Hospital Adventures (the long version!)

The kids have had a cold. It all started with Caleb, who gave it to Natalie, who gave it to Amelia. That's how it goes with more than one kid, sickness just keeps getting passed along down the line. But for two-month old Amelia, sickness is not as easy to handle. I was keeping a really close eye on her and doing a lot of research on when to worry about a cold in kids. Usually, it is not too concerning if there is no fever (or even a fever for just a couple of days) and the kids are able to breath ok. Well, all was going ok other than a pretty stuffy nose, when on Wednesday night Amelia started to seem as if she was really struggling to breathe. I heard a slight wheeze for the first time from her, and she was panting. I kept counting her breaths per minute and it was 15 breaths higher than what Dr. Sears says warrants an immediate trip to the ER. So I called our family doctor and he echoed the advice, so off to the ER we went.
Apparently, babies who are struggling to breathe take priority in the ER because we got into the back with almost no wait time despite a very busy ER. The doctor listened to her and agreed she was not able to breath well. He ordered a chest x-ray and a breathing treatment that included a steroid to help ease her rapid, drawn breaths. He then ordered a blood sugar test, which came back really high. His diagnosis based on this was possible diabetes and he immediately called OHSU to see if we could get a bed there and started an IV. Upon a second blood sugar test (and another prick in the heel, poor girl) the blood sugar had lowered significantly and he called the on-call pediatrician. She said that the steroid treatment had probably caused her blood sugar to spike. They did yet another test and found she is positive for RSV ( a respiratory virus). The decision was made to admit her since she is so young and could have oxygen problems really easily with RSV. In the morning, the on-call pediatrician came by and let us know she would be keeping us one more night for observation, since most RSV babies tend to get worse before getting better and they weren't sure where on the curve she was. Sure enough that second night at about 1am she was not able to hold her oxygen levels high enough while sleeping and they started her on oxygen. Throughout today they tried a couple of times to take her off the oxygen, but had to put her back on as soon as she fell asleep. We have been told she will need to stay in the hospital until she is able to hold her oxygen levels up without assistance for an entire night. As for right now, she is still on the oxygen, so we may be looking at another night if things don't rapidly improve overnight.
Here are some pictures from our adventure so far.

The oxygen tubes she now sports on her nose.

Sleeping peacefully now that she can breath.
Her arm is all wrapped up to keep her from pulling out the IV.
The albuterol breathing treatments she gets every 3 hours around the clock.
This is the torture device used to give her a chest x-ray.

2 Months

Amelia is two months old now! We went to her doctor appointment this last week, and despite a bunch of shots, she did great. She weighed in at just over 12 pounds, which means she has gained almost 5 pounds since birth. She jumped from the 50 percentile to just over the 90 percentile. As for height, she is 22.5 inches long, having jumped from the 50 percentile to the 75 percentile. The doctor did find a small hip click in her left hip, so we will be going in tomorrow for an ultrasound to make sure she is not developing hip dysplasia.

I am really enjoying watching her little personality begin to shine. She is very smiley and happy. Daddy can even make her giggle when he tickles her. I think she will be the most ticklish of all our children. I can hardly pat her back to burp her without her squirming because it tickles. It is amazing to me that in only a couple of months I can hardly remember life without three children. Life is so rich with all three and we are very blessed!

Saying Good-bye and CQ's

Because we are moving on such a tight timeline, we do not have time to get together individually with many of our friends and family before the move. So we decided a good-bye barbecue sounded like a good way to see everyone. If you know Jason and me, we love to host at our house, and have had many large get-togethers over the past several years. Well, we had a wonderful time yesterday having so many of our friends and family over to celebrate our move. It was a time with much laughter, a few tears, and lots of love! We are realizing that we will really miss everyone here in Oregon (as if we didn't know that before!). Thanks to all who came!

On an exciting note, we may have a buyer for our home! I was starting to get discouraged that our home had been on the market for two weeks and didn't even have one showing. However, a realtor brought a family through yesterday morning and a few hours later they came back to take a second look and measure for their furniture...I think that's a good sign. We received a call last night that they will be meeting with their realtor today to put in an offer. What a blessing to have a prospect.

And now for a few Caleb Quotes. I have not been good about posting these, so here are some quotes (with stories!) from recently. Caleb loves to ask us if he can do things, and is very creative in his asking style. Lately he says to me, "you never mind if I eat this orange (or whatever else it is he wants to do)?"
Daddy loves to tuck Caleb in. Part of the night time routine is singing songs. One night Jason had to work late so I was tucking Caleb in. I always ask which song he wants to sing, and this night he said, "the monkey song!" Well, I don't know about you, but I don't know of any monkey songs! I tried hard to think of what the monkey song may be, but could not figure it out. So that night when Jason came home I asked him about the monkey song. He said, "oh yeah, that's Old MacDonald." What? Apparently Old Macdonald now has a monkey on his farm! Since then, Caleb's favorite song is Old MacDonald, and he often makes up new things for Old MacDonald's farm, like a mommy (who says "no, no here and yes, yes there"), a lion, and even some teeth (that go "chomp chomp").
Whenever Caleb wants to ask a question beginning with "who" he replaces the "who" with "whobody". So he'll say "whobody is at the door?" He made up a song that he loves to sing about whobody and it goes like this..."Whobody on the road? Whobody on the road? Whobody is it? It's....ooma!"

Once Upon A Sunny Day in March...

Today was such a beautiful day! I think the sunshine rubbed off on the kids, as they were in splendid moods. I think it helped that Caleb and Natalie were able to get out in the backyard and run around. Caleb stayed out all afternoon and pushed his trucks around in the dirt. He came in covered in dirt from head to toe! Such a little boy, I love it! Natalie came inside after a bit and played around with Amelia and me. Natalie is a little busy body these days, carrying things here and there, making little piles all over the house. Amelia has been growing so much, I can hardly believe she will be 8 weeks old tomorrow! She really started smiling a couple of weeks ago and can't seem to stop! Even in the middle of the night when she wakes up to eat, she gives me a bright smile after she's all done. What a joyful child she is. I took the oppoortunity of such a wonderful day to snap a few pictures of the kids playing. Here's our day in pictures:

The Big Move

Well I can FINALLY break the silence! My amazingly wonderful husband was promoted to store manager a couple of weeks ago, but we were told to keep it quiet until a formal announcement was made. I must say it's been a difficult task, as I have been bursting at the seams! Not just with pride and love for my hubby, but also because the whirlwind began right away to get our home here in Oregon on the market and to find a new home in Idaho. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we are headed to South Central Idaho. We have been so very blessed in this process. God is taking care of the details and things are progressing as smoothly as we could hope for. I am sad about moving away from Oregon, as I have never lived anywhere else, and all our family is here. But we are excited at the idea of making a new home for our family. We know that the Lord has something good in store! I am most excited about the idea of Jason never having to work another night or swing shift, as most of our 7 year marriage has consisted of those shifts. Yay for 8-5! We will also be doing away with his 1 hour drive each way to get to work. To that I say, "Praise the Lord!!"

Jason and I took little Amelia this last week to explore our new hometown (neither of us had ever been there before!) and look for a new house. It was a fun adventure and Amelia was a trooper. She did great on the flights just hanging out in the sling barely making a peep. We loved the amazing views in our new hometown.





This is the bridge leading into town over the Snake River. It is amazing. We were just driving along a freeway and all of a sudden the huge canyon opened up in front of us! Talk about awe inspiring.

Here is a view of the canyon and Snake River from a lookout point next to the bridge. It snowed one of the days we were there.





We were on our way to view the Shoshone Falls, and found a frozen waterfall along the side of the road. Crazy!

Here are the Shoshone Falls. They are often referred to as the "Little Niagra". In the spring I guess there is just a ton of water that flows down, apparently this is a "small flow". We were here at the falls when we received the call that our offer on the house was accepted! It was an incredible place to find out such good news.

Here's the house we will be moving to. I was able to take pictures on the day it snowed. I am excited to live in a place that gets snow so regularly that all the houses we toured had snow-blowers in their garages!

So to all our friends we extend an invite. If you ever want a place to come crash and see some neat sights, come visit! We sure will miss all you Oregon folk!

Our Tiny Wonder

Speedy Delivery!

After 9 months of anticipation, the wait is finally over! Amelia Jordyn made her debut into the world yesterday, January 10, at 1:25am. She is absolutely beautiful, weighing in at 7lb, 9oz and measuring 19 inches long.

The story is definately one worth telling, as her speedy entrance into the world took us all by surprise! And sorry for those of you who may not want the details, but I promise I will not get too graphic. We had a scheduled induction for the Monday morning following my due date (today!). My due date came and went and I figured I'd just have to wait for the induction, as with the last two kids. Amelia had other plans. As I was falling asleep around midnight on Saturday, I felt a big kick in the front of my belly and heard a "snap!". I knew almost immediately that Amelia had broken my water. We called Jason's parents and they came over so we could head to the hospital. We were in no rush (or so we thought) as my last labors had taken several hours to really get contractions going and things moving along. About 20 minutes after my water broke, I started having contractions. After the 10 minute drive to the hospital, they were noticeably stronger and coming every 5 minutes. By the time I was checked through the ER (about 15 minutes later), the contractions were bad enough to want an epidural (which I never got!) and I was taken strait to a delivery room. The short story is, within a half hour of arriving in the delivery room Amelia entered the world! I only had about 20 contractions from the time my water broke, and they barely even had an IV started by the time she was out! From the time I was laying in bed to her arrival was a total of 1 1/2 hours. I guess it's a good thing we got to the hospital quickly.