Buy One Get Two Free!: February 2017

We have entered the WHY? stage. Sammy started it about a month ago, and now every conversation leads to a dozen new topics explaining the previous topic. Elsie and Danny quickly jumped on this train and now my day is spent explaining

why we put money in the bank
how gas makes the car run
why some dogs are white and others are brown, or black, or grey
why we don't take an ambulance to the doctors every time we go
how come every school bus we see isn't dropping kids off at their preschool
why we can't go in an airplane every day
why the dog catcher truck in the movie 'Life of Pets' looks like a mail truck
where are we going in the car? Why are we going there? (repeat 10 times in the 5 min car ride)
why we can't go to the grocery store everyday
why adults go to work
how come our outside toys are wet after it rains
why hitting our siblings gets us a timeout
why their large construction excavator does not fit on the Thomas the Train play tracks
why Danny gets to pick a show to watch on TV too
why we can't make Daddy a birthday cake everyday
follow up: why it's not their birthday everyday so they can have cake
follow up: why does Elsie have the same birthday as me
follow up: why were we in your belly

You get the idea. It's torturous. A small part of me is happy they are curious and wanting to learn new things, but it's a very small part. The large part of me that has to repeat the same answers to the same questions over and over and over again all day is exhausted. There have been a few car rides where I say 'ok everybody let's just watch bubble guppies till we get there'.

We've also amped up time outs. Not feeling the sitting on the couch is effective anymore. So now the 3 count gets you up in your bedroom. It's like the apocalypse for them. The crying that they have to walk all the way upstairs and sit in the room alone is excruciating. So Danny's new offense is defense in these matters. When he gets in trouble (like for hitting Sammy with a toy) I say 1 and he runs to Sam and says 'sorry sammy' and gives a fake quick hug and then looks at me as if this will erase 1. It does not. And 5 min later when he pushes Elsie, he gawks at me incredulously when I say 2. That's right 2 Danny. Then he is behaves for a solid hour hoping that is enough lead time to start the count back down to 1. Sometimes it does, depending on the infractions. Other times it does because I've just thoroughly enjoyed an hour of no trouble Danny.

We had another hospital visit for Elsie this month. Mommy and Daddy tried to escape on a no kid vacation to St. Maarten for a week, and Elsie put a halt to that. We left on a Saturday and by that afternoon Miguel's mom called to tell us Elsie had what she thought was the stomach flu. By Sunday she had the cough to go with it and by Tuesday evening she was dipping below 90 for oxygen saturation. So my mom took her to the ER Tuesday night and they were able to do a respiratory protocol and give a liquid steroid that boosted her lung function up and her O2 sat bumped up to 95 so they sent her home saying to follow up with our pedi in 2 days. On Thursday when my mom picks her up to go to the pediatrician at 1:30 she texts me she doesn't look good. I am sitting on the beach and Miguel is up in the room eating some lunch. Knowing my Mom wouldn't say that lightly, I check my phone to see the last flight to the states is at 3:36 pm. Considering you need to be to the airport 2 hours before an International flight, I didn't think it was likely. It's 2:15 island time when my mom texts me they are in an exam room at pedi with an 82 sat, and the doctor went to go get her some oxygen. I knew this meant a hospital stay, so I throw our beach stuff in a bag and high tail it up to the room, we pack and vacate the room in 5 minutes and head to the airport 15 min away. We get there and I run in while Miguel waits at the curb in the rental car, it's already 2:50. The American Airlines rep is great, she says she can get us on the flight to Miami and connect us to Boston by 1 AM. We'll take it, Miguel returns the rental, we go through security and get to the gate at 3:20, leaving the island at 3:36. Things happened so quickly that I flew in my bathing suit and flip flops. We land at Logan at 1 AM and my Aunt Cathy picks us up and drives us all the way to Hasbro to see our girl. She had full on laryngitis the poor thing and didn't speak for a whole week. She stayed for 2 days and we went for our pedi follow up and decided to put her on a daily nebulizer treatment with a low dose corticosteroid to keep her lungs clear through the winter months. Seems to be working so far. The good news is they continue to agree there is no wheezing or signs of asthma or chronic lung disease. They still just feel that the lung tissue is regenerating from the initial ventilator damage and therefore struggling to hold oxygen when she has a cough with fluid in her lungs. So still holding out hope she will outgrow this.

And hoping we are done with sickness for the winter since this last flu went through the whole house. Ugh.

We've been using a lot of essential oils with the kids for a variety of reasons. We are using some for sleep since the fall was full of little ones waking up in the middle of the night and staying up for hours. We've been able to transition Danny off Miralax since they've had some recent news that it affects little kids neural development. We diffuse oils daily that help with the afternoon 'crazies' of having 3 three year olds. Danny seems to really respond to them. He is our 0 to 100 meltdown kid. He gets so worked up over small issues, the other day he cried so much his eyes were almost swollen shut because we were out of bananas. I put some lavender and calming oils on his wrists and within minutes he was settling. I never realized how many ways you can use these oils, and I love that we are using chemical free ways to do things. I made an awesome face moisturizer and my skin is looking and feeling great and it cost me a few dollars.

The kids have had a massive growth spurt since the summertime. We went to the pedi here are the current weights and heights:

Sammy is 30 lbs and 37 inches.

He was 14% last check up and is now 30% in the weight category

He was 13% in height and how is 34%

Danny weighed 31.8 lbs and 37.25 inches

He was 33% weight and is now 48%

He was 40% height and is now 54%

Elsie is 26,8 lbs and 35.75 inches

She was 3% weight and is now 10%

She was 5% weight and is now 17%

WOW! What a growth spurt. Even though she is still small for her age, she went up 4 shoe sizes this year and 3 clothing sizes. We'll take it.