students’ taxis, Leah looked out the window and said, “Wooo! Buh-bye Scot-end!” We all laughed, though none of us broke it to her that we were still coming back!

Leah charms one of our students at the hotel.

We arrived at the lovely York train station (no sarcasm intended…it actually is lovely!) at 1:00 pm and dragged our luggage to the hotel nearby. It was the same place to which we took our students in 2011, though it was now owned by a new firm, and the robin’s egg blue walls I admired the last time were now done in hot pink. But the location was still great, and the price was still right for a large group. The top floor room that we got was the same one in which we stayed in 2011, though it now only had three beds in it instead of four. Leah was going to sleep on an airbed anyway, but that did mean that we had to put Emma down in the women’s dorm. She didn’t mind, because she is getting along very well with the students since she’s actually only five years younger than they are, and as we walk through the towns she spends more time with the other students than she does with me.

David and the students (and Emma) went off after checkin for a 3pm tour of York Minster. I didn’t go because I assumed that neither Leah nor John would love a 90 minute tour of a Gothic cathedral. Instead I took them to the York Castle Museum, which is housed in a former debtors prison and tells the story of the city through various time periods. There’s a recreation of a Victorian street, complete with shops, schools, churches and homes that the kids can tour, and another recreation of World War 1 trenches on the other side of the museum. The trenches included some narrow-hidey holes that were just Leah’s size, and we spent a good bit of time trying to fish her out of those. Eventually, the sound of machine gun fire that the museum was piping in was enough to draw her out, and we were able to move on. There were other exhibits about the prisons themselves, and in each cell there was a projected image of a prisoner, telling his or her story about why he or she was there and what the prison conditions were like. It was very well done, but Leah found it a bit ominous so she wanted to hurry through the cells. John on the other hand was quite taken at the personal stories and the manners in which they were to be executed and was more interested in lingering. I managed to delay Leah in a colorful exhibit about the 1960’s and Beatlemania long enough for John to catch back up with us.

Leah in front of York Minster

The three of us left the museum when it closed and walked to the York Minster for evensong. We arrived in time to wave to the group at the very top of the Minster tower. When they came down and rejoined us, we all filtered into the choir, where evensong was going to take place. A merciful usher seated our family right next to an exit. Leah made it almost all the way through the hour-long service by playing alternately with her shoes, her fingers, and the Book of Common Prayer. Eventually, even she had had enough of the chorus, and announced in a very loud whisper that she had a dirty nappy. Incidentally, if you ever happen to be in York Minster with a toddler, make note that the changing rooms on the left-hand side of the main altar are very well equipped!

After evensong, we had a group dinner with the students at an Italian chain that was in a converted church. This is a pretty common site in York, though some of them have been turned into shops or even nightclubs rather than restaurants. It is a telling symbol of the changing importance of religious practice (and food!) in British culture. The chain had left a good number of the architectural features intact, though they had replaced the pulpit and the pews with sleek white tables and stainless steel bars along the ends of the room. Though it was a chain, most of the waiters were Italian and the food was surprisingly good. Almost everyone ended up with some kind of pizza, though a few students chose risotto instead. For a crowd of college kids on the first night of spring break, they were all a bit subdued, though it was possibly because David had assigned a rather large paper and a number of them had been working on it late into the night the night before. At eight, I left with most of them to go on a “ghost tour” of York, while David stayed back with the kids, and the student that looked most exhausted, to finish the pudding that had come with the kids’ meals and to pay the bill.

The “ghost tour” is a popular pastime in almost all large British cities…even St. Andrews has an outfit that offers them. I usually shy away from this kind of thing, since I’m not too into murder or mayhem. However, this one seemed to get some excellent reviews online, and was apparently run by a pair who are relatively serious at historic research…or as serious as a pair running a ghost tour outfit can be, I guess. Our tour guide was fantastic, well informed, funny and appropriated dramatic but never hokey. He took us to some fairly interesting spots and shared as much history of the city as he did stories of executions and haunted pubs. In fact, the only thing actually scary about the tour were the roving bands of bachelorettes and wannabe bachelorettes out on parade in stiletto heels, feather boas, rhinestone tiaras  that kept passing our group and cackling in a ghosty-falsetto voice. It made me supremely pleased that the whole hen-party tradition seems not to have made it across the Atlantic yet…except perhaps at Halloween.

Clifford's Tower in York

In the morning, we had yet another tour, but this one was of the center city of York and didn’t involve any ghosts or stilettos. Our tour guide was a former librarian who brought along a collection of very old texts, maps, historic photos and coins to illustrate the history of the town as we walked. He took us along the very high stone city walls (which was interesting to navigate with a stroller!) and through many of the streets, and told the group about the Roman and Viking influences on the city. He also talked a bit about the history of the city since it had discovered tourism, and how some of the poorer areas had been gentrified. That was clear as we walked, and passed even more historic churches that had been converted into High Street British chains like Joules and Jack Wills and Boots. Since it was a Sunday, the cobblestoned streets (or newly re-cobblestoned, as our guide pointed out) were full of families, tourists, and street performers. One of our students ended up as the assistant in a knife demonstration at one point, but it happened at the same time that Emma wanted to duck into the Cath Kidston, and so fortunately I missed it and only had to fret about it while watching the replay on the students’ phones.

After our tour and a bit of free time to wander the streets and the market, we met at a pub (again, haunted) for a Sunday roast. All the students had either the traditional beef roast, complete with Yorkshire puddings, mashed potatoes AND roasted potatoes (!), cabbage, peas, cauliflower and carrots, though a few requested the vegetarian nut-loaf version instead. It was a lot of food for the middle of the day, and so after we ate and returned to the hotel to retrieve our luggage and board the bus I noticed that almost all of them fell asleep almost immediately!

On the Road (and Rail) to England

And we're off! We have a four hour train ride this morning through southern Scotland, and will arrive at the northern English city of York in the afternoon.We have a tour of Westminster Abbey planned and we'll get a chance to walk along the city walls.

After an overnight and a tour of the city itself (and probably a late night ghost tour too!) we'll take a bus to Oxford. David has a number of lectures set up here for the students, and that means that the kids and I get some time to wander around the city, visiting the fabulous free Natural History and Pitt River museum and walking along the bank of the river which will undoubtedly be full of daffodils and crocus at this point in the season. We'll take an afternoon tour of the university with the students at some point, and will see Christ Church, the Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera, pictured below.

After two nights in Oxford, we'll take another bus to London. We'll be here for the remainder of the week, staying in a cool hostel in Holland Park.

Our time in London should be pretty busy, and we have a packed itinerary. I'm a little worried about navigating the Underground for the students while dealing with a toddler and a stroller, but it's also always one of my favorite parts of traveling to a big city. Since I grew up in the midwest where we don't have a lot of public transportation, I love the novelty of it...and the challenge! However, I think a few times we'll use the bus system as well, because the kids are going to love riding on the top floor of one of those double-decker Routemasters!

Care of children in the UK

Every morning when I drop Leah off at nursery, I see the day's food delivery in crates and boxes by the back door to the kitchen. The daily food delivery to a nursery school in the U.S. (if nursery schools served meals) would probably be Sysco boxes full of frozen french toast sticks and preformed chicken patties. Not here. Yesterday morning's delivery was mushrooms, potatoes and leeks, along with pears and bananas.

The teachers told me at pickup time that lunch had been stovies with sausage, and poached pears for pudding. Lucky kids!

It's interesting to see how parenting is a bit different in a different culture, and taking Leah to nursery has given me a chance to see that. Parents are much more relaxed here about a number of things. The playgrounds are full of some pretty seriously fast and high slides and swinging contraptions that, when fully loaded with a kid's body weight, could easily take out a small toddler passing by. Parents are always either on a bench nearby as their child plays, or down in the sand or mud playing alongside the child, but never hovering over in an attempt to keep the kid from plunging off the side. I have also noticed that a good number of toddlers here ride in car seats that are installed in the front seat of the car. That would never, never fly in the United States. I'm not actually sure why that happens here, because the cars seem to be equipped with the same airbags as they are at home. I have never seen a rear facing infant seat in the front seat here, so it seems to be a practice reserved only for toddlers. Leah still hasn't noticed all of her little friends getting out of the front seat of their parents' cars in front of the nursery, probably because she is still too impressed with the sheep and the cows that are peering over the front gate at her as we walk past their stalls. I hope she doesn't, because we are certainly not going to put her car seat in the front seat, no matter how many other families are doing it!

There's an interesting discussion taking place in Scotland right now about a proposed "Named Person" scheme. It's a new policy by the Scottish government set to go in effect at the end of the summer, though it does have opponents who are trying to get it thrown out before then. Basically, it will give each child a "named person," appointed to monitor his or her welfare as he or she grows up. The named person, who will usually be a midwife, health visitor or head teacher, will be a point of contact for the child for information or advice. It's meant to ensure that cases of child abuse or neglect are uncovered, but opponents argue that this will undermine parents and violate a family's right to privacy. It has prompted an interesting discussion about parenting in general in Scotland, and since I get a good bit of time in the car each morning to listed to BBC Scotland after dropping off the kids, I have learned quite a bit about the debate. Overall it sounds like a good idea, though I do see the validity of the opposition arguments. However, I'm struck at how difficult a program like this would be to institute in the United States, if only because we are such a large country. This seems to be just one aspect of life in Scotland that couldn't possibly be replicated in the U.S. because of the difference in the size of our population.

I think about this a lot when I am driving. Scotland is visually so calm...no billboards on the side of the road, for example, and no screaming advertisements on shops or pubs. This must be because of tradition, in part, but also because it's just not worth the expense of putting up a huge advertisement on the side of the road when not many people will see it. The other day, Emma told me a statistic that I found shocking: the population of the United Kingdom is a bit over 5 million people, and only 8.3 percent of those people live in Scotland. 8.3%! That's crazy! Scotland covers nearly a third of the entire land mass of the UK, but holds only 8.3% of the population. What's more, about 70% of those people live in the band of land between and around Edinburgh and Glasgow (the dark blue dots on the map below...along with Aberdeen which is on the northeastern coast) 

There are various and complicated reasons for this of course, mostly historic (see clearances, highland for much, much more on this issue, or ask the person of Scottish descent nearest to you right now...) but some economic and cultural. In a way, it's what makes so many parts of Scotland so special. While this low population rate creates some serious challenges (no wonder their roads are so narrow! Who would pay to widen them?), it does create a number of opportunities and advantages...and the named person scheme is just one of many. 

Mum's Day in the UK

March 6 is Mum's Day, and it's celebrated here pretty much the way it is in the U.S...as a marketing scheme carried out by flower companies and restaurants. I'm not usually too much of a traditionalist about Mother's Day (ask me own mum on this one!), so usually I just ask for a few hours to spend in the garden. That was a tall order this year, since early March is hardly gardening weather in Scotland, and since we are in a rental unit. However, traditions are traditions, so I did buy a flat of pansies at the grocery store for £3 and Emma and I spent about 30 minutes outside raking up the winter debris in our walled garden, and planting the pansies in between the crevices in the walls.

John has a rugby "fixture" on Sunday as well, and David, Leah and I went. I was surprised to see that John has been given a position that has him at the center of a big pile of boys at the beginning of some of the plays. I noticed when I saw him put his arms around two of his teammates, and at first I just thought he was being especially supportive. But as more of his teammates started to crowd around, I realized it was some kind of official formation, and he was at the center. I'm not sure it's an especially skilled position to have, and possibly he was given the position because he's a bit shorter than some of his other teammates. But when I saw he was to play some of the game in such a pile, I was thankful that we had purchased fluorescent orange rugby boots!

Otherwise, John played relatively well for a kid who still isn't sure what the rules of the game are. I'm not sure either, and I had a difficult time telling when one team scored a "try," so I had no idea who won the game in the end. When we went to the clubhouse to collect John after the game, one of his coaches came up to us to compliment John on his game. He asked us if we had seen John's first try, and we assured him that we had. In the car a few minutes later, I told John that I was sorry I hadn't realized that he had scored. "You know," he said, "I didn't even know if I did or not." So, we still aren't actually sure if he did score, or if the coach has him confused for the one other American kid on the team.

It's possible that he's in the end zone here, but we still aren't sure...though I am sure it's probably not called the "end zone" here.

In any case, his mates were happy with him!

After the game, Emma and I took a walk into town to do some shopping while Leah napped. We stopped into a bookstore, and tried on some clothes at a high street clothing store. We were going to stop for tea, but every place in town was chock-full of mums and their families celebrating the holiday. So, we went home and made a quiche instead.

All in all, it was a wonderful day. At the end of the day, out of curiosity, I looked up the UK date for Father's Day, and felt bad that it was in mid-June, when we will be in Germany. On a whim, I looked up the German date for Father's Day, hoping we could celebrate David with a pretzel and a stein of beer. No dice, though...it's May 5! I think we will manage to miss Father's Day in each country we visit this spring, so we will just have to celebrate him on our own this year!

The Beach and the pool

Friday is the day that Leah stays home from nursery, so when it was my turn to take her I decided to take her back to the leisure center in St. Andrews, called East Sands because that's the name of the nearby beach. (West Sands, the beach known for the Chariots of Fire scene, is, obviously, on the other side of town...) The leisure center is a wonderful British phenomenon, and as one drives through the country one will often see small road signs pointing to the local leisure center. I'm not sure what council structure is in place to pay for such things, but the fact that even small towns have a publicly-available space with a gym, fitness classes, community meeting rooms, and sometimes an indoor pool is pretty amazing. They aren't free...a visit usually runs about £4 per person, and so taking a family of five can get a little bit expensive, though there are membership schemes that one could choose, rather than the pay-as-you-go option that we are using.

Leah and I arrived at the center at 2pm, and since this is prime nap time for toddlers, we had the toddler pool to ourselves. There were two mums there with very, very small babies and both of them were sort of swishing the babies around in the water trying to get them acclimated to being in the water. Both babies were taking the swishing about very well, so I could tell this wasn't their first time being in the pool. Leah had a great time splashing about, and I'm trying the Bringing Up Bébé
French approach here with her--letting her awaken to the sensation of being comfortable in the water rather than the more American attempt to have her swimming from one side of the pool to the other, underwater, by her third birthday. 

After we finished at the pool and were walking out to the car park, we decided to take a quick detour and have a walk on the beach. This beach is much smaller than West Sands, but really great for little ones. It's wide and clean, and to one side where the sand meets the rocky cliff above there are all kinds of rock pools and water streams perfect for a toddler in wellies. We spent about ten minutes splashing about, and then Leah slipped off a rock and fell into one of the pools. She ended up with wet trousers, so we returned to the car park and headed home.

This last one was taken about 3 seconds before she fell in!

On Saturday, the weather forecast was calling for “thick cloud” for most of the day, so I thought the older kids would like to have a chance to swim as well. Rather than staying in town, we decided to drive to Dundee, about 20 minutes north of us. Their leisure center is much bigger, and it’s new. When we were here in 2011, we visited their center several times and were very impressed, so I was surprised to learn that, since then, they had torn that one down and built a brand new one on the other side of town. I had read some mixed reviews of this new facility online, most of which included complaints about small changing areas and cold water. I wasn’t too chuffed about either of these, but we decided to try it out on our own.

As we entered, the woman at the registration desk warned me that they had had some reports of cold water in the toddler pool, so I had really low expectations as we entered. However, we were wrong, and the facility was wonderful. It’s full of water slides and wave pools, and climbing structures that spurt fountains of water. There's even a wave pool, and a lane pool that had an Aqua Zone set up...a big inflatable obstacle course that bobs up and down in the water and gets so slippery when wet that no one can manage to scale the first hump. Plus, the water was perfectly warm. I splashed around with Leah for a bit while everyone else tried out the water slides. They came back with a full report, and insisted that I try them as well. One of the slides is called the "Cannonball" and spits riders out about 4 meters above the water, so I requested that they send me on the tamest first. It wasn't tame at all, though this might have been partly my fault. These slides all have "themes" so as you are sitting at the top and waiting for the little light to turn from red to green, indicating that it's ok to proceed, you get to choose from four or five themes on a touchscreen next to you. The theme will change the lighting and the music on the slide as you go down, and I noticed that most of the riders ahead of me were choosing "Mexican Fiesta" then sliding down into a pool of green light accompanied by the sound of a mariachi band. I decided to shake things up and try the "Fantasy" theme instead, but this might have been a mistake. My plunge down was accompanied by spooky music, and about a third of the way down, I slid through a blast of water so thick that a holograph of a skull could be projected onto it. After the blast of water, the entire slide turned pitch black and I had no idea when the next drop was coming. It was terrifying. At the end, I splashed through a pool of water with such force that my contact lenses almost floated off my eyeballs. Emma and John were standing at the end waiting for me, and so for about five minutes we all discussed the look of sheer terror on my face as I shot out the end of the slide!

In the end, the poor reviews seemed to be false, and the leisure center was a great hit. It was like a Great Wolf Lodge without the attached hotel, and full of Scottish people. And, in true Scottish fashion, there seemed to be no rules in effect about what or wasn't age appropriate. David and the kids wanted to take Leah into the lazy river but it was surprisingly fast and I was sure we would be promptly whistled by a lifeguard as we tried to enter with her. I even asked David to ask the lifeguard if it was ok, and when he did she looked surprised and shrugged, as if we had asked her if it was ok for us to enter the pool when we were already wet. She had a blast, and as we zoomed around the pool with her I noticed a number of other mums with babies so small that they couldn't have been more than a month old. Talk about an awakening to the water experience!

If you go, avoid the green one, or at least don't select the "Fantasy" theme!

Random Observations

Now that Leah's well, we're all back on our usual schedule...meaning there's not too much new or exciting to post. Also, I'm working from home (or sometimes a cafe, but...same thing) and it gets kind of lonely during the day with nobody around. In the absence of office colleagues to share stray thoughts and observations, I'm bringing some random thoughts to this blog instead!

We didn't bring too many toys for Leah in our suitcases, so it's interesting to watch her make toys out of whatever she can find around the house. Usually, it involves some kind of make-shift doll bed. Here we have a lavender and wheat-filled "hottie" that was given to us as a housewarming gift from our letting agent, cozied up in a dish towel and a potholder!

The flowers around town are starting to bloom. The snowdrops are up in full force, and now we are starting to get some scilla siberica and chionodoxa sardensis too. I even saw a few daffodils in bloom against a sunny stone wall this morning on my way to Leah's nursery. Here's a shot I took of my next-door neighbor's garden when she wasn't looking!

I'm getting used to the accent but a few things still trip me up. My yoga teacher rolls her "r" sound in such a way that it sometimes sounds like a "d" so when she tells us to turn our heads to the left towards the reception desk, it sounds to me like she's saying "deception desk." An interesting commentary, perhaps, on her profession? Also, I think that everyone in my yoga class thinks my name is Gillian and she's shortening it to "Jilly" which is a very common name here...much more so that Julie.

The salmon here is amazing. AMAZING! We have this at least once a week for dinner, with "British Greens" which are some kind of unidentifiable Asian-like cabbage. We wilt the greens in a wok, then splash with soy sauce and serve with feta. Even Emma, our avowed vegetarian-who-detests-vegetables, will eat it without complaint.

How is it that creme fraiche hasn't caught on in the United States? We are really missing the boat on this one. It is utterly delicious, and I eat a bit of it on fresh fruit everyday. Every. Day.

And lastly, John's breakfast cereal has possibly the best cereal name ever!

Adventures with the National Health System

It was inevitable. In 2011, none of us ever needed to visit the doctor, as none of ever got sick enough to warrant professional medical care. This time around, we weren't so lucky. As you know, Leah was sick over the weekend, running a fever and covered in some kind of rash. She didn't seem to get any better by Monday, and so we kept her home from school. The rash was worrying me, and I kept checking her tongue to make sure it didn't look like scarlet fever. Finally, I bit the bullet and started to look into how I could take her to a doctor.

St. Andrews has a local hospital, and I pass it every day on the way to Leah's nursery. It's small but always looks very busy, and there's a large pharmacy in front of the building as well. I had a look at the website, and it seemed that there were three general practices at the hospital, called Strathcairn, Feddinch, and Blackfriars. Very Hogwarts! Interestingly, the website implied that new patients register with one of the three practices based on the first letter of their last name. I'm not sure if that's been the practice for some time, or if, when one is registered, one can switch back and forth between the practices. It did seem odd, though of course no stranger than the way we do this in the U.S., where you choose a doctor based on the financial agreements of your insurance carrier. When I explained our particular situation (U.S. residents in the UK for six months, not permanently, affiliated with the university, with a toddler with a fever and a rash) she decided not to transfer me to one of the practices but to have me speak with a nurse at the hospital. She put the phone down, and a nurse was on the other line in about 10 seconds. I repeated all of Leah's symptoms, and she suggested that it was probably just a virus and that I could go to the chemist to have a wee look at her. This seemed like a curious idea, and so I sent David (who comes from a family full of medical doctors and pharmacists) to the Morrison's pharmacy with Leah.

They came back in about 45 minutes with two bottles of medicine and some fruit pouches from the grocery store. David said that when he arrived, the chemist had come around the counter to have a look at Leah and they registered her for the "NHS Minor Ailment Service." He had a pamphlet from the NIH that described this service, and it really sounds brilliant. It's a free service for children (anyone under 16, or 19 if you are still enrolled in school) and those over 60. It provides, through a pharmacist, advice and FREE treatment for a whole list of things, like cough, headache, nasal congestion, sore throat, hay fever, cold sores, indigestion, etc., but also things like acne and head lice. The literature states that it may be the case that the chemist will refer you to a general practitioner, but still...what a great idea this is! What a shame that we don't implement this in the United States! I'm imagining all of the ailments that could be treated by those Rite Aids and Walgreens that are on every street corner in America, rather than in more expensive facilities like the doctor's office, or sometimes even the emergency room. It would really reduce the burden on our medical system, and it would mean that those who can't afford a doctor's visit or an ER trip for a minor ailment could have it taken care of at no expense, before it turns into a larger problem.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of our story. Leah seemed better by the evening, and so I went off to my Italian class at the university. As the class let out, I saw a text had come in from Emma saying I should come home because Leah was asking for me. When I got there, she was crying and holding her ear. So, we bundled her up and headed back to the chemist. This time, they said it was probably an ear infection and they couldn't help us, and that we should call the doctor in the morning. Leah was really in a lot of pain, and it was hard to get her to sleep. We had been in this situation once before last summer, and it ended in a ruptured eardrum, so I knew what was coming. In the morning, sure enough, when she woke up, her ear was full of puss, and so we knew that her eardrum had ruptured overnight. So, I called the hospital again and explained this new development. They told me to come in.

To make a long story short, we spent the best part of the day going back and forth between desks at the hospital and our house, with passports, medical records, and copies of our lease, in an attempt to register Leah with a practice. The staff at the hospital were incredibly helpful, and kept apologizing that this was difficult. In actuality, it was not that hard, but it was complicated by the fact that Leah was sick and I was trying to get her in to see someone at the same time that I was registering. (Note to future Colgate study group directors: best to register with a doctor here BEFORE one is needed). Through the whole process, I noticed that the UK system is generally just a little more flexible, and a little less legalistic, than in the U.S. I have a good bit of experience dealing with doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, and it just seems a lot less complicated here. Of course, I was just trying to deal with an ear infection this time, and I know I can't really compare it to the process of having an infant undergo major surgery at a children's hospital...(plus, that is the subject of another blog!)...but overall it did seem just easier. In the U.S, the first thing one deals with when trying to access medical care here is an insurance company, and matters of billing and co-pays. Here, none of that exists. Once we were in the NHS system, we had no problem getting in to see a doctor that day. The doctor visit was free, the antibiotic was free, the lab work that the doctor ordered for Leah was free, etc. Now that we are registered, I'm sure that none of us will actually need to visit the doctor again, but I did learn something in the process. Plus, Leah seems to be on the mend and was back at nursery today!