Summer Fun {Picture update!}

Swimmin’ with daddy Bein’ extra cute	Hangin’ with our cousins Goin’ to the zoo
Picnicin’ a Eagle Point Park	Lovin’ on baby sister

p.s. – Anybody else think the makers of the Moby wrap ought to pay me for the free advertising?

Creating a Legacy

We spent this weekend in Dubuque IA celebrating Tom’s Grammy’s 90th birthday – SO, SO much fun!  We celebrated Grampy’s 90th in Florida in January 2008, but they aren’t as mobile as they were then, so we all traveled to them for this celebration!   Tom’s grandparents are SO fun –they’ve been married 66 years, traveled all over the world together (like even kayaking in Antarctica), raised 4 kids and until last year, they still lived in the home that they built when their kids were young.  (Last year they moved into an independent/assisted living type apartment.) 
Spending time with them this weekend got me really thinking about the legacy I want to leave—and realizing what an amazing legacy his grandparents have created.
I couldn’t find an electronic copy of their wedding picture – but here are Tom’s grandparents with their first child.
 
And here’s the picture I took last weekend – seriously, I hope I look this good at 90!

And here are their 4 kids – then and now….

And after 66 years of marriage and raising 4 children – they get to enjoy 6 grandkids (1 wasn’t able to make it) and 10 great grandbabies (The 1 grandson who couldn’t make it has twin 13 month old boys). 


I imagine that Grammy had days when she yelled at her kids, maybe crabbed at her hubby, wanted to pull her hair out, wanted to throw in the towel….you know some of THOSE days that we all know all to well.  But she and Grampy stayed the course – they stayed committed to each other and to the daunting task of parenthood….and 66 years later, what an amazing story they have!  And what a sweet, sweet reminder of the bigger story, the bigger picture that can be all to difficult to see when you’re “stuck” in the day to day job of changing diapers, feeding babies, breaking up fights, cooking, cleaning and washing the 17th load of laundry.

A Day Worthy of A Blog

You may have seen my facebook posts, but I figure yesterdays excitement is worthy of a blog post too!!  We spent the weekend in Dubuque Iowa for Tom’s Grammy’s 90th birthday –SUCH a fun weekend….more on that in another post when all the babies are healthy! 

Friday night/early Saturday morning (like 3 am early), I was up nursing Gracyn and I could hear Micah making this awful wheezing sound when he breathed.  I knew I didn’t dare stop nursing Gracyn or she would scream her little head off and wake everyone else, so I nudged Tom to go check on Micah.  He picked him up and took him into the bathroom and the poor little guy had spiked a fever and started in on this awful cough.  It was seriously a cough I’ve never heard before – I don’t even know how to describe it.  Definitely not the dry, hacky cough you sometimes get with a winter cold….this sounded deep and rattly and sometimes almost like the barking that seals do. 

He continued off and on with the cough and fever all weekend…..but also had periods where he had no tylenol, no fever and seemed fine.  He played at the park, swam in the motel pool and was his usual ornery self…..then he’d start fevering and coughing and snuggle into my lap for a while.  When he was still coughing all the way home Monday, I decided I was taking him into the clinic first thing Tuesday morning.

And on our way to the clinic I had a friendly encounter with a very generous State Trooper –who reminded me that I was driving too fast and needed to slow down….thankfully with just a warning.  My children on the other hand – not quite so generous!  Makenzie reminded me all day yesterday –“mom it’s not good to speed…why were you speeding…did you know you were speeding….you know if you speed you’ll have to give the cop all your money…and on and on and on she went ALL DAY.  Micah man so kindly told EVERYONE at the doctors office, “my mommy speeded and the cop made us stop.”  Love them! 

We made it to the clinic….5 minutes late! And then waited for 30 more minutes in the waiting room….guess I didn’t need to hurry quite so much to get there!  The doctor gave Micah man an antiobiotic…..and then he got worse.  The poor guy just faded as the day went on.  He woke up from his nap coughing around 3:00 yesterday and NEVER stopped.  By 5 I was giving him phenergan with codine that we had in the closet from his last episode of coughing – then I dropped him off at Grandma’s so we could go to Makenzie’s preschool open house.  When we picked him back up at 7 he looked worse than he had looked all day and was still coughing –the cough medicine didn’t do a thing.  I called the ER and talked to the PA on call who recommended more cough medicine and tylenol…..gave him that and he coughed so bad he puked it right back up, so we headed to the ER.  

And in case that wasn’t enough excitement for 1 day – Tom called me as I was driving to the ER (keep in mind it’s literally 3 blocks from our house!) to say that Makenzie was throwing up.  (Thankfully that was all over and she was sleeping soundly by the time I got home with Micah!)  Gracyn went along with me to the ER so I could feed her when necessary – and thankfully my wonderful mama met us there a short time later and helped me care for both kiddos.  Seriously I don’t know what we’d do without grandparents around!!

At the ER, they drew his blood to test for pertussis (whooping cough), gave him 2 breathing treatments (the albuterol one didn’t phase the coughing but turned him into his naughty self for a few minutes and he was swatting at me and trying to escape our little ER room….thankfully that wore off pretty quickly!), gave him a rocephin shot in the leg (OUCH!!), took 2 chest x-rays to make sure he hadn’t swallowed something that was irritating his airway and 4 hours later sent us home with steroids to take for the next 4 days.  He did sleep pretty well after we got home, so I’m hopeful he’s on the mend! 

Makenzie has a bit of a cough today (she’d like to think it’s MUCH worse than it is ) and Gracyn seems to be healthy!