Last night was a weird night at our house. Aside from Elena's midnight hour long scream fest, Karina fell asleep at 7pm, one minute before Sesame Street started, while Bill was telling her it was coming on. So I took her up to bed and later she woke up, I'd say around 11. She was a little confused and I just put her in with me.
Sometime around 130 or 2, after dealing with Elena for over an hour and finally crawling back into bed, I heard Karina call me.
"Mommy?"
"I'm here, baby, everything's okay."
"Mommy, I can't get this potty seat to stop talking."
Pause.
"I'll make it stop, baby, go back to sleep."
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Roseola. Maybe?
On Thursday I got Elena undressed for a bath and noticed she felt really warm. Now you should know that both of the girls always feel warm, to the point that I took Karina's temperature almost every day when she was a baby because she always felt hot to me. It turned out Elena had a fever of 101.4, which is not too high, but no fever is good news to me. Then I noticed she had a pale rash all over her back. I had noticed a rash on her bum but figured she'd gotten diaper rash from the overnight diaper or something. We took her to the doctor in the morning when the rash was worse, and she no longer had a fever. Our pediatrician tested her for strep and said it was probably roseola. Roseola is a common childhood virus where they run a fever, sometimes very high, for several days and when it breaks, they develop this rash all over their bodies which lasts for another few days. During the illness, they usually act as if they are totally fine and not sick at all.
It was weird that Elena still had a fever when the rash started, but the weirdest thing was Saturday night when she was up all night, from 9pm til 3am screaming. We now think it was unrelated, and she was constipated, but still, all at the same time? Really? Thanks, universe.
I kept crossing my fingers Karina wouldn't get it, because Roseola is contagious (very) and she did not have it as a baby. Sure enough, yesterday she ran a high fever all day which we controlled well with ibuprofen. (It was 103.9 at one point). This morning, the fever is totally gone. But she has no rash yet. One website said it could take a few days for the rash to appear.
I am so frustrated because I don't know whether to send her to preschool on Thursday if she doesn't have a rash yet or not. I believe she is no longer contagious but still....just not sure. What if she never gets the rash? How long do I keep her out? I hate this illness. It's annoying.
But I'm glad her fever is gone because that for me is the scariest part. I remember being sick as a child, probably 4 or 5 years old and hallucinating in my bedroom that numbers and letters were dancing all around the room. They looked like Sesame Street numbers and letters. You know, like puppets. Then another time I don't remember, Mom had taken me to see the doctor and while we were there I had a convulsion from a fever. I don't remember this because I was very little, but the story is enough to scare me where fevers are concerned.
Karina and I did do something super fun on Friday though. We drove across the water to a church fair where my friend had a Tupperware booth set up. The fair had vendors, crafters, games, rides, and food. It was overall kind of small, but we had the best time. Elena was sick so she stayed home with Bill, and just Karina and I went. We had a blast! One thing we discovered was a company called Paparazzi, which is one of those direct sales companies where you host parties. The girl had her booth there and everything is $5! Kids' jewelry was $1! Karina got to pick out three things and I got a really pretty necklace and earrings set--$5! That was fun. We ate hot dogs and played a bunch of games. I spent $3 on tickets and she ended up winning a bunch of trinkets and candy and 3 fake dollars to spend in their "store". She loved that! She also turned out to be a good golfer. She got 2 holes in one! She has never golfed or even held a golf club in her life. That was pretty cool. The drive home was less than stellar, as apparently the department of transportation in our area is run by people whose brains have been consumed by zombies, or perhaps it is run by the zombies themselves. There are three bridge or tunnel crossings in this area that are used by millions in this area. Millions of people every single day. So they decided to shut down two of them at the same time, but then secretly the one that was supposed to be open was having road work while another that was supposed to be closed was opened up, except that to get to that one you had to sit through construction on yet another bridge. So we left at 7:30 and didn't get home til almost 9. It should have taken about 30 minutes. Now apparently the DOT has decided to reschedule some of this construction/maintenance because I guess they didn't realize it would cause so much traffic backing up. Um, really? Zombies. I'm sure of it.
Hope you all had a good weekend!
It was weird that Elena still had a fever when the rash started, but the weirdest thing was Saturday night when she was up all night, from 9pm til 3am screaming. We now think it was unrelated, and she was constipated, but still, all at the same time? Really? Thanks, universe.
I kept crossing my fingers Karina wouldn't get it, because Roseola is contagious (very) and she did not have it as a baby. Sure enough, yesterday she ran a high fever all day which we controlled well with ibuprofen. (It was 103.9 at one point). This morning, the fever is totally gone. But she has no rash yet. One website said it could take a few days for the rash to appear.
I am so frustrated because I don't know whether to send her to preschool on Thursday if she doesn't have a rash yet or not. I believe she is no longer contagious but still....just not sure. What if she never gets the rash? How long do I keep her out? I hate this illness. It's annoying.
But I'm glad her fever is gone because that for me is the scariest part. I remember being sick as a child, probably 4 or 5 years old and hallucinating in my bedroom that numbers and letters were dancing all around the room. They looked like Sesame Street numbers and letters. You know, like puppets. Then another time I don't remember, Mom had taken me to see the doctor and while we were there I had a convulsion from a fever. I don't remember this because I was very little, but the story is enough to scare me where fevers are concerned.
Karina and I did do something super fun on Friday though. We drove across the water to a church fair where my friend had a Tupperware booth set up. The fair had vendors, crafters, games, rides, and food. It was overall kind of small, but we had the best time. Elena was sick so she stayed home with Bill, and just Karina and I went. We had a blast! One thing we discovered was a company called Paparazzi, which is one of those direct sales companies where you host parties. The girl had her booth there and everything is $5! Kids' jewelry was $1! Karina got to pick out three things and I got a really pretty necklace and earrings set--$5! That was fun. We ate hot dogs and played a bunch of games. I spent $3 on tickets and she ended up winning a bunch of trinkets and candy and 3 fake dollars to spend in their "store". She loved that! She also turned out to be a good golfer. She got 2 holes in one! She has never golfed or even held a golf club in her life. That was pretty cool. The drive home was less than stellar, as apparently the department of transportation in our area is run by people whose brains have been consumed by zombies, or perhaps it is run by the zombies themselves. There are three bridge or tunnel crossings in this area that are used by millions in this area. Millions of people every single day. So they decided to shut down two of them at the same time, but then secretly the one that was supposed to be open was having road work while another that was supposed to be closed was opened up, except that to get to that one you had to sit through construction on yet another bridge. So we left at 7:30 and didn't get home til almost 9. It should have taken about 30 minutes. Now apparently the DOT has decided to reschedule some of this construction/maintenance because I guess they didn't realize it would cause so much traffic backing up. Um, really? Zombies. I'm sure of it.
Hope you all had a good weekend!
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Just a few miscellaneous notes
Elena was weighed yesterday at the GI doctor's office (Gastro-intestinal doctor) and she is 19.5 pounds!!! That girl is something!
She has two teeth on the bottom and I think she's getting more somewhere because she is still chomping like crazy on anything she can get her hands on.
She has started "investigating" objects. What I mean is when babies will pick something up, turn it over and over and just look at it and touch it and really seem to be scientifically observing it. I love this stage; I think it's so cute. She was investigating my phone and I scared the daylights out of her when she started to put it in her mouth! I grabbed it and exclaimed, "no!". Poor kid.
Karina is getting consistently fantastic reports from preschool, though I expect nothing less from her at this point. I am sure there will be some negatives someday, but the way she is right now, I'm just soaking it up! Yes, please, tell me again how awesome my child is. Oh yes. She is. (I figure I should get my fill now because Elena....I just don't know. She might be just as good or she might be um, ornery.) (Every time I use that word, I think of my grandfather "Pop" and the first time I saw that word spelled out and I didn't realize it was the same word he used all the time to refer to my brother and me. "Ornery kids" he'd say, but lovingly. He wrote it in one of my grade school yearbooks. I digress.)
Karina is really having fun with my old My Little Ponies. She insisted on getting them all out of my closet, and I gave in, finally, because I figure they should be getting played with rather than stuck on a shelf, although my first ones I did not give her to play with. They are just too special. She still adores her Cars and likes Barbie dolls and Disney Princess dolls of the same size, and she also really likes paper dolls still.
Karina wants to be Rapunzel for Halloween, but I have no idea what to do with Elena. I have the outfit Karina wore, but frankly, I'm not sure Elena will fit in it, and the way she whines when getting dressed, I don't think she'll go for it anyway. I think she is just going to have to be something simple.
A friend of mine recently gave birth to a son, expecting him to need multiple surgeries immediately for some kidney issues he had that they had detected in utero. However, he is doing GREAT and has not needed any surgeries so far! Yeehaw!
I know I promised pictures but I haven't watermarked any yet. I'm sorry, I just don't have the time right now. I will get to them sometime though.
Hope everyone is well!
She has two teeth on the bottom and I think she's getting more somewhere because she is still chomping like crazy on anything she can get her hands on.
She has started "investigating" objects. What I mean is when babies will pick something up, turn it over and over and just look at it and touch it and really seem to be scientifically observing it. I love this stage; I think it's so cute. She was investigating my phone and I scared the daylights out of her when she started to put it in her mouth! I grabbed it and exclaimed, "no!". Poor kid.
Karina is getting consistently fantastic reports from preschool, though I expect nothing less from her at this point. I am sure there will be some negatives someday, but the way she is right now, I'm just soaking it up! Yes, please, tell me again how awesome my child is. Oh yes. She is. (I figure I should get my fill now because Elena....I just don't know. She might be just as good or she might be um, ornery.) (Every time I use that word, I think of my grandfather "Pop" and the first time I saw that word spelled out and I didn't realize it was the same word he used all the time to refer to my brother and me. "Ornery kids" he'd say, but lovingly. He wrote it in one of my grade school yearbooks. I digress.)
Karina is really having fun with my old My Little Ponies. She insisted on getting them all out of my closet, and I gave in, finally, because I figure they should be getting played with rather than stuck on a shelf, although my first ones I did not give her to play with. They are just too special. She still adores her Cars and likes Barbie dolls and Disney Princess dolls of the same size, and she also really likes paper dolls still.
Karina wants to be Rapunzel for Halloween, but I have no idea what to do with Elena. I have the outfit Karina wore, but frankly, I'm not sure Elena will fit in it, and the way she whines when getting dressed, I don't think she'll go for it anyway. I think she is just going to have to be something simple.
A friend of mine recently gave birth to a son, expecting him to need multiple surgeries immediately for some kidney issues he had that they had detected in utero. However, he is doing GREAT and has not needed any surgeries so far! Yeehaw!
I know I promised pictures but I haven't watermarked any yet. I'm sorry, I just don't have the time right now. I will get to them sometime though.
Hope everyone is well!
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Oh wait, I still exist? Hey, actually I do!
Well, as I posted recently--I mean, a while ago--things have been crazy and wild around here. I've been busy and tired, and busy. Most of this is an Elena update, but I do have a few Karina things to share.
Basically what happened was this: Elena was born in January and began crying the second she entered this world. She proceeded to cry so much in the hospital that we got zero sleep until our night nurse finally agreed to take her out so we could get a few hours of sleep. Thus began our descent into the month of nightmarish screaming. After about a month of this, our pediatrician realized that she has acid reflux and prescribed some medicine for her which helped. We had her sleeping in an inclined bassinet which was great, except that she grew really fast and is in the 90th percentile so she outgrew the thing. She would wake quite a few times during the night, as normal newborns do, but this continued for months, even when she should have been giving up some of those feedings. Finally, at her 6 month appointment, we increased her medicine dose based on her weight, but due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the dose was actually less than what she should have been getting because the strength was not the same as she'd been getting. We got that fixed, and by 7 months, Momma over here had had enough of the waking up 2-5 times a night. I hit a wall. I was so tired one day, I literally could not make breakfast. For anyone. I gave her to Bill, announced through tears that I was never, ever getting up with her at night again, and attempted to cry myself to sleep. Bill and I agreed that I would turn off the baby monitor at night and he would try to help Elena learn to sleep better at night by not immediately responding to all of her cries, something I always did. We did try other things, no cry methods, and various other things, but the bottom line became this: I could not function normally or safely, and I could not be a good mother unless I got some stinking sleep. So the "kind" methods had to go. Bill used our video monitor to decide if her cries were urgent or just "I woke up where are you come put me back to sleep". He never let her cry to the point of hysterics or anything like that. Miraculously, from the first night he took over she slept better. I jokingly say she heard me say I wasn't getting up anymore! So now she's 7 1/2 months old, and only waking once a night. It started out around 130am, shifted back to 330am, and is now between 5 and 530am the last three nights (knock on wood). The best thing about these last three nights is the part where she goes back to sleep for another 2 hours! She has been getting up at or before 6am every day (on top of the bajillion night feedings). So that is on the way towards becoming normal, if she'll keep it up. Yay!
She is not crawling yet, but very close. She does the little baby push ups, scootches around on her tush a little, and reaches like crazy. I think she will be crawling very soon.
Today, she got her first tooth! I knew it was coming, I could see it just under her gums, and last night I could not get her to sleep. She cried for an hour, which she has not done for a long time--even with the crazy night feedings, she'd at least start off going to sleep. So I knew something was wrong. Then this morning, she was grinning at me and I saw it--it looked different, so I stuck my finger in there, and yes! It's just barely breaking the surface, but it is there! She has been gurgling and goo-gooing all over the place the last few days, too. Now I just need her to stop spitting out her baby food...I'm not sure she has actually ingested any of it. She just starts spitting as soon as she sees the spoon! Sometimes I can't even get the spoon into her mouth at all!
Karina's chair, my nose.
The now famous Lambkin.
Her toes. The girl takes millions of pictures of her feet.
Her face.
Elena's grin.
Fountain at church; below, some flowers at church.
Karina. She is doing great, as usual. My sweet little girl is getting so big! She starts 3 year old preschool on Tuesday! Wow, how time flies! She is really excited and can't wait to go back to school. This weekend we gave her a kid camera of her own because she has been taking pictures with mine and I'm so afraid she'll break it. But she loves taking pictures, and some turn out okay, too! This one is by Vtech and has only about 1.5 megapixels, but it stores 1000 pictures and has been super easy for her to use. She loves it! And I love that she's no longer asking to use my camera every five seconds. :-) I need to edit and watermark a ton of photos of mine, but that takes forever, so I'm sorry but you will all just have to settle for a bunch of Karina's pictures! I know they are blurry, most of them, and that's because there is no flash on her camera. The outdoor photos did better, but she has to learn about holding the camera still and things like that. I think she did all right for not even being four years old yet. Aren't the flowers pretty? And the one above them is the fountain at church in our columbarium garden. I don't know why there are suds in it. I guess they cleaned it or something.
So we're all doing okay, doing better in a lot of ways, too. My dad is working on the girls' playhouse and when he's done I will definitely post some pictures of that, because you all are not going to believe how awesome this thing is. It's huge, first of all. He has two walls framed up now and once he gets two more done, woo hoo it's going to look like a real building! So I will post about that later. (People, it has a porch! A real one, like with decking and stuff! My own house doesn't have that!)
There you go, all updated, sort of, in summary form. As Elena gets older and is more able to play on her own I should be able to carve out a little more time for photo editing and blogging so you can keep track of my ever-so-exciting life!
Oh, my cousin's baby is due in about 8 weeks! So exciting! I'll keep you posted about that, too!
Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend everyone!
Basically what happened was this: Elena was born in January and began crying the second she entered this world. She proceeded to cry so much in the hospital that we got zero sleep until our night nurse finally agreed to take her out so we could get a few hours of sleep. Thus began our descent into the month of nightmarish screaming. After about a month of this, our pediatrician realized that she has acid reflux and prescribed some medicine for her which helped. We had her sleeping in an inclined bassinet which was great, except that she grew really fast and is in the 90th percentile so she outgrew the thing. She would wake quite a few times during the night, as normal newborns do, but this continued for months, even when she should have been giving up some of those feedings. Finally, at her 6 month appointment, we increased her medicine dose based on her weight, but due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the dose was actually less than what she should have been getting because the strength was not the same as she'd been getting. We got that fixed, and by 7 months, Momma over here had had enough of the waking up 2-5 times a night. I hit a wall. I was so tired one day, I literally could not make breakfast. For anyone. I gave her to Bill, announced through tears that I was never, ever getting up with her at night again, and attempted to cry myself to sleep. Bill and I agreed that I would turn off the baby monitor at night and he would try to help Elena learn to sleep better at night by not immediately responding to all of her cries, something I always did. We did try other things, no cry methods, and various other things, but the bottom line became this: I could not function normally or safely, and I could not be a good mother unless I got some stinking sleep. So the "kind" methods had to go. Bill used our video monitor to decide if her cries were urgent or just "I woke up where are you come put me back to sleep". He never let her cry to the point of hysterics or anything like that. Miraculously, from the first night he took over she slept better. I jokingly say she heard me say I wasn't getting up anymore! So now she's 7 1/2 months old, and only waking once a night. It started out around 130am, shifted back to 330am, and is now between 5 and 530am the last three nights (knock on wood). The best thing about these last three nights is the part where she goes back to sleep for another 2 hours! She has been getting up at or before 6am every day (on top of the bajillion night feedings). So that is on the way towards becoming normal, if she'll keep it up. Yay!
She is not crawling yet, but very close. She does the little baby push ups, scootches around on her tush a little, and reaches like crazy. I think she will be crawling very soon.
Today, she got her first tooth! I knew it was coming, I could see it just under her gums, and last night I could not get her to sleep. She cried for an hour, which she has not done for a long time--even with the crazy night feedings, she'd at least start off going to sleep. So I knew something was wrong. Then this morning, she was grinning at me and I saw it--it looked different, so I stuck my finger in there, and yes! It's just barely breaking the surface, but it is there! She has been gurgling and goo-gooing all over the place the last few days, too. Now I just need her to stop spitting out her baby food...I'm not sure she has actually ingested any of it. She just starts spitting as soon as she sees the spoon! Sometimes I can't even get the spoon into her mouth at all!
So we're all doing okay, doing better in a lot of ways, too. My dad is working on the girls' playhouse and when he's done I will definitely post some pictures of that, because you all are not going to believe how awesome this thing is. It's huge, first of all. He has two walls framed up now and once he gets two more done, woo hoo it's going to look like a real building! So I will post about that later. (People, it has a porch! A real one, like with decking and stuff! My own house doesn't have that!)
There you go, all updated, sort of, in summary form. As Elena gets older and is more able to play on her own I should be able to carve out a little more time for photo editing and blogging so you can keep track of my ever-so-exciting life!
Oh, my cousin's baby is due in about 8 weeks! So exciting! I'll keep you posted about that, too!
Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend everyone!
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