Thursday, October 31, 2013

Halloween 2013











Meagan with Claire and Sydney...they are a bunch of grapes and a grape farmer

NiNi's effort to protect her candy.  It says "Do Not Eat or this will  happen" then beside it is a picture of someone apparently injured in some way saying "help! help!"  Wow, deperate times call for desperate measures.


An attempt at looking scary...I think



Ethan wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle...but I scored this regular ninja costume at Goodwill for 4 bucks and told him it was Raphael.  He totally bought it.


Sunday, October 27, 2013

Fall Break

Some friends of our let us use their lake house and boat over fall break.  Unfortunately, it was the coldest weekend of the season so we stayed inside most of the time.  The kids had a blast watching movies and playing board games.  NiNi had been begging Chris to take her fishing for about a year.   Not sure what her obsession with it was.  So they were able to do a little cane pole fishing with hot dog bait.  After about 20 minutes of sitting out there, not a fish in sight, she said all disillusioned, "THIS is fishing?  It's boring.  " So that cured her fishing bug.


 

 







 





Monday, October 21, 2013

A few of my least favorite things...

Chilling in the PICU
 
And topping the list today...(drum roll please...) INCOMPETENT MEDICAL PERSONNEL!  We have two premier children's hospitals in this city.  When NiNi was a baby, I had an unpleasant experience at Children's Hospital #1.  So ever since then we shifted all of the kids' physicians and care to Children's Hospital #2.  Problem solved.  Except our beloved pediatric urologist at Children's Hospital #2 (who is seriously the coolest, nicest guy in the world) happened to be doing surgery at Children's Hospital #1.  When I saw it on the paperwork I had a bad feeling, but I brushed it off.  So Ethan was scheduled for a circumcision and chordee repair (a minor easily correctable birth defect).  Surgery was scheduled for 12:00 noon. This was not the greatest news because he of course had to fast all day.  The night before, they called me back and said they were able to get him in at 7am.  Awesome. Day of the surgery...oops, they now say they can't do it in the morning after all, but go ahead and come in around 11 and they'll see what they can do. Ethan actually didn't even complain about being hungry until about 10:30.  We got all settled in the pre-op room at 11:30.  By then he was pretty much starving and anxiety off the charts (as soon as he sees the hospital jammies he starts freaking out).  Long story short, I waited in the pre-op room with my starving, screaming kid until 2:00pm.  Child life never came by to offer toys, movies, nothing.  So at that point they take him screaming from my arms (this never gets easier no matter how many times you do it and no matter how minor a procedure) and I head for the waiting room.  About an hour later I see the surgeon (OUR surgeon) wandering around the waiting room looking for ME.  He tells me there was a mistake...he was handed the wrong size syringe and a medicine (the local anesthetic) which was supposed to be administered just under the skin, was mistakenly injected into his blood stream.  This can cause heart arrhythmias so they were taking him to the PICU for observation possibly overnight.  What???  Mind you this was supposed to be an hour long procedure.  My other kids were getting off the bus and I had chili simmering on the stove.  Ethan was ok, but, because they screwed up the local, he had virtually no coverage for pain except oral pain meds.  He is a really tough kid and it takes a lot for him to complain, and he was screaming.  And I was mad. They moved us up to the intensive care floor and hooked him up to heart monitors.  I kept asking questions... how did this happen, does this happen a lot, what are the long-term effects of getting a dose of this to your heart, etc?  At one point there were 3 people in business suits standing in our hospital room I assume trying to preempt a law suit. We got somewhat settled.  About 2 hours had gone by, fluids pumping into his IV for 3 hours total.  I'm not a genius, but I do know that if you pump fluid in, it's gotta come out.  I realized he had not peed nor did anyone come in to suggest he get up to try to pee since he came out of surgery.  Interesting.  So try to pee we did.  In the process the heart monitor leads came off.  No one came in to check on the apparent cessation of heart beats either.  Hmmm...  I wont bore you with more details but I really could go on and on...pain med script came up missing (and doc on call wouldn't write a new one but suggested we use "leftover pain meds from the last surgery"), nurse who accidentally socked him in his surgical site while pulling up his pants, etc.  Once they discharged us (around 10pm) I think I practically ran to the parking lot.  His heart is fine and Ethan is hanging in there but recovery has been very painful.  We have decided that underwear are a completely unnecessary part of his wardrobe.  I smuggled out 2 pair of the drawstring hospital bottoms and that's all he wears...I wash one pair while he wears the other.  They are peach.  Poor kid.  Looking forward to having our boy
back to his old self.        

Friday, October 18, 2013

yea-yea love


 

 
 Wish I would have had the Nikon with me, but snapped these with my iPhone. NiNi and Ethan's relationship has made a lot of progress, but Ethan and his yea-yea have always had a special bond since the day we brought him home.  Ethan wakes up scared in the middle of the night on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes I don't hear him crying but Meagan will get up and bring him into her bed. I find them together all snuggled like mice in the morning.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Girls get-away

 
Part of my 40th birthday present was a weekend cabin get-away in Brown County with my two best friends.  I knew exactly what I wanted and planned the whole thing myself, we just had to convince the husbands, which was not hard.  Perfect weather and great company.  We barely got out of our jammies except to drive into the Story Inn to eat. 
 












 
 

Friday, October 11, 2013

Mama's got a brand new ride


Not really, but we got to drive it for a bit.  Chris had a business trip to Chicago with his co-worker who drives this convertible.  Knowing how much Ethan loves cars, he gave us the keys while he was gone.  Ethan was over the moon and talking about riding in "Lightning McQueen."  (Meagan was taking pictures from the front seat before you get too concerned).  The wind got to be too much after awhile and Ethan asked me to "roll up the windows."


 





Thursday, October 10, 2013