Houston Vacation: Kelly’s Thursday- An Old Friend, a Boardwalk, and an Ear Infection (10/21/10)

My good friend and old college roommate, Janet, lives in Austin. When I told her the dates of our Houston vacation, she took Thursday off work and we planned to have her come over and spend the day with me and Lily. I was so excited. I haven’t seen her since she visited Michigan when I was pregnant with Lily in the summer of 2008. Austin and Houston aren’t that close together so Janet had a three hour drive to meet us once she took her kids to school. She arrived while Lily was taking her nap so we first had lunch together with Jodi. Lily woke up very crabby but then finally settled down. She wasn’t her normal giggly, happy, chatty self, though, and instead seemed very subdued. Janet and I decided to head to the Kemah Boardwalk which is an amusement park and restaurant complex on Galveston Bay. We thought that it would be a good way to keep Lily entertained so that we could catch up. Lily did well on the hour ride down because she got to watch Dora on Janet’s in-car DVD player. We thought we would never get there because we had no idea where we were going and my Garmin kept malfunctioning. It would lose its signal at the most inopportune time such as right when we were supposed to be turning or merging onto a new highway or it would think that we were driving on side roads adjacent to the highways that we were actually on. One time it actually thought we were traveling on the train tracks! It was very frustrating but hysterical at the same time.
We finally found our way there! Here are Janet and Lily at the entrance to the boardwalk:

Lily and I waiting to ride the carousel:

We are ready:

Here we go! Lily loves carousel rides:

Lily and I on the train. Lily adores trains:

Cutie waiting for the train to take off:

Lily loved riding on this balloon wheel but I could barely fit in the tiny thing with her. Good thing I’m not any taller because my knees were barely contained in the compartment. Every time we came down she yelled, “Wheeeee”:

They were playing a lot of fun music so Lily and Janet started dancing around:

The Ferris wheel:

Lily on the carousel with Janet. As you can see, it is a cool double-decker design which I have never seen before:

An old police car:

The really neat Aquarium restaurant where we went for dessert so that we could take a break from the heat:

Lily saying hello to a grouper in the huge aquarium display by our seat:

Lily and I back on the train for one more ride before returning to Houston:

Three photos taken by the Kemah staff:

Lily seemed to have fun on the rides but was a bit quiet and, as previously mentioned, not quite herself. She fell asleep on the ride back to Houston but woke up shortly thereafter crying. We tried to go out to dinner but ended up having to take our food to go because Lily wouldn’t stop screaming. She felt really hot again but I forgot to bring the Motrin. Janet, being a nurse practitioner, assessed her and based on her symptoms and red ears, diagnosed her with an ear infection. I was thinking that was what she had too, as last time she had an ear infection, she had no symptoms other than the fever. Janet can prescribe medications but her iPhone battery was dead so she didn’t have her authorization number on her. We stopped at a Target to get a charger for Janet and Motrin for Lily. Janet then got the phone running and called in a prescription to a pharmacy further up the road. By the time we picked up the Amoxicillin and I gave Lily her first dose, she had settled down because her Motrin was kicking in. We headed back to Mike and Jodi’s house and finally ate our “to go” dinner. Lily was acting more like her jovial self when we finished eating. Poor Janet didn’t hit the road until 9pm which meant that she wouldn’t get home until around midnight and had to work the next day. It was great seeing her. I was sad that she didn’t get to meet Lily under the best of conditions but I was so grateful that she was there when Lily got sick and could write her a prescription. It saved me the time and trouble of having to call my insurance company then having to travel to some unknown urgent care. Being sick, Lily would only sleep in the bed with us again but she did sleep fairly well.