We have crawling...

It's official. He's mobile.

So it goes...

Last Wednesday, I started coughing the entire day at work, and by the evening, I could feel that "I'm geting sick" feeling.  Sure enough, by the middle of the night I was in full-on flu mode.  I locked myself in the bedroom and Mel took good care of me, but she was scheduled to work at Starbucks on Thursday night, so she called my step-mom to see if she could watch the kids while she worked.  Of course, she was nice enough to come right down.

By the time Mel got home from work on Thursday, she was starting to feel sick, too... and by Friday, we were both full-on sick with the flu.  My step-mom was nice enough to watch the kids all day Friday, but Saturday morning, she went home sick, and Katie woke up with the flu.  So we got to spend Saturday/Sunday all being sick.  By Saturday afternoon I was feeling quite a bit better.

Although Mel wasn't totally recovered, Katie was the main focus on Sunday... the worst of her sick days.  We called her doctor's nurse line, and the doctor called in a prescription for Tamiflu for her to try to both lessen her symptoms/sickness duration and try to help her not spread it to Josh, but he was already getting a light fever and coughing Sunday night, so we kinda knew...

Josh didn't want his last feeding on Sunday night, so we let him sleep... Mel woke up with him at midnight, and he only ate about an ounce, and woke up at 3am with a 103+ fever and refused to eat.  Because of his recent MRSA, age, and high fever, Mel took him to the Children's Healthcare ER.  They monitored him, put him on Tamiflu as well, and Mel ended up coming home around 10am, and I am heading into work...luckily Katie woke up feeling pretty good, and it seems like she's almost over it.

So, not only did Mel never really get a good day to recover from her flu, but she only got around 2 hours of sleep last night.  And now she's got sick kids at home all day.  And it's her birthday. :(   Oh, the joys of kids during flu season... I'm thinking we'll all try the flu shots next year. :)

Long day...

The other day we noticed a bump on Josh that looked kind of worrysome.  We'd had experience with MRSA/Staph in the past with Katie, so be safe we had it looked at.  They took a culture, but they said from the look of it, they were almost 100% sure it was MRSA.  They recommended we give Josh a couple warm baths an hour and do our best to drain it, and if it wasn't better by the morning to take him to Children's Healthcare to have it drained.

After pretty much giving him a bath non-stop last night, the bump was the same this morning.  We called Children's to figure out if this was an outpatient thing, or if we needed to take him to the ER.  The nurse called back, and told us that because he wasn't feverish or acting weird, we could take him to the urgent care down in Kennesaw when they opened at 11am. I stayed home with Katie, and Mel took him down there, but 9 other people were waiting as well.  So after an hour, they finally called her to go back, and she realized she'd forgotten her wallet at home.  They wouldn't take a check or card over the phone, so we had no other option but for her to come all the way home, get her wallet, and go back.  They made her wait in line again, so 45 minutes later they finally took the $75 copay got her back in.  The doctor came in the room, looked at it, and said it was too deep and she'd have to go to the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta main hospital (emergency room).  Luckily, they refunded the co-pay, and Mel headed down to Children's in Atlanta around 2pm.

She sat there until around 5pm, and they finally were able to sedate him and drain it.  They gave him a precription for some antibiotics and liquid hydrocodone and she left about 7pm.  He slept the ride home, and we woke him up to feed him about 9:30 and put him in bed.  We'll see how he does tonight, but he seemed himself, just sleepy.  What a day...

Updates...

An interesting last couple weeks.  We got the news 2 weeks ago that Mel's grandma (father's side) had passed away.  She lived in Pennsylvania, and after seeing that plane tickets would cost us around $1500 to fly up there on short notice, and knowing how much of a pain it is to fly with one kid, let alone 2, we decided to drive the 13+ hour drive up there with Melanie's mom.  Surpsingly, both Katie & Josh did very very well.  We brought 20+ episodes of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" for Katie's DVD player, and she was set... although everyone else about went crazy listening to it. :P  Besides the stops every 1 1/2 - 2 hours for diaper changes, bottle feedings, bathroom breaks, etc, it was a nice drive.

It was good to see everyone on that side of the family, as we rarely get up that way, but it's sad it takes an event like a funeral to get everyone together.  It's been pretty much the same way with my family in Iowa, as well... seems like we only get up there for weddings and funerals, too.

I've been battling a cold for the last 3-4 days, and it's finally started getting better last night.  I feel a lot better today, but of course even with my best attempts to stay away from her, Katie wakes up this morning sniffling, coughing, and sneezing.  Hopefully she'll feel better by her 2 year birthday party this Sunday. :)  Crazy that she's already 2 years old... looking back at her 1 year party pictures, she couldn't even walk yet... now she's began climbing up into her car seat by herself, and managed to scale the back of our living room chair and hop in it.   (With supervision, of course). :)

Anyways, we'll post pictures on Flickr for everyone who can't make it to the party Sunday.