Well, it's 15 degrees here...brrrrr! But I love it! I would much rather it be cold than hot. When it's hot, you can't snuggle up next to crackling fire w/ your kiddos and stay in your jammies all day watching Noggin because school was canceled due to an inch of ice on everything. They just don't cancel school for too much hot. Unless you're in the city school district. Oh snap!
Now, when I say I love not being able to leave the house is great, it is...unless you've been stuck inside for 5 out of the last 6 days. My fears of J.J. having whooping cough were assuaged by a quick trip to the emergency care doctor last Sunday. Nope...he just had a cough due to his allergies, said Mr. Overpriced On-call Doctor. And his overly goopy-but-not-quite-pink eyes were caused by the same. So that's why we took him to school on Wednesday. Then it hit us. All of us.
The sickness. The coughing, aches, chills, headache, sore throat, sniffling, sneezing yuckiness that has been hitting EVERYONE around here. First, I called in sick to Bible study Wednesday night. I woke up with a bit of a scratchy throat that morning and unfortunately it got progressively worse as the day progressed (despite my best attempts to fix it with Jason's Deli soup and salad bar--thanks for the invite, Julie N.!). By the time 5:00 rolled around, I was shivering under a blanket on the couch with aching joints and a pounding headache. And still had 2 kids to take care of. Ahhhh....motherhood. I tried to enlist the help of both my mom who was stuck at work and my mother-in-law who was on her way to Norman to visit her fiance, so J.J. was forced to watch show after show until Daddy could make it home with McDonalds and an extra pair of hands.
Oh...I forgot to mention that Johnny had been feeling rotten for the last 3 days...so I officially blamed my getting sick on him. Except, his rationale was that I felt worse, so I got him sick. I don't know...men have weird ideas sometimes.
Anyway, J.J.'s eyes got progressively worse as the evening went on and his cough wasn't getting any better either. So the next morning (Johnny stayed home to take care of the boy so I could try to get better) I called and got him an appointment with our favorite Dr. H. When I woke up to them coming home at 11:30, I was informed that not only did J.J. have PINK EYE but also a sinus infection. GREAAAAAT! Sorry, everyone at school! I exposed your kid to pink eye!
So the next three days consisted of me laying in our bed, taking my beloved Z-pack (I had some kind of infection...the P.A. I saw didn't really tell me what it was) and letting Hadley crawl all over the bed. Meanwhile Johnny (whose sinuses were so clogged the dr. couldn't even see if it was infected...she just knew and therefore prescribed our friend Mr. Z) and J.J. (suffering 4 times a day through Daddy forcing eye drops and then 2 times a day ingesting yukky antibiotic) relegated themselves to the living room, leaving the door to our room open so they could talk to us, but keeping the baby gate up in the doorway so J.J. couldn't come infect the baby with his eye funk. Oh let me not forget that on Saturday morning, J.J. barfed all over the kitchen. We're chalking it up to too much swallowed mucus. At least I didn't have to clean it up...what a saint of a hubby I have! All in all it was a great weekend. Ahhh...motherhood.
Except for one tiny little detail I neglected to mention: Sunday was J.J.'s 3rd and Johnny's 29th birthday. And Saturday was supposed to have been J.J.'s Cars party at our church. Needless to say, the festivites were postponed until NEXT Saturday (as Johnny's mom is getting married this Saturday). But I guess it turned out okay...it gives me more time to get stuff ready for the party. I just felt awful because the poor little guy (and the big guy, for that matter) didn't really get a big fuss thrown about their special day. Which I really hate. Don't get me wrong, we did give him a couple presents on his actual birthday, and we got to venture out to eat at Texas Roadhouse for lunch on Sunday, but it just wasn't the same without the party.
And now we're still stuck in the house because Jack Frost is nipping at everyone's noses...and glazing the streets. Like I said, it's great to stay in jammies all day long, but I have to admit the stir-craziness is rising up in me.
But you know what? I have everything I need here in my house...food, warmth, running water, electricity (Lord willing!), my adorable kids, and plenty of stuff to do. And it's not like I'm really itching to get out on the road with the rest of the morons who don't know how to drive on ice...even though that's all we usually get here--you'd think we'd be pros by now! But I'm not relishing the thought of packing both my children into Phyllis (our van's name, christened on a trip to Buffalo for Christmas), tempting some nitwit who thinks they can stop on a dime on an inch of ice to plow into us. So for now, I'll stay all bundled up by the fire, with a nice cup of coffee and read J.J. a story while Hadley blows raspberries, just so she can hear the sound.
Ahhhh....motherhood.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Why do I read stuff on the internet?
Seriously...I don't know why I look to the internet to answer my questions, especially if the answers I seek are regarding my kids' health. All it does is freak me out...EVERY TIME! I innocently google a symptom or a suspected ailment and it brings up something more serious and my mind instantly rushes to the worst case scenario. Just like tonight.
A little background info first:
J.J. has allergies. Cat (pretty severe), dog (mild), peanut (somewhere in between), dust mites (who doesn't, seriously?). He takes Zyrtec (generic) every night. So...given the last allergen, when he has a cold, we can't use the humidifier, because dust mites somehow find humidity a fun-fest in which to breed. Which means that I can't use the time-tested cough reducer of a nice blast of cool steam in the room (Side note...how on earth does cool steam exist, anyway? By pure physics, steam only exists when water boils--BOILS! So how does one achieve cool mist? It's a mystery! Okay...on with my blogging).
This brings us to my current situation. J.J. has had a pretty yukky cough for a while now. It's pretty wet (not a dry, hacky cough) and sometimes he takes in this deep breath and it sounds like a honking goose. But that only happens once every one or two days. Usually it's just a cough. And those only happen 4 or 5 times a day. It's not all the time.
I've asked the nurse at our doctor's office if there's anything I can give him, but due to all the new restrictions on pediatric cold medicine, there's not. So...we've just kinda let it run its course, hoping it would go away. Well, it hasn't. It's still there. I probably should have taken him to our pediatrician, but I didn't, simply because I didn't want to take him and them tell me it's just a cough. And I maybe should have taken him back to the allergist, but a little part of me is afraid to hear the word asthma come out of her mouth. I don't want J.J. to have a strike against him before he gets to the cruel world of school where they make fun of you if your hair does or doesn't stand up in the right place.
Enter my crazed websearch tonight. I was harmlessly reading some blogs on my Google Reader and I came across a way to look up local blogs. So I found some blogs from people that live around here and one woman was writing about her son and how he just got diagnosed with pneumonia! It kind of scared me a little bit, because some of his symptoms sounded a bit like what J.J. has been dealing with. So I googled the words "cough 3 year old" and it brought up a whole list of people's questions on message boards, with a couple actual websites regarding coughs. So I start reading. As J.J. would say, "Dis not a great idea, Mommy."
They started out pretty harmless...people asking what to do to help their child's coughing, followed by all sorts of advice from random medical website surfers (moms, well-meaning aunts, wanna-be doctors...you know the likes). Then one caught my eye. It gave a list of a lot of pretty typical coughs...what they sound like, the symptoms that come with them. A couple were pretty close to what J.J.'s sounds like, but none of them really hit it square on the head.
Then came the dreaded "Call your doctor if..." list. It started out pretty encouraging...it says that most childhood coughs are nothing to be worried about. But then it lists the scary symptoms. Things like "Has trouble breathing or works hard to breathe" or "has a blue or dusky color to the lips, face or tongue". Okay...so far, so good. We're still breathing...color still towards the red side of the ROY G. BIV scale. Then came the one that caught my attention: "Makes a 'whooping' sound when breathing in after coughing". Uh-oh.
My pulse immediately started to get faster...a wave of fear swept over me. Is that the sound J.J.'s making when he breathes in? Is it a whoop? Or more of a honk? What exactly does a 'whoop' sound like, anyway? I mean, I know there's a whooping crane, and I assume that's what a whoop is supposed to sound like, but having never actually met a whooping crane and asked it to talk, I don't know what the sound is.
So then I indulge my stupid irrational fear even more. I google "whooping cough sound" and guess what? It's searched for often enough that I didn't even have to finish typing it. Google kindly popped the drop-down menu for me and there it was, all ready for me to click on and scare myself. Which of course I did. I clicked on the first link and waited for the sound. And the sound it made sounded exactly like J.J.'s little breath that he takes in. Now my mind is flipping out even more.
So I go to another link and listen. Yep, same sound, different kid. My heart races. Does J.J. have whooping cough???? Have I been exposing countless kids and adults, including my own precious infant daughter (who by the way just got her 6-month round of dTap today, so isn't fully immunized towards pertussis--whooping cough--yet), to a very serious illness? J.J. has been in contact with dozens of people since his coughing started. Hundreds if you count the people we share air with when we go to Walmart and the likes!
I go to more sites. I go to www.pertussis.com. It fills my head with all this information about how hundreds of innocent little kids and babies die every year from pertussis. I read statistics and scary stories. I hear PSAs about it, complete with moms who have lost their babies due to pertussis. My mind has completely run away from me at this point. I even stop to pray for J.J. and Hadley, begging God not to let J.J. have whooping cough and for Hadley not to get it if he does. I'm almost in tears at this point.
Then something in the back of my mind tells me, "Heather, go back and look at the list of symptoms that go along with whooping cough." So I do. I go back to one of the many websites I've just poured over and find the symptoms. Here's what one website says:
"The first symptoms of whooping cough are similar to those of a common cold:
Okay...my heart calms down a bit. J.J. never had the runny nose or low-grade fever. He doesn't turn red or purple and he doesn't cough so hard that he gags himself. He does a couple coughs, makes a weird sound like a goose, coughs one or two more times and then he's fine. Yes, the sound he makes does sound very similar to the soundbytes I heard, but his coughing doesn't at all. Those poor kids sound like they might pass out in the middle of the coughing, they're coughing so hard. And there's always a gaggy sound at the end. J.J. doesn't do that at all.
So I calm down enough to go put Hadley to bed (she'd fallen asleep on my lap after her nightly bowl of rice cereal) and I go check on J.J. He's been asleep for almost 4 hours at this point, so I know I won't wake him up. I creep over to his bed, lean in and kiss him on the forehead. And of course, crazy, irrational nut that I am has to actually stick my ear on his back and see if I can hear anything out of the ordinary in his breathing. And I'm ashamed to admit that I actually contemplated getting his toy stethiscope out of his Fisher-Price doctor kit to try and get a better listen. Wow. There's something seriously wrong with me.
I've calmed down a bit now. But my mind has moved on to other things to be bothered about. Like the fact that I know J.J. is allergic to dust mites and yet I still don't vacuum his room every week or (and this will sound insane) vacuum his mattress (hey...it's actually something you should do between sheet changings. It said so on a website...has to be true, right? Seriously, though, his allergy doctor did mention it).
So now I'm running through all the things that I don't do to keep the house clean enough for my son to live in it without his allergies being exacerbated and possibly making him continue to cough. I don't vacuum enough, I don't change his sheets often enough, I don't wash his pillow in super hot water, I don't (get this) freeze his stuffed animals for 6 hours to kill the dust mites living in them, I don't dust the house, let alone his room, often enough. I'm basically having a pretty low mom-esteem moment right now.
And I realize that it's almost 1 am (WHY AM I STILL UP?!?!?!?) and that I'm probably a bit irrational, and definitely can't do anything about it at this late hour...but I also know myself and I won't do anything about it tomorrow. Because somehow, somewhere in my head Saturdays are not for working in the house. Even if it needs it. Even if I didn't do my job during the week well enough to keep from having the need to work on the house on Saturday. Doesn't matter. Saturdays are NOT work days.
Hopefully I'll reread this tomorrow (okay...later this morning) and it will inspire me to actually get something done tomorrow. Maybe. Maybe I should just go to bed. Yeah...that sounds like a wise plan.
A little background info first:
J.J. has allergies. Cat (pretty severe), dog (mild), peanut (somewhere in between), dust mites (who doesn't, seriously?). He takes Zyrtec (generic) every night. So...given the last allergen, when he has a cold, we can't use the humidifier, because dust mites somehow find humidity a fun-fest in which to breed. Which means that I can't use the time-tested cough reducer of a nice blast of cool steam in the room (Side note...how on earth does cool steam exist, anyway? By pure physics, steam only exists when water boils--BOILS! So how does one achieve cool mist? It's a mystery! Okay...on with my blogging).
This brings us to my current situation. J.J. has had a pretty yukky cough for a while now. It's pretty wet (not a dry, hacky cough) and sometimes he takes in this deep breath and it sounds like a honking goose. But that only happens once every one or two days. Usually it's just a cough. And those only happen 4 or 5 times a day. It's not all the time.
I've asked the nurse at our doctor's office if there's anything I can give him, but due to all the new restrictions on pediatric cold medicine, there's not. So...we've just kinda let it run its course, hoping it would go away. Well, it hasn't. It's still there. I probably should have taken him to our pediatrician, but I didn't, simply because I didn't want to take him and them tell me it's just a cough. And I maybe should have taken him back to the allergist, but a little part of me is afraid to hear the word asthma come out of her mouth. I don't want J.J. to have a strike against him before he gets to the cruel world of school where they make fun of you if your hair does or doesn't stand up in the right place.
Enter my crazed websearch tonight. I was harmlessly reading some blogs on my Google Reader and I came across a way to look up local blogs. So I found some blogs from people that live around here and one woman was writing about her son and how he just got diagnosed with pneumonia! It kind of scared me a little bit, because some of his symptoms sounded a bit like what J.J. has been dealing with. So I googled the words "cough 3 year old" and it brought up a whole list of people's questions on message boards, with a couple actual websites regarding coughs. So I start reading. As J.J. would say, "Dis not a great idea, Mommy."
They started out pretty harmless...people asking what to do to help their child's coughing, followed by all sorts of advice from random medical website surfers (moms, well-meaning aunts, wanna-be doctors...you know the likes). Then one caught my eye. It gave a list of a lot of pretty typical coughs...what they sound like, the symptoms that come with them. A couple were pretty close to what J.J.'s sounds like, but none of them really hit it square on the head.
Then came the dreaded "Call your doctor if..." list. It started out pretty encouraging...it says that most childhood coughs are nothing to be worried about. But then it lists the scary symptoms. Things like "Has trouble breathing or works hard to breathe" or "has a blue or dusky color to the lips, face or tongue". Okay...so far, so good. We're still breathing...color still towards the red side of the ROY G. BIV scale. Then came the one that caught my attention: "Makes a 'whooping' sound when breathing in after coughing". Uh-oh.
My pulse immediately started to get faster...a wave of fear swept over me. Is that the sound J.J.'s making when he breathes in? Is it a whoop? Or more of a honk? What exactly does a 'whoop' sound like, anyway? I mean, I know there's a whooping crane, and I assume that's what a whoop is supposed to sound like, but having never actually met a whooping crane and asked it to talk, I don't know what the sound is.
So then I indulge my stupid irrational fear even more. I google "whooping cough sound" and guess what? It's searched for often enough that I didn't even have to finish typing it. Google kindly popped the drop-down menu for me and there it was, all ready for me to click on and scare myself. Which of course I did. I clicked on the first link and waited for the sound. And the sound it made sounded exactly like J.J.'s little breath that he takes in. Now my mind is flipping out even more.
So I go to another link and listen. Yep, same sound, different kid. My heart races. Does J.J. have whooping cough???? Have I been exposing countless kids and adults, including my own precious infant daughter (who by the way just got her 6-month round of dTap today, so isn't fully immunized towards pertussis--whooping cough--yet), to a very serious illness? J.J. has been in contact with dozens of people since his coughing started. Hundreds if you count the people we share air with when we go to Walmart and the likes!
I go to more sites. I go to www.pertussis.com. It fills my head with all this information about how hundreds of innocent little kids and babies die every year from pertussis. I read statistics and scary stories. I hear PSAs about it, complete with moms who have lost their babies due to pertussis. My mind has completely run away from me at this point. I even stop to pray for J.J. and Hadley, begging God not to let J.J. have whooping cough and for Hadley not to get it if he does. I'm almost in tears at this point.
Then something in the back of my mind tells me, "Heather, go back and look at the list of symptoms that go along with whooping cough." So I do. I go back to one of the many websites I've just poured over and find the symptoms. Here's what one website says:
"The first symptoms of whooping cough are similar to those of a common cold:
- runny nose
- sneezing
- mild cough
- low-grade fever
Okay...my heart calms down a bit. J.J. never had the runny nose or low-grade fever. He doesn't turn red or purple and he doesn't cough so hard that he gags himself. He does a couple coughs, makes a weird sound like a goose, coughs one or two more times and then he's fine. Yes, the sound he makes does sound very similar to the soundbytes I heard, but his coughing doesn't at all. Those poor kids sound like they might pass out in the middle of the coughing, they're coughing so hard. And there's always a gaggy sound at the end. J.J. doesn't do that at all.
So I calm down enough to go put Hadley to bed (she'd fallen asleep on my lap after her nightly bowl of rice cereal) and I go check on J.J. He's been asleep for almost 4 hours at this point, so I know I won't wake him up. I creep over to his bed, lean in and kiss him on the forehead. And of course, crazy, irrational nut that I am has to actually stick my ear on his back and see if I can hear anything out of the ordinary in his breathing. And I'm ashamed to admit that I actually contemplated getting his toy stethiscope out of his Fisher-Price doctor kit to try and get a better listen. Wow. There's something seriously wrong with me.
I've calmed down a bit now. But my mind has moved on to other things to be bothered about. Like the fact that I know J.J. is allergic to dust mites and yet I still don't vacuum his room every week or (and this will sound insane) vacuum his mattress (hey...it's actually something you should do between sheet changings. It said so on a website...has to be true, right? Seriously, though, his allergy doctor did mention it).
So now I'm running through all the things that I don't do to keep the house clean enough for my son to live in it without his allergies being exacerbated and possibly making him continue to cough. I don't vacuum enough, I don't change his sheets often enough, I don't wash his pillow in super hot water, I don't (get this) freeze his stuffed animals for 6 hours to kill the dust mites living in them, I don't dust the house, let alone his room, often enough. I'm basically having a pretty low mom-esteem moment right now.
And I realize that it's almost 1 am (WHY AM I STILL UP?!?!?!?) and that I'm probably a bit irrational, and definitely can't do anything about it at this late hour...but I also know myself and I won't do anything about it tomorrow. Because somehow, somewhere in my head Saturdays are not for working in the house. Even if it needs it. Even if I didn't do my job during the week well enough to keep from having the need to work on the house on Saturday. Doesn't matter. Saturdays are NOT work days.
Hopefully I'll reread this tomorrow (okay...later this morning) and it will inspire me to actually get something done tomorrow. Maybe. Maybe I should just go to bed. Yeah...that sounds like a wise plan.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
"Micah's Plan"
There is a special project going on for the 1st graders at Micah’s school. On the 100th day of school they have the “hundred day” parade and the first graders get to march around the school showing off their “100 piece” project. Each first grader’s assignment is to find, make, gather, put together, etc 100 of the same items. It can be candy, pictures, pencils, drawings, anything. You are supposed to work on it as a family and make a poster board or put it in a wagon or a bucket or something to show your 100 items.
Micah and I talked about it and he thought it was silly to buy 100 pencils or pieces of candy and he wanted to do something that would make a difference. (we always talk about making a difference). He said that he wishes that SOMEHOW he could help 100 people. I told him that was a lot of people and I think he should narrow it down to 1 person. So, he reminded me of the “man in the van”. There is a homeless man who lives in downtown Waco in an old van. We used to bring him dinner a lot and Micah always talks about him and prays for him. I often use him as an example to remind Micah of how blessed we are. Once I remember Micah asked if we could go by and get some dinner. He ordered a kids meal and after he got it, he took the toy out and said that he actually wasn’t hungry but that he wanted to give his food to the “man in the van”. We actually don’t know his name. Matt just always called him “sir”. So, we brought “sir” Micah’s kids meal. He was so appreciative and Micah was all smiles the rest of the day.
So here is Micah’s idea. And yes…this is HIS idea. He says he wants to ask 100 people to mail him $1.00. He wants 100 envelopes and will display them on his poster board. I asked him what he wanted to do with the $100 and he told me that he wanted to buy two things for the man in the van. A coat, and a Bible. Micah’s idea. Not mine.
Micah also asked me to put the request on caring bridge because he didn’t think he would have the time to call 100 people to ask for a letter.
If you have time, and $1.00 and money for a stamp, would you please helm my son with his 100 days of school project. His project is to get 100 people to send him $1.00 so he can buy a coat and a Bible for a man with no home.
Please hurry. The 100 day of school parade is on January 30th. This morning he said this exact thing "Mom, what if the people who read my request, gave it to their friends....who gave it to their friends...who gave it to their friends, and we actually COULD help 100 people."
I told Micah that we would just have to see what happens. If you will forward this request and label it "Micah's plan" to anyone and everyone you know....it would be awesome. Later today I will put a picture on our other blog site of Micah beside the mailbox with this same letter.
Thank you so much! Hurry! It ends in 2 weeks! I just KNOW that Micah will be able to make a difference!!
Expecting miracles,
Marianne
****My friend Julie posted this on her blog. The little guy is a relative of one of her Sunday School classmates. I know that sounds like "friend of a friend of a friend who knows some kid", but it's totally real. Julie gave me the address, so if anybody wants to help out, let me know! Facebook friends, blogger friends...whoever! Wouldn't it be great if we really could help out 100 people by helping this little man?
Micah and I talked about it and he thought it was silly to buy 100 pencils or pieces of candy and he wanted to do something that would make a difference. (we always talk about making a difference). He said that he wishes that SOMEHOW he could help 100 people. I told him that was a lot of people and I think he should narrow it down to 1 person. So, he reminded me of the “man in the van”. There is a homeless man who lives in downtown Waco in an old van. We used to bring him dinner a lot and Micah always talks about him and prays for him. I often use him as an example to remind Micah of how blessed we are. Once I remember Micah asked if we could go by and get some dinner. He ordered a kids meal and after he got it, he took the toy out and said that he actually wasn’t hungry but that he wanted to give his food to the “man in the van”. We actually don’t know his name. Matt just always called him “sir”. So, we brought “sir” Micah’s kids meal. He was so appreciative and Micah was all smiles the rest of the day.
So here is Micah’s idea. And yes…this is HIS idea. He says he wants to ask 100 people to mail him $1.00. He wants 100 envelopes and will display them on his poster board. I asked him what he wanted to do with the $100 and he told me that he wanted to buy two things for the man in the van. A coat, and a Bible. Micah’s idea. Not mine.
Micah also asked me to put the request on caring bridge because he didn’t think he would have the time to call 100 people to ask for a letter.
If you have time, and $1.00 and money for a stamp, would you please helm my son with his 100 days of school project. His project is to get 100 people to send him $1.00 so he can buy a coat and a Bible for a man with no home.
Please hurry. The 100 day of school parade is on January 30th. This morning he said this exact thing "Mom, what if the people who read my request, gave it to their friends....who gave it to their friends...who gave it to their friends, and we actually COULD help 100 people."
I told Micah that we would just have to see what happens. If you will forward this request and label it "Micah's plan" to anyone and everyone you know....it would be awesome. Later today I will put a picture on our other blog site of Micah beside the mailbox with this same letter.
Thank you so much! Hurry! It ends in 2 weeks! I just KNOW that Micah will be able to make a difference!!
Expecting miracles,
Marianne
****My friend Julie posted this on her blog. The little guy is a relative of one of her Sunday School classmates. I know that sounds like "friend of a friend of a friend who knows some kid", but it's totally real. Julie gave me the address, so if anybody wants to help out, let me know! Facebook friends, blogger friends...whoever! Wouldn't it be great if we really could help out 100 people by helping this little man?
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