One Thing No Mom Ever Wants to Hear

"Mom, I had a dream last night that Jesus came and said it was time for me to go back to Heaven."

*gulp*

Follow-Up

Ryan is fine. His cough is minimal now. I was told to take him in for a follow-up appointment with his pediatrician Tuesday, so I did. He checked him over and said that his lungs and throat and ears were clear and great. He shouldn't develop any complications or issues from the Croup. The pediatrician said that the breathing treatments are specifically for the lungs, but that Croup is really all in the throat. It swells up below the vocal chords and you get the barking cough. He told me that it was really the shot that helped Ryan, and not the breathing treatments. He also said that he was really surprised that the Walk-in Clinic didn't have the shot on hand. It is the kind of medicine that they (his office AND the clinic) always keep stocked and will reorder when it starts getting low. He told me that if it happens again, I should go to a different clinic because it is highly likely that they will have it on hand. Unfortunately, croup often is at it's worst at night when the clinics are closed so the ER is the only choice. That is pretty much the situation we were in. Anyhow, he's fine now... but I still hate the Croup.

Croup - Not Welcome at Our House

I sit down to blog about this adventure, and I feel like writing, "I don't want to talk about it."
Still, for the sake of a journal, I will give the effort. It's going to be too detailed for most of you. I don't care if you don't read it.

Monday morning Ryan developed a dry little cough. Some virus, oh well. After the kids woke up from their naps at about 3:00, it was definitely still present, but not bad. We drove out to Anaheim to spend a few hours with Jana and her kids at the hotel they are staying in while going to Disneyland for the next 4 days. We snacked, went swimming, had a fun time. I left for about an hour to take care of a Disneyland errand, and when I got back, I noticed that his cough was a little worse. Oh well, last I checked, I can't fix a cough. We went to Sonic for dinner and he was getting pretty whiny and didn't eat any of his food. He begged me to take him home so we left - it was about 8:00pm.

As we were driving on the freeway, he would cough, cry, cough, cry, gasp, cough, cry, etc. I thought to myself, "I guess I'll take him to the doctor in the morning and see if there is something they can recommend for this cough. Boy, none of us are going to get any sleep tonight, etc." Then I realized that the Walk-in Clinic was open until 9pm. Maybe they could give him something tonight - heck it was the same co-pay and all. So, I impulsively got onto a different freeway and headed toward the clinic. Honestly, I'm not one to take my kids to the doctor over every sniffle, so I didn't see much logical reason to take him. Still, I went.

Croup. By about 9:00 he was barking pretty badly and gasping for air. I could tell it was pretty hard for him to breathe. Both of my kids were getting pretty tired and cranky. The nurse told me I should've brought him in earlier. What the heck? It was just a dumb little cough until a hour before. They had me give him a breathing treatment which he was hysterical about. He kept turning his head and screaming about how much he hated it, etc. They gave him an oral dose of steroids to open up his airway. After the breathing treatment was done, the doctor told me that I had to take him to the ER because their facility didn't have the medicine that Ryan needed. The steroids would work, but not for another 6-8 hours. Thanks.

By this time, It's 9:30 and Ryan is crying, Katie is getting tired and wants me to hold her. I manage to get them to the car and call Derek. He's got to find a way to meet us at the hospital. He was at work with just his bike. Luckily, we have a great home teacher who picked him up and drove him over to the hospital to meet us.

In the meantime, I have 2 kids in a PACKED Emergency Room and they are both crying for me to hold them. I was standing in line to sign Ryan in so there I was, a woman 7.5 months pregnant, tired as you can imagine, holding my 38 pound 4 year old in one arm, and my 23 pound 2 year old in the other - both of them pretty upset. Bless the nurse who opened a door out of nowhere and asked, "Who's that barking out here?" She carried Ryan in for me (this is the part where I started to cry) and put him on a bed. They hooked up 3 little electrodes on him and a mixture of 4 or 5 nurses and doctors were in messing with him in one way or another. Someone was trying to take his temperature, someone else is asking him questions, all the while, he's FREAKING out. He's trying to get up from the bed, bury his face in it, climb on my lap (I'm trying to keep Katie from getting too scared too), gasping for breath, hacking away. I hated it so much. The nurse gives ME the job of getting his temperature. I'm supposed to get an oral temperature on a kid who can hardly breathe (because he's so worked up) and is coughing 20 times a minute? Didn't happen. He's screaming for me to take him home, trying to rip off the cords/electrodes attached to him, "I don't want any more people," etc.

Finally, most doctors left and we just had a nurse come in who started another breathing treatment. Ryan was totally unreasonable about the FIRST breathing treatment, now I'm trying to convince him to sit still and calm down during another one. He was so out of control. All he was supposed to do was sit and breathe. He was more relaxed when he had to get stitches. THEN, my husband walked in the door.

To make a long story a little shorter, our home teacher stayed and helped Derek give Ryan a blessing, and then afterwards he took Katie to his house so she could get some rest. They did a chest x-ray on Ryan, gave him a shot in the hiney of the steroid that he needed, and had us continue the breathing treatments for as long as he'd tolerate them. He relaxed enough to fall asleep at one point, but when we started another treatment while he was sleeping he woke up and got upset again. They moved us to a different room and gave him a teddy bear and blanket and he finally was able to rest at about midnight. His breathing seemed almost normal while he was relaxed so they told us we could take him home. During the night he did pretty well. At one point he woke up and started coughing again and I told him that he needed to calm his body down or else we'd have to go back to the hospital. He was silent after that and went right back to sleep.

I pretty much refuse to ever do that again. I never felt super worried about Ryan, but it was emotionally very stressful. I'm just glad that I have a great husband and a helpful home teacher. Croup, don't rear your ugly head at our house again. You're not welcome.

A Few Sewing Projects

So, I'm a total novice when it comes to sewing, but I really enjoy the end product. Here are two little sewing projects I finished recently.

First, is a little baby sling for Katie's dolls. I have 4 baby carriers myself and I thought it might be fun for Katie to have one for her doll since she'll see me carrying around our new baby. I used some scrap material (thanks Gina) and whipped it up in less than an hour. I think it turned out pretty cute.

The second is a waterproof pad. The only reason I post this is because I felt good about recycling things instead of throwing them away. Ryan had a waterproof mattress cover that was getting REALLY torn up from washing. The vinyl was split all the way across so that it wasn't really usable anymore on his bed. Instead of throwing it out, I cut a section that didn't have any splits in it and sewed it together with an extra baby blanket. Voila - a new mattress cover. It's actually a very useful size so I'm pretty happy with it.

I have 4 or 5 other projects "in the making." I am definitely not quick with sewing. I can't leave my sewing machine out in an accessible place. That means that I have to get everything out and put it all away each time I work on something, so small 15 minute sessions are incredibly rare. I only sew when I have a good hour or so to work on the project, and I don't have a good hour or so available very often. BUT, it's fun to have things to look forward to.

Guess Who Came to Visit

Uncle Joey! My 18 year old brother (VERY soon to be 19) brought two of his BYU roommates on a little road trip and camped out at my house for a few days. They hung out at the beach, went to Magic Mountain, saw a few movies at our dollar theater, and went to a concert. We found out that he has good taste in friends. His roommates were really respectful and totally nice to our kids.

Ryan adored them all and wanted to do everything with them. Katie was also very quick to warm up. It was nice to see her act just like herself even though there were new people around. I keep telling my Dad to come and visit so that he can get to know Katie in her own surroundings. After this visit from Joey, I am TOTALLY convinced that is true. We weren't much for entertaining the guys, but we were glad that they came.

Hurry back Joey - we love you!

Harry Potter's Got Nothing on Ryan

I am lazy and don't have a picture to show, but we had another little trip to the Urgent Care last night. Ryan was riding his bike (too fast, like usual) and took a nice spill onto the concrete. He had his helmet on, but it wasn't positioned well enough to protect his forehead from a nice little cut. It really isn't very big, but will end up being another scar right on his forehead - in between his eyebrows. We didn't think it was quite bad enough for stitches, but since it was right on his face, I thought I should be safe and take him in. He ended up with just surgical tape (thankfully). Unfortunately, he bled so much afterwards that the tape ended up coming off today. I made a makeshift butterfly bandage so here's hoping it works well enough.

I just wish that boy of ours could learn how to slow down a little. He is such a mover and is obsessive about speed. Oh well - being fearless and daring has its up-sides too. Doesn't it?

A Little Positive Peer Pressure Can Go a Long Way

A friend of ours recently posted on her blog a picture of her 3.5 year old riding his bike without training wheels. I was impressed and showed it to Ryan. That was all it took for him to decide that HE was ready to ride without training wheels also. If Simeon could do it, so could he. :)


Here's a little video of him learning.








Here is a little later in the day. Now he can do it without help getting started or anything. We have done little else besides watch him ride bikes the past few days.

Spring Cleaning

So this may seem like a lame post to most of you, but it's mostly for my mom. You see, when she was here visiting a few weeks ago, she walked onto my back patio and said, "Jenny, we do humanitarian aid for people like this." It was truly a disaster. The bushes were totally overgrown, there were sand and leaves all over the concrete, the bunny hutch had tons of yucky stuff underneath it, and I had so many outdoor toys that my kids could barely walk out there, much less play with/on any of it.

Look Ma, I've simplified. I about killed myself doing it, but worked for 3 days to get everything cleaned up (Derek wasn't so happy with me for overdoing it while he was at work). Now the kids play out there all the time. Ryan can even ride his scooter around - that's saying something. I'm ready for summer visitors to come and play.

Best Friends

Grandma was our photographer while she was here visiting a few weeks ago. Going through the pictures, these are a few of my favorites. But... they completely go together. I can't just post one, I have to see the whole story board.

Okay, hug each other.

Give a kiss.





Look how they were laughing and thought it was so funny.

Whenever I ask, "Who's your best friend" they usually will name each other. They do have fun together, even though Ryan really enjoys teasing. I hope it lasts...(the friendship, not the teasing.)

A Bit Too Close to Home

Last night after midnight, we heard a ton of noise coming from our rabbit hutch outside. They will often play and chase each other around at night, so I figured that was what they were up to. There was so much crashing around and it was going on for a few minutes so I finally looked out our blinds to see what was going on and saw a coyote pacing right outside their hutch.

Of course I panicked and yelled to Derek that we had a coyote on our patio and he went running out there to scare it away. He was easily frightened off and was gone before Derek even got out there. Still, bunnies are pretty fragile and I knew that they could easily die of a heart attack even if the coyote hadn't touched them. We brought them inside for the night (they are still hopping around in one of our bathrooms) and now we have to figure out what we're going to do about it for the future.

The coyote knows that we have rabbits and will be back - that I am sure of. Plus, even if they aren't out there, their cage smells like rabbit. We will surely have to bring them in every night in order to keep them safe - we just don't want him to return at a time when our kids are outside. Not sure if it's just safest to get rid of the bunnies or if things will be fine if we just bring them in regularly. I really want to keep them, but not at the expense of my children (if you know what I mean). I will say that I am very glad that we made some adjustments to our rabbit hutch ahead of time. We cut the legs off so it is very close to the ground and put a board on the floor of the cage so their feet wouldn't be exposed on the wires. The coyote wasn't able to go underneath - but if he did, he still couldn't get to them because of the board. They were unharmed, but it gave all of us a scare.