Our TERRIFIC Kid!

We had the immense joy of seeing our sweet little girl be presented with a school award on Friday. Emma was chosen to be her class's "Terrific Kid" and we got to attend the ceremony held at school. It was so neat to see all the kids so full of pride knowing they were being recognized for their special talents. Emma was beaming from ear to ear. The principal read each teacher's description of what made these children "terrific." I have to say, the things Emma's teacher said about her made me burst with pride. We couldn't ask for a sweeter girl, and she's smart to boot! We just wanted to share our Emma's achievement with all of you!

On the mend

The boys are back to normal - crazy as ever. Miss Emma just got back from the Dr. and now she has an ear infection. I thought those things weren't contagious. I know, they're not. But sheesh!

Emma has her Fun Run at school tomorrow, and the Dr. said it was fine for her to go. So she will still participate. Heaven forbid if she didn't get to go. So much angst from such a young girl! We'd better keep an eye on that. Oh, and for those familiar with Emma's growth issues, today at the dr. she weighed 41 pounds fully dressed (with shoes). Yay! Still significantly small for her age, but at least she's gaining.

Something else fun is happening on Friday for Emma, but it's a surprise for her, so I'll post about it this weekend. Hopefully I'll figure out how to post video and share it with everyone.

The "P" word

I had to take Brian back to the dr. yesterday for a follow-up visit. I had taken him on Thursday because he had the same thing Jackson had, but much worse. Turned out he had a double ear infection, red/raw throat, and he was wheezing. So she put him on Omnicef and prednisone and breathing treatments every three hours. We made it through the weekend and he seemed to be getting better. And he is, however when we went back for his follow-up, she said she still heard a lot of junk in his chest, so she wanted a chest x-ray. Can you see where this is going? We had the x-ray done (and I'm not going to dwell on the trauma that caused both Brian and me) and went back to the dr's office for the report. Miss Wendy came in the room (after a 45 minute wait) and said she didn't like what she saw. Brian has inflammation/fluid/congestion in his right lung. She also noticed how he was holding his breath a lot and told me that was his way of changing the pressure in his lungs to get more O2. Poor little man! I had no idea he was that bad. He's actually been more normal through this illness so it wasn't totally obvious how sick he was. She basically said it was borderline pneumonia and gave him a high dose antibiotic injection. She also told us to continue the omnicef and the nebulizer treatments and come back on Thursday. So we're just hoping that by Thursday she'll hear some improvement in his lungs and we can put this illness behind us. Although Emma did wake up with a cough and runny nose this morning, but I'm not so worried about her just yet.

I'll leave you with a couple pictures. The first one is a drawing done on the magna-doodle (or 'drawing board' as Brian likes to call it). Brian drew this picture all by himself! It's supposed to be of Joe and Blue from Blue's clues. I'm still in awe that he can draw a face like that at his age!

The one of Emma is of her her first "friend from school" phone call. I felt it necessary to document when the "socialite" behavior first started. Dave and I are sooo not ready for this!

Illness has returned

The boys are sick. Jackson started out with a little cough on Thursday last week. I decided to keep him home on Friday just in case it turned into something worse. He started running a very low temp (99.8) mid-day Friday - he usually is around 97.8 normally. So I was glad I kept him home. On saturday he was fever free and just coughing a bit. He sounded much worse through the evening and on Sunday his fever jumped up over 101...I decided at that point to take him to urgent care because I knew a few kids in his preschool class had the flu. We waited almost 2 hours just so the Dr. could tell me they were out of flu tests and he most likely had the flu. Fine. Monday morning before he woke up I went to CVS and filled the scrip for Tamiflu and went home. Got Jackson up, took his temp - it was 98.4! No fever. He was much more alert and happy. So I have to believe he didn't have the flu but just a cold virus. He's still coughing a lot, it's getting productive, so hopefully he'll work it out soon. He's also pretty congested, but it's not running and it's not slowing him down any. I will continue to keep him home from school though. There's no need to expose the class with something else - they've had enough illness this year.

So I always pray hard when a cold bug comes into the house because Brian still trends towards asthmatic with any kind of virus. Jackson used to be this way, but he's grown out of it mostly. Since Jackson started coughing last week, I have been waiting for it to hit someone else - all the while praying it wouldn't be Brian. Emma is still doing well, Dave and I are fine, but Brian started coughing last night. He's definitely got it, but so far no fever and no breathing treatments have been necessary. Keep fingers crossed that he's old enough to fight it...I would love not to have to break out that nebulizer again...

Happy Birthday Michelle!!!!

Hope you enjoy turning OLDer like me!!!!

Happy Birthday Maria!!!!

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Pia
Happy birthday to you

I promise not to mention how old you are...because I'm older than you!

And way to go on the weight loss - that is awesome!!!! (I'm a bit envious!)

Oh, and I know I'm a day early, but I had to do it while I was thinking about it, otherwise I would have been late!