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Cough, cough, cough

December 13, 2011 7 Comments
Tree!

My kids have coughed all day long. I’m so sick of having sick children! Booooo! They’ve already missed school on Friday, Monday, and now today. And tomorrow’s not looking great, I’ve gotta say. They’re all still whiny and tired and coughing their heads off. But…but…but…this was my last week! The kids have their class parties for Christmas on Friday afternoon, and then they’re home with me until ::gulp:: January 24th. I was going to use these last few days without children to wrap presents, get a pedicure, and try to stock up my inner stores of solitude and peacefulness. I’m going to need something to get me through this long winter break! So, yeah. I’m supposed to be at that autism insurance seminar I posted about, but I’m home with four sick children (and I’m sick myself, as well.) Mister Pauly is going instead, so I’m sure he’ll take lots of notes and let me know what I need to read up on. And little Pablo is missing Zoo Lights with his Cub Scout group, which kind of sucks for him. Stupid long-lasting colds!

In other news, our elementary school has officially announced that they are changing to a traditional calendar after this school year instead of the 4-track year round calendar we currently follow. I could not be more pleased. I’m sure I’ll miss the awesome fall track-off that occurs in late September/early October, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t like having a five week summer vacation. I don’t like my kids heading to school at the end of July when the other kids are at the pool. And I sure as hell don’t like having my children cooped up in the house for five weeks in the dead of winter, when it’s freezing outside and everyone is always sick! My dear friend Arin’s children go to a school which is on a modified traditional schedule, and to me, that sounds like the best of both worlds. They have two weeks off in the fall, at Christmas, and in the spring, and a *slightly* shorter summer vacation. Doesn’t that sound nice? I’ll be interested to see what our breaks look like next year. For now, I’m like, YEAH! This will be our LAST January track-off. With that in mind, it’s not really killing me as much as usual knowing that my kids are blowing through their last week of school by being NOT at school.

While they’ve been home, we made an awesome Christmas present for their daddy! Paul’s working out of a field office near his latest construction project, which is right near Sports Authority Field at Mile High (which will always be Mile High Stadium, as far as this Denver native is concerned.) He moved into his office in the fall, but has nothing on the walls. The kids and I made him an awesome painting that I hope he will like. He hits up my blog about once a year, so I doubt my posting this will ruin the surprise. It came out pretty cute, huh? I painted the (admittedly jacked-up looking) tree and sky, and the kids added the leaves with their fingerprints.

Filed Under: Teh Crazy, The Monkeys Tagged With: , , ,

Why is my bed so comfy when my kids are sick?

February 21, 2011 Leave a Comment

Remember me having the flu last week? Yeah, well – apparently I shared a bit of it with my kiddos. Boooooo. Boo for sick kids, but boo also because they won’t stay in their own ROOM! Even though their bedroom is small and closed up, with a humidifier cranked on high, they won’t listen to reason and stay in there. They’d much rather drool on MY pillowcases.

Filed Under: 365, Family Tagged With: ,

365 – January 7, 2011

January 10, 2011 Leave a Comment

Poor Nikki has been battling the worst ear infection ever! This was our 2nd trip to the doctor and our 2nd round of antibiotics. Poor bug.

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It’s Two Hundred Dollar Day!

April 22, 2010 1 Comment

I know my posting has been sporadic, and it’s not because I don’t love ya, ’cause you know I do! It’s because I’ve been busy dealing with a houseful of sick children! Now, having a sick kid or two is pretty commonplace around here. This has been the first time in history, though, that I’ve had to take ALL FIVE of my children to the doctor on the same day.

Let’s do the math here, shall we?

$30 doctor visit copay x 5 kids = $150.00. Ouch. Grocery budget for the week, blown immediately.

$10 prescription copay x 4 kids who all have strep = $40.00 Sheesh. Can’t I just get a gallon jug of Amoxicillan?

Miss Kayley’s strep test was actually negative, much to my surprise, so she didn’t get a bottle of the pink stuff. So, I stand corrected, Kaiser only got $190 of my money. Boooooo! Thank God we spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month on insurance, so we can spend another two hundred bucks when our kids get strep throat. I’m going to divorce my husband and go on welfare. (No, not really. I’m just going to bitch about it on my blog.)

Filed Under: Boooooo., Family Tagged With: ,

Why can’t I be like Allison DuBois?

January 22, 2010 4 Comments

I don’t really want dead people to visit me and try to avenge their own murders or anything like that, but I WOULD love to be able to figure out what’s making my son ill today. The boy’s been vomiting since he woke up this morning and I’m scratching my head – everyone else is absolutely fine and healthy!

Pablo’s progressed to where he speaks pretty well, but he’s still really not verbal enough to tell me what hurts, whether or not he ate something he shouldn’t have, or even if he’s feeling a little bit better. This is by far the most frustrating thing about autism – not being able to communicate back and forth when it’s extra important.

Poor punk! He’s playing with Legos, so maybe we’re on the up and up!

Filed Under: Autism, The Monkeys Tagged With: ,

Shouldn’t I be losing my mind right about now?

April 10, 2009 2 Comments

Well. Here we are. Friday! A week ago at this time, Mallory was being diagnosed with pneumonia, Pablo was in the middle of a bad spell with his reactive airway disease, and the little girls were coughing like a pair of barking seals. And little did we know that day, that in just another twelve hours, we’d be rushing Pablo to the ER because of major abdominal distress. Our house was like a sick ward, with the smell of Vicks Vaporub hanging thickly in the air, the constant hum of the humidifier, and that loud ass nebulizer buzzing away every four hours, right on schedule.

Contrast that with today! The kids are using the toybox lid as a sled, and sliding down the entire flight of stairs to the basement. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and my little barrel of monkeys finally seems to feel better. It’s about fucking time, that’s all I have to say about that. I’m not certain we’re completely in the clear, as Pablo was just running a fever yesterday – but we’re 180 degrees from where we were a week ago.

We’re midway through the big kids’ track off from school. They got out on March 26th, and they don’t go back until April 20th. That’s three long weeks to spend at home with mom, and the last time they tracked off from school, I damned near lost my MIND! Of course, they were off for FIVE weeks that time, and it was right as we were moving into our new house. This time seems to be going a little better, in spite of the fact that we’re living in the quarantine house.

I fully expected to be clawing at the walls by now, after the seemingly endless snow and cold wind we had that first week, and the whiny sicko children this whole second week. But here we are. Just one week to go, and I’m already feeling sad about them going BACK to school! What? What’s going on here? Shouldn’t I be doing pirouettes around the living room at the very idea of restoring a small amount of order to my house? I’m not at all! I’m really ENJOYING having my kids all home, watching them make up little games and stories, doing art projects, destroying my house.

I’ve only got one week left with them! We need to really make next week COUNT! We’ve got to make our museum trip! We need to plant flowers! We need to ride our bikes to the park! We need to go get haircuts and eat sushi and buy new shoes! And we need to do it SOON, before we start wearing on each other’s nerves!

We’ll see what tune I’m singing NEXT Friday, when they’re heading back to school after the weekend!

Filed Under: Family, House, Teh Crazy, The Monkeys Tagged With: , , , ,

Reactive Airway Disease SUCKS!

April 1, 2009 57 Comments

Mallory giving Pablo a nebulizer treatment. Have you ever heard of Reactive Airway Disease? I hadn’t either, until a year or so ago when our son got this horrific cough that wouldn’t go away. It’s basically just like asthma, except instead of being ongoing, the symptoms come and go and it’s usually triggered by a cold virus. The kids have been passing a cold bug back and forth, and it finally made its way to the boy. So, for days now, we’ve been doing round-the-clock nebulizer treatments and having him sleep in a humid room. Old hat. Easy cheesy. We’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, every time he gets sick, and it usually passes in a day or two.

Not this time! The other night, Pablo coughed literally all night long. Paul and I were up with him, worried, and I started counting the seconds between his coughs, like I was trying to find out how far away the lightning strike was from me. He was coughing on average, every twenty seconds. Poor kid! And NOTHING helped. We did the nebulizer, I buttered him up with Vicks Vaporub, we had the humidfier going on high, I even gave him the strong cough meds I usually save for emergency situations: Prescription Cheratussin with Codeine! It didn’t do a thing for my poor child.

I rattled off an email to Kaiser at about 4 in the morning, right before Pablo FINALLY stopped coughing and fell asleep. They asked us to come in promptly at nine. Paul pointed out to me that middle-of-the-night emails work WAY better than calling in and sitting on hold for half an hour!

Pablo’s oxygen level was at 90. I thought that sounded pretty good! That’s an A, right? I guess not. Even at our elevation, they wanted him to be above 96. They gave him a nebulizer treatment at the office and then informed us of the new plan: Prednisone!

We tried Prednisone a few years ago when Pablo was too frightened of the nebulizer, and it sucked ASS. It turned him into this psychotic, paranoid, hyped up little toddler. I was NOT looking forward to trying it out again, but…it seems to be doing the trick. Pablo’s still coughing here and there, but no more of that all-night-long business. And he is a bit agitated, but honestly – we’re on spring break, it’s cold as hell outside, and everyone’s sick. I’M a bit agitated!

Fingers crossed that the sun’ll come out tomoooorroooooow, the kids will get better, we can stop the steroids, and manage a trip to the museum before school starts again!



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