Hospital Visit

Well after the last few days we are much more acquainted with the hospital here than we were before. It’s been awhile since we last had an Emergency Room visit so I guess it was time to have another. Andrew started having problems with is asthma late Sunday night. We did what we could at home but by Monday afternoon I knew he needed more than what we could do for him at home. Luckily Derek was available and was able to take him to the Emergency Room while I stayed home with the other boys. They spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the ER only to finally be admitted that night. The next morning he was doing worse and so they moved him to another floor to a specialty ward where he could get closer monitoring. By Wednesday he was doing much better and was able to finally come home late that afternoon. Yeah!! So by the time we were done we had seen the ER, the 4th floor, and the 2nd floor of the hospital. The OB floor is the 3rd so soon enough we will have seen almost the whole hospital. What an accomplishment! :)

Andrew is doing better now. He has a cough but he can breath so all is well. The cold season is only just beginning and that’s the worst time of year for asthma so it could be a fun winter. We may end up seeing much more of the hospital than we want to. I guess we will see what happens.

Luckily Derek was able to have all the time Andrew was in the hospital off school. So he was able to stay at the hospital most of the time with him while I ran around taking care of the other kids (Brian and Timothy both have colds too) and kept things at the house going. The only bad thing is he was behind on all his school work before this happened and now he is really behind and wondering how he will ever get everything done. He has several papers due next week as well as his midterms. Gotta love the way kids mess up your plans for getting things done! Derek just shrugs and makes some comment about how he can stay at the school for 12-13 hours a day doing work but he still gets to come home at night. It’s amazing how deployments change your thinking. Not much else matters to him, as long as he gets to come home to his family at night! :)

Ironic that this all happened on the day Brian took the cast from his broken arm for show-and-tell.

Modeling his mask used for Nebulizer Treatments (special breathing treatments):

The mask is a dragon face. During the treatments smoke comes out of the holes on the sides so it looks like a fire breathing dragon. Andrew thinks it's pretty cool. He calls it his "Dragon Mask."

He wears the mask around the house like this:

Showing off the sticky left from the monitor stickers:

Showing the spot left from his IV:

He was very brave and the nurses commented on how good of a patient he was when they put the IV in and took his blood. They even told him that they had adults that didn't do as good as him. He was a very brave and good boy through the whole ordeal.

1st Day of School

Well finally it's our turn-- it seems like everyone else has been posting their back to school photos for weeks. I guess we just got a longer summer. :) Brian started the 1st grade on Tuesday, September 2nd. He was very excited and had no problems getting on the bus and going off to his first day of school all by himself. We are trying out sack lunches since school lunches are $2.40 this year. He was so proud to carry his lunch box-- he wouldn't let me put it in his backpack, he had to carry it. Silly kid!

All ready to go:


At the bus stop:

Getting on the bus:

Waving bye!:

After school he rode the bus home too. He was the first one off the bus and he had a big smile on his face so I guess he made it through okay. I asked him how it was and he said, "Good!" Boys are so descriptive!! I finally got out of him that, "The first day of school got me excited!" and "We had PE." I asked him if he made some friends and he said, "Yes. One." When I asked him about his friend he said, "He had a shirt." Well, I 'm so glad to know that he had clothes on. After a little more probing I also found that he had "Speedracer" on his backpack and that he was in his class and sat by him on the bus. You have to be a super-sleuth to get any info out of him!

At school Brian got this notebook thing that he has to take to school with him everyday. It has a calendar in it like a daily planner. I'm not sure what it's purpose is yet and of course he can't/won't tell me. He writes things in it like, "Today was sunny," or "Today was sunny and hot." Today I asked him what he was supposed to write in it. He looked at me like I was crazy. When I continued to ask him about it he finally told me it was a, "Magenta." Magenta?? I kept asking him over and over, "What's a Magenta?" and he would just shrug and say, "It's a Magenta." I don't know how but something clicked in my brain and I said, "Oh, do you mean AGENDA?" He smiled and said, "Oh yeah! It's an agenda." :)

16 Weeks

Alright, I know you have all been waiting to see, so here is the first belly shot. Do you think I look pregnant yet?