Catching up…



It’s been what, two months since I last posted?  And so much has gone on since then…

Ace got sick in early July.  Really, really sick.  After 4 days of fevers over 102, I took him to the pediatrician after hours on Wednesday, July 8.  She listened to his chest, said his lungs were clear, it was a bad virus and gave him eye drops for pink eye.  That was this day:

The next day, he was so sick that all his did was sleep, and if he wasn’t sleeping, he was moaning.  It was pretty pitiful, so I took him BACK to the pediatrician after hours and he saw a different doctor.  This one did a chest x-ray and lo and behold…  pneumonia.  We were carted off to the hospital where the little A-Man spent two days getting IV fluids and antibiotics.

Gater fared better as he didn’t have to go to the hospital (other than to visit A-Man, of course), but he was pretty darned sick, too.

Calista was mostly spared as she got to go to Victoria to visit Gramma and Papa for a week.  I ended up losing my voice and being sick for a little over two weeks, and Skip got it, too.  So the first half of July pretty much sucked.

August was pretty run of the mill until mid-way through, Calista got a nasty headache.  She was sick for two days with it.  On the second day, August 14th, she came into our room in the middle of the night.  She bolted up out of our bed at 6 am announcing she had to throw up, and Skip got her to the bathroom just in time.  I heard him ask me — rather panicked — if she ate anything red.  I had forgotten she had a DQ Arctic Rush (cherry, of course) the day before and when she barfed up all that red in the dark bathroom, he must have thought it was blood.  Oops!

After he cleaned up and threw the bath mat (that was a casualty of the incident) into the hamper, we climbed back in bed, and soon after, the boys joined us.

Skip headed off to work as the four of us slept in the bed blissfully…  myself, A-Man, Calista and Gater in a row.  Unbeknownst to me, Skip had left the bathroom door open and Gater had slipped out of bed to wander.

I woke to a thud and a scream, and ran to the bathroom to find Nate face down on the floor with a pool of blood forming around his head.  NOT GOOD.

The best I can figure is with the bath mat missing, the floor was wet from Skip’s shower and Nate slipped on the floor, hitting his head on the corner of the bathroom scale.

At any rate, I scooped him up (in retrospect, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to move someone with a bleeding head wound, but hey, I freaked) and got a washcloth to hold on the gash on his head.  I screamed for Skip — as did Calista who was now awake and on the verge of tears in a panic — but he didn’t answer.  I looked out the window and saw his car was gone, so I knew he had left for work.

I started to fumble through the caller ID on the phone with one hand while holding the cloth on a screaming Nate’s head with the other.  I was trying to find my neighbor T’s  number to see if she could watch Ace and Calista for me while I got Gater to the doctor or hospital.  I couldn’t find her number, and the phone said it was 9:00 am, so I called Skip at work but got his voicemail.

I left him a panicky message saying I was pretty sure Nate needed stitches and I needed help.  I looked at the phone again and saw it was actually only just after 7:30 am — the 9:00 time I saw must have been on the caller ID.

Skip leaves for work at 7:30 am, so I called his cell and miraculously, he not only had it with him and had it turned on, but he answered it!  I told him to come home as I needed to get Nate to the hospital.

Calista was in tears and scared, so I gave her the job of waiting for Daddy at the door.  All this while, Ace was just sort of wandering around, doing his own thing.

I got Nate an appointment at the pediatrician and Skip took him so Ace, Calista and I could get ready to meet up with him there.

When we got there, Nate had a different band-aid on his head from the gauze and band-aid I had sent him out the door with, so I thought they had already taken care of it, but Skip said he had only had a numbing shot.  The kids and I waited in the waiting room while Gater got…  6 stitches.  Ouch.

The poor boy was screaming his little head off and I’m really glad it was Skip with him and not me.  After being there where Ace and Nate had to get chest x-rays (they lock them in a weird tube which holds them still with their arms over their heads) and then Ace’s IV insertion the month before, I think I had my fill of traumatic baby experiences for a while.

Now Gater’s stitches are gone and he’s got what looks like it will be a nice scar going on there.

And to think, he did it just one week shy of the one-year anniversary of when he broke his arm.  And just 6 months after he broke his left front tooth.

Oy vey.

More updates to come later, I have to get a few things done before Calista gets home from school!  :)

One Reply to “Catching up…”

  1. Oh the things I have to look forward to. You and Skip are amazing for holding it together while dealing with screaming, coughing, bleeding, puking, or otherwise maimed kids. I’m taking notes.

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