Avoidance Blogging. Alternate Title: The Moving Month

Some of you may have wondered what happened to your Midwest-girl-turning-Southern-belle over the past month. 

Well, I'll tell you.

I've gone back to being just a straight-up Midwest-girl. 

More on that in a bit.

In the meantime, I should let you know that I've been practicing a form of blogging that I like to call "Avoidance Blogging".  Let me explain.  Usually, blogging is some sort of therapeutic activity...a place to jot down thoughts,  record events, a platform to promote ideas and discussion. 

In Avoidance Blogging, you don't do any of that. Instead, you simply own a blog, and don't write on it.  Easy-peasy, huh?

I guess I should clarify though--Avoidance Blogging isn't simply forgetting to blog--it's much more involved than that.  In Avoidance Blogging, you think about your blog and you may even mentally compose several posts. And almost daily something happens that makes you think you really should be posting about this or that.

But, unfortunately, there are SO MANY of those things running through your head and so many different things occurring in your life, that you completely avoid your blog (hence the name) in hopes that things will settle themselves back into nice neat little happy posts with out any record of the chaos in between.

Avoidance Blogging.  If you haven't already tried it, you probably will.

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Now that we are settling into some type of normalcy and the upheaval of our lives and emotions has finally subsided, I am leaving my stint as an Avoidance Blogger.   Instead, I will condense the past Moving Month into one, devoid-of-emotional-angst post--complete with an almost daily breakdown of what has been happening and a smattering of pictures.

Here we go.

The Moving Month:
Dec. 1--Our First home is officially back on the market.

Dec. 2--Our friends-that-are-family have a going away party for us.  During which, I fail to take any pictures because somehow it would have made the fact that we were leaving seem more real.

Dec. 3-17th--Dr. C leaves for Iowa, leaving me alone with our three-children and a house that has to be constantly kept "show-ready".  We have various showings during this time, but no offers.

Dec. 5th--Dr. C starts his new job.

Dec. 9th--Church Christmas party and sitting on Santa's lap.

Miss B was not a fan of the guy in the red suit.

Dec.17th--Dr. C flies back to Memphis.  The kids and I drive the 3 hours to pick him up.  After six hours in the car, when we return home, we spend 3 hours moving everything out of the attic down to the garage and bringing everything in our storage unit back to our house for the movers.  (P.S. A big thanks to our friends-that-are-family for watching the kiddos and helping us move all of our junk belongings.)

Dec. 14th, 15th, 19th--Miss B's last days with our Kids Therapy Spot/Early Intervention family.

Miss B with her first boyfriend.

Miss B's Occupational Therapist and Speech Therapist

Miss B's Speech Therapist

Miss B's Physical Therapist

Miss B's Service Coordinator



Dec. 18th--Our last Sunday with our church family in The South.

Dec. 19th--The movers arrive and start packing up all of our things.  Miss B's amazing school, The T.K. Martin Center, holds their annual Christmas party and Miss B attends for the first and last time.

Miss B's lovely teacher.

Dec. 20th--The movers finish packing up and all of our belongings and head back to the Midwest.

Dec. 21st--The boys have a half-day of school; their last day at Sudduth Elementary.  Some people come and look at our house while we are doing our final cleaning and loading up the van to overflowing.  We leave our Southern Home and head to St. Louis for Christmas.

Dec. 24th--Christmas Eve.  Complete with the annual Clam Chowder & bread sticks dinner.

T-Man making a funny face.

Dr. C wearing the crown from his popper thingy.

After dinner, we spend the evening by the fireside, and read the Christmas story.  A perfectly lovely Christmas Eve.

Dec. 25th--Christmas Day.  We wake up, open our stockings, stop, eat breakfast, go to church, come home, eat lunch, and don't even start opening presents until 4PM.  And my kids are okay with it.  Miss B had started feeling bad on Friday and by Sunday morning, she is looking pretty sickly.  She still perks up enough to open presents.

Miss B loves this FurReal cat thing.  The rest of us think it is a slightly possessed toy that really should have an on/off switch.  It is currently residing in a corner of the basement, facing the wall.  Please don't tell Miss B where it is.

T-Man, the Bounty Hunter

Miss B signing "help" as in "GET THIS DOLL OUT OF THE BOX FOR ME, NOW!"

Dec. 26th--Dr. C leaves St. Louis for Iowa to meet our moving truck.  He is unable to return until Thursday night.  Miss B wakes up feeling worse.  We go out to lunch with my very good friend E.Lee who I hadn't seen in over a year. 

That night, Miss B takes a turn for the worse, and a new adventure begins.  We start at the Urgent Care center, they give her a breathing treatment but think she is too sick for them to handle.  We are then sent to the ER.  The ER spends 5 hours giving her meds (which she promptly spits back out), lots of tests, 2 breathing treatments, and then decides she is too sick for them to handle.  After a lovely ambulance ride, we end up at St. Louis Children's Hospital and a definitive diagnosis of RSV and bronchiolitis.

We are there for a week.



Miss B staying with us is touch-and-go for a couple of days there.  She spends some time in the PICU and her IV faithfully pumps her little body full of fluids and steroids and eventually antibiotics.

(Have I ever mentioned how thankful I am for modern medicine???  My little lady would not be with us today without it.

On the flip side though--those high-tech monitors with all of their wavy lines and different beeps could very likely drive a parent insane.  Any parent who has spent some time in the hospital with a child knows what I'm talking about.

There's the beep.        beep.       beep.--the one that means something is up, but you just have to hit the silence button and keep an eye on it.

Then there's the higher-pitched, faster-- Beep! Beep! Beep!--which means it's time to call the nurse.

And then lastly, the panic-invoking, fear-inducing--BEEP!!!BEEP!!!BEEP!!!--that means it's time for you to run into the hallway and scream for someone to get there RIGHT NOW, #$&*  IT, AND TAKE CARE OF MY BABY!!!

I hate the beeps.

Just sayin'.)

Dec. 31st--Miss B's very nice doctor brings us a bottle of sparkling grape juice for the evening.  Dr. C and I toast the New Year with styrofoam cups at 8PM. Then Dr. C leaves and spends the rest of the evening at my parents' house with the boys so they would have at least one parent for the holiday celebration.  I spend the evening watching The Big Bang Theory marathon on some random channel. 

Most unusual New Year's Eve ever.

 Jan. 1st--Miss B finally busts out of the hospital on New Year's Day--my 30th birthday--and we load up the van and make the rest of the journey to our new home in Iowa.  Probably my most unusual birthday ever as well.

Jan. 2nd-Unpacking and settling in begins.

Jan. 3rd--Dr. C heads back to work; I get the boys registered for their new school.  That night, we head to our first Iowa caucus where we hand-write our ballots and turn them by placing them in a plastic sack.  Afterward, we check out the Mitt Romney Caucus Night party.

The press area--holy cow, there were a lot of cameras.  Not to mention all the wandering camera people.  Wowzas.

 The kids and I only stay for a few minutes (it wasn't exactly a kid-friendly event).  Dr. C takes us home and then goes back for the speech.  Definitely a unique experience.

Jan. 5th--T-Man and Fearless are supposed to start school, but pick up a nasty stomach bug instead.  I'm still not sure that it wasn't at least partly psychosomatic, but due to the fact that there was actual throwing up involved, the first day of new school is delayed.

Jan. 7th--In need of furniture for our new house that has a completely different floor plan from our old house; we drive the two hours to Omaha to the Nebraska Furniture Mart.  We returned victorious with a new sectional precariously tied to Dr. C's truck.

Jan. 8th--Our first Sunday in our new ward.  Everyone was perfectly welcoming--some new friends invited us to dinner that evening and we had a lovely time.

And finally--if you've made it this far--Jan. 9th--T-Man and Fearless started their new school.  T-Man loved it, Fearless is not sure yet.  I'm crossing my fingers that he will love it soon.

No, he didn't take the sword to school.

And that my friends, wraps up the recap of The Moving Month. 
Here's hoping I don't need to practice Avoidance Blogging again anytime soon.

Medical Adventures with Miss Banana: Feeling Better and Home.

In the not-to-distant past, an episode like the one Miss B just pulled might mean I would be coming home without her.  But thanks to the wonder of modern medicine...she's almost back to herself.

I have a serious love for modern medicine. 

This is what my girl is supposed to look like--happy, smiley, full of mischief. 

I'm so glad she has returned.

Dr. Kids-BeachBumEdition came in this morning (complete with bermuda shorts and white golf shirt) and said Miss B's lungs sounded clear and that we were free to go home.  While I still hold a grudge against that man for giving Miss B a drug that made me think she was having seizures, I appreciate him springing us from jail the hospital.

Hmm, what mischief can I cause while I wait for them to get rid of this blue arm stuff??  Ripping the cover off my Curious George coloring book is a good start.

Mommy, we should have done this earlier, it's so much easier to read this way.



That's my happy girl.  Love love love seeing her smile!

I just want to end with a big shout-out to everyone for their love, concern, thoughts, prayers and acts of service.  You know you have the best friends and family on the planet when you get home from the hospital and there are many, many messages on the machine, all checking on Miss B...when friends watch the boys at the pool so they can have some much needed fun-time, when dinner is taken care of without a thought from me, when the boys are watched all afternoon so Miss B and I could take a much needed 4-hour nap, when there are more offers of service than we could possibly use.  You all are amazing.  Thank you.

We love and appreciate you all.

Medical Adventures with Miss Banana: Whammo! She has Pneumonia.

Lately, we've had very few installments of "Medical Adventures with Miss Banana" so I guess I should have known that it was time.

Medical adventures with her are tricky because you just never know when something little will explode into life-threatening illness.  Last week, Miss B was a bit wheezy, but was still acting like her typical toddler self.  We even took her to the beach this past weekend and to the pool yesterday morning.

But then...WHAMMO! I laid her down for her nap after lunch and she slept until 5PM, when I got her up for dinner.  She didn't want to eat at all and her wheezing was worse and she felt warm...so I gave her some Motrin and a breathing treatment, which didn't help at all.  About 45minutes of cuddling her later, I took her temperature and it was 103.3 degrees.  (Where did THAT come from??)

I took her to the ER--and her temp had jumped to 104.5.  A couple of x-rays and a dose of Tylenol later, her temp jumped to a whopping 104.9 and she had confirmed pneumonia.

The scariest though, was the hauntingly blank, lethargic stare on her usually cheerful, bright face.

I hate when my babies are sick--especially Miss B...because with every sickness, especially the sudden onset ones like this, my mind immediately jumps to panic about the possibility of the L-word or heart failure or lungs collapsing.  I know that might sound extreme, but in "Medical Adventures with Miss Banana" land, they are frighteningly likely and real possibilities.

Thank goodness her blood count came back with good results.

After a night full of strong IV antibiotics, plus oral antibiotics, plus breathing treatments, plus continuous Tylenol and Motrin, I am happy to report my girl is doing better--she's currently sleeping, fever-free, in her hospital bed.

Here's hoping this is just a quick blip on her Medical Adventures radar.

Medical Adventures with Miss Banana: 15 Month Check-Up and a Clean Bill of Health

Miss Banana had her 15-Month check-up and I am very happy to report that it was a NON-adventure!  Hooray!  We got all of her blood work results back and everything looks fabulous.  She's growing some--she now weighs 20lbs. 11oz.  and 29 1/4 inches long.  Which puts her just below 75% for her peers with designer genes and just above the 10% mark for her typical peers.  Not too shabby!  You can tell a difference when you pick her up now--it used to be that she was this little air-baby, but now she's starting to chub up a little.  Hooray for healthy, baby-fat rolls!  This visit was also the first time EVER I have walked out of Dr. SouthernKids' office without 3+ prescriptions to fill for Miss B.  That on its own is a major milestone!

With her new found weight, we decided that it was time to move her out of her infant seat and into the convertible one.  She loves the new seat; now she sits up higher and can see out the window better, but I'm struggling with it because now she has to sit in the top of grocery carts and she can pull stuff off the shelves!  Ahh, the joys of toddlerhood.

Side note: I don't think I've ever enjoyed all those little crazy things that toddlers do as much as I do with her.  She can now get into cupboards, pick up little grodies off the floor, and she tries to climb into the dishwasher.  And while I know I should be correcting her behavior, I find myself cheering that she is stable enough to open the cupboards and pull everything out.  Or that she is using a perfect tip pincer grasp to pick up tiny things off the floor.  Or that she has the gross motor skills to climb up and pull the rack out of the dishwasher...each of those acts represents hours of occupational  and physical therapy work and are cause for celebration!

I'm crossing my fingers that maybe this is the tapering off of all the crazy medical adventures with Miss B.  (Knock on wood...I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by even saying that!)  Here's to a healthy future!

Medical Adventures with Miss Banana: Panic, Blessings, and Introducing Dr. Guts

On Wednesday, I took Miss B to The BIG City to see Dr. TennHearts and the new doc in Miss B's life, Dr. Guts.

At our last appointment with Dr. TennHearts in The City at his clinic for those of us that live in The Village, he had noticed the hole in her atria that Dr. HeartSurgeon had put in (on purpose) during her heart surgery. He wanted to close the hole through a catheterization procedure because he thought too much blood was short-circuiting the heart through it. He had wanted to just go ahead and schedule the procedure instead of another check-up, but when I told him that we would be in The BIG City to see Dr. Guts, he decided to do one more check-up at his office with the BIG City equipment, which I'm pretty sure is more advanced than most medical equipment where we live.

Miss B had a fever the day before, but we have been waiting almost 4 months to see Dr. Guts and there was no way we were skipping the appointment!

The BIG City is about 3 hours away, so Miss B and left at 6:45AM to make it to Dr. TennHearts appt at 10. Poor Miss B slept the whole way and when we arrived, she obviously didn't feel good. The nurse took her temp (100.9F) and her respiration rate was super fast. But, being the heart doctors, they told me I would have to take her to the ER to get it figured out! Seriously??? We were in a room with 2 doctors and 3 nurses and NONE of them can tell me what is wrong with her? Ridiculous.

Anyway, they went ahead with the heart appointment. Dr. TennHearts walked into the room and said, "We are going to look at her heart today to see if we can fix the hole between her atria through catheterization or if we are going to have to open heart surgery again."

CUE PANIC

Wait a minute! Open heart surgery AGAIN?? WHAT?!?!?? We had talked about the catheterization before, but OPEN HEART SURGERY?!?


I don't think there are very many phrases in the English language that can strike fear in me like the phrase "open heart surgery" can.

The room started spinning and it was just about all I could do to keep from fainting.


I know that sounds overly dramatic, but for those of you who have had a child go through open heart surgery, I'm sure you can understand. For those of you who haven't....I hope that you never know. It's not something that I would want any child or parent to have to go through.


Miss B and I headed to the echo cardiogram room--where Miss B did a fabulous job. I think it helped that she felt like crap, because she actually fell asleep during it! Because she was so still, the tech got to spend a lot of time getting really good pictures of her heart.

The whole time I was silently praying that we wouldn't have to do open heart surgery, that the hole could be fixed with the catheter procedure.

We walked back to Dr. TennHearts' office for another wait. I paced the room--Miss B had fallen asleep again on my shoulder. 

Please don't need heart surgery again. Please. Please. Please.

Dr. TennHearts walked in and I braced myself for the worst.


"Good news. We got a really good look at her heart today. The hole is very small. And I think we should just leave it alone entirely. See you in six months."

CUE RELIEF

If I hadn't been so elated about the good news, I think I would have chewed him out for scaring the crap out of me.

I left the appointment with a still sick baby, but feeling very blessed. If she hadn't been sick and laying so still, they might not have gotten a good look at her heart. If we hadn't come all the way to The BIG City for her appointment, and just relied on the info from the equipment in The City, we would have unnecessarily messed with her heart. And possibly taken her into OPEN HEART SURGERY for NO REASON.


The idea of open heart surgery is horrible on its own...but to do open heart surgery unnecessarily?? (Shudder)...I don't even want to think about it.

In a daze, I picked up some Motrin for Miss B at the pharmacy--which helped tremendously.

After that wild ride, our appointment with Dr. Guts was rather uneventful--just a lot of questions about the ins and outs of Miss B. (haha-pun intended.) We scheduled a swallow study for her to make sure she isn't aspirating. We'll see how that goes.


The End.

(Anti-climactic, I know. But I would MUCH MUCH rather have her medical episodes be anti-climactic instead of being nail-biters.)

Stay tuned...this week Miss B heads to Dr. Ears.

P.S. Miss B (and T-Man) are still sick. We saw Dr. SouthernKids on Friday, so now they are on various meds that should make them feel good. The jury is still out on that. I think they are doing better, just not totally fabulous yet.

Medical Adventures with Miss Banana: Pilot Episode

We are starting a new feature here on "Life As We Know It"...I know I've talked about her medical problems before, but she has had so many episodes, that I thought we would just give them their own feature so hopefully everyone can keep it straight--and for those of you that don't want to know the ins and outs of Miss B's doctor craziness, you can just skip these ones. :)

On the Pilot Episode today, I thought I would give a recap of the past months' medical circus:

It all started with the cardiologist visit at the end of January.  Dr. TennHearts said that she was having pulmonary hypertension and might have to start meds for it.  He could tell she was having a respiratory infection and wheezing, and thought that might be contributing, so tolds us to come back in a month and he would recheck her.

Next, we headed to the Dr. SouthernKids about the respiratory infection.  Cue round of antibiotics, oral steriod, and albuterol via nebulizer every four hours.

Week 2: Head back to Dr. SouthernKids after finishing oral steriod treatment and no improvements on the respiratory infection.  Cue stronger round of antibiotics, singulair, and pulmicort via nebulizer 2x/day.  Also received RSV vaccine and various other routine vaccines.

Week 3: Head back to Dr. SouthernKids after finishing next round of antibiotics with no improvement.  Cue referral to Dr. Guts to see if Miss B is aspirating (basically swallowing liquids into her lungs when she drinks) and if that is causing the wheezing.  Also, bring on 3rd antibiotic (stronger still) and instructions to keep doing all the previous routine.

Week 4, part 1: Miss B mysteriously breaks out in funky hives all over the back of her head, shoulders, some on the torso and diaper area during occupational, physical, and speech therapy appointments.  Dr. SouthernKids was booked for the day, and there was no way I was going to CluelessDr.Kids, but thankfully Miss B's service coordinator, Richard, showed up, pulled some strings, and got me into see Dr. SouthernKids that afternoon.  Turns out, Miss B is allergic to amoxicillin.  Fabulous.  She did finally get a clean bill of health on her lungs and we can stop the albuterol, (but continue everything else).

Week 4, part 2: Dr. TennHearts checks her over and says the pulmonary hypertension is only mild now (maybe it was the junk in her lungs causing the problem?) but now the small hole Dr. HeartSurgeon left in during Miss B's surgery is leaking A LOT and needs to be plugged.  He'll consult with various other dr. tennhearts and call me next week.

Not quite as entertaining as Seinfeld, but just as many plot twists as CSI!

Stay tuned for more episodes...

The Exciting Conclusion to Mission: Impossible

In case you missed it, here are the highlights from last week's installment of Mission: Impossible--

• 2 sets of medical records needed to be faxed from NE to Dr. TennesseeHearts
• 10 phone calls
• One promise to send records made
• One refusal to send records made
• One voicemail saying that denied records were actually going to be sent to me

And now you're up to speed!

After all the phone calls, I remembered that Miss B's service coordinator from NE had sent us some of the hospital records, so I decided to take those with me, hoping they would be right.

Amazingly, some records from Children's Hospital that I didn't have were, in fact, delivered to my home on Monday.  Funny thing though, they also included someone else's registration for their insurance wellness program.  It kind of looks like whoever jotted down my new address on the back of these forms and just threw them all into the envelope by mistake.  Slightly ironic that I had to pull teeth to get MY OWN DAUGHTER'S records and yet I had to do nothing to get some random person's wellness information.  I'm sure the HIPAA people would love that.

I took the whole stack of records to Dr. TennHearts.  Once there, I asked to make sure that the records that Dr. Heart in NE promised to send were there.  And....a big fat NO on that one.  I'm not sure if they just never made it out of Dr. Heart's office or if they just stayed in Dr. TennHeart's home office instead of coming to The City with him...but either way, the ONE set of records that I was counting on being there, were gone.  I shouldn't have been surprised!

I finally hand the stack of records I had over to the nurse for them to make copies.  Dr. TennHearts flipped through the stack, picked out THREE PIECES OF PAPER to be copied, smiled and said, "that's all I need."

Are you kidding me?  I spent over 2-3 hours trying to track down all the papers and ensure that he had them all--and he only needed THREE papers that had been sitting on my bookshelf the whole time.  He should have at least given me a golden star for effort or something.

Three pieces of paper. 

That's it. 

Go Figure.

Smiles!

Miss B smiled at me today! I hope that is a sign that she is starting to feel better. Southern Dr. Kids was in today and has the respiratory therapists start doing the percussian therapy to help break up the congestion--but since we are a small county hospital, they don't have the fancy machine the children's hospital in Omaha had...so I'm not sure how effective what they are doing actually is.

She has spent more and more time out of the O2 tent today--which is good news. We'll see what Southern Dr. Kids says when she comes back for evening rounds tonight. Unfortunately, Clueless Dr. Kids is on deck for rounds tomorrow, so who knows what will happen then, but I'm hopeful that maybe we will get to come home tomorrow.

I'll try to post again tomorrow!

Hospital Update

Fearless got his bright green cast on today and he thinks it is the coolest thing ever. We'll see how long that lasts! He has to wear this cast that goes all the way up his arm for 3 weeks and then he has to wear another just forearm cast for 3 weeks after that.

Miss Banana is slightly better today. She started talking to me again (for the first time in a week) but she still refuses to smile, so I think she is still feeling pretty cruddy. She is still wheezing, but they did let her spend some time out of the O2 tent today. BeachBum Dr. Kids came in today and said we would try to work toward discharge sometime in the next few days. (Real specific dude, thanks.) I'm hoping that Southern Dr. Kids will be back tomorrow and I can get a medical opinion that I actually trust.

Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and well-wishes--it means a lot to us. Hopefully after this, we will settle down and have at least a month without any drama.

Broken Arm + Pneumonia = Our Weekend

Fast post before I get back to the hospital. Saturday night, Fearless broke his arm while playing with his bike. Thankfully he had his helmet on; if he hadn't, his nose would currently be part of the pavement. He is in a soft cast at the moment, he'll get his hard cast tomorrow.

Miss Banana was started doing worse and worse; by Sunday morning, she looked...transparent. Dr. C took her to the ER and they immediately admitted her--her heart rate was 199 (should be in the 120-160 range) and her O2 saturation was only 74 (should be in the 94-100 range). The discovered that she has pneumonia in her left lung and they have given her 3 antibiotic shots, breathing treatments around the clock and she's in a O2 mist-tent (basically a high-powered cool-mist humidifier with extra oxygen) just to keep her O2 levels up. Southern Dr. Kids was the one doing rounds yesterday and I am totally confident in her ability, but today I had to fight with Clueless Dr. Kids (the one I saw at my 2nd office visit last week) to keep him from prescribing a drug that would speed her heart rate back up. I really wish I had gone to medica l school. I'll post more when I can, our little county hospital (which I will probably not ever go to again if I can avoid it) doesn't seem to have wireless, so I can only update when I get a chance to come home.

Please keep Miss B in your prayers. She is one horribly ill little lady.

Still Sick and Some Mud

Miss Banana is still sick and doesn't seem to be getting any better. She doesn't seem to be getting any worse either, so I guess that is a good thing. We were supposed to go camping tonight with some friends for Miss B's first camping trip, but that will just have to wait. Hopefully the weather will stay nice for a few more weeks so we can get some camping in this year. I'm ashamed to admit we haven't gone once this whole year. Oh well. The benefit of being stuck inside is that I can start working on Christmas presents!

I do have some funny pictures from last week to post though--we were outside practicing soccer with T-Man and Fearless and after all the rain we've gotten, everything is pretty muddy. He ran after the ball and kicked it in classic Charlie Brown fashion; you know--the big kick, the slip, and then land flat on your back? I probably should have changed him out of his school clothes--oops! Here are the after pics:

This was "Stop taking my picture, Mom!"

This is the hose off...

Which turned into an all out water fight...except only Dr. Corn had the water...

Which T-Man thought was funny... And Fearless didn't.

The End.

Update on the Sickies

Short update--then I want to head to bed to get some rest. Fearless is doing much, much better. I only had to give him 3 breathing treatments today and he was running around like a little wild man again tonight. Miss B is still pretty sick. Last night, her fever got up to 101.7 and she was up all night coughing. She isn't eating well because she is totally stuffed up and can't breathe. This morning her fever was still over 101 (with Tylenol) and she just looked awful. She was still breathing really rapid/shallow so I took her back to the doctor this afternoon--we saw a different Dr. Kids than yesterday and he said she her lungs sounded better, so to keep doing what I was doing and give it a couple more days. He thought (after reading the notes from yesterday's Dr. Kids) that she's improved enough that we don't need to worry about a hospital visit unless she suddenly gets worse. (Big sigh of relief!) She still looks miserable though--her little expressive eyes that say, "Help me Mommy!" just break my heart. We propped up her bed for tonight so hopefully she can sleep better tonight. I'm really hoping that all the meds kick in soon so she will totally recover and be back to her smiley self.

Here she is getting her breathing treatments. She looks so miserable!

So Sick!

On Sunday afternoon, T-Man didn't feel well. I kept him home from school yesterday and after taking the day off, he was good to go again. Unfortunately, Fearless and Miss Banana got it last night and are horribly sick! Miss B went to bed at 4:45PM yesterday--ususally she just cat naps around then, but she never got back up. I woke her up to feed her a couple of times throughout the night (there was no way I was letting her sleep for that long without eating!) but she would just eat and go right back to sleep. Poor Fearless was miserable all night; he kept coughing so hard that he would throw up. (P.S. Cleaning up puke is my absolute LEAST favorite part of being a mother. Potty training is a close second.) He eventually did get some sleep, but he had a fever of 101.5, so I don't think he was feeling to great. Miss B had a fever of 100.8 this morning and both of them were breathing so shallow and fast that it was/is pretty scary! I took them to Southern Dr. Kids and she immediately gave them breathing treatments and wrote some other prescriptions as well. She said it is bronchiolitis probably caused by RSV. If Miss B gets any worse, she will need to be hospitalized. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers and hope that the meds will all do their jobs.

Week In Review

It has been quite a week at our house this past week or so. Lots of different things going on, so this will be a random smattering of info post.

Last weekened was Miss Banana's baby blessing and lots of family came to visit. T-Man and Fearless had so much fun playing with all of their cousins but Miss Banana, the lady of the day, slept through a lot of it. After the whirlwind weekend, I realized how few pictures I had taken--what a bummer!

Here are few of Miss Banana--she wore the dress/bonnet that I wore when I was blessed--how cool is that?? Funny story--Dr. Corn got her dressed before church on Sunday and put her in the car before I was ready, so I didn't see her until we were walking into church. As I peeked into the carseat to see how she looked, I noticed that the bonnet was on upside down and backwards--oops! I guess we're still learning about all the girl accesories! We fixed the mistake and I think she looked pretty cute.

Tuesday,Wednesday, and Thursday I spent getting ready for a Garage Sale--I ended up getting rid of almost a whole vanful of stuff--yay for less stuff to have to move! Thanks a ton to Heather who helped me price everything and let me join her and her other friends for the sale. There is something freeing about getting rid of stuff and it's always a bonus when you make money doing it too!

Thursday was also a big day because we meet with Dr. Heart Surgeon at Children's to learn more about Anna's upcoming open heart surgery. Dr. Corn and I decided that Dr. Heart Surgeon struck the right balance of being confident and realistic about her surgery that we feel comfortable (well, as comfortable as you can be under the circumstances) with him performing the surgery. The surgery should take about 4-6 hours (possibly more). He was great at really explaining things to us--so now I have a much better understanding of what has to happen and the complications that could arise. Please keep praying that none of those complications happen and that Dr. Heart Surgeon will know what to do and that he will do it well.

After spending 5 hours in Omaha at Children's, we headed home to pick up the boys and noticed that Fearless had a MASSIVE bump on his head behind his ear that was making his ear stick out funny. So, since we hadn't had enough of hospitals and doctors that day, Dr. Corn took Fearless to the ER to figure it out. After a CT scan and various other tests, it was determined to be a bug bite that has gotten infected. So now we are on a round of antibiotics for him. It's bubble gum flavored though, so Fearless thinks it's a treat.

This week is kind of a down week--the calm before the storm of next week maybe? I'll keep everyone updated. Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers and support--I will probably requesting more next week as we head into surgery.

Next week I'll try to update as things happen so one post isn't quite so busy!