Wordless Wednesday: Eye think they’ll be brown

Hip hop

This temporary and probably semi-ongoing blogging hiatus has been brought to you courtesy of my mom’s latest health ailment: a hip fracture and surgery to repair it. Not good on top of her already-poor health.

To say I am drained would be an understatement. I felt like I had everything on my plate just barely in balance, but this has thrown things into disarray. There is not enough time in the day right now. There wasn’t before.

It’s too much to go into the whole story, but the gist is that she had a fall on Sunday afternoon, and she was x-rayed in the ER and it was determined to be a fracture and the ball of the femur had to be replaced. Surgery was performed on Monday night, and that went well, though she had some trouble coming out of anesthesia and was put in the ICU overnight for observation given her previous pulmonary issues. Moved to a regular room on Monday morning and was having some hallucinations and confusion, most likely from her pain meds. (I got a great story about her seeing a nun pushing a baby stroller.)

After a very rough Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, things seemed to turn around on Wednesday night, and Thursday (today) was a very good day for her. She gave some initial resistance to going to a rehab facility after she’s discharged, but she really doesn’t have any choice. She has begun physical therapy at the hospital and had a great session this morning. She still requires a lot of assistance and gets out of breath easily, but her attitude has turned around and she’s much more willing to fight. They are hoping to discharge her to the rehab facility tomorrow, and she will begin her journey to regaining strength and walking ability there. We have no estimates on how long she’ll be there, but I suspect we’re looking more at months rather than days or weeks, especially given the fact that she’s got Charcot foot. But we’re really not looking that far ahead yet — first she needs to be discharged from the hospital and get over to rehab.

Balancing work, family, and my mom has been quite a challenge. I’ve driven to the hospital (about a 25-min drive each way) three times most days. I’ve had to return home or to daycare to feed The Little Sis. I’ve had to do my reading for work at 11 p.m. at night after everything else has been taken care of. (Though thankfully they told me to just take off today and Friday instead of juggling work with everything else.) I am physically and emotionally drained, but very glad she seems to be improving, and greatly hoping that continues.

The sick house

*The Big Sis never did end up getting sick beyond that one time throwing up, so I’m not sure what the deal was, but I’m certainly glad it didn’t go any further.

*I recovered from my stomach bug and was back to normal by Wednesday, but now I seem to have a cold/laryngitis in time for the weekend, which doesn’t really amuse me.

*The Husband is mostly better but has occasional bouts with laryngitis himself.

Let’s aim for a 100% healthy house next week!

Wordless Wednesday: And they call it puppy love

You make me sick

Blog silence this time came courtesy of some illnesses running through our house. The Little Sis’ RSV turned out to be very mild (yay!), but then The Big Sis and The Husband got bad colds over the weekend and were down for the count (boo!). I managed to avoid that crud (yay!) — but then made up for it when I got a stomach bug overnight on Sunday night/Monday morning (boo!). I called into work yesterday and today, and I’m finally feeling mostly like myself.

I was hoping to avoid passing that on to anyone, but The Big Sis just threw up a little after 9 p.m. tonight, so here’s hoping that was a one-time thing and not an all-night ordeal like mine was. We’ll know before long, huh?

Well check that out

The Little Sis went in for her 6-month well check and came out of it with an RSV diagnosis.

Well, hrm, that’s not how it’s supposed to go.

She started with some very slight congestion and a very slight cough earlier in the week, but it wasn’t enough to even consider keeping her home from daycare and certainly not enough to consider taking her to the doctor for it. However, two of her classmates had been confirmed with RSV in the past week, so when I took The Little Sis for her 6-month checkup this morning, I requested an RSV test. Not too surprisingly, it did come back positive, so she was home today and will be home tomorrow.

So far it’s been mild, so hopefully that’ll continue to be the case, as I know this can get very serious in babies. (The Big Sis dealt with it twice, worse than this though thankfully not bad enough to have to be admitted to the hospital.) Good news is that The Little Sis’ ears looked great, and I hope that continues as well.

They still did the well check while we were there, and The Little Sis is looking great. She was 25 3/4 inches long (25th to 50th percentile) and 16 pounds and 9 ounces (50th to 75th percentile), and her head circumference was 16 3/4 inches (50th to 75th percentile).

She met all of her developmental milestone questions, which included:

*Can your baby roll over?
*Does your baby reach for objects?
*Does your baby turn his/her head to sound?
*Will your baby try to move a toy?
*Does your baby make vowel sounds?
*Does your baby recognize you?

We decided to postpone shots until she’s feeling better, so we’ll go back in two weeks for that.

She sure doesn’t look like she’s too sick, does she? This pic was taken right before we left for the doctor this morning.

Wordless Wordy Wednesday: Victory is mine!

All right, it’s not quite a wordless entry this time, as I wanted to explain the significance of these pics.

Anyone who has taken the picture of two or more children — not just siblings but any two children — knows how impossible it can be to get a picture of both children looking in the same direction as the camera AND smiling. It’s the ultimate holy grail of kid picturedom.

The Little Sis, who has always been a happy baby, is going through a spurt of extra happiness at the moment, resulting in quite a large number of ear-to-ear grins. (Oh, I need to remember to post a video of her giggle!) This makes for a perfect opportunity to get pics of both of the girls together, smiling AND looking at the camera. The five pics below all have come within the first seven days of February. Not too bad!

Halfway through the first year!

In da crib, yo

We tried to put The Little Sis in the crib over Thanksgiving weekend, and that worked well for a couple of weeks, but then it all went downhill quickly, so we moved her back to the trusty swing. Then she started waking up again overnight even in the swing (darn you, four-month sleep regression!), but thankfully that phase got better — but then the swing broke and we had to order a new motor, so we were without the motor for a couple of weeks. We managed with the swing, but we had to go in and manually push the swing whenever her sleep cycle would change and wake her up.

A week ago, The Husband was talking with The Daycare Teachers. They were saying how The Little Sis pushes with her feet against the side of the crib and rolls over to nap on her belly. To say we were shocked was an understatement, especially considering she had rolled from back to belly just once for us.

That night, we tried something different. We decided to unswaddle her (she was sleeping in the Miracle Blanket still, with just the arms swaddled) and try to let her sleep on her belly. Of course, it’s not recommended at this age for them to sleep on their bellies, but we made the decision to give it a try. She has been sleeping in her crib ever since, still using a pacifier and now sleeping with a frog blanket cuddle toy**. That’s another crib no-no, the cuddle toy, but I needed to try something to keep her from taking her pacifier out of her mouth with her hand and waking herself up, and that did the trick. She’s had two nights in the past week where we didn’t have to go in there at all until time to wake her up. The other nights we’ve had to go in there a couple times to replace a pacifier or pat her back for a bit, but you can tell she’s doing much better with self-soothing when she does have those sleep cycle changes. I’m not quite ready to put up the Miracle Blanket for good, but I did wash it and tuck it away in the drawer. Oh, and we’ve not changed the swing motor yet even though we’ve had it for a good week or two, as this helps us avoid the temptation to just plop her in the swing if she wakes up. Still, it’s nice knowing it’s there, just in case…

Here’s hoping we don’t even need it, though!

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**Funny story about the frog blanket cuddle toy. Once I saw that The Little Sis was developing a fondness for the frog blanket, I decided we needed to buy an extra as a backup. I was having trouble finding an exact replacement, which didn’t surprise me since we actually received the blanket when The Big Sis was a baby but she never used it. Well, some more poking around the Internet revealed the fact that this blanket had been recalled — so nowhere can you buy it. Of COURSE that’s the one that The Little Sis has started to get attached to. I contacted the company, and they can send me a replacement frog blanket (that doesn’t look the same), but we are supposed to send the recalled blanket to them first and then they ship out the new one. I’m trying to track down a local retailer for it so I can buy a new one to use once we send the old one back, so we’re not without a frog blanket for at least a week or two, but so far I haven’t had much luck with that. They’re looking into it for me, though, so here’s hoping they find a retailer here!

First-food Friday

The Little Sis started solid foods for the first time today, beginning with some oatmeal to get some practice.

The Big Sis got things started for us (I love The Dog sticking his nose in there to see what’s up):

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Gimmesome!

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Hrm…not really sure about this, you guys.

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Hey, this is great!

Doctor day

Today was The Big Sis’ five-year checkup. The Pediatrician began by looking at the last time she was in the office, and you know what? Her last visit was for her four-year-old checkup! (Well, aside from going for her flu shot. That doesn’t really count.) She made it a whole year without a doctor’s visit!! Considering our rough start with her in the first couple of years with illnesses, this was a fantastic realization for us.

The Nurse weighed her (42 pounds) and measured her (43 inches), both 50th to 75th percentile and a BMI of 16 (50th to 75th percentile), then took us back to the room and did the blood pressure (84/42). I answered the questions of developmental milestones, which she met. They included:

*Can your child point while counting three or more objects?
*Can your child name some letters on sight?
*Is your child able to recognize some signs or billboards (like the word “open” or the word “stop” on a sign)?
*Can your child button his or her own clothes or a doll’s clothes?
*Does your child react well when left with a good friend or a sitter?
*Can your child jump with his or her feet apart (broad jump)?
*Can your child walk down stairs using alternating feet?
*Can your child copy a square?
*Can your child identify and print the first letter in his or her name?

The Nurse left and The Pediatrician soon came in to examine The Big Sis. He checked her ears, eyes, nose, teeth/mouth, throat, belly, girl parts, and legs and feet. He then had her bend over so he could check her spine as well. He asked if we had any concerns — and we did discuss one pretty big thing that will be its own post very soon — and we talked some about starting school. Our state requires a dental exam (which she’s due for this spring) and a vision exam, which we’ll have done probably sometime over the summer; I added her to my vision plan recently at open enrollment, so we’ll be ready for that. She was taken to another room for a hearing screening, which she passed, and with that we headed out, stopped for a doughnut, then headed off to school and work. Five-year-old checkup? Check!

Wordless Wednesday: The birthday girl