Visits, Turning 28, and a Trip to the ER

Wednesday April 23, 2008

So the past few weeks have been busy. One of my favorite parts was getting a visit from this handsome guy. Finally, after months of anticipation we finally got to meet the second son of our friends, Merica and Jake. (I'm not sure how much information I'm allowed to give at this point. We'll call him DJ just in case :) This little guy spent the first 8 months of his life in Africa. His parents went to get him right around the time Will turned one. And I thought child birth was hard? We have been praying for this little guy for a long time. We're glad he's finally here with his family!

I'm not ashamed to admit that I recently turned *gasp* 28! The best parts about my birthday were:

1. calls, texts, and emails from family and friends

2. the rock star parking I got in front of the doctor's office that morning.

3. AND Will took a long afternoon nap that day which allowed me the same.

In short, when I get sick, I get really sick. Too sick even for birthday cake. My throat was so sore all I consumed was Sprite for 4 days.

Last weekend, Jesse's parents came for a visit before heading to East Tenn. for some meetings. We had a great time with them and only wish we could spend more time together. Since they live in Washington, our visits are few. Maybe one day we'll be closer together!

So the day that Jesse's parents left, Will was running a fever. I checked his temperature before bed, 101.7. I gave him some Tylenol and assumed he might be getting what I had the previous week. Around midnight, he woke up crying and coughing. The barking cough was unmistakable- had to be croup. He was burning up. I tried taking his temperature because I knew the doctor would want to know as soon as I called. 103.7. Yikes. I called to have the doctor paged. As I held Will to comfort him, he started to shake. I started to panic a little. As a mom in panic and no patience to wait for a call back from the doctor, I called 911. I explained to the lady his symptoms and she said, "Well we can send someone out just to check on him so you don't have to take him to the hospital this late at night." No big deal. Sounded good to me at the time. So two minutes later we hear sirens. And then it hits me. This is a big deal. Am I really that mom? Really there is a fire truck and an ambulance pulling up in our driveway for a baby with croup? (Merica if you're reading this, SHUT UP!) To my credit, the paramedic did say that I was handling myself very well for Will's condition and most moms would be requesting they take their baby in the ambulance IMMEDIATELY. So, they did say we needed to take him to the hospital ASAP because he was having trouble breathing and steam wasn't working to reduce the swelling.

So off to the hospital we went, at this time it was 1:00ish. Still no call back from the doctor. After getting vitals checked by the nurse, the doctor saw us pretty quickly. She explained that since he was having "stridor" breathing, that they would need to do a breathing treatment and some steroids to reduce the swelling. "Sweet, we'll be out of here soon then." says an anxious Jesse. "Well, we can have the treatment finished in a few minutes but you'll need to stick around for a couple of hours so we can monitor his breathing after the treatment. Sometimes the stridor returns." A couple of hours? And it's 2:00am? The breathing treatment went fairly smooth. I think Will was too tired to fight it. I held his hands and Jesse held the mask over his face. After five minutes of Darth Vader jokes, the treatment was over and finished off with a dose of steroids. So off to recovery. They were nice enough to set us up in a private room with a twin bed and three chairs. Will and I took the bed and Jesse curled up in the three chairs. Poor Jesse. Will slept most of the time we were waiting. So after a couple of check-ins with the nurses, the doctor returned to check his breathing around 4:00am. She said it sounded great. We headed home and all three of us crashed.

Waumba Land #19

Sunday April 6, 2008

Will has been having some trouble in the church nursery recently. It is progressively getting worse. It started about 5 weeks ago. He gets dropped off in his class and always goes without a complaint or hesitation but by the end of class, he's definitely ready for a familiar face. Usually we get a report saying, "Oh he was disappointed when someone would walk by our class and it wasn't you." Just a little separation anxiety, no big deal. Today was the day I realized just how bad it really was. I knew he wasn't crazy about being left alone in a room full of people he doesn't know, but I didn't realize he despised it. Actually, I think he just doesn't like the idea of us not being together.

This morning we dropped him off in his class as usual. We were a few minutes early so before the service started Jesse asked if I wanted to check on him. I walked by his class and saw him standing up playing with one of the nursery workers. Relieved, I went back to my seat. In the nursery, they give your child a number and the parents a corresponding number so that when the child is picked up, the numbers have to match. This number is also used if they need you to come to the class for any reason. "Are we #19?" I ask Jesse as I return to my seat. "Yep." No more than 30 minutes later we see "Waumba Land #19" flash on the screen. We've never seen a number flashed before, by the way. I've seen it in other churches and I always scan the room looking for the parent with the "trouble kid." Or I've often thought, "oh no, someone's broken an arm." I know...it's ridiculous.

When I walk in to Will's class, the director was holding him trying to calm him down. They obviously had to call in reinforcements. As soon as he saw me, he was fine. His teacher said she called me because she thought I wouldn't want him crying that hard. Poor little guy. She said he cried any time there was a change in the room. I assume he was upset when someone would come in and it wasn't his parents! I played with him a few minutes in the room so Jesse could listen to the last few minutes of the sermon. I walked out of the room in to the hallway with Will and a teacher walks by and says to me, "oh you got the little guy calmed down!?" Jesse met me in the foyer and the director offered us a dvd of the sermon since we missed the last few minutes. "Just keep trying, he'll get through this. We had a mom once who went through this. Oh, and I won't be here next week and we rotate nursery workers a lot so you might want to let the workers know that he does this." Does this? Yikes. He's been doing this? And you had a mom once who went through this? I thought this was common. Ye-ikes.

"Obviously our kid is the one all the teachers get warned about!" Jesse said as we walked to the car.

So, does anyone want to volunteer to babysit?

Anyone?

14 Months

Monday March 31, 2008

I have a funny story to share. The other night I was singing different silly songs with Will. The one that seemed to amuse him the most was "I'm bringing home my baby bumble bee, won't my mommy be so proud of me..." He immediately took to the motions which was a sure sign because I've been doing Wheels on the Bus for at least a decade and he has never initiated any type of movement with that song. So at dinner one night Will clasped his hands together and rocked them back and forth like he does when I sing the song. So I started singing it (even though in the back of my mind I thought "didn't we have a rule about not singing at the dinner table growing up?...) and Will immediately points to Jesse. Not just a casual point, the throwing it home kind. Like he really really needs something. Obviously we knew what he wanted, "let's see if I can get my dad to look just as goofy as my mom!" Of course it worked and the three of us are "squishing up our baby bumble bee..."

So, here's wm at 14 months:

With wheels like these, who needs to learn to walk?

Lemme handle it

Easter, Lemons, and First Steps

Wednesday April 2, 2008

We spent some time with family in WV and OH for Easter and had a great time. Will hasn't seen a lot of our family since our last trip in late July so he took some time to warm up to everyone. Even those he had just seen a couple months ago were like fresh faces. I just wanted him to be in good spirits so our family could enjoy him but I think it was all a little too much for a one year old to handle. Besides all the people, we had an early flight and he spent a lot of time sleeping on the go. Crabbiness aside, he was still spoiled with attention and gifts. Will also tried candy for the first time. He loved my Junior Mints!

Taking a walk with Grandpa

Haircut #2 with Grandpa

What we discovered while eating out one night was that Will has a love for lemons. He kept pointing to the lemon in my dad's water so we finally gave it to him. I thought he would take one lick, pucker his lips, shake his body, and throw it down. I was completely wrong.

He ate it like it was candy- the rind and all.

Finally meeting Great Aunt Susan!

The evening we returned to Atlanta, Will took a couple of tentative steps. *I have a little video of it that I'll put up later. It has been a week now and he is really improving in his steadiness. If he is standing up, he'll definitely try walking first before getting in to the crawling position.

*Just a side note. I wanted to put up several other pictures and videos but I don't think I have the patience. Our computer, when it does decide to work, it sooooo slow. Getting it checked out is on my to-do list.