Yes, they've been 2 for a few weeks now, but I'm obviously not blogging very regularly. We celebrated on June 18th with a family party. Here are a couple pictures from their birthday party:
I ordered the big cookie from a lady here and she did a great job! I loved it - she even used the same colors in my "theme". I wanted to do an airplane birthday party, but had trouble finding an airplane cake. I tried to order an airplane cake from a lady that my sister knows, but she didn't do airplane cakes. Anyway, the big cookie was wonderful! And the boys could eat it by themselves and didn't make a huge mess.
In the past few weeks, I've noticed that E has become Mr. "I do it." He wants to do everything himself. E cracks me up all the time. He says the funniest things or imitates things. I love how he says "glasses" or "playset" because he has a little bit of a lisp.
I has become more of a mama's boy. I is also talking more. He is pointing out more things and saying what they are. E has been talking quite a bit, too, but I wasn't talking as much. I also loves to throw things. Anything. He especially loves to play catch. And swing. He spends a lot of time swinging outside.
N still has a very short attention span (unless she is playing on the xoom or watching TV). Not the best things for a 4 year old to do. She loves to read books. She also loves to help in the kitchen with baking. She also will play for short periods by herself in her room! In other news, N started waking up in the morning with a dry diaper, so she is now sleeping in her underwear. I know, so exciting!
Happy belated Easter! We had a fun Easter weekend with K's parents here visiting. We spent lots of time with them and with the cousins. So fun! Friday night we went to friends' house and made resurrection rolls. They were a great illustration of Jesus' resurrection! And they were really yummy and fun for the kids. They will be a new tradition for our family! We also dyed eggs and frosted cookies (the kids did mostly) with the cousins and Grandpa and Grandma on Saturday morning.
Dyeing eggs with Daddy at the cousins' house Samuel getting in on the frosting of cookies
We went to church Saturday night for the Easter service. It was great! Lots of loud music! On Easter morning we did an Easter egg hunt at our house and had lunch at the cousins' house. We had another egg hunt that afternoon. The kids loved it! E-man finding eggs
Emma striking a pose for the camera
I did one last round of the resurrection eggs with Emma yesterday and then packed up the plastic Easter eggs and decorations. May we be reminded all year of the joy of Easter and Jesus' resurrection!
Samuel has been scooting quite quickly and lots of different places lately. He loves to scoot to the kitchen and pick stuff up off the floor to eat. Yesterday I found a nasty hard piece of cheese in his mouth. He also loves to go to the laundry area and play with the shoes. Emma loved to play with shoes, too.
Michael is still quite content to sit and play or lay on his tummy and try to sleep. He loves to stand by the couch and will stand for a long time. He also loves to play peek-a-boo.
Both boys love, love, love to eat. Especially Samuel. He eats anything. Obviously. He eats off the kitchen floor. Michael is more picky, but still loves to eat.
Emma is in swimming lessons right now and is, well, improving. She wants to be held a lot by the teachers. And she gets very cold. But she's gone 3 times so far and has 2 left. She still gets excited to go. I think it's mostly because she gets to wear a swimming suit.
Emma also loves to go to the library and check out books. She picks the most random books and we read them over and over. Our (small) town library has a check out limit of 20 books. I think that's crazy. What happens when I have 3 kids that want to check out lots of books? Emma checked out 11 this last time.
Emma also loves to watch music videos on our tv and dance to them. K ordered a doo-hickey off Wo.ot that lets us connect to You-Tube. Her latest favorite? Shine by the Newsboys. While watching the Newsboys on You-Tube, I found this gem. I'll leave you with the Love, Liberty Disco. Love it!
Michael is spending the night at the hospital with Daddy. I had K go because it's snowy and I'm a chicken about that. And he wanted to go. But I think I'd rather be there. I don't like not knowing what's going on. What if Michael needs me?!
He has bronchiolitis. However you spell that. He is coughing and wheezing. K took him to the pediatrician on Saturday and he prescribed steroids and gave K some stuff for our nebulizer. We've been giving him all that. But he still wasn't getting better and this afternoon was worse. He got a fever and was too tired to eat. He just was sleeping and sleeping. Scary! So I called and made another appointment with the pediatrician for tonight and they sent him over to the hospital. Which is what we thought would happen so K took all the stuff he needs to stay overnight.
K called a little while ago and said they were sucking a lot of gunk out of him. I wish I had one of those vacuum suckers they have at the hospital. It's hooked up to the wall and they turn it on and it has vacuum suction to suck out their noses. Both boys love it. Ha! Michael will also have oxygen and probably an IV. Poor kid. He looked so miserable this afternoon.
And Samuel has started coughing and wheezing a bit too. So I started him on the steroids and nebulizer treatments. Hopefully it won't get as bad as Michael's. Please pray for the boys. Emma is coughing too but she isn't wheezing.
So...on a happier note. (I feel like this blog is depressing lately, sorry.) My sister and her husband came last weekend. (I hope they don't get sick.) But my sister and I spent Saturday afternoon going all over town. It was nice to get out of the house. We went to Babies-R-Us, the mall, chick.fil.a, Once.Upon.a.Child and I picked up an Easter dress for Emma that I found on c.raigslist. I actually didn't spend a lot of money, except probably in gas. Because you don't see T.arget on the list, do you?!
When we got home, Samuel was sleeping in his car seat, so I let him sleep. He sounded pretty good. I got lunch ready for Emma and I and Michael watched. Then...Samuel woke up and started wheezing again with retracting. The pediatrician said if that happened I had to take him to the emergency room. I started a hot shower (to help Samuel breathe) and called K to come home from work to stay with the other two. Then I sat in the bathroom with him and ate my sandwich. The pediatrician called our house about 10 minutes later and asked how Samuel was doing. I told her that he was wheezing again and she told me to take him in.
I threw some stuff in a bag for me and checked his diaper bag while he laid in the warm, showery bathroom. When I went back in to get him, I realized that we had used all the hot water and it wasn't steaming anymore! By then K was home and packed up Samuel while I did a few last minute things like go to the bathroom, etc. Then we headed to the hospital. I figured we would be staying overnight, but you never know. Also, K's parents were spending the night at our house that night.
When we got to the hospital it took me a little while to find the emergency room. By then Samuel was sleeping again and sounded much better. I finally made it to the ER and talked to a crabby check in guy and headed over to pediatric triage. After they checked us in, they hooked Samuel up to a heart rate/oxygen level monitor. It was a good thing I'd been through the NICU experience with them, or I would have been really freaking out. After he got checked into a room, they did another epinephrine treatment and decided to watch him overnight. His oxygen levels were good, even when he was wheezing, but we had to stay because he regressed before. The doctor/resident guy told me that it was because he "failed outpatient treatment."
Well, nothing was super speedy, so we were in the ER for quite a while before they got us up to a room. It was in a children's hospital so everything was brightly painted. After we got up to a room they checked him out and weighed him. 17 lbs. 13 oz. at almost 6 months. He does like to eat. Eventually the pediatrician at the hospital came in a chatted with me and checked on him. I really liked the nurse we had at first and I liked the pediatrician. K came to visit later that night and brought me supper while Grandpa and Grandma babysat. It worked out fine because we weren't allowed to bring the other kids to visit because of h1n1. I stayed overnight with Samuel. I liked having the one on one time with him just to snuggle and hang out with him, although he spent a lot of time sleeping. Poor baby. He was probably so glad to be able to breathe well again.
He did great overnight. The pediatrician said that night time is the worst during croup, so that was another reason to keep him overnight to monitor him. In the morning, they gave him a dose of oral steroids and we got to go home. Again after waiting for a while for every step. But that's just how hospitals are. K came in the morning to hang out and bring Samuel home. They got home around 2:00 I think. I had to run some errands...read: shop. It was crazy, crazy...especially at my favorite T*rget. But I ended up finding some stuff to buy.
Now Michael is coughing and has a runny nose, but it's not the barky cough and he isn't wheezing...yet. I just hope I never have to hear that again. Ever.
Well, now that we are on the mend, I have some time to write about last week. Samuel started getting a runny nose on Wednesday morning. Which turned into wheezing by Wednesday afternoon. I took him to an urgent care doctor Wednesday night because of the wheezing and he had eye junk. They gave him a nebulizer/albuterol treatment and said his lungs sounded better afterwards. They also "checked" his oxygen levels. It's hard to do on little fingers with a device made for adult fingers. Anyway, as soon as she checked it, the nurse called in a semi-frantic voice for the doctor. This scared me. His original reading was 78%, which I don't believe because he wasn't blue or anything. But after his nebulizer treatment, it was up to mid-90s if you go by the same device. The doctor gave us a prescription for albuterol and a nebulizer to rent and said to give him a treatment every 3 hours or so and come back the next day.
So Wednesday night I gave him a treatment every 3 hours and neither of us slept very well. The treatments didn't really seem to help, but since I didn't know what else to do, I kept giving him the albuterol. He also had a barking cough...
Thursday morning I took him in again to the urgent care clinic and said that the treatments haven't been helping. They checked him, did another albuterol treatment and the doctor told me he had bronchitis and wrote him a prescription for oral steroids. I'm not a big fan of steroids after having taken them for my throat, but if it would help him breathe better, then I'd do it. Samuel was still wheezing a lot and coughing and pale but he really was still happy.
Thursday night he slept in a bouncy seat next to our bed. I didn't sleep very well since he was still wheezing and coughing his barky cough. (I'm pretty sure you know where this is going.) Well, Friday morning when I was changing his clothes, I noticed that he was really struggling to breathe. His skin was sucked up under his ribcage with every breath (now I know it's called retracting). I was pretty scared and called a nurse at our pediatrician's office. She said I needed to have him seen, but they were full and to call a different pediatrician's office in the same health system. I did and fortunately got an appointment in an hour. I gave him a couple alubterol treatments but that didn't help at all. And I gave him his steroids in his bottle. I should note that Samuel is a great eater and was still very hungry, it was just hard to eat when he couldn't breathe.
I loaded everyone up early and got on the road and made it most of the way there and then got lost. I was 15 minutes late. The receptionist had to ask if the doctor could still see us. When we got back to see her, she basically said right away that it's croup and he's pretty bad. She was a really sweet doctor. They gave him an epinephrine treatment in the nebulizer (used to treat croup - not the albuterol) which helped right away. He sounded so much better. And they also gave him a steroid shot since he was so bad. She also had us wait there for a while just to make sure he was okay. Then we went home...
I ordered the big cookie from a lady here and she did a great job! I loved it - she even used the same colors in my "theme". I wanted to do an airplane birthday party, but had trouble finding an airplane cake. I tried to order an airplane cake from a lady that my sister knows, but she didn't do airplane cakes. Anyway, the big cookie was wonderful! And the boys could eat it by themselves and didn't make a huge mess.
