1. First all 4 kids passed around some nasty cold/croup virus. Of course it his Noah the hardest. His athsma makes a virus into something more difficult. He was coughing until he threw up when he was sleeping and it never woke him up. It got old really fast. The first night that he got the cough he woke up at midnight and his barking cough woke me up. A few hours later he was really struggling to breathe. We tried all the things we knew to do and then decided he needed to go to the ER. That is always such a hard decision as a parent. We feel like we're overreacting, but then I remember our allergist saying athsma can go from bad to worse and even fatal in the blink of an eye. It's just not something to mess with. I would rather they send us home than second guess why we didn't do it. He didn't seem to mind all the much. Wathching TV and drinking a cocktail of steroids and fruit punch was not so bad. I was exhausted, but we survived. The treatments helped quickly and we were home within 3 or 4 hours.
I'm not sure what the actual order of all this is, but it really doesn't matter. At some point Aiden was standing in the hallway talking to me when out of nowhere our key hanger/mirror managed to break apart and fall...right onto Aiden's face. For those of you keeping track that makes a split open eyebrow, a fall at the zoo that scraped up his face really bad, bit through his lip..twice and now this. That's all in less than a year.
Next was a bit of really great news. Devyn got her first tooth! She got her second tooth recently too. The weird part is she got her "fangs". Too bad it's not Halloween. She could've been a vampire. There are no other teeth in sight, so we'll see what happens with that.
The craziest part of the last month came when Devyn decided to try and walk down the stairs. We had taught her how to turn around and go down on her belly. She was doing great. Then, one day she decided she wanted to be just like her brothers and walk down. Of course she didn't even make it down one step. She cried for a while and then seemed okay. I could tell that when I moved her arm it hurt, but she didn't make a big deal out of it. The next time she put pressure on the arm she cried. I called my mom and she agreed that she should probably go in. So, my mom went with me and Nate stayed with the boys. The ER was CRAZY busy. We thought she seemed to be doing better and even considered leaving. I told my mom that we had come that far, we might as well wait. Good thing we did. It was broken. They told us she had a greenstick break of her ulna. They put a temporary cast on, questioned me about how it happened and checked her whole body for abuse. People have asked if it bothered me that they did that. My answer is no. I would be bothered if they didn't. That's their job. After a few hours (which was much faster than I expected given how busy it was) we were on our way home.
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| Thank the Lord for Mimi! I would have had a nervous breakdown from all the crying without her! Plus, she's just pretty great.
The next day I called and made an appointment with an orthopedist at the University of Chicago. I had just switched offices for Noah's allergist and thought that we were done going there. Almost 4 years later I'm convinced we'll have reasons to go back there forever. We have seen more doctors at that hospital than I ever would have imagined. Anyways, when I got her up from her nap that morning she has done a number on her temperary cast.
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Thankfully there was a fabulous team who helped get her all set when we got to Comer. The orhopedists came in right away to check her out and to tell us that she had not broken one bone, but 2. She broke the ulna and radius. They handed me a printout of her xray to show me the breaks. So sad. They put a pretty pink cast on her arm while singing to her, blowing bubbles with her, giving her stickers and doing whatever they had to do to keep her from crying. It was nothing short of amazing. She cried anytime they came near her in the ER and she never cried once they started singing to her at Comer. That is exactly why we go there. They know exactly what to do and who to call (thank you child life team). It is worth the trip every time to receive such great care.
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| She gets to have this beauty of a cast on for 5 weeks. It goes most of the way up her arm, almost to her armpit. It stinks and she'l learning it's a weapon.
All in all it's been a busy month. I've also been asked a number of times if the broken arm was really hard for me. It's really not so bad. We have lived through SO much worse than this. It's a bump in the road. I felt bad, but at the end of the day she was okay. Now on we go to Christmas. So, it may be a while before you hear from me again. At least now you know why it took so long this time!
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