We're hopeful. Hopeful that Ruby will not have to go back to the emergency room where we spent eight hours, yesterday, while fluids dripped into her veins. Hopeful that tonight will be better than last night. Hopeful that our beautifully cheerful and much happier child will be even happier tomorrow. Hopeful that the virus that took over her body is slowly but surely on its way out.

But we don't need to be hopeful. We know. Ruby woke up this morning and didn't look at us with confused eyes, wondering what the heck she had been through yesterday. Even though she had had another rough night, extra fluids notwithstanding, she woke up and she pointed at Dreyfus and smiled. Today she rediscovered her apartment, where for the past five days she had pretty much only wanted to sit on the couch in our arms. Today she talked again, of cats, of planes, of dogs and of the warm and waning summer day here in Brooklyn. She read the Sunday New York Times with her papa David and then went to the playground and the hardware store. She nursed and nursed and nursed some more. She cried tears, real hydrated tears, when we forced her to drink some fluids with electrolytes. She woke up and embraced life.

Hopefully David and I can do the same. We need to catch on sleep; forget to regret a lost weekend--one in Montreal for me and one on the beach for David. And especially we need to not look back at our day yesterday, spent pinning down our baby girl so someone could poke her not once but twice to get a drip in her arm. Like Ruby we need to wake up and embrace life, our life with the unflappable Ruby.