Only right now I feel like it should say House of "Pfain" established Spring Break 2014.
Not to make my first blog post since, well, since I was home on maternity leave with JJ (whose 18 months now) a complete whine fest, but I'm going to anyway. After my week, I get to.
It all starts with JJ teething last week. Ok, I can handle that. Brian and I are maxed out at work, getting report cards done before spring break, but teething we can do. Poor JJ: drooling, red cheeks everywhere a guy can have a "cheek", fussy. Still sleeping, which is good. Then the busy week turns into the weekend with beautiful weather! JJ's teething symptoms have now turned to a runny nose and whine fest. Hmmm...allergies? It must be. My throat is tottering on sore, but ignore, just ignore: we have a family gathering and a trip to Bend planned. The show must go on!
SATURDAY-The family gathering is successful (and super fun to meet a new family member! Baby Jane lives in CA with cousin Paul and wife Cristina. What a doll!) No major melt downs, just runny noses from both kids. Great family time. It was a win-win. Saturday night check in? Doing ok! Sore throat? What sore throat? I'm ignoring you.....
SUNDAY-Charlotte takes a turn for the worse. JJ is a mess. What a puddle! I feel awful, but still trying to ignore it. We decide to cancel our trip to Bend. We were supposed to leave the next day. Everyone except for Brian is whimpy and whiny and sick.
MONDAY-JJ is still a complete puddle and Charlotte is quickly approaching. SO GLAD WE DIDN'T GO TO BEND. It's a beautiful day! Monday afternoon Charlotte starts to lose her voice. Weird. Everyone is in bed early, too tired to go on. But wait, there's more. 10pm. Who's that coughing in the monitor? Yikes, who's that REALLY coughing in the monitor?!? My heart stops. Is she breathing? Is she ok? Rush upstairs. Charlotte sounds like a dog that has had it's voice box removed and can't stop coughing and can't catch her breath and is crying hysterically. Half asleep, coughing, unstoppable. Everyone is panicing. Finally it subsides and she falls back asleep in my lap rocking. Brian calls the on-call dr. CROUP. All signs point to CROUP. This is our first experience with croup and please lord, let it be our only experience with it. If you don't know what this is, good. I hope your sweet little one never experiences it. If you have dealt with this, you know exactly what this was like. MISERY. Did I mention, WE ARE SO GLAD WE DIDN'T GO TO BEND? Between my headcold and Charlotte's coughing, the night was off and on sleep with Charlotte in our bed with me and Brian downstairs on the couch.
TUESDAY-We make an early dr. appointment to check in about the croup. Might as well have JJ checked out too, while we are there. Poor guy has an ear infection! Got meds for everyone. Let's hope this is it. Let's hope that we are all on the upswing. I'm starting to feel myself again, thankfully. Moms don't get to be sick, especially when both kids are. The soundtrack of our house is coughs, crying, and noses being blown. The baby burp cloths that Karen made us are the best and softest nose wipers ever! Otherwise, I'm pretty sure my kids would have horrible red sores where their noses were supposed to be. My mom makes us miracle soup for dinner, thanks mom! Charlotte sleeps with me again and Brian is down on the couch. It took forever to get her to go to sleep. She kept poking my cheek and saying "psssst, mommy! why do we have to go nigh nigh?" I came up with every answer I could think of without cracking a smile. It was just so dang cute! She needed to sleep with an adult again, in case the horrible hacking stridor cough was back. Once she was asleep, I was able to calm her quickly when she did start coughing again and it never got to that heart stopping panic stage.
Thankfully, Brian is still in one piece. Right, Brian???? He mentioned a tickle in his throat earlier. Please let that be it.
WEDNESDAY-Brian wakes up with a sore throat. Oh, great. Man alive! Can we catch a break? I'm feeling a bit better, but still a foggy step behind. Charlotte is a complete mess and just wants to "watz a so" all day. (watch a show). How do you limit screen time with someone who just plain doesn't feel good? Her voice is still horse and is just plain a mess. JJ is starting to feel better. He looks better. But still has his moments and is whiny. all. day. long. This is really starting to be a patience tester. We decide to get out of the house. None of us had left the house since Sunday. We strap the kids in and just drive around, just to get a break from chasing JJ around the house. Relief for a few minutes. Brian and I had a conversation that didn't get interrupted and wasn't yelling over a screaming/crying child. He's not feeling good now. At all. Everyone is back to sleeping in their own beds that night, thankfully. There is a coughing scare at about 10:30, but disaster averted and everyone sleeps soundly.
THURSDAY-JJ is back to himself. Thank you Omoxicillion! Climbing & testing limits, but smiling and laughing. He's playing independently a bit, which is a relief. He'd been hanging on one of us (mostly me) for four days and it was getting hard. REALLY hard. Brian is sick. He's hanging in there, but he got "it" bad. Charlotte had a great morning, but wakes up early from nap. She is inconsolable. Tears. Wouldn't eat. Nothing except Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on TV and her "D" (blanket) would make her feel better. We try to go out for a change of scenery. She wasn't having it. She had told me earlier that her ear hurt in passing and also told Brian on a different occasion. We stop the car. She says "it hurts". Through the tears, snot, and hiccups, we find out that her ear hurts. Her left ear, to be exact. She's pretty specific. Thankfully the Dr. has an appointment available and 20 minutes later we are in the waiting room. To add to it all, the poor girl has an ear infection too.
UGH!
While driving to get her prescription, Brian is saying he feels awful. He is really susceptible to strep throat. I convince him to make a dr. appointment for himself. He does. It's tomorrow at 8:30am. I think that I might actually hope that he has strep throat, because then at least we know what it is and he can get drugs to make it better.
It's been a horrible spring break. The worst. Ever. But, Brian and I keep saying how thankful we are. We are so thankful this wasn't a work week. We didn't have to figure out who was staying home with the kids while they were sick and while us being sick at the same time. We didn't have to write sub plans. We didn't have that extra stress of do we send them to day care or not. We are thankful that this all happened on spring break because this was a hard week. The hardest. And I know it would have been even more hard with the stress of work added to the mix. So yes, we are crazy and so thankful.
Did I mention I'M SO GLAD WE DIDN'T GO TO BEND? Brian's sister just had a baby and we we are so excited to meet Baby Heath. Zander turned 3 and Charlotte's 3rd birthday is coming up too, so we were going to do a little celebration with the cousins. It was going to be a great trip, but with the exhaustion of it all, I'm just really glad we didn't go.
So with that, it's 11:30. I'll be punishing myself in the morning for staying up so late to write this. That's why I haven't posted anything in the last year. It's just so hard to do any of the "extras" in life right now.
Signing off from the House of "Pfain",
the crazed mother,
Melissa Pfaff.
No comments:
Post a Comment