Last Week, sick and Jamison update

We apologize for the lack of posts last week but this house was under the sickness. This was one of those horrible you don't know what to do sicknesses. Eva started last Sunday night with weezing and having a hard time breathing and then coughing from her lungs and screaming in pain. This was for two nights and then just coughing and non appetite. I kept thinking about going to the ER when she couldn't breath but I worried I would be waiting there for 4 hours without being seen by a doctor and then going to a room finally and waiting another 2 hours then being told its not serious go home and I didn't really want to do that because that would make her worse. We called our nurse hotline and were told to use cool mist humidifier and tylenol and and honey she was able to sleep a bit that first night. It wasn't working that well so we bought a warm mist humidifier and ding ding ding that is what they needed. Then ALexander got it and he was screaming out in pain a lot and I was up all night worried they were not breathing so yeah it was a HORRIBLE week. They finally got better on Sunday night. Their coughs were hardly there. We went to the doctor yesterday for wellness visits and Eva is fine so yeah. I came out the worst during this because I was exhausted and cabin fever but I am feeling happy now that Alexander went to school yesterday and Eva is happy again. Luckily Jamison didn't get it at all!! Daniel started to get it but with forced sleep gatorade and orange juice he was able to stop it early.

This was Eva when we put her back in her room (she was in our room on her mattress on the floor for 3 days) we put a portable dvd player on the chair for entertainment.

This was the first morning Alexander started to feel sick (wednesday) He was SOOO happy because Eva was getting special treatment for being sick and he kept saying he was sick when he wasn't (he finally got sick and jumped in our bed (literally) but he wasn't too happy when the full sickness came and he couldn't breath and it felt like his lungs were getting ripped to shreds.
Having two extremely sick kids and a 6 month old doesn't mix well with my ability to run back and forth. So in the mornings I would feed Jamison and stick him in my bed. Alexander loved having someone to talk to and Jamison loved being right next to Alexander. So I gave Jamison his blanky and he kept falling asleep (Jamison loves our bed and he LOVES LOVES LOVES his blanky, falling asleep not in his bed is NOT normal for him) Here are some shots of Jamison through the week.

He has learned to sit up without falling over much (hence the pillows behind him)
He has learned that his thumb is a LOVELY thing to stick in his mouth
He has learned he loves Daddy . He loves sitting in his lap, looking at him, playing with him and smiling at him.
Oh and Jamison is now 6 months old! He is a healthy boy (I mean he didn't even get sick through all that!!)

He weighs 19lbs 8 ounces 90% for weigh
He is 27 inches tall 75% for height
and his head is still more than the 95th%

He now fully fits the 12 month old clothes some have extra foot room but I can barely zip his pjs at the chest and some clothes are just too tight at the chest. I think he has a very broad and large chest and shoulders. He is as cute as ever, there is this little book thing on the exersaucer (Meleofa's that we still haven't returned... sorry Meleofa we promise to bring it out next time we are in Utah!!) he likes to flip through it and look at the pictures!! Anyway he is ready for stage 2 solids! so any tips on how to make those from home would be great. I have never been big on the baby food jars but I can't remember how to do stage 2 foods. I think I need a blender.

So yeah not a good week but it made me really appreciate the healthy times no matter how messy :)

and the winner is...

I might have strep throat. I went to urgent care because of the short breath and feeling of suffocation all day long and especially at night and all the other symptoms. They took a strep test and it was negative so I guess thats a big maybe?? My tonsils are all swollen (no wonder its so hard to eat or drink all my water) and gross and white with pus. It doesn't explain the headaches and suffocation feeling. Oh well.

He prescribed Robitussin with codine and the infamous Amoxicillin. I say that because When Alexander was diagnosed with Asthma they gave him Amoxicillin. Then last month when Eva was sick for 3 weeks they prescribed Amoxicillin. It makes me wonder if its a catch all. I have seen it work so thats good. Hopefully I can breath again in a couple of days. I HATE being sick I just sit on the couch all day cause I can't breath. Blah I hope it goes away.

Miriam

This week in the Reeves household

I am sick.
I started to get pretty sick on Monday at 530pm and its slowly progressing to worse. I have been trying to keep a regular schedule and it just makes things worse. I have almost lost my voice now so I got a sub for primary. (don't want to get them all sick)

Daniel let me sit in bed ALL day yesterday and I just read. I couldn't sleep. Hopefully I will get better because being sick makes it so you can only do Yoga and stretching for exercise. Even that makes me have a fit of coughs. I think this is the longest I have been sick in a long time.

The kids have been good. Lots of Movies. We watched Elf and Alexander actually liked it. They fight and it makes me laugh still but I try to get them to share. Alexander will come take (insert item) from Eva, she won't fight for it long. Then a minute later she goes to him takes it out of his hand and says thank you. They are the most polite children. They start taking the books out of my shelf and say sorry (both of them) over and over while still doing it. Sorry is becoming my least favorite word. I hear it all day long with no stopping of bad behavior. Just a learning process I guess.

Got to go be sick all day again.

Have a great week. My to-do list is getting really big and so is my laundry pile :(

Miriam

sickies

All of us are sick except Alexander. I don't know how he did it but he hasn't been sick. Daniel has been off and on sick since we camped. I have been sick since last Saturday and its really been getting to me and Eva has been sick for 3 days now. She got two new teeth up top on the sides. I haven't felt this bad since right after I had Eva and had a cold. Its lasting forever too. I have been passing out (falling asleep without control) every night at 9 or ten. I just go in there and brush my teeth and fall down. I haven't been very proactive this week because of it. If you have any home remedies I would like them thanks. I have finally started taking cough syrup it is so disgusting but it makes sleeping easier. I accidentally bought the licorice flavor kind last night. I love black licorice but the syrup is horrible. Anyway here are some pictures of Eva yesterday morning. She slept until 10am!!! Just like her dad and she woke up refreshed but looking like this:

Just waking up

These two are after she realized Alexander was a wake, trying to figure out what he was doing.

El Jefe Grande

Yesterday (this is a random one) Daniel came home from work in a good mood and gave me a card that someone at work had written him (it had the headsup logo's on the front and everything). He was pretty happy about it so I read it and it said something like "thanks for taking care of that one tree over at that one place so quickly and taking care of T.E.C (I am not a fan of all the acronyms in the world) and you aren't going un-noticed and more details and such and such. I tried to be supportive and said "wow thats nice" I didn't really get what any of the fuss was about so I said "who is this card from?" He responded "El Jefe Grande" Now I am not sure if I am just sick or thick but I just though some guy he worked with was named El Jefe with the last name Grande.

For the rest of the night my thoughts kept going back to "why did that card make him happy?" Then when we were brushing teeth getting ready for bed I saw the card again and asked, "so do you guys just have some strange love note thing at Headsup? Where they have Headsup logo cards in a basket and you are supposed to write love notes to one another?" He looked at me like What are you talking about? I said "well some random guy named Jefe writes you a random card it just seems a little weird"

He started laughing and said "I forgot you don't speak spanish, El Jefe Grande means the big boss. OHHHH clarity. It all makes sense now. I felt dumb but laughed pretty hard. I am ashamed to admit I took 2 years of Spanish and that still didn't click until 6 hours later and some explaining. I guess I can blame it on the head cold.

We are back, a camping story

We are home (have been since Friday) and getting back into the routine. This last week was more exhausting than I realized but it was very fun. We spend lots of time with Allison, Maggie, Ashlee and Paige so we were happy. You can see some of the stuff we did with them over here . The camping part was not as great as I would have imagined. I don't recommend camping in bear country EVER. Well maybe not ever but not when you have little children who drop food all over the ground.

Eva making sure there are snacks for Bears later
Alexander enjoying his ramen

We spend a lot of time trying to pick up all of the stuff they kept dropping which included tiny bites of carrot that Eva kept spitting everywhere.

Eating Carrots with Dad


I am sure in 10 years I will look back on this camping trip and think it was a great experience but I need some time to re cooperate. Here is a run down of what happened. (its a long story)

We got to the site at 5pm on Wednesday. We sprayed bug repellent all over our selves set up camp had dinner and let the kids play in the dirt.


There was no one else at the camp site or even close it seemed. So we cleaned everything up and shut all the food and whatever else in the truck because there were signs everywhere that said to do so because of the bears. We did this and we got in the tent and went to sleep. Well everyone else went to sleep I sat there for a couple of hours waiting to be eaten by bears. I finally dozed off but woke up to the sound of something walking around outside. I could here the walking around so clearly it was strange. I heard it jump into the back of the truck so I woke Daniel up (I wasn't about to get attacked by some animal and be the only one awake) so Daniel wakes up listens and decides to light off one of those loud fire crackers (this was our plan to scare off animals, I don't care if it was loud and obnoxious). We just lit off one to sound like a gun shot and it did. Daniel's head was outside off the tent and he saw the whatever's run away. He said he couldn't tell what they were. I was somewhat satisfied that they wouldn't come back so I feel asleep pretty quickly. I don't think Daniel did.

Then I woke up again to the sound of the walking around and told Daniel, as soon as he turned on the lantern we heard them run away.

In the morning we decided to pack up camp and go a little further down the road. We did and liked the area better. It was more open and pretty close to the creek river thing so we could go throw rocks. I was dead tired after setting up camp again (I hadn't slept much) so we decided to make lunch and Eva and I would take a nap while Daniel and Alexander would go exploring). We made lunch and I was going to do some baked potatoes in the fire. Well I had no idea they would be ready so soon so I burned them to a black crisp. I took them out of the fire and left them out of the fire pit to cool down so I could throw them away. I went in the tent and fell right asleep with Eva.

We woke up later with Daniel napping on a mat outside and Alexander hitting things with his stick. We were well rested so we decided to to go wash in the river. We walked over to it and there was a lovely snake. After a few convulsions I continued on and washed the kids.


Eva 30 minutes after her river bath
(those are old white pants with green stars on them)

Then we decided to take a drive up the canyon to see what was there. We found a beautiful little waterfall and let Alexander throw rocks for awhile. Then we saw a beautiful bride hiking up to the fall to get some bridal shots done there. I hope she didn't dirty her dress. Anyway then we drove a little more and saw some beaver dams Daniel wanted to hike to.

Alexander stopping every few minutes to throw rocks

Daniel and Eva hikingSo we were trekking through freezing cold water but it was pretty fun.
We got pretty far but realized the kids wouldn't make it all the way up to the dam so we turned back and went to make dinner.

I asked Daniel if he had thrown the baked potatoes away from my burning lunch. He said no. I know I hadn't so we looked around and found them in the bushes half eaten. We were guessing it was squirrels. I picked up all the stuff and threw it away. We figured it wasn't raccoons because they would have taken the shiny (foiled) potatoes home with them. We made dinner ate it and it started to rain a bit. We put the kids in their pjs and zipped them in the tent to play.

Alexander reading Thomas the tank Engine

We cleaned up all the food and garbage and stuck it all in the truck so the bears wouldn't come and tried to go to sleep.

Eva trying to go to sleepThe rain actually made it easy for me to block out any animal sounds so I feel asleep pretty quickly. I woke up to Daniel shaking me and telling me to listen. I heard something in the truck and told him I heard so he got right up and threw a fire cracker out of the tent. I tried to go back to sleep but Daniel was shaking so bad I couldn't go back to sleep. Then we realized the rain was getting in the tent. Eva had woken up so we checked her and she was DRENCHED! She had 4 layers of clothing on and they were all wet except her socks. so we stripped her down and stuck her in with us and she warmed up quickly and went right back to sleep. So Daniel never went back to sleep. The tent was pretty wet so he said as soon as it was light out we were packing up and going home. I was happy to hear that but I fell back asleep even with the two sleeping children slapping and kicking me (they are not peaceful sleepers). Then all of the sudden I am woken up by Daniel. "ok we are leaving lets get the kids in clothes and pack up and go" I figured it was day light and time to go. Nope it was 4 am but Daniel had had enough (he was sick already by now with nose, throat and chest). So we packed everything soaking wet in a half hour and started to drive home.

As we drove Daniel starts to say in light conversation: "oh by the way I have a confession to make that first night it was two bears that were walking around our camp site, one of them was walking around the camp site and the other was in the back of the truck" the reaction in my mind was "WHAT THE ##!%*^#$###*" He saw the look on my face and then said "well I guess it could have been two really huge raccoons" Yeah the biggest raccoons in the entire universe! He saw them as they ran away. Then he says that is why he was shaking so bad that second night and not sleeping because he was worried there were bears again. When he looked in the back of the truck he saw that whatever animal had been in the back of the truck the 2nd night had knocked the box of water bottles and something else (I can't remember) over. So yeah what a joyous memory that became.

Daniel drove until he couldn't stay awake anymore (1 hour) then I drove the rest of the way home. We left the campsite at 5 am and I got us in our driveway at 8:30 am. I was a little anxious to get home and sleep. We all took showers and baths and went straight to sleep until 12 noon then we got up to clean the camp stuff.

Eva and Daniel both got sick with colds from camping. Alexander was fine and I was stomach sick since we left Utah and still don't feel so great. I have been catching up on sleep and feeling better though.

You may recall we were supposed to go to Mesa Verde on the friday we left. Well it was raining, everyone but Alexander was sick and we hadn't slept much so I didn't want to ruin the Mesa Verde experience and we literally took a rain check.

That was our camping trip. As a disclaimer I HATE wild animals and I can't sleep very well away from home ESPECIALLY when there are wild animals lurking around and the only piece of protection I have is an extremely thin piece of material. Sorry if this is a depressing camping trip story. I asked Daniel to blog the story (because I didn't want to revisit the memory and be pessimistic about Daniel's dreamed about camping trip) but he said I should. So I did and there you go.

Us this week

Well this week was better than last and things are getting normal or more on a known schedule now. Not much new this week. Daniel saw dolphins in the ocean twice at the Hilton. (Where my mother and Lete and I went to see if we could see the blue star fish) I am very jealous because I have never seen any. I want to see those and whales. I know they have boat rides for those but I don't know of any fun boat rides with a 2 year old and a 2 month old. Oh well maybe way later in the future we can get a babysitter and go. Oh and a new thing is we can't take Alexander to stores anymore because he turns into the Monster from BiggestBratintheWorldland. He is also starting to think he is an adult now because there is a new baby. Oh how wonderful he has been this last week. Anyway I put some pictures from this week up with little explanations. Enjoy!

Alexander taking his medicine, by himself

Alexander has been taking his medicine by himself this last week and it has been joyous. For the first week I had to shove it down his throat which was not enjoyable for him or me. However Friday was the last day he had to take them all so he is done! Yay. No more running nose infection or coughing so I am hoping this next week will be filled with a happier Bubba. I am going to let him help me wash my car this week. We bought giant sponges and soap. I will give him his own little bucket full of water only and keep a baby monitor in with Eva on her nap.

Eva in her church dress today

I just took this of her after church because she is growing so fast and I can't tell the difference between this one and her newborns but I figure since my mother and sister are the only ones that have seen her I better keep recent photos of her on here so people can see her grow. She sleeps between 4 and 5 hours straight then eats and goes right back to sleep in her crib so things are getting much better. My sanity is slowly returning and the zombie look in my eye is disappearing.

Daniel and Eva on the couch

Everyone napped yesterday (Saturday) so Daniel finally got some much needed rest and I got some much needed time to clean and organise the house. I prefer free time to do that over a nap because I feel better when the house is clean on Sunday and ready for Monday. She was sleeping in his armpit it was very cute.

Alexander's new bed.

He loves it but has a very difficult time taking naps in it because he has so many toys, so now we stick all the toys in his closet and close the door so he is having a better time but its still an adjustment. His sheet has trains on it so he just stares at those and says Twain and choo choo in a high pitched singing voice.

The camera worked

The camera actually decided to sort of work today. Eva is just getting better. Still has coughing fits and Alexander is getting alot better and very full of attitude. Well Here are some pictures I took this Morning. The weird half and half one is an example of what the camera does when freaking out. Its just Eva in her bouncer and the others are of Alexander. I was feeding Eva and Alexander was drawing on himself. He got a hold of one of thoe super sharpies. That was him eating his lunch trying to hide his crime. I laughed for a long time when I saw him because its the first time he didn't draw on everything else, just himself. Anyway thats all Eva is crying now, does want to go to sleep.

Miriam

Parenthood

I finally feel like a parent. Alexander has been sick since Friday night and its Tuesday morning. It would be fine if it was just a cold but it wasn't. He tossed his cookies Friday night at 12 then had a fever all night. Then he had a fever all Saturday that kept coming and going every few hours. He cried a lot and wouldn't eat or drink. Then he had a fever all night Saturday and started his runny nose and coughing a lot. Then he had a fever all Sunday and started getting crankier and crankier. The fever kept going all Sunday night into Monday morning and he started getting the shakes. He refused to sleep in his bed or our bed so I was on the couch with him all Sunday night into Monday morning getting an hour of sleep here and there when he did. His fever went down after I gave him Tylenol but would go back up to 102 when it wore off. This happened all weekend. So I finally called the pediatrician. He got us in Monday afternoon at 5. We found out he seems to have athsma or however you spell that and it's trigger is a runny nose. He also started getting an ear infection. So he is on three medications right now because the doctor said he is more aggressive with it because if you hit it hard in the beginning it will go away faster and wont come back as much over the years. Alexander was so exhausted last night from not sleeping more than an hour at a time for the last three days that he slept the whole night in his bed ( I am sure the medication helped too). I finally got some sleep last night too and I hope this doesn't happen again any time soon because I was up with Eva and then Alexander too. It became too much, that is why I called the doctor finally. The only good thing about this whole thing was that some how they didn't cry at the same time .I would get ALexander to calm down and go to sleep for a bit and then Eva would wake up and I would get her fed and changed and calm and asleep then Alexander would get up again. I didn't mention Daniel in this but he helped a lot over the weekend taking Alexander in the nights and sleeping in the other room with him when he would. I wanted Daniel to get a good nights sleep on Sunday night so he could work the next day and thats when I got no sleep at all. I can feel myself getting sick for the lack of sleep and now Eva's nose is blocked up again. This is the first time I have felt like a parent overwhelmed. I am sure it gets way worse over time but wow I don't want to experience this again for a long time or at least until Eva starts sleeping 6 hours straight so I can be ready for an experience like this and not already exhausted before it starts.
Miriam
P.S no pictures because the camera is broken still and all you would see was sick children.