Thursday, February 22, 2007

When It Rains...

We have music playing almost 24/7 in our kitchen, from our iTunes library. One favorite song that comes up a lot in our rotation is "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall." The pertinent lines are:


Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is falling in mine


That's definitely how we felt around here on Tuesday when Carol came down with a very painful sore throat. She went to the doctor yesterday (boy, we've been to the doctor a lot lately!) and you guessed it: strep throat! Sheesh! The doctor took one look and said she wouldn't even wait for the culture results. She started Carol on antibiotics immediately. A couple of hours later Carol got a call that the culture was positive.

I guess we're just getting this all out of the way before vacation, which is only nine days away.

Can we been finished now?

P.S. It's 6:45am and we haven't had to visit Charlotte since we put her to bed at 7:00pm. Yippee!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Cough Mystery Solved?

Last night Audrey's cough kept her awake quite a bit. Carol was trying to buy some over the counter medicine for her today and didn't like the advice she was getting from the pharmacist. She called the doctor to clarify what she should do. The nurse asked some more questions and decided they should see Audrey again. Sure enough: double ear infection. They just saw her last week (and so did a nurse practitioner friend of ours at home on Saturday) and her ears looked OK, so it apparently was low level and decided to come into full bloom in the past few days.

She'll start a course of antibiotics today. Maybe we can finally be rid of her cough. She's a really good sport, but we can tell that the constant coughing is bothering her.

Audrey Turns Three

Ooph, we've had a challenging couple of weeks. Skip this post if you're easily grossed out.

The winter child illness season just keeps hammering us. I've previously written about Audrey's persistent cough and then Charlotte's double ear infection. Right in the middle of Charlotte's course of antibiotics she started hurling. We assumed a drug reaction, but were told by the doctor that it didn't present right for that and must be a coincidental stomach bug (what we used to call "stomach flu", but which is really gastroenteritis - nothing to do with influenza). OK, so we made it through 24 hours of vomiting and then eruptions from the other end. Of course, two days later Audrey came down with it. Poor girl vomited the first time in the car stuck in traffic on the freeway. There was nothing Carol could do but let Audrey stew in it and get home - about 15 minutes. That was Wednesday afternoon.

Meantime, Carol and I both felt horrible and thought we were coming down with it, too. Wednesday night we both went to bed with body aches and assumed we'd be joining Audrey in being up all night sick. But fortunately we apparently had some immunity and we both just felt lousy for a couple of days but produced no unpleasant body fluids. Good thing, because Audrey was pretty sick for about 36 hours. I stayed home from work Thursday and we all laid around and watched TV and movies all day. Audrey, through this whole ordeal, has continually put herself to bed when she has felt tired. It's the cutest thing, and sad when it is because she feels sick.

Both girls hadn't kept much food down for days. Of course, as parents that made us really worried. Slowly they started getting better and Saturday morning they finally both woke up famished and ate a ton and kept it down. Neither of them are 100% yet, but they're definitely getting better. I hate to whine here, but that's been our life for the past two weeks.

Fortunately, that all hit after Audrey's birthday party. We had a joint birthday party with Audrey's friend Ian who is two weeks younger than Audrey. We held the party at the YMCA and invited about 10 other kids. We had an hour in the kids gym, which has tons of padded stuff to play on. Everybody had a blast. Then we moved into the party room, where the staff had set up decorations and had table places all set up for the kids with cupcakes and juice. The whole thing was very fun. The staff was wonderful and they do a great job.

Every February in Seattle we seem to have one or two days that are 70 degrees and gorgeous. Saturday was that day this year. We went down to Alki Beach and went for a walk. There were tons of families there enjoying the pleasant weather. After walking a while, Audrey wanted to play in the sand. She was still pretty low energy. She found a place near a big log and just sat in the sand for a long time and played quietly. We could tell she was enjoying being outside for the first time all week.

Yesterday Audrey wanted to go back to the beach. It was 25 degrees cooler, but it wasn't raining. She also said she wanted to walk to the beach, which is about a mile from our house down through a heavily wooded ravine (Schmitz Park). Usually we carry the girls in backpacks when we go that way, but yesterday Audrey walked all the way for the first time and loved it. We stopped at Whale Tail Playground for a few minutes, but it was too cold to play. So we went to the bakery for hot chocolate. Audrey was really enjoying her date alone with me (and so was I!). She even thought having her picture taken in the nice light in the bakery was fun. Then Carol and Charlotte picked us up in the car and we went to Tacoma for a little exploring and then to Aunt Tricia and Uncle Frank's house for a delicious salmon dinner with Aunt Beth and cousin Adam. It was a very fun day. Both girls fell asleep in the car at 5:00pm. We transferred them to bed and they both slept all night.

Less than two weeks to go until our trip to Palm Desert, CA and Carol and my escape to Las Vegas for two nights. We can't wait! Maybe some warmer, dryer weather will help Audrey's cough.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Our First Ear Infection(s)

As is completely normal with young kids, ours have been sick off and on through the winter. As I wrote before, Audrey has had a cough for about two months now. It sounds bad to us, but a few weeks ago she had a chest X-ray and it was clear. Yesterday the nurse practitioner checked Audrey's lungs while Carol was having Charlotte looked at and Audrey's lungs sounded clear. So it's apparently just post-nasal drip from ongoing low-grade sinus congestion.

Carol took Charlotte to the doctor because she had had a cold and fever and seemed to be getting over it, but over the weekend she ran a fever again. Monday morning she started pulling at her ear. Carol called and they said to bring her in for a look. Sure enough, Charlotte has ear infections in both ears. Poor thing! Given the stories we've heard from other parents, we feel pretty fortunate that our very first ear infection (that we know about :)) didn't happen until 14 months into our second child.

Charlotte was prescribed an antibiotic that she'll take for 10 days. Hopefully in a few days she'll start to feel better. I picked her up from her crib this morning and she started just writhing and screaming in agony in my arms. That has to be the most useless feeling one can have - a child in pain and nothing you can do about it.

The reason I chose to write is that Charlotte was screaming some more in the car all the way home from Audrey's preschool today. Carol reports that Audrey's response was to put a towel over her (own) head, plug her ears and say "la la la la la." We have no idea where she learned that.

Friday, February 2, 2007

"I Just Need to Rest"

Audrey turns three tomorrow! How time flies.

In her old age, Audrey has developed a very attractive new habit: putting herself to bed! She has done it several times in the past few weeks. Tonight she did it again. She nibbled at her dinner, but then got down from the table and said, "I just need to rest." She went to her room and tucked herself in her bed. I went in to close her curtains and turn off her light, which led her to protest mildly, "I don't want to go to sleep. I just want to rest." I said, "OK, you just rest," and closed her door. We never heard another peep.

Charlotte has had an icky cold for a week and a half. She seems to be over the hump now and is sleeping better. That's caused us to have a slight setback on our schedule for weaning her, but we should still be fine. She has to be completely weaned by the end of February, because we are all headed to visit my parents in Palm Desert in early March and Carol and I plan to escape to Las Vegas for a couple of days. We can't do that if Charlotte is still nursing. We have our fingers crossed.