Video's

Here are two video's I took last week when Donovan was feeling better. Nothing super earth shattering, just some looks at what our life is like these days and how we spend our time. This one is from last Monday or Tuesday when he was feeling better but not back to his normal. Note Reese waving to the car as it passes in the beginning of the video. This one is from Thursday when he was almost back to himself and enjoying his returned energy level. Reese loves Donovan's helmet. Wears it all the time. She's a nut and I love it.

Bounce house

Way back on May 12th, after the strep throats but before the reaction from hell, we all went over to our friend's Kris and Lynn's house. Their daughter Penelope was given the gift to end all gifts of a bounce house for her 2nd birthday so Donovan and Reese were invited to try it out. Donovan and Penelope loved it. Reese thought, "Umm, this is fun, but I think these two kids are a little wild. I am not sure if this is safe for me to be in here." She's very smart for her age. Here are some pictures from that fun morning.

On the mend

Yesterday was Donovan's last day of steroids and so far, so good. No major re-start of the reaction that we had feared. He is doing better every day. He still looks run down and tired in the face, and in general he has much less energy than usual but he is more spirited now and it is such a relief. We are keeping him out of school for the whole week so he can fully recover since he plays hard there. I will be happy when next Tuesday comes and he can go see his friends at school and run around.  So things are looking up!

Just for fun, here are some of the things that Donovan has said/is saying lately that makes me laugh or that I want to remember:
________

Donovan: "Mommy, the other day, I was two, I was...(fill in the blank with some thing he did or saw a little while ago. Doesn't matter if it happened last week or 9 months ago. It was the other day and he was 2.)"
________

Donovan: "Mommy, the other day, when you was at work, and I was at grammies, I was missin' you at work."
________

Donovan (hugging me): "Awwwww (patting my back), sweet mommy."
________

He also tells Tom and myself (separately) that he is our best friend. In a cute way where he really means to say we are his best friend.
________

Donovan (pooping on the potty): "Mommy, you don't have a penis?"
Me (keeping him company in the bathroom): "Nope."
Donovan: "Oh. You just have a butt?"
Me: "Uhhh....yeah."
________

Donovan: "I can't know how to do it." (Instead of I don't know how)

Reese 1 yr stats and other info

Poor Reesie's 1 yr post got pushed back with all the drama from this past couple weeks. We had her well check on Friday and her stats are as follows:
Height: 29.5 inches-62%
Weight: 19lbs 4oz (our best guess, she was NOT going to sit still on the scale)-20%
Head Circumference: 18.5 inches-93%

Pictures from the day after she turned one. (she was in no way going to cooperate on her actual birthday, with that jerk tooth giving her a hard time and all).

A picture of her little, growing mullet. It is getting close to teeny-tiny pony tail length.

Lets review all things Reese at a year.

Eating: Reese is still taking bottles, we have not yet attempted the switch over to milk in sippies. At her birthday we had not yet switched to whole milk either. (Now we have and she is doing great, didn't phase her at all and she is getting almost all whole milk and almost no formula). She still drinks 4 bottles a day. Ranging in size from 8-4 oz, depending on how she is feeling. Her first bottle is her best, followed by her last then the two in the middle are crap shoots. She still eats squeezy food and loves big people food. Some favorites; hot dogs, cheese, tortillas, puffs, blueberries, cuties, and whatever her brother has.

Sleeping: She sleeps from 8pm to 5 or 6 am when she wakes up for a bottle, and then goes back down until we wake her or around 7:30 or 8am. She still takes two naps, ranging from 30min to 2 hours. One is usually long, the other short. She sleeps with her wraps as lovies still. She also drags them around like Linus. I may have mentioned that before but I forget so if I did, forgive me.

Activity: Reese climbs on everything. She can get herself up on the couches now and loves it up there. She is also running (baby version) and can walk backwards. She really likes riding on her bikes and cars. She holds on and leans backwards when she is going down the driveway like she is going really fast. So cute.

Speech: Reese's words at 1 are: Mama, dada, doggy (da-deee), uh-ohh, all done (ahh-duh), yeah and hi.

New business: Reese has started to fight back. No longer content to be Donovan's punching bag, Reese now pulls his hair and bites him. Hard. In fact, the first time she did it he lost it and when we pulled his shirt up, we saw two teeth marks on his back. I say, good for her. While we do not support it and we tell her so when she does it, it also serves Donovan right as he has been a bully for too long to her. One of the new things she does that I absolutely love, is that she loves to read and when she wants you to read something to her, she grabs a book, walks up to you, turns around and backs into your lap until she falls into it and is ready to read. She also knows when her books are upside down and will turn them right side up accordingly.

She also is very obsessed with driving in our cars. Or pushing the buttons and just playing in them. She loves it all and wants to do it daily.

Another thing she is doing right now that I am absolutely obsessed with is when she wants to show you something or wants you to go somewhere, she grabs at you until she frees your hand from whatever it was doing, then she grabs hold of your pointer finger and leads you to where she wants you to go. Yesterday she grabbed my whole hand, and tucked it under her arm, in her armpit and clamped her arm down and walked me over to and up the stairs. She knows how to get her point across. Another thing she does is dance on command. Especially when she gets on top of Donovan's purple stool. So adorable.  She is also loving going up and down the stairs. A lot. It is very exhausting because she wants you to hold her hands and help her walk down the stairs. Then she climbs back up. Repeat times infinity.

Reese also got her 3rd tooth yesterday. Top right. Hopefully she will be a lot more comfortable now. Oh and also, Reese had strep throat last week too. I think that is all. 

No fun

So it turns out Donovan's reaction to amoxicillin was a little more than we were prepared for. It started Tuesday night and we are just now starting to get our lives back to something a little closer to normal. The pictures from the previous post were from Tues night when we were going to bed. Wednesday Dono woke up at 2am and I saw they were worse. These were pictures from Wed morning after we woke up.

We send him to grammies like normal and she reports that he does well, but he is just a lot less active then he normally is, preferring to lay on the couch. We called the dr's office and they said, yes it sounds like a reaction to amoxicillin and you should keep giving him benadryl and watch for certain things, one of which was painful joints. So that night Donovan stops walking and is wanting to be held. He complains that his feet and ankles hurt him. So we call the dr's exchange, talk with a nurse and she sends us to the ER. So Donovan and I go and they were pretty impressed with his hives. By this time he is about 75% percent covered by them (even in his hair and on his ears). He also was pretty pathetic. Crying and whining that his body, legs, feet and hands are hurting him and he also had a fever of 101.6. It broke my heart and really scared me. They gave him ibuprofen and benadryl by mouth, and then he calmed down a little. The Dr there was very nice and reassuring that he was going to be ok and that the joint pain was normal with a reaction like he was having. He also said it was going to get a little worse probably and be better in 48 hours. He diagnosed his hives as "erythema multiform" for anyone who wants to go look that up.  This was Dono when we were waiting for our discharge papers.  We left the ER at 10:30 that night and Donovan was very restless from about 12-2am but finally fell asleep.

 Tom stayed home with him on Thursday. He told me he was pretty pathetic and after talking with one of the physicians I work with who scared the living crap out of me after I told him how Donovan was doing and also that he had Erythema multiform, I had Tom schedule and appt with the ped. to have him checked out again. Tom said he was really restless and very itchy, and benadryl wasn't helping, however cool wet rags on his legs seemed to calm him down nicely. The Dr. saw him and said he was confident he was just having a reaction to the Amoxicillin and that it wasn't something worse, like the Dr. I worked with had scared me into thinking. He told Tom that the swelling that Donovan was now having in his hands and feet was normal, and that we just needed to keep at it with the motrin and benadryl. He also told us to look out for lip blisters and swelling in his scrotum, but that we did not need to go to the ER again, that he was going to be fine.

When I got home Thursday night this is what I saw.

Poor guy's lower lip was swollen and he was in so much pain he would not turn his head to look at me. He had cool rags on his legs and his hands propped up on his chest/stomach because they were so swollen and hurting him so much. He was crying/whining most of the night. If Reese even touched him it would send him into a fit. Tom or I had to hold his cup for him to drink because holding anything hurt him. Peeing was so sad too. We had to hold him up, and if we had to set him on the floor for any amount of time he would scream and cry in pain. His hands and feet were so swollen, probably twice their normal size (in width). We distracted him with movies and TV but he was so uncomfortable. When I was sitting on the couch with him he started shaking, and I asked him what was wrong and he told me he was shaking because his legs were hurting. We finally tried to go to bed and I laid there with him to try and keep him calm. He asked me to roll him to his side as he was afraid to move at all. It was the saddest thing ever. Then to top it off, once we got in bed, his rash was only covering about 50% of him, but the itching seemed to intensify and he was non-stop itching himself, which made the pain and swelling worse. Twice he fell asleep for 20 minutes, but then he would wake himself up and start itching and almost panicking again. He would cry out for Tom and I, "I need you mommy! I need you daddy!" and it was so sad because there was nothing we could do. He had already had his medicine and the rags weren't working and he would complain he was too cold. So finally at 1 am Tom and I couldn't take it anymore. He had itched himself so raw that his eyes were starting to swell shut. So we called our neighbor over to stay with Reese and we headed to a different ER. These are the pictures from that trip.

Luckily Donovan looked so pathetic and the nurses were so impressed with his facial, hand and feet swelling that we got expedited back to a room and got to butt in front of lots of people. The doctors there were pretty impressed with his reaction, but also reassuring to us that they also believed it was just a gnarly reaction to the Amoxicillin and not something worse. This time they gave him Atarax, a different but similar medicine to Benadryl, Pepcid, for it's anti-histamine components, ibuprofen for the pain, and Prednisolone, a steroid for the rash. Soon after that he relaxed enough to fall asleep, sometime around 2:30am.

Luckily, after that Donovan was slept until 8am. He woke up and was a completely different kid from the pathetic thing we had seen the previous day. Both of his grandma's came over to help out with the kids (we had arranged that prior to Tom and I being up til 4am and them both calling into work) and that made him very happy. He was actually WALKING 10 minutes after he got up.  We went to the Dr that afternoon for both kids "well" visits that we had already planned so I got to go and ask the Dr all about what the hell was happening. The unfortunate thing he told us was that the steroid that Donovan got is kind of controversial because it doesn't necessarily end the immune reaction, it just pauses it, so there is a good chance after his doses were stopped, that the whole reaction would start back up with a vengence where it left off. That is not what we wanted to hear. So he tweaked our prescription to try to keep that from happening but we will just have to wait and see. He also said that this will probably last for 2 weeks total, maybe more. Lovely. He said benadryl doesn't help that much because the immune response has already started, and benadryl is best for preventing that from starting, not stopping it once it has.  This is what Dono looked like Friday afternoon after the Drs.

His hands were still swollen, although not as much as they were on Thursday so we were happy about that.

Fat feet. Again, still swollen but better than it had been on Thursday. (and yes, that is nail polish)

So that brings us to today. Today Donovan has been a little itchy but not bad at all, but still not his normal self. He was really trying to do too much, now that he is in not that much pain, which brings problems in it's self because he is not back to normal yet so he gets tired really fast, and crabby even faster. His hives come and go but are really not that noticeable. He went to our friends birthday party today and lasted an hour before he started complaining his hands were hurting him. Poor kid. And poor parents. The past two nights I have started to get a little anxious as the sun started setting since both wed and thurs nights were when things got bad and we headed to the ERs. Two ER trips in two nights is not a record I ever want to break. Hopefully our ped was wrong about his reaction getting bad again. I am scared if it does because he is in so much pain and all we can give him is Tylenol or Motrin. So anyways, that is the recap of our half week from hell. Say some prayers for us that he doesn't get much worse again and is back to his normal self by this time next week.

Donovan's impression of a leopard

Either that or he is having an allergic reaction to his Amoxicillin. I am leaning towards the latter.

Happy Birthday Reese!

Poor Reese spent her birthday crabby and mad at the world. Her two b@$t3rD upper teeth are about as close to popping out, without actually being out at all as you can get. Her one tooth has such thin gums over it is is practically transparent. So our birthday girl was in no mood to party. We celebrated anyways with both sets of grandparents and my sister. I felt bad for her but also I felt bad for us. She was no happy camper. If we don't see a tooth or two this week, I am scared for our sanity's sake.

We did manage to get some pictures from the evening that did not have a crying or crabbing girl in them.

Checking out her cool mermaid towels that her Q grandparents got her. (But don't be surprised if you see them in my bathroom. They are cool)

Donovan and Reese played in the water table for a little. Reese had peaced out by this point but brother was loving it.

We gave her a cupcake again but skipped all the fanfare of singing and candles since we were unsure of what would set her off. She humored us for about 5 minutes before she really started fussing.

Telling us all about what she thinks about getting new teeth.

Donovan's dinner tonight

Alternate title for tonight's post: Kids are gross.

Yes that is goldfish crackers with milk on them. He requested it. I tried to tell him it was not cereal and would be yucky but he insisted (i.e. started to throw a fit). I told him he wouldn't like it and wouldn't eat them. I was wrong.

Catch up

Sorry for the absence. We have been very busy, then very sick in this past week. Between Saturday and Sunday we had committed to 4 things, and after we did our first on the list, Ian's birthday party at the Transportation museum, I started feeling bad. Long story short, I have been down since then and was diagnosed with Strep throat yesterday, as was Donovan today after he came down with a fever and a sore throat yesterday. So Tom has been doing the vast majority of the parenting, and I have been holding down the couch or snuggling with Dono. But good news, both Dono and I have amoxicillin on board and we are both feeling close to normal! Yeay! Here are some pictures from Ian man's birthday party, before our weekend took a sharp turn down hill.

She looks so grown up in this one. And also annoyed with me taking pictures. Get used to it kid.

Look how freaking big she looks just sitting in a chair like a big girl. Donovan (can be seen in background) was so surprised to see her sitting like that he was telling his friends, "Look at Reese! She's sitting in a chair like a big girl!"

She just sat and ate her food and swung her legs back and forth like a big girl. Tear.

Landon, Donovan and the birthday boy on the train ride. They had a blast.

How Reese spent her train ride. Wanted to stand and taste the railing the whole time.

Today, between the Dr's office and picking up Donovan's meds, we killed time driving through Lone Elk park. All the animals we hiding today except geese, one lone deer, and this snapping turtle which I thought was awesome! I thought Donovan would think so too so I stopped the car, told him all about how cool they were and how they had a sharp beak (or whatever you call it) and how we couldn't get to close or he would bite us, all while I was getting Donovan out so he could see the turtle. Well apparently I freaked him out because that child clung to me like I was trying to get him next to a lion. He was shaking and trying to move from my hip to my back and when we got about 5 feet away he told me we should go back in the car. I calmed him down a little, enough to let me get the camera and snap a shot of our new friend. It was the highlight of our day.