Oh Hi

Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s been a while since I posted.  The last 10 days have been pretty insane.  Here’s a quick(ish) recap of what we’ve been up to.

*Jack hit a milestone no parent ever wants to see.  He had his first (and god help me, his last) overnight admission in the hospital.  He had trouble breathing, was briefly diagnosed with pnemonia and then they decided that wasn’t it, it was really a partially collapsed lung caused by lack of air movement in his lungs.  It actually sounds scarier that it really is.  Anyway, we were in the hospital for 36ish hours with a 3  year old hopped up on steroids.  I’m glad we all survived.

*When Jack was having problems breathing, I called our pediatrician and got patched through to the Children’s Hospital Triage line.  The nurse told me to take Jack to the ER.  She said to keep him talking and awake and if he got worse or started turning blue to pull onto the side of the road and call 911.  I seriously burst into tears. Thank god my husband was there to calm me down.

*During Jack’s hospital stay, he was officially diagnosed with asthma.  This isn’t a shock considering his history of wheezing.  Right now his triggers are colds.  Not all colds cause breathing issues.  It’s totally random.  So the treatment plan is to treat colds more aggressively.  In the past we only did breathing treatments once he started wheezing.  Now we will start twice a day breathing treatments when he gets a cold.  We’ll see how it goes this summer with allergy symptoms and if need be, we will have him retested for allergies in the fall.

*I want to say thank you to all of our friends and family who helped, offered help, or offered to visit us while Jack was in the hospital.  My SIL had just gotten home after watching the boys all day when I called to tell her about Jack’s breathing problems.  She lives about 40 minutes away from us.  She immediately turned around, met us at the hospital and spent the next day and a half taking care of Xander.  Another friend took care of our dog and countless others offered help, food, and visits.  Thank you all so much!

*You know when your kid was sick and pitiful and despite being  hopped up on steroids, they really didn’t have the opportunity to be bad or obnoxious.  And you know how once they are better, they need to make up for the lack of bad and obnoxious?  Yeah, that was Jack over the weekend.  The kid is smart enough to say “Mommy, you’re my best friend.” just at the right moment, otherwise this weekend would have been REALLY ugly.

*Xander turned 18 months old five days ago.  I don’t even know what to say about that other than I can’t believe he’s turning into this cool little person.  He’s in the middle of a word explosion and it’s incredibly adorable.  He runs every where now.  And we are fully in “I want to do everything my brother is doing” mode.

*A few months ago we ditched the high chair.  Xander had grown weary of it so we switched him to a booster seat.  A few weeks ago he started pitching a fit when in the booster seat.  He would fuss through meals, not eat anything and then when we finally let him down, he would crawl into an empty chair and demand food.  So as a result we have ditched the booster seat and now he just sits on his knees in a regular chair.  It’s been an interesting experience. Some meals are better than others, but there is less screaming and whining at meals.

*I signed up to run a 5k with Jayesel on April 14.  This will be my 2nd 5k and it’s just a few weeks before the Pittsburgh Marathon Relay.  Our team is raising money for The Mario Lemieux Foundation. If you can spare a couple bucks, head over to our fundraising page.

*We had a new deck built a few weeks ago.  It’s basically the same layout as our old deck, just new wood and a built-in gate at the top of the stairs.  The former owners of our  house didn’t really take care of the deck and they painted it.  Who PAINTS a deck?  Anyway, I’m insanely excited to spend a ton of time our there reading and making grilled pizza.

So, what have you been up to the last week or so?

Jack asleep in the hospital. That blue tube is oxygen helping to keep his pulse ox up.

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