Summer Firsts

Every year we have at least one beautiful rainbow across the street in the same place. We've been watching and watching this year for it to appear, and a couple of weeks ago, it finally did. There have been a few more since, but this was the first of the season...the view from our front porch.

It made me realize we've had quite a few fun little firsts this summer...and some of them have gone without a blog post to remember them by.

Keelyn got to go to her first movie in a theater! We went to see Toy Story 2, which of course is wonderful. We had to laugh though, because a big part of the movie has to do with the toys avoiding a trash truck, and Keelyn happens to be horrified of the trash trucks in our neighborhood. It was like the worst villain she might ever imagine. Trash day usually consists of an entire morning of me carrying her around as we get dressed until we can leave the house. It's actually like a weird obsession where she loves to hate them. She'll watch and watch out the windows as she hears them driving around, and to hear her talk, you'd think she was excited...but then when she sees one coming, she tears across the house to me, nearly in tears as she climbs onto my lap or up my legs. Anyway, it didn't phase her in movie form, and she really enjoyed herself.

And also the popcorn.

Another first I've been meaning to share is Hailey's drawing habits. These aren't the first pictures she's drawn, but she draws the same things so often, I felt like I needed to document her first favorite things to draw. They are rainbows, herself, and...

...her family. Oh, and flowers. And she writes KDMH on everything...as in Keelyn, Daddy, Mommy, and Hailey. So, these little doodles are representative of her first favorite things to doodle.

And Keelyn has recently loved her first of the summer...helping me grocery shop with her own cart. Before now, we've always been on a tight shopping schedule, but the slow summer days have allowed for the long grocery trips required to accommodate such fun activities.

And our most recent first was bowling. The girls had a blast. Hailey loved chucking the ball down and watching it bounce on that wood floor...and then blowing on it to get it to continue ever so slowly with absolutely no momentum to hit the pins. It even turned back to us at one point. So funny.

Keelyn bowled with a ramp. Her first score was an 89 and that included two strikes. She's a pro.

Then we went to the game room for some ticket earning fun...

...and collected these lovely pieces afterwards.

So here we are at the end of July, and it came just as quickly as the end of June. I can already see the end of August. I'm just glad we've had some rainbows to slow us down a bit once in a while.

My latest project.

Hailey can pretty much occupy her entire day with drawing and coloring and painting and creating...and Keelyn is just starting to be the same way. I converted a bookshelf in our hallway to an art supply station for them to allow easy access to their essentials whenever necessary. I also have wanted the kids to have a pint-sized table and chairs since forever. The one major problem with my want: even pint-sized is too big for our house. We are flat out, out of space. But. I talked them into being okay with parting with a toy we have that's a house made for littler kiddos which they still manage to play with at times...if the other side of the deal was a table to go in its place.

I searched high and low and found some cute ones, but our second issue was budget. I just didn't want plastic, and couldn't find anything nicer for less than $100 (or way more). So I found this on Craig's List for $35. It's as old as I am, as it was sold by parents my parents' age, just now getting rid of their children's things. It's sturdy wood and really cute. It also needed a touch up.
I had no idea when I got started that I would talk myself into the particular definition of "touch up" I decided on, but I suppose I must have been looking for a project. So I primed.
Then I painted (many, many, many, many coats).
Then we hand printed.
Then I lacquered (many, many, many, many coats).
And now it's all done!
It only took me every waking non-kid hour of my life for a couple of weeks...but hey, they LOVE it, and even with all of the paint and supplies, it still stayed well under the $100 mark, and it's completely personalized and way nicer than anything else I found in my previous search. I ran into some glitches with this heat wave. Apparently polyurethane does not like 103degree days. But then, who does? So here it is up close.
And here it is in action.

Another Movie for Monday!

This is kind of an ordinary video. Hailey explains her project in depth while Keelyn buzzes about entertaining herself. (Not that anything about a child's imagination is ordinary.) Anyway, a look inside a typical mid-day moment.

AFresh APizzapie-a!

Homemade pizza is a favorite in our house...but summertime homemade pizza really can't be touched...I could eat it every day.

Fresh ingredients.

Busy little fingers.

Andrew's completely perfected whole wheat blend pizza dough with just the right amount of fresh rosemary to make the house smell good for the entire day.

Hot out of the oven. Deliciously nutritious.

TONS of leftovers.

Mmmmmmmmmmm.

What we were doing before all of this took us down.

Dear Pneumonia and other Horrible Lung Stuff with big names I am still working on pronouncing,

Please leave my child alone.

Sincerely,
Frustrated General Hater of You

P.S. You look fat in that x-ray.

Big Scary Panda

I literally spent the entire day on the verge of tears. Like, closer than the letters are on this page to each other. Closer than your finger is to your mouse as you scroll. I was close. But I kept them in my eyes. Or maybe my throat. Either way, I am frazzle-dazzled from what was easily a four-hundred hour long day. I can't even remember if I showered. Or ate.

Let me start from the beginning, because it's kind of important in the ending.

Less than two weeks ago, I took Hailey to the doctor to let him have a listen to her breathing sounds. They sounded funny. She has allergies, and a cocktail of meds to go with them, but this was a bit different. Asthma maybe? Doc said no. In fact, maybe just a nervous habit, the way she was breathing. He didn't really hear anything. No cause for concern.

Okie-dokie.

Four days later, she got a fever. Wait, no, let me rephrase that...an elevated temperature. I have since learned that what I call a "low-grade fever" of 100.7, to some is actually a "normal temperature" until it reaches 101. So no matter what you call it, she was sick. With no symptoms other than her non-fever-fever and an affinity for sleep...oh, and a non-interest in anything food.

Finally at the one week mark of fever, which had now turned into more of a cough-the-entire-night-and-get-no-sleep-and-still-no-eating, we went back to the doctor, despite the silly nurse who told me she wasn't sick because she didn't have a "fever" and really it would all just go away.

Saturday morning we learned she had an ear infection. Also, pneumonia. Also, weight loss.

So now it's today. The nurse on the phone this morning told me I might be expecting too much to think that it would improve too noticeably in 48 hours of antibiotics, but I made an appointment anyway. Not sure why I called the advice line. I knew we needed to go in. This time, the other ear is now infected, and the doctor can't hear anything in her lungs.

And I don't mean "can't hear anything," as in "nothing bad." I mean, like, nothing. Like no matter how many times she told my baby to take a deep breath... notta. That led to a breathing treatment, which I was ill prepared for.

Note to self: Even when you think you are just being uber-paranoid and going for an extra visit and the doc is just going to have a little listen and send you home...ALWAYS BRING THE LOVIES!!!

Right. Okay then.

(But they had a cute little panda bear nebulizer.) (And a fishy mask!!) (But none of that matters when you don't have Blankie.) (Also: Emmit.) (Because both children are scared of the nebulizer, even when only one child is being tortured by it.)

Seven minutes later, she could hear maybe a little breathing, maybe a little crackling, maybe a little who-knows-what. Maybe. But she did that whole I'm not committing to anything until we know more thing that doctors do just to make moms like me completely go off the deep end of insane worry and terror and shakedy-shake-shake-hold-me-please, before I fall over.

So we went down the road and purchased a beautiful new nebulizer. It's a grey box. It is not a big scary panda.

Then, we went down the road some more, and graced the x-ray machines with a view of the lovely insides of my little lady. Thank God for the nurses there who kept Keelyn entertained while I stayed with Hailey for the scans. And thank you to Keelyn for going with them to explore the outer room of the lab. I'm not exactly sure how the afternoon would have gone without their cooperation. As in, I don't know which child would have been forced to scream bloody murder while I stayed with the other. Just what I needed as I tried to hold myself together, right. Sophie's choice, no thank you.

Anyway.

Final analysis: Atelectasis.

Basically her lungs are partially collapsed. Basically this "little bug" she seemed to have is not so little. There is a similar symptomatic tightness to asthma. Risk factor for pneumonia. Would not have gone away with the antibiotics. Is making my child completely exhausted many hours of the day. Also, not eating. Can you blame her? She's been using teeny-tiny pockets of lung to collect teeny-tiny amounts of air for many days now. Here's to hoping that the multiple daily breathing treatments, along with a host of meds she was already on, will clear this thing up.

Final lesson: When something doesn't seem right, keep taking your kids to the doctor. Even when other people tell you not to. Even if it costs you a crazy number of co-pays. Even if it means you have to deal with your other child squealing and jumping around in the exam room while you wait and spend 5 hours of your day requiring "inside voices," and "please sit down on your bottom," and "I need you to behave just a little longer," subjecting them to ten thousand stickers to choose from at every location as really-not-so-great bribery. Seriously. Stickers only work at the first appointment. In the first hour.

Final, Final lesson: Never again leave the house without lovies. Never.

Final, Final Diagnosis: We'll see. I'll believe this is all squared away no sooner than it actually is.

And. If I'm feeling defeated by this day, it's all wiped away by watching the video I posted earlier today of her a couple years ago. I am so lucky to have such an awesome kid. Now, if we could just find her some working lungs.

A two-and-a-half-year-old Hailey.

Guess what? I got a video up here for a Monday post!!! Yay! Maybe I can keep up with my weekly goal after all.

This is a VERY old one. I realized today, that Keelyn is the same age now that Hailey was when she was born. I went back to look through some videos of what Hailey was like when she first became a big sister, and found this one. It's actually when she was a little bit older...in fact, it's from almost exactly two years ago today.

She's talking up a storm, and I just laugh at how clear I used to think her speech was. Of course when it's your own kid, you understand everything...and I still can, but I can appreciate it for the two-year-old diction it was now better than I could before.

She has a little stutter too, that started when Keelyn was born. She never lashed out or did evil things when she became a big sister like some little ones do. Instead, she internalized the stress of the change a bit and it affected her ability to communicate easily. At the time, it was very stressful for me, and my postpartum self shed a lot of tears over my feelings about it. Now I can look back to two-and-a-half years ago, and see that it would all be okay. This video was taken a few months after Keelyn was born, and the stutter had cleared up tremendously, but was still quite obvious to me since I knew what she was saying. When the stutter first started, she could barely get out a few words for a simple request. I remember recording this and just crying at how happy I was that she was finally telling me a whole story again.

Anyway, that was a long explanation, but I'm putting these up here each week because I wanted to document some things, so the words are necessary! Here's the cutie pie. And in case you can't tell, she's talking about all the pretty colors of the bicycles in the sky. And then of course when it occurs to her that I'm using the video camera, she gets goofy for a bit. Some things never change.