I have been wanting to, and meaning to, sit down and start a blog on this site for quite some time. Because we have been cutting costs and saving money everywhere we can, we have eliminated our old site along with our own web address and website. I have lots of friends who use and enjoy this site, so I'm going to give this a go. I can't remember the last time I gave an update about our family, so if I leave something out or repeat something, please forgive.
The month of February was a whirlwind. Not only do we have about 300 birthdays to celebrate (and important ones too, not just friends or acquaintances) our family battled illness the entire month. There was not a single day that there wasn't someone in my family on some kind of anti-biotic. It all started with Adrianne, who brought home an upper respiratory infection and croup from school. (I'm not 100% sure school was the culprit, but its an easy thing to blame, so I'm going with it) She and I were sick the week before her birthday and I focused on getting us well in time for her birthday festivities. Then, Callum woke up coughing. Jeff and I both looked at each other with a kind of "oh crap" look in our eyes, and we headed off to urgent care to try and get to it early enough so that it didn't get too bad. HA! We went, they listened, and they sent us home. All that was presenting itself at that time was an upper respiratory infection, which was nothing too bad to worry about. The week carried on (now the week of Adie's birthday), and he maintained the sickies which I thought were just par for the course. Finally after a night of coughing and crying, I took him to our doc. Turns out the upper respiratory infection was now RSV. I thought to myself, "oh crap, babies get put in the hospital for that stuff." Thankfully, the doc thought he'd be just fine at home and gave us a list of things to watch for. He sounded terrible, acted like he felt horrible, and made me worry even more than I usually do. There was nothing to be done for him though, so we just watched him closely and took advantage of all the cuddles. As the week passed on, he was in much better shape and Jeff and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. At some point, Jeff acquired a sinus infection and felt pretty crummy too, but when there are a couple of sick kiddos in the house, the sick mommies and daddies are left to fend for themselves. Thus, I don't remember much of his junk. Both the kids were doing alright for about a week or so, and then Adrianne spiked a fever and was feeling achy and weak. Off to the doc we went again where we discovered she had a sinus and ear infection and throat that looked "streppy".
Adrianne in the midst of her sinus, strep and ear infection. Poor baby looks miserable.
We got some medicine, and headed home. When we got home, we pulled out the medicine to get her started and the minute it touched her tongue, everything in her stomach came up (all over my kitchen). We cleaned her up, gave her a drink and I got another dose ready. This time I threatened her with everything she cared about not to throw up again. Well, sometimes even the fear of your mother (believe me I'm pretty scary) can't stop the puking, and on our second try, the same thing happened. At this point I was on the phone with the doc pleading for a new prescription. I stopped for a second to imagine a week of doing that twice a day...and what I could imagine wasn't pretty. Thankfully, they gave us something else, and it went over much better. Every time it was time to give it to her, she had to make sure it wasn't the old medicine. She recovered and was feeling much better. Since she was feeling better, it was about time for something with Callum to go wrong again, and it did. Over the weekend I had noticed him really rubbing at one of his ears and fussing a lot. I made him an appointment at our doc (again, to our doc's office, by this time they had seats reserved with our name on them in the waiting room). I was just sure they were going to look in his ears, see something infected give us an anti-biotic and send us on our way. Negative. They looked in his ears, and they looked fine, but when they listened to his lungs, they informed me that he sounded terrible. I had no idea. I felt like the worst mother in America. Well, maybe not America, but at least our city. They gave him a breathing treatment in the office and sent us to get an x-ray of his lungs to check for pneumonia. Jeff met me at the x-ray place and took Callum back for the x-ray. The minute I sent just Jeff back, and stayed to wait in the waiting room, I regretted it. I needed to be there... to help, to see, to know. I waited nervously and kept thinking, "I could just ask to go back" but stopped myself reminding myself that Jeff was more than capable of handling it on his own and that they'd be right out. That worked until I could hear Callum screaming from the waiting room. In that instant I jumped up, gathered our things and went back to cuddle my crying boy. Apparently for infants, they have to put them into a harness like contraption in order to keep them still, and funny enough, babies (callum in particular) hate it. Jeff had to hold his arms up and assist in the torture, so you can all imagine how he felt about it. We all recovered from the trauma and headed home to find out that there was no pnemonia, and we were just to proceed with a z-pack and breathing treatments 4 times a day. At first, we had to fight him through the entire treatment, but as the days went on he either got more used to them or just admitted defeat and tolerated them. Most of the time he would crash out to a coma like sleep about 2 minutes into each treatment.
Mommy and Callum getting the breathing treatment over with
Anyway, both Adrianne and Callum have returned to good health and we are leaving the illness in our dust. Please lets all do a collective knock on wood to ensure I won't eat my words later. Whew.
In the midst of the sickness, the birthday celebrations continued. It was still Adrianne's birthday and that could not go unnoticed. On her birthday, we had family over to our house for a lasagna dinner and cake.
The following Saturday we had a birthday party for her friends at Lakeside Nature Center which is a really neat facility with tons of native Missouri animals. The people who work there brought in 3 animals to show the kids and gave little explanations about each one. Adrianne had a blast, and I think the other kids did too. Needless to say, she was once again sufficiently spoiled and is super proud to be 4!
Callum is now 5 months old and learning more and more everyday. He loves to lay down on the play mat and roll from side to side. He's not yet ready to roll over onto his belly, or sit up completely by himself.
Callum Boy doing what he loves the most
Those are the things we are working on. He chatters all the time and love love loves to watch Adrianne run around like a wild woman. If Adrianne or Flint are in the room at any given time, everyone else might as well forget trying to get his attention. He's fascinated by both of them. No one else can make him laugh like Adrianne does, and its one of my favorite things about having two kids, watching the way he loves her and the way she loves him. I expect them to do that forever and ever and I don't want anyone to tell me they'll grow out of it.
Adrianne is still loving preschool and everything that goes along with it. She loves it when she's the "helper" and looks forward to playing with all her friends there. She has begun reading simple books. We read together every night as much as her attention span can tolerate, and I'm amazed by how she can sound out words and put sentences together. She begins practice tomorrow for her first season of "soccerball" (as she calls it). She's looking forward to it, but is disappointed that the shirts are baby blue. "I really wanted a violet shirt" she told me today. I tried to explain to her that we just don't get to pick those things. Her games will be every Saturday for 8 weeks. Jeff and I can't wait to watch her and the other kids do their best to figure out the sport.
Jeff and I have begun finding ways to minimize most aspects of our life. He is going full speed ahead with a garden in our back yard and spends most weekends working on something for it. This past weekend he built a composter and is now working on the fencing he's going to put around our little vegetable and fruit garden. He found somebody off of Craig's List looking to get rid of a lot of different kinds of wood. Jeff went over to take some of it off his hands and has used it to build everything he needs for the garden. I'm so proud of him for being so resourceful and for being so passionate about his new project. So far he has built a rain barrel system, a composter and set posts for the garden area. He has a lot of work still to go, but he's making progress every chance he gets. If you want to read more about his endeavors check out his blog, www.missouriminimalist.blogspot.com
I think this is probably enough info for now. I hope to be able to keep this up, but as we know from past experiences, I make no guarantees.
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