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Lucky came home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. He is doing much better and was running around with his brothers tonight, making me crazy. Life is good!!

Thank you so much for your prayers. I think I might have felt them the most.

Pictures to come.

Lucky has a follow-up visit at his pediatrician's tomorrow morning. I'll let you know how it goes.

Saturday (it is Saturday, right?)

I started a post last night all about yesterday's happenings, but fell asleep writing it. I will finish it at some point so we can remember all that happened. The short story is that they had to add another antibiotic to the other major ones Lucky was already taking. His white blood cells have gone down. He also did not have a fever last night. That was the first time since last Wednesday, Dec. 8th. That is very good news.
The doctors say that if tomorrow's labs and x-rays show improvement we get to go home!

Update on Lucky

Last night was pretty normal for Lucky. He slept well except when his fever was up. When his fever is up he is just miserable. His breathing becomes really shallow and he grunts with each breath. This morning he was acting great, but he has been that way the past few morning.

The doctor came in this morning to tell us that Lucky could possibly be coming home today. A pleasant surprise. He said that if he found that what he had was viral then there was nothing they could do in the hospital that we couldn't do at home. I was glad to hear that he might come home, but it also made me nervous to go home where there are no experts waiting right outside the room.

Well, the afternoon came and went and we hadn't heard anything. I left for a little while for some shopping to relieve some stress (didn't help) and when I called El Guapo to see how things were going he said that Lucky would need to spend another night. Then a while later El Guapo called to tell me that they were going to do another chest x-ray. He thinks that the x-ray looks better than the past few x-rays, so that's good. He ordered an ultrasound to be sure. The tech said she saw "a little bit of fluid". I don't know if that is good that there is only a little, or if the fact that there was any is bad. We will find out tomorrow if he needs surgery to drain the fluid.

I am sorry if none of this makes sense. I am exhausted and want to go to bed. I'm sure I will read over this in the morning and find plenty of mistakes. El Guapo is sleeping with Lucky tonight. I hope he gets more sleep than I did.

I'll let you know how things go tomorrow.

Good night.

Hospital

Lucky is in the hospital. As his doctor said: He is not in distress, but what we are doing is not working and we need to move in a different direction.

His lung was not responding to the antibiotic shots they were giving him. The x-ray of his lung on Wednesday was worse than the one on Monday. As far as I could tell, from his activity at home, he had been a lot better Tuesday morning, but had no change from Tuesday to Wednesday.

We are here for IV antibiotics. He did a great job when they put in his IV. He cried, but got over it pretty quickly. When they came a while later to draw some blood from the IV he got really nervous. The nurse told him that she was not going to poke him again, but I could tell he was still worried that it would hurt. Once she hooked the syringe up to the line and she started to suction the blood out he sighed and quietly said, "That feels fine."

They are having some problems with their prescription computer, so they have not actually started the meds yet. Which I am assuming means a longer stay for us since we have now been here for 5 hours with no medication yet.

I had a flight planned for tomorrow afternoon. My little sister is getting married in Utah this weekend and Buttercup and I were going to be there. We will not be going. I am sad about it, but I am happy to be here helping Lucky.

While typing this they came to get him for a chest x-ray. He is a pro at them now.

He is in great spirits. He is joking around and being very sweet. There was a little while earlier this evening that his fever was back and he was not so happy, but he is great now. He is watching Nemo and eating candy. What more could a kid ask for? :)

They just started the antibiotic drip (now 7 hours after we arrived). Let's pray that it does what it should.

I'll let you know tomorrow how things are going. And I'll post some pictures.

Lucky's not feeling so lucky

Last Wednesday night Lucky started getting sick. It began with the complaint of a sore throat, then a high fever, then vomiting. By Friday night the vomiting stopped, but other symptoms like stomach and back pain started. We took him to urgent care and he was diagnosed with a double ear infection. Poor baby.
We got him on some antibiotics and things were looking up. Or so we thought. By Sunday night he was still not really eating and the fever was still going strong. The other symptoms were getting worse too.
We decided to take him to his regular pediatrician this morning and after a very long day at the hospital and a few tests it turned out that he has pneumonia. Poor, sad baby.
It is scary to hear that, but at the same time it was nice to have a correct diagnosis. I never felt like the double ear infection was right. I knew there was something else going on. I didn't realize the pneumonia was it, but once they said it everything made sense.
The doctor gave him an antibiotic shot. We will take him back in the morning to see if he needs another one and then get him on an oral antibiotic.
He is peacefully sleeping right now. His brothers just got home from school. Dusty pulled a candy cane out of his backpack and laid it on Lucky's blanket. So sweet. I hope Lucky is up rough-housing with his brothers again soon.

12 Days of Christmas

Click on the link on my sidebar to learn what our family will be doing for the 12 days of Christmas this year.

I'm excited to start this on Monday. It goes right along with the FHE lesson we had this week about service.

4th of July (yep, more catching up)

I was looking through old pictures today and saw these of Buttercup from the 4th of July.

 I miss that round face and fuzzy head.


I don't recall much from this day, but I got some fun pictures.

This was earlier in the evening when we were only doing smoke bombs, not real fireworks. I love how excited the boys are in this picture.

They were obviously pretending it was a big, scary firework.

It took a few seconds for Lucky to catch on.

So funny.

I love Ned's face in this last one.

It had rained earlier in the day and they had a great time playing in the puddles in our front yard.

They were all attempting to jump at the same time for a picture. Didn't work out too well.

It was a good day.

10 months

In the last month Buttercup has started to crawl, just in time for the Christmas tree to go up. The tree just happened to go up the same day she stared to crawl. An unlucky coincidence. For the first few days she would crawl with her hands and drag her knees. It was so cute and funny. She has not been too bad about getting into the tree though, which has been nice. Thunder has been worse about it.

Speaking of Thunder, I keep forgetting to show you all a picture. The one I have was taken just over a month ago. He is growing like a weed. He is so much bigger now. We love him, but man, he is one active puppy.

It is kind of funny to have a puppy and a baby at the same time. They get into the same things. They both want to chew on cords, shoes, pick up food off of the floor, etc. It can bet a bit crazy. Thankfully I can stick one of them in the back yard most of the day. :)

9 months

I love these big mouthed smiles! Especially with 2 little teeth.

Usually when my children turn 9 months old it make me so sad. It usually means they become less cuddly as they start to move around and crawl. Well, Buttercup has never been much of a cuddler anyway. Yes, I am sad she is getting older, but I don't feel like I am going to soon miss out on that. This girl is a mover. She just doesn't stop. If it were appropriate I would take video of her nursing. She is a crazy girl. She does not stop moving!

She is getting closer to crawling, but (thankfully) not quite there.

She loves to eat. She also loves to feed her new puppy from her tray (details on him coming soon!)

She has enough hair that I can put a tiny barrette in it, which I did for the first time today. Hopefully she will not take them off as much as the headbands. She has been pulling on them a lot lately.

She sleeps through the night. She has done that for quite a while now, but she has been sleeping longer recently.

She lights up when her brothers, and especially her daddy is in the room.

She has a well-check in the morning. I will report her stats soon.

Family Pictures, October 2010

My friend, Cara took our family pictures for us before she left me moved to Virginia this weekend. She has been a great friend and I will miss her so much. She (and her two kids)  finally gets to see her husband after his year in Saudi Arabia. A year is a very long time. I am so excited for them all to be together again!

Anyway, I realized that I posted some of my family pictures on FB, but not here. I am posting tons here, so enjoy!