The Farm

December has been a hard month for the flu. It feels like I've been dealing with diarrhea and exploding diapers since Thanksgiving. Just when Evie started to get over that first round of the flu, Anna started throwing up and passed a new flu bug on to Evie, starting the diarrhea over again. When Evie was finally getting over that round of diarrhea, she got an ear infection, requiring antibiotics, which led to more diarrhea.

I shouldn't really complain because even though Evie has had exploding diapers for most of December, she usually only had two or three a day, so it wasn't like it was a constant flow. She did get lots of extra dips in the bathtub because sometimes it felt like that was the only way to clean her up. I learned to keep her in footed pajamas or sleep and plays so that the poop wouldn't drip all over my house. I think she's worn two different outfits at Church for the past four weeks because she has a blowout every Sunday. In fact, it's become a common thing for me to scoop her up and run out of a meeting, as I hope to get her on a changing table before there's too much of a mess. Thank goodness for tights! They also work well at holding in the poop.

With all this sickness, we spent several days at home, missing our playgroup and nursery. So Anna was feeling a little stir crazy. Dan agreed to babysit Evie one Saturday (Dec. 11) so I could take Anna to the Farm at Thanksgiving Point. The weather was fairly warm for December, so we had a good time checking out the animals. Several of them made Anna nervous though, so she asked for lots of "huggies" and I ended up carrying her a lot. 

I really didn't think she'd want to ride the ponies, but she surprised me. Most of the time I walked beside her, but she let me step away long enough to snap this photo of her riding Chief.

When we'd seen about everything, I suggested we go check out the reindeer by the water tower, but when I wanted to drive over there, Anna started to cry. She wasn't ready to leave yet. Being the great mom that I am, I bribed her with ice cream up at the Deli. They have these tiny cones that are the perfect size for Anna and their free for kids three and under. Of course, after she finished the first one, she wanted another and I didn't have anything left to bribe her with to get her home, but somehow we made it and we had a good time while we were there.

Raspberries

Evie has started blowing raspberries. Her ability to do so has probably been helped by the bucketfuls of saliva dripping out of her mouth since she is also cutting her bottom two teeth.

So, after I came home from the doctor's office last week, I thought that I was going to spend time snuggling with Evie and watching Lost. Instead, I spent much of the night pacing the floor with Evie. We were giving her Tylenol and Motrin at the same time and an hour before one of the medicines was about to wear off, she'd start to fuss. When we did get her to sleep, she usually slept for only an hour at a time, and that was only when both medicines were at full force. Plus, it was a real fight to get her to take the medicine. She would cry and try to spit it back out while I pinched her cheeks, hoping to get her to swallow some of it.

Early in the night (around eleven), we finally got her all dosed up and I could see her start to relax. But rather than doze off in my arms like I had hoped she would, she straightened up and started to blow raspberries. It was a sweet moment even if I was desperate for her to go to sleep.

Throughout the night, Evie was drinking less and less of her bottles. She normally sucks down six ounces, but after she got sick, she seemed to be content with only three at a time. But by mid-morning Thursday, she became even less interested in her bottle. We started giving her formula through a medicine dropper, trying to get her to take at least one ounce an hour. We also tried Pedialyte, but she liked that about as much as she liked the medicine.

At first, she was drooling so much that whenever I would set her down after holding her up on my shoulder, my sleeve would be soaked. But by Thursday afternoon, her mouth was wet, but the drooling had slowed considerably. Her last wet diaper was at six in the morning and she was starting to appear lethargic. So around four, we decided to take her to Primary Children's Hospital. We weren't certain that she was dehydrated, but I figured I'd have more confidence in their ER doctors if they sent us home than I would have with our local ER crew.

Of course, once we checked into the ER, Evie seemed to perk up and she had a wet diaper, but the doctors were nice and didn't make us feel at all overprotective. Instead they referred to us as "motivated" when we told them how we had been feeding Evie with a medicine dropper. They also suggested a "magic mouthwash"--a mix of Maalox and Benedryl. The Maalox works on the acid in the blisters and the Benedryl helps with the swelling, so that Evie would feel like drinking again. With older kids they just have them spit the mouthwash out, but they said Evie would be fine to swallow it. And after being up with her for nearly 36 hours, we were hoping that she'd swallow every last drop of the Benedryl. They had us try out the mouthwash and then feed Evie again. When she drank two ounces easily, they sent us home.

Evie passed out on the way home and even slept through our dinner at Pei Wei. We got home and got both Anna and Evie settled around nine. Mercifully, Evie slept until three in the morning. It was wonderful, but at first I really struggled to go to sleep. Even though my mom had come to help and Dan had stayed home that day, I was too worried about Evie to nap. Then when she finally seemed to be doing better, I was still so wound up, I was almost afraid to go to sleep.

By Friday afternoon Evie was back to drinking her six ounces at a time and by Sunday evening she seemed to do better. That's when I finally realized that she was teething. I hadn't realized that in addition to blisters on her throat, Evie was also dealing with two teeth trying to work their way up through her gums at the same time. But for the most part, she is our sweet, healthy Evie again.

It took me a few days, but I'm catching up on my sleep. Of course, I'm not being very easy on myself though. I've signed up for a 5K this Saturday and I was worried that I wouldn't get a chance to go running at all this week. So when Evie woke up on Tuesday morning at 4:30, I got her fed and back to bed at 5, but then when my alarm went off at 5:30, I decided I wasn't sleeping very well and got up to go running. Needless to say, I wasn't my most patient that day. I took the day off on Wednesday to rest up, and then planned to go running this morning. Evie was a little nicer, getting up at 5:30 this morning and that's when my alarm was set to go off. But I ran six miles and by eight o'clock this evening, I was dozing while reading to Anna. So I should probably stop writing and get myself to bed.