Milestone: First ER Visit

Well, we had a new milestone Saturday night - our first trip to the ER with Sam. And it only took 14 months. Saturday evening, Sam started coughing a little bit, but seemed normal and fine before bed. While he was in bed we could hear him more than normal through the baby monitor, breathing and waking up every once in a while and coughing. Well, around 1:00, he woke up crying, which is normal, he only sleeps through the night maybe 60% of the time. So Justin went in to get him, then he called me in there, which is definitely not normal. Sam was coughing this awful sounding cough (later we came across the description of a cough that sounds like a seal barking, and that really is what it sounded like!) and when he was breathing in it sounded rattley and like there was some junk in his throat. He had a coughing fit and coughed up a big blob of clear mucous, and we brought him in our room. I was just holding him in my lap and he was dozing, the funny thing is that it wasn't upsetting him at all, which actually might have been the freakiest part. You could feel that his breathing was a little rattley if you put his hands on his back. So Justin did some looking on the internet and we came up with Croup. The website advised to call the doctor if they're having breathing problems while resting, so we called our clinic - they always have a doctor on call, which is great. It turned out that the doctor on call last night was actually Sam's doctor. Since he hadn't had a fever or cold symptoms during the day, she told us to take him to the ER because it started so suddenly in the middle of the night.

So, at 1:30 last night we piled into the car - Kira came with us because she was spending the night and wanted to go - and drove down to the Evergreen ER in Kirkland. That's the hospital where Sam was delivered, and it is a great place. They have a brand new ER, which is currently the best ER in the country because it's so new and updated. You can tell too - it's huge and really nice looking. So, they diagnosed him with Croup, which is what Justin thought, and got him some medicine. The first medicine was Epinephrine that he had to breathe in a mist of through a mask. That was the worst part. It takes 10 minutes for all of the medicine to vaporize, which involved Justin holding him and the nurse holding the mask on his nose and mouth and Sam screaming and crying for 10 minutes. When we started, the nurse said "It only lasts 10 minutes" and we were all thinking, ONLY? It seemed like an hour! That medicine was to get deep down in his lungs and help open things up and loosen anything that was in there. Even right after we finished with it, the cough sounded much better. A few minutes later the other nurse came back with a syringe of medicine for Sam to drink to reduce the swelling in his voicebox/throat. He cried & didn't like it, but it was really quick. After another 20 or 30 minutes of waiting, he was doing well and they came back and gave us instructions on what to do if he has another attack and when we would want to think about bringing him back in. Finally, at 3:30 in the morning, we were headed home.

Overall, it was as good an ER expreience as you can have. I often imagine taking your child to the ER to be very scary, but it wasn't really scary because he was not having a ton of trouble breathing or turning blue or anything, and of course there was no blood :-) So, that's how we spent our Saturday night. We spent much of the day Sunday just chilling and holding Sam a lot. He woke up at 9:30 on Sunday and was pretty tired for most of the day and somewhat cranky. Last night he got put to bed around 8:30 because he had reached the point of no return - nothing was good, he was unhappy and just fighting sleep really hard. He cried, but he went to sleep, and slept through the night, so hopefully today will be a more normal day. He's still coughing a little at night, but hasn't had an attack like the one on Saturday night, and it's not really waking him up from sleep, so that's good. Hopefully we won't hit ER visit number 2 for a very long time!

Videos!

You'll notice over to the left there is now a link for videos! I have put up a few from March and April, and I'll get the ones from July 4 up as soon as I convert them, probably tonight. You'll get to see Sam walking and dancing in those ones! Yay!

Our Fourth of July was pretty good. We went to a small street fair in Mountlake Terrace over by where Lorelai goes to preschool. They had games for the kids and music and some booths. We put our blanket on the grass field and basically just hung out and ate hot dogs and Sam ran around in the grass and danced, and we had a lot of fun. Brooke and Dave and the kids stayed for the fireworks, but we headed home around 8:30 since we'd been there for 3 hours and Sam was starting to get tired. I put him to bed at 9, at his normal time, but there were about 30 people in our neighborhood setting off fireworks. He wasn't crying, but I could hear him making noises every few minutes because he wasn't asleep. Around 10, he started to cry a little. I think he was frustrated because he was drifting off and all the noise was waking him up. So I went in and picked him up and rocked him in his chair and he fell asleep. I ended up just bringing him in our room and holding him while I watched TV, that way if he got startled awake he would be right back to sleep. We kept him in our room until around midnight, when it was mostly over with. So, it went pretty well.

Sam has started to be able to get up on his own, but he doesn't do it that often. I have seen him do it a couple of times in the last couple of days, which is really neat. Later today I think we're going to head over to the Everett Children's Museum to play for a while.

New Roommates, Dancing and Summer Fun

I'm back! I'm sorry it's been so long since I've updated the blog - I really fell behind this time! But, I decided in the last week that I am really going to try a lot harder to keep up to date with my e-mails, messages from people, and keeping this updated with the most current info for everyone! I know how much I look forward to getting updates from my friends and family, so I want to be more regular about this.

Lots of stuff has been happening around here since the last time that I wrote! Sam is 14 months old now and doing wonderful. He got his first pillow two days ago - I was trying to find a smaller one and came across a travel pillow, which is just about the perfect size for his little boy head. He has been doing pretty well with sleeping, most nights he sleeps through the night or only wakes up once. He's pretty much down to one bottle a day at bedtime too, mostly he drinks milk and juice and water out of his sippy cups. He has been taking super long naps - sometimes up to 4 hours! I'm not sure why, but the great part is that when it gets to be about 4.5 hours after he woke up in the morning we can do some quiet time and then put him down awake for his nap and he will usually go to sleep pretty quickly. It's much better than just waiting for him to fall asleep on his own and him getting over tired.

Sam is a champion walker now - he barely crawls anymore. He does crawl when he falls and isn't near something to pull himself back up to standing on, but sometimes he walks around on his knees instead! Yesterday while I was out, Justin saw him stand up on his own twice, without holding on to anything! It's the first time he's done that, and once he gets that down I think he'll pretty much give up crawling for the most part! He is also good at climbing stairs somehow, even though we have our stairs blocked off. I let him climb up today and he is pretty quick! It's another story when it comes to going down the stairs though. He has no concept of how to do it, whether it be walking down or crawling down backwards. So, we need to work on that.

Sam has also started dancing! It's not too much yet, but he wiggles his butt back and forth when music is playing, especially the theme song to "The Backyardigans", which seems to be his favorite song aside from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. He also loves Blues Clues and is very captivated by it, and dances during all of the little songs they do. It's so cute! We will try to get a little video of it soon.

Justin finally figured out the right way to convert the videos that I'd taken with our camera. It actually takes pretty good quality videos, which is nice because we can take short ones and then just transfer them to the computer when we transfer our pictures. So, I've will upload some videos from March and April onto my video page as soon as I figure out which website I want to use. I will put a link to our video website over to the right with the link to our photo pages. We also have a cute video of Sam walking all the way down the hallway when he was first learning, but I haven't gotten it converted yet. I also have a few random pictures from June that I just added to our Flickr page including some from our most recent visit to Bellingham, and some from the Science Center last week. Check them out for your Sam fix!

Up until the last couple of days (we think he might not have been feeling too well), Sam has been eating like CRAZY! I swear, he eats as much or more than Seamus and Lorelai, who are 3 and 5. I don't know where he puts all of it, he's so small still! His favorite food right now is hot dogs. He eats the fake Morningstar Farms hot dogs at home, and regular meat hot dogs if we're out somewhere that they're selling them. He finally got the hang of sippy cups and usually has one with him now. He has done really great with the transition to using a milk-based formula and to drinking whole milk, no stomach troubles or anything, which is great. He still won't eat peas or carrots, but I think maybe if they were fresh and not packaged he might like them more. Who can blame him for not wanting to eat microwaved, packaged peas?

So, that is mostly what's been going on with Sam. Justin and I are both doing well, although Justin has been thrown off lately because of going back and forth between working at night and working during the day. The biggest change around our house is that we got a new roommate last week! Justin's friend Tim moved back up to Seattle from Las Vegas about 3 weeks ago. He was staying with us and looking for a place to live and after much discussion, Justin and I decided to clear out the office and rent it to him. It's a little bit of a change for me, but I am also trying to do something good for someone and help him out, at least until he gets settled in with jobs and stuff again. Now the desk is in our bedroom, and if he moves out we'll have a room for the next baby, whenever that happens. It's working out fairly well so far, and there are DEFINITELY perks. Like having someone to mow the lawn and take out the trash. Plus, last week Justin and I actually got to go to TWO movies in one week by having Tim stay here with Sam after he went to bed for the night! Woo hoo!

I am still loving staying home with Sam and going to regular playdates with our friends. I'm REALLY looking forward to the new Harry Potter movie and the new bok that cmes out in 2 weeks. Next week I'm volunteering M-Th to help out with the kids at Vacation Bible School at church, then on Thursday night Kira and I are leaving on a redeye flight to Atlanta to go to our Aunt Becky's wedding. We'll be gone until Monday, it should be a nice little break, and I'm really looking forward to spending the time with Kira.

So, that is what's going on with us. I will post again much sooner this time!