Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Our destiny is to be sick…all the time…

I’m not sure why, but we just seem destined to be sick. Just as Luke was getting over his last sinus cold, he caught another respiratory virus along with another stomach virus. Will had yet to completely recover from his last sinus cold and caught the respiratory virus right after Luke did. And of course, Chris and I both have had a touch of the stomach bug and we’ve both started getting the lovely colds. When will it all end?! I feel so bad for Luke and Will – poor boys have been sick with one thing after the next since before Valentines Day. ‘sigh’

So needless to say, I’ve kept quite busy with two sick boys. Chris continues to remain very busy at work as all the last minute details are completed for going downrange. He has a 4-day this weekend which we plan to use to try to get better and to do a mountain of paperwork and errands that need to get done before he leaves.

Here are quick updates on the boys:

Luke:

Luke’s appetite has suffered greatly with this last round of sickness, which is really frustrating since I felt like he was starting to do better with his eating. Anytime Luke gets sick it seems to really affect his eating. I hope that his appetite will soon return so we can get some meat on those bones!

With this last cold, Luke has learned how to blow his nose. Right now he likes to do it because it’s something new – it’s pretty funny! We’ll hold the Kleenex to his nose and say, “blow” and he’ll give a little blow with a smile.

The other day, Luke started jumping with both feet off the ground! He’s leaped around and attempted to jump up and down before, but this time he finally got both feet off the ground at the same time. He was so excited! He’ll crouch all the way down, hands on the floor, and then with all his might he’ll juuuuump into the air. He’ll do it over and over again.

I’ve also noticed that he has started to color in a different way. Before he would just make a mark or two on the page, but now he’s starting to circle his crayon around the page, pick different colors, and even start coloring specific objects on the page. It’s obviously not in the lines yet, but it was pretty exciting that he’s learning how to color a picture. Of course I think Chris and I have just as much fun coloring as he does!

Some of the things he does is so endearing. He’ll try to give his puppy a drink from his sippy, or feed a stuffed animal a cracker. He’ll cook a meal on his grill kitchen and try to put shoes on his doggie. It’s pretty funny to see him mimic so much of our behavior.

Some of his behavior is not so endearing though. =) He’s started throwing tantrums a lot more then usual. It may be because he’s sick and doesn’t feel well…at least I hope that’s the reason. He’s very adamant about what he wants, and if he can’t have it – tantrum time!

Luke is still loving on his little brother although the more he gets used to Will being around, the more we have to remind him to be gentle. He’s not usually intentional with his roughness – he just wants to be able to play with him. Lately he’s started trying to read his books to Will – too cute! He’s very willing to share his toys (for now) with him. He also likes to have Will sit in his lap. He’ll try to pick him up (luckily Will is to heavy for Luke to be able to do so – otherwise I’d worry about him dropping him) so we’ll tell Luke to sit down and then put Will in his lap. Luke loves it!

Will:

Poor Will has been sick for half his life so far. I’ve tried to get him into the doctor for the last three days, but it’s impossible to get an appointment. His cough sounds horrible and I’m very suspicious he might have RSV from the research I’ve done. From what I’ve read though, there’s not much a doctor can do for a mild case of RSV. Obviously for a serious case they give them medications and hospitalize them. Will hasn’t had a fever so we’ve just been keeping a very very close eye on his cough. If he gets any worse we’ll have to take him to the ER in Landstuhl (since we can’t get him an appointment here.)

I started doing tummy time with Will. Since he’s been so congested the past few weeks, I hadn’t been putting him on his tummy much (though before he got sick way back when, he was taking some of his naps on his tummy.) He loves being on his tummy and I really want him to be able to work on strengthening his neck, so I've started putting him back on his tummy again. I feel really lucky that he likes tummy time so much as I know a lot of babies don’t at first. I know Luke didn’t like it at first!

I have no clue how much Will weights at this point. Thankfully he’s still been nursing fairly well despite his many colds. Speaking of nursing, I’ve very slowly started to reintroduce dairy into my diet. I’ve had a little bit of cheese and chocolate (wow do I miss chocolate!) He seems to be doing better with it, though it’s hard to tell for sure at this point. I do think it’s promising though!

Will is quite alert. He loves to look at his play gyms or mobiles. He’s even started trying to swipe at the toys on his play gym. He’s smiling more and more and making those way cute cooing noises. He still likes to be held a lot – but we’re slowly managing to lay him down for longer periods of time…though he’s not always happy about it.

Alrighty, I’m gonna post this. It’s taking me on average 3 days to write a blog…and I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll take a lot longer once Chris leaves. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll get anything done (other then taking care of the kids) when Chris leaves! Hehehe!

Luke's expression says it best - "I'm tired of being sick!"

Lately, the weather has been more of what I expected Baumholder to be in the winter. Now that it's spring, it's cold, windy and snowing allllll the time. Here is Will all bundled up!

This never happens - Luke fell asleep on his truck chair...

Will doing Tummy time!

And lift that head!

Luke trying to help Will do tummy time...

Luke entertaining Will...


Will sitting on Luke's lap...


Luke reading Will a story...

We got Luke a booster seat so we could recline the highchair and let Will sit at the table during our meals. That way Chris and I didn't have to hold him and try to eat at the same time. Luke was very excited about getting to sit in his big boy chair. Chris had just taken it out of the box and put it together in this picture. Luke started sitting in it and putting the tray on even before we got it on a chair.

Here he is at the table. We did raise the booster seat higher after this picture was taken. At first he was about eye level with his food! Now that it's higher, it fits him just right. He can even climb in and out of it...and is working on strapping himself in too!

Will in the high chair (the back is reclined)... the funny part of it all was that we didn't really have to adjust the straps that much! Luke is so skinny and Will is so big that the strap setting worked for both of them. Will enjoys being able to sit up and see what’s going on – it’s made meal time much much easier.

Luke has started counting to 3. I'm not sure he completely understands the concept of numbers yet - but it's so cute to hear him counting even if he is just mimicking us. Here he is reading one of his counting books...

Will sitting up and alert...

Happy Boy!

Just a cute picture of Will laying his head in Luke's hand...


Update:

We ended up taking Will to the ER last night. He started wheezing badly and breathing really fast so we were pretty concerned considering he’s still so young. I called the nurse advice line and they said to take him into the ER. So at 7pm, we all loaded into the car, drove in the nasty snowy/sleety weather and headed for Landstuhl. Once we got there it took foooooooorever to be seen. I think it was close to midnight when the doctor finally got in there. They did a rapid test for RSV which came back negative, but then the doctor said a lot of the rapid tests come back negative and then when they culture them later, find that they were actually positive. He went on to say that he wouldn’t be surprised at all if he did have RSV. Since his wheezing was pretty bad, they gave him a breathing treatment and had a chest X-ray done. Thankfully the X-ray came back fine. The doctor prescribed an inhaler for him to help with his breathing. I think we left the hospital at around 1:20am in a bad snow/sleet storm and got home at 2am. Luke was a mess. He did pretty well for the first few hours at the ER – but because we were there waaaaaaay past his bedtime (and because he’s still sick as well) he had one meltdown after the next. If it wasn’t that Chris and I are miserably sick as well, we might have been able to entertain him a little better. All in all, we all made out ok though. I’m just relieved that Will is ok.
Alrighty, now I’m going to post the blog. =)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, poor babies! I'm so sorry you are all sickies! Praying for you to all get better soon.

I love the pictures of Luke and Will together - especially the tummy time one with Will's head on Luke's hand. SOOO sweet! Your boys are adorable!

--Jenny

Annie said...

Oh wow, what an ordeal! I am so sorry to hear that you all are so sick. I pray that God heals you all. It must be so draining to be sick AND taking care of 2 sick little boys.

Annie