I have a good excuse!

I know, I know! It's been nearly a month since I updated. But I have a really good excuse.....actually I have quite a few! It's been a rough month in the "Kansas Three" household.

On MLK, Jr. Day, Ethan and I spent the morning at walk-in at our pedi's office. He had been up ALL NIGHT the night before just crying and crying. Yup! Ear infection in the right ear and pink eye. So we got on an antibiotic. Charlie stayed home with him on Tuesday. We sent him to daycare Wednesday but he didn't make it. Charlie was picking him up at 1:30 because he was just miserable. I made sub plans before I left work and stayed home with him on Thursday and Friday.

By Friday he was doing much better and we did some laundry! Ethan helped!



Friday was his 6-month well visit. He is growing like crazy! He weighed in at 17lbs and 10.2oz. He was 26 1/4" long. We "passed" all parts of the well-check except when Dr. M asked if he was sitting up on his own. He was still falling over to the side and flopping on his face when we tried to help him sit up. We promised to keep working on it.

Here are some pictures from January 11th - the official 1/2 birthday. It is getting harder and harder to take this pictures. He likes to crinkle paper!!








Literally 3 days after his well-check when we told his doctor he could not sit up on his own, we got down on the carpet to play with toys and he sat right up on his own - looked at us and laughed.........as if to say "Ha Ha! You got in trouble with the doctor and all along look at what I can do!!" He's getting more and more steady with his balance and really loves to sit up and play! It's fun!

pssst ~ look really close in that 2nd picture!!




Among our other milestones ~ and as a follow-up to my last blog post ~ we definitely have two teeth!! If you missed them in the previous picture, he's a better one!




He is eating all sorts of veggies and especially loves green beans!! So far the only fruits he has enjoyed are applesauce and peaches. We have to wait a little longer (around 8ish months) to do yogurt, puffs, teething biscuits, etc because most of them have some kind of milk protein in them. And that's why we are on the special formula - because up to this point he hasn't been able to tolerate the milk proteins. As soon as we get all better ~ we are going to start Stage 2 meats!




OK ~ back to the timeline of my excuses!

So he had his well visit on Friday 1/23. The following week seemed to go great. I know, I should have updated then. But that week, I was the one who started to feel cruddy and we were all trying to catch up on sleep from the week before.



He finished his antibiotic - which he had a horrible reaction to and ended up with a very very very bad diaper rash - on Wednesday 28th. On Saturday 30th, I noticed he was starting to get congested again and had started to cough. Great! By Sunday when I got home from church he sounded terrible. I was afraid of starting the week off with a sick baby so off we go to the After Hours Pediatrics place. Sure enough ~ ear infection again in that same ear, but no pink eye this time! Ugh! New antibiotic for 10 more days. Here we go again.

By Monday afternoon his diaper rash, which we had almost gotten under control, returned with a vengence. His poor little bum was actually bleeding it was so raw. A few tearful phone calls to the pedi later and we have a helluva expensive RX for diaper ointment. But it seems to be working so we'll go with it.

Tuesday 3rd I picked him up from daycare and his cough seemed to have gotten worse. I figured it was the whole "worse before you get better" thing and went on with life. Yeah, not so much! By 8:30 Tuesday night he was coughing so violently that he was spitting up and then choking on his own spit-up. It was very scary and so sad to watch. So off we go to the After Hours doctor again. They pinned him down on the table and suctioned out his nose/throat. That was the most horrible thing I have had to see in a long time. He screamed like I've never heard him scream before. Then they gave him 2 nebulizer breathing treatments. They tried to give him an oral steroid twice, but both times he promptly threw up all over the nurses, the table, the floor, everywhere! We got home after 11pm with instructions to see our doctor first thing in the morning.

Went to see Dr. M on Wednesday and sure enough - great news! - our poor little guy has bronchiolitis most probably caused by the virus RSV. We are sent home with more medication and told to continue the breathing treatments for 2 more days and come back on Friday. We are also told that he is doing well, but we are not out of the woods and could still end up in the hospital with this. Not what we wanted to hear.

I stayed home with him on Wednesday. Charlie stayed home on Thursday and Friday. He hates that nebulizer and mask more than anything in the world. How pitiful is this!?!?!?



Friday 6th was our follow-up to Wednesday's appt. My principal is very very nice and was willing to get my class covered for about an hour-and-a-half so I could go to the appt and make sure that Ethan was doing better.

He is doing better and it appears that we have avoided a hospital visit! Great news. We still have to do the breathing treatments about every 4ish hours over the weekend and then we can cut back to 3x a day on Monday. He has another recheck on Wednesday 11th. Hopefully he'll be doing even better by then and we can cut back again on the treatments. They are torture for everyone involved.

So that's it. That's what we have been up to for the past month! I promise to update this week. 7 month pictures coming on Wednesday.............maybe Thursday.........could be Friday............but definitely by the weekend (I hope!)

and if you made it all the way through that - here's a fun little video for you!!