Adventures...

It’s been a crazy past few weeks. Actually, all of May was crazy, which I knew it would be. I had a lot of time off for the kids’ birthdays, girls weekend, and our 5 year wedding anniversary. That was all planned. What wasn’t planned was the not so expected adventures.

In my last post, I covered how well Kaydriana’s party went. When I entered the information into the kids’ baby book, there were 41 guests at her bday party! We didn’t invite as many little friends to Lake’s, so his party had 21 guests, which was perfectly fine!

Lake’s birthday was fun. I made him a little ball pit with a plastic tub with plastic balls. He loved it! Kaydriana loved it too! That made for a fun morning. Because it was the Friday before Memorial weekend, daycare was closed so Tim and I took both kids to the Woodland Park Zoo. The kids held up for a long time, but they made it clear when it was time to go! After we got home from the zoo we sang happy birthday to Lake and presented him with an adorable little cake his daycare teacher gave him. He was not into it! I think he is more like Tim: not a big fan of sweets. Unlike Kaydriana, who is a lot like me and insisted on helping her baby brother with devouring his cake.

Lake’s party started off a little touchy with decorating and setting up for an indoor party. At the last minute, we moved everything outside since the weather seem to have stabilized. Lake doesn’t usually go too long without a nap so we knew we’d be fast tracking the birthday events. Lake had fun playing with the ball pit balls we moved outside and watching his sister and cousins running around. He was in a much more cheerful mood than he was at Kaydriana’s party. Then it was time for cake. He still didn’t have much interest, but we made him get dirty anyway, because we’re awesome parents like that. After he was good and messy, I realized we hadn’t brought out any wipes to clean him with. I asked Tim to go inside and grab wipes.

He comes back out sauntering in that way that he does and locks eyes with me and motions me with his finger and then says our house is flooding. Without reliving all the gory details, basically, my third story toilet didn’t stop running and it leaked through the second floor all the way to the first floor kitchen. Water was pouring out of the sprinkler system and light fixtures. Tim and Lee were taking care of things and Tim told me to go back out with our guests and go ahead and open Lake’s presents. So the party went on.

Lake wasn’t too excited with opening presents, but sissy was there to assist. Our party goers started to leave and give us their condolences and well wishes as they left.

Not too long after, the water damage people showed up and went to work drying out our house. All I gotta say is, thank goodness for homeowners insurance!

They tore apart my bathroom, placing the toilet in the tub. In both bathrooms and the hallways, Lake’s closet and the linen closet, the floor boards were ripped off. So with the carpeting also pulled back and nails and chunks of dry wall exposed, it has been too dangerous to have the kids upstairs while I’m getting ready for work. That has been so difficult. How our house is laid out, the most practical way of me getting ready each morning is having the kids on the third floor with me, putting the baby gate up at the top of the stairs and letting them play. This has not been possible for over two weeks. I’ve been going to the gym to work out and get ready, dropping the kids off at daycare early so I can get ready at home, and once I locked them downstairs while I showered and that didn’t work out too well. Finally after 16 days the house was put back together!! I am looking forward to getting back into our normal routine. The mornings are my only quality time with the kids. However, now that I know I can make it to the gym, I’m going to try to go twice a week. I really enjoy my work outs again!

Both kids had their well child checks on May 30^th. Kaydriana still has her irregular heart beats, called PCVs. I was kinda hoping she would have grown out of them already, but we’ll just continue to watch her. Kaydriana is 33 pounds now and despite her heart beats, is perfectly healthy.

We talked about Lake and I gave Dr. Schrier the notes I made regarding Lake’s fevers.

There isn’t a consistent pattern and we talked about the possibility of arthritis. Because Lake hasn’t been exhibiting any real signs of it, she felt we could rule that out for now.

She advised that we continue checking his temperature, and when he does spike a fever, to have him come in and get checked for symptoms. And if we can find a more consistent pattern, see if I can get him in before a fever spikes and draw blood to check his white blood cell counts. Sounds like if he does have something, it’s going to be a long time before we figure it out.

However, less than 12 hours after our appointment and he getting vaccines, when I got home at 7 that night, Lake had a fever of 102. He woke up the next morning with that and had fast shallow breaths and his heart was beating fast. I called the nurse on call at Children’s and from what we were able to discern, it appears he could be part of the 1-2% of children who have a reaction to the PCV vaccination. I was told his symptoms could last 72 hours, but to go ahead and treat with ibuprofen and Tylenol. I took him to daycare and got a note faxed over so they could give him the fever reducers.

That same day, Tim had a surprise overnight date planned for our 5 year anniversary. He had picked up the kids from daycare and took them to his parent’s house. He didn’t mention anything about Lake not doing well. He picked me up and whisked me away to Salish Lodge.

We had a great time, staying in the nicest room I had ever stayed in. We had an amazing dinner and dessert and enjoyed the falls. We also enjoyed the Jacuzzi tub, which I’ve never used before. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention, I walked into the room with a beautiful bouquet of roses and gourmet chocolates.

The next day, I had a hard time sleeping in (darn breast feeding!) but enjoyed lounging around and ordering room service. Salish makes the best eggs Benedict! While we were waiting for our breakfast to arrive, Tim called his parents and that’s when we learned that Lake had had a really rough night.

When we made our way to the kids, Lake couldn’t even sit up, he was so lethargic. He usually is so excited to see me, but it was almost like he didn’t recognize me. The rest of our anniversary, Lake laid on top of me. He couldn’t get comfy in his crib, and he didn’t want any food except to nurse occasionally. My sweet little guy L

The next day, Sunday he perked up a bit, but still had a fever. And then on Monday morning, he woke up and it was like a light bulb was switched on. He was perky and happy and fever free….

So we’ll just keep tracking, and I’ll be avoiding vaccines at his 15 month appointment.