recovery

I ended up calling our pediatrician and taking Logan to the ER late yesterday afternoon. He had been throwing up for 9 hours every 20 minutes and couldn't even keep a teaspoon of water down. When he cried, he had no tears and that worried me. I didn't want him to continue throwing up and getting more dehydrated throughout the night. A good friend and neighbor watched Dylan until Andrew could get home, and Logan and I zoomed off to the hospital.

I was fully expecting to encounter a waiting room full of sick kids. Our hospital has a nice new pediatric ER and I just knew it would be full of kids. I didn't know how long we'd have to wait, so before we left the house I threw a bunch of supplies in the car - extra clothes, Matchbox cars, towels, books... But when we arrived and signed in, they had an empty room and they put us back right away.

Logan was completely lethargic and pale and just laid in bed, still, watching Curious George, while they ran various tests and took X-Rays to rule out pneumonia. The ended up giving him Zofran to stop the vomiting, and tested its success later by giving him juice and a turkey sandwich. If he kept it down, we'd be released. If he didn't, they'd give him an I.V. and start fluids. We had a 50/50 chance.

The Zofran worked almost immediately. It was like watching a deflated punching bag lying limp on the ground rapidly fill with air and stand up. And then start flying around the room like a firefly on a sugar buzz. He drank three apple juices, and ate all the bread of the sandwich.

And then he became Corn Julio.

They wanted to give him an hour and a half and make sure he didn't throw up again. Which was plenty of time for him to explore every crevice of the 8 x 10 room, push every button, play with the automatic faucet on the sink, figure out how to elevate the hospital bed, and lick every single flat surface in the entire room including the chair arms, the sliding glass door and the sink counter. So it will be a small miracle if he didn't infect himself with another Plague of some sort. They said there might be a wave of diarrhea before this whole thing is over. Fun! At least he's still in diapers and we can contain that, unlike the projectile vomitorium all over the house yesterday.

They released us at 7 p.m. and he blew kisses to all of the nurses and slapped the doc a high five. He's a charmer. Today, he's already eaten a pear, some cereal, a fruit smoothie and painted three pictures, played Hungry Hippos, helped me unload the dishwasher, blew bubbles and terrorized the dog.

Yep, I'd say he's back to himself.

plague

I knew we'd been too lucky this winter in avoiding The Plague. Logan woke early this morning throwing up, and has not been able to keep anything down all day. Its a total laundry-o-rama going on over here. Dylan is at school, and Logan is laying on beach towels on the couch watching movies until the next wave comes. So far Andrew has taken his whole bed apart and put it back together, and I've scrubbed the carpet and couches three times. And I'm using towels that have already cycled thru the laundry once today. Poor guy can't even keep down a sip of water. He's already had three baths today from throwing up all over himself.

I'm praying for a miracle, that somehow the rest of us avoid coming down with this nasty thing.

Speaking of praying, this has been a very sad week for several of our friends who are mourning the loss of loved ones. There seems to be a lot of that going on in the past few weeks. Our hearts go out to all of you, and you're in our thoughts.

illin'

Friday night, Logan would not sleep. He kept crying that his ear hurt. I'm so glad he at least has the words now to tell us. And he's really been sleeping so much better lately, we knew something was off. He had a cold all of last week and by Friday night, I guess it migrated to his ear. I got one of the coveted few pediatrician appointments first thing Saturday morning, and sure enough, infection in the left ear. Not too, too bad yet but still worthy of antibiotics and lots of Motrin. Off to the pharmacy, we filled his prescription for amoxicillin, and he's slept just fine the past two nights.

Dylan was riddled with repeated ear infections when he was an infant. So much so, that by 10 months, he had tubes put in. We always wondered when we had a second child, if they would suffer the same fate. But this is Logan's first one ever, and at 2 1/2, I think that's pretty darn good. I hope its an isolated case.

On a related note, I keep wondering when its going to be Our Turn. Usually once a winter, all (or most) of us come down with a Terrible Stomach Virus. The kind where you don't know which end to stick in the toilet first. The past two winters, I swear I traced it back to a random weekend visit to Chuck E Cheese once, and a visit to the kids play area at the mall the other time. This winter, guess where we aren't going?

sick day

The first germs of kindergarten have invaded our house. I've been a hacking, feverish, runny nose mess for two days now. And last night, Dylan came down with a fever. I kept him home from school today, and we've been lounging. Well, maybe lounging isn't the word. Lounging doesn't happen with a two year old around. I'd call it "doing as little as possible to keep everyone fed." The first half of our day was spent watching Scooby Doo and cleaning out the toy box.

After Logan's nap, we got slightly more motivated and baked some cookies. I don't know why they came out so flat, but they're darn tasty anyway.

Then we moved onto pumpkin painting, trying to convince ourselves to feel better.

Except Logan got more paint on himself than his pumpkin and it took a good hosing down to get him cleaned up.

All I've really wanted to do is just crawl in bed for about three days, watch movies and turn off the phone. But there's no such thing as a sick day for mommies.