Roseola

Well we finally know what was causing the fevers. Roseola. It was my thought since she had a high fever an no other symptoms. Well this morning she woke up covered in the tell tale rash. I have never been so thankful to see a rash in my life. Little E is still not back to her super happy self but she is certainly on the mend. I stayed home with her today and she took a super long morning and afternoon nap. Pretty much she slept all morning, ate lunch and went back down for a nap. She was up for a total of an hour between the naps. She slept horribly on Sat, Sun and Mon night so I have a feeling she is playing a bit of catch up. Shazam is home with her tomorrow so Thursday we should be ready to go to daycare. Fingers crossed. While she is feeling better she looks a little rough around the edges right now with a rash all over her face, chest and back. I am so glad that we had to reschedule our family photo shoot to next week. Splotchy rash is not what we are looking for on the holiday card.

On a final note we have a new badge on the left. On November 17th we will be blogging for Preemies. I want to encourage all our readers to take the time to blog for babies on November 17th as well. Whether you have a preemie or not on November 17th take the time to remember the thousands of babies born too soon every year.

Sick

Little E woke up Friday morning with a 102 temperature. I had already gone to work and Shazam had a class and midterm to had in that morning. Normally I would have thrown some sub plans together and headed home but we were going on a field trip so that would have been very difficult to deal with. Fortunately my mom was able to drive to us and take care of Ella. We took her to the doctor Friday afternoon. I was almost hoping that it was her ears since she had no other symptoms. Fortunately and unfortunately her ears were clear. The doctor seemed to think it was viral and sent us home with instructions to keep her comfortable with tyl.enlol and mot.rin. We does Little E every 4 hours alternating the two drugs and it only dropped her fever to about 101 with it always spiking to 103-104 when at the end of a dose. She ended up sleeping with us for most the night friday and was a sleepy cranky mess all day Saturday. She ate very little but we were to keep her hydrated. She went down at about 7 pm but woke at 10 pm with a fever of 105. We gave her a sponge bath gave her some motr.in and called the on call doctor. It took 2 more pages to get him to call back. I was not pleased. It wasn't a doctor from our practice but I will still be letting our doctor know that there was a problem. Anyway, with the mo.trin and the bath Little E's temp dropped down to 101. The bath dropped it from the frightening 105 to 102. By the time I spoke with the doctor it was 101 so he thought it would be ok to wait to go to the ER until the morning. When Little E woke Sunday morning she had no temp! So Shazam and I decided to wait and see what happened before spending our day at the ER. Little E was still feeling pretty crappy and by mid morning was refusing all food and most liquids. She was pretty irritable so even though she wasn't febrile I gave her a dose of mo.trin at about 1 pm and put her down for a nap. She woke about 30 minutes later with a fever of 101.5. She was now pretty listless and was just laying in my lap crying, so we decided to take her in. We got to the ER at about 2 pm and by then her temp was 103. They gave her a dose of tyl.enol in triage and we were taken back to the pediatric ER about 20 min after we walked in the door. The ER was packed by the way but they got us back in record time. The doctor saw us within 5 minutes of being in a room. When she examined Little E there was a child life specialist with her blowing bubbles singing songs and giving us toys. The doctor was shocked to hear that Little E was a 30 weeker and told us that she would have never guessed that she was a preemie. She look actually shocked that she weighed 2lb 5 ozs at birth! Anyway the doctor felt that it was either a virus, a UTI, or a reaction to her MMR shot that she had 10 days ago. To rule out infection she wanted a blood count and a blood culture done. The nurse, the child life specialist, and a lab tech all came to our room to help with the blood draw. The c.l.s. explained that they would be putting an iv in when they drew the blood so that it would be in if they needed to give iv antibiotics. They were really great at explaining what they were going to do ect. they were very concerned about how Shazam and I were feeling about the blood draw and IV. I reminded them that Little E had been in the nicu for 69 days and that we had seen plenty of IVs placed in Ella and that a blood draw was not a big deal to us. While I don't like to see Little E in pain and she certainly didn't like the poke she handled it like she always does with some tears but she holds still and waits for it to be over. When they were preparing to put the IV in I could see the nurse examining Little E's hand taking note of the numerous scars from the ivs Little E had placed in the first months of her life. The nurse was great and got the iv in with one stick. With the blood draw done we were told we would have results in 45 minutes. The C.L.S. set us up with a dvd and Little E fell asleep on Shazam's chest. The great news is that her blood count came back normal. The bad news is we still don't know what is going on. So we were sent home to wait and see what happens. Her fever was gone when she went to bed tonight. I need to check her in a bit to see if it has gone up again. I am hoping we don't have a repeat of last night. None of us got much sleep and are feeling it today. My mom is coming to watch E tomorrow and I am hoping that she wakes up fever free, feeling like her spunky self and back to daycare on Tuesday.

Oct 14 Ella using walker.mov

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Fall Fun!

Fall in New England is my favorite. There is so much to do and the weather is cool and crisp but the sun is still bright. I love wearing a warm fleece and doing fun things outside. Last year Shazam, Ella and I took a trip apple picking. She was just home from the hospital and a little squeak of a thing.

This year we have been apple picking and to a pumpkin patch. Boy are things different this year! The apple picking was very quick as we didn't want that many apples and it doesn't take long to pick a half a peck. But it was a nice day and we enjoyed our time in the orchard with my mil, sil and niece. Two weekends ago we went off to find a pumpkin for E. We went to a local farm and unfortunately it was very disappointing. First off they wanted us to pay $14 each to go in a have the opportunity to pick apples and pumpkins. That was not going to happen and we convinced the person at the booth that we just wanted to pick a pumpkin and not see the rest of the stuff (rides and petting zoo). Once at the pumpkin patch it was horrible. There were no good pumpkins, in fact many of them were rotten. We ended up posing E by some pumpkins and leaving. I will pick her up a pumpkin at the store and be done with it. I did get some nice pictures so I guess it was ok. This weekend we were up in NH for Great Bubba (great grandpa) and Mimi (mil's birthday). It was fun to see the family and the weather was great. I got some nice shots of E and her cousins enjoying the fall weather.

Ok so you all deserve an update!

So I really have not updated what we have been up to in so long. Pretty much it is work, play, eat sleep around here. Not really all that fun but we have been having some fun in between the boring day to day life.

Our highlight of late is we went apple picking a few weeks ago. It was fun and I think E enjoyed it. We only picked a peck but have been enjoying apples and apple treats since then. Little E is a freak about apples and loves eating them. If I peel one she will hold a whole apple in her hands and munch away. It is very cute!

Ella is off pretty much all purees and on table food now. I must say that this makes life soooooo much easier. It also makes going out to eat much better. Since E is entertained eating her own meal we can eat together and have an enjoyable time for the most part. While I am still struggling with what on earth to feed her I have found some really yummy items that little E really enjoys. I have not done very many product endorsements here but I think these items are good options for busy working moms trying to feed a hungry toddler when I get home from work.

Little E just loves the Dr Praeger's broccoli pancakes and the California veggie pockets. Just throw them in the toaster oven for a few minutes and a yummy healthy vegetarian option is ready.

In other news Little E has been sick on and off for the past month. Darn you daycare! She has been home for the past 2 days with an ear infection. Just the latest in the sickness that Typhoid Mary has brought home with her. She came home from daycare on Friday with a fever and had it all weekend. She had no other symptoms though. When it didn't go away on Monday I took her into the doctor. Well Little E had an ear infection in one ear and is now on antibiotics. Poor little bumble bee! She was home today with my mom and will be home tomorrow with Shazam. Hopefully she will be back to daycare on Thursday where she can pick up another sickness! We are really happy with the daycare we just wish we could keep her in her little protected bubble for a little longer.

Ella is growing like a weed and while she hasn't really gained any weight since her 12 month appointment (according to her weight yesterday at the doctor) 21lbs she definitely is getting taller. I am looking forward to seeing how tall she is at her 15 month appointment in a few weeks.

The other big news is that Little E has been discharged from Early Intervention. She had an evaluation last week and she did not have the necessary 2 month delay in any area. It was interesting to see how far she has come since her last eval. We have our last appointment with our home visitor tomorrow and we all will be sad to say goodbye. We should get all her results tomorrow and I will have a more complete update on all of Ella's sub-group scores.

Well I must run an tune into glee!

Goodbye Sweet Friend

I have been absent from blogging for about a month now. This absence is partly due to the big life changes over here at Darwin's mommies. In the last three weeks Little E started daycare, I went back to school to teach a new grade (6th), and Shazam started grad school for her master's in social work. To say that we have been busy would be and understatement. I have loads to blog about but there hasn't been much time around here to think about a post let alone actually write one.

Truthfully though the reason why I have not logged on and posted is that I knew I would have to write the post I am about to write and I just wasn't ready to do it. About three weeks ago our spunky puppy and name sake was hit by a car and killed. He got out of a door that was left ajar and was hit. It was terrible. I found him in the road outside our apartment and knew from far away that he was gone. Darwin would have been 12 in another month. I got him at an animal rescue when he was 8 months old. I got a beagle because I wanted to name him Darwin (I am that much of a geek). He was a naughty puppy and drove us all crazy. He was still driving us crazy 11 years later. He was smart but used it, as I used to say, for evil. He ate all sorts of things he shouldn't have over the years. Amazingly only getting really sick from things in his later years. Goat dog's stomach just wasn't what it used to be.

Darwin was a true friend to me through some really rough times. I had him from age 26-37 and so many things changed for me in that decade plus, but Darwin always remained by my side. He was the one living thing that saw me almost every day for that entire decade. He slept for years under the covers with me (until he was ousted by Sue a few years ago). He was the my greeter every time I came home and took a nap after school on the couch with me every afternoon. I cried many tears onto his soft ears.

For a while in my early 30s I was kind of lost. My friends all were couples and I just couldn't figure out where I fit in. I was just starting to figure out that I was gay and didn't quite know what to do with that either. It was during this time in my life that all I pretty much had was my Woobie dog. We drove to the white mountains to hike, camped on the farm in VT and snow shooed in the conservation land around home. He was more than just a dog to me he was a true friend.

Darwin was with me through the tough times, went on Shazam and my second date, loved Shazam even though he knew he was replaced a bit by her. This last year had been rough for the hound who was just finally accepting the new "puppy" into the pack. Ella's early arrival and the chaos that followed stressed my old friend a bit. But over time he was warming to Ella and her constant attention. He particularly enjoyed Ella's treats that she dropped off the high chair. Ella's first word was DiDi and for a few days crawled around the house looking for her DiDi calling his name. Now she sees his picture and says DiDi. It is sad to know that she won't remember having a dog but we will tell her all about her big brother and how much he loved her.

It is quiet around here without Darwin to let us know when the mail arrives or when it is time to eat. To say that I miss him just doesn't do it. I kind of feel like I am missing part of myself. Before I had Sue I had Darwin, before I had Ella I had Darwin. My family just feels a little incomplete without him here.

I can say confidently that I don't know if I would have made it through the last decade without him and while I know I will, I don't really know how I will get through the next decade with him gone.

I picture him asleep curled up like a cinnamon roll on a cloud in dog heaven eating as many chicken wings he can find hidden in the clouds. I hope I get the chance to see him again and kiss his soft head and scratch his favorite spot on his chest. I miss you my sweet woobie. You will always have two mommies that love you so very much.

Award

So I woke up to a blog award! How nice to have the first thing I read this morning be compliments from my friend E over at Our Growing Family. I have gotten to know E over the last few years while we were both planning our weddings and it has been great being along for the ride with through the ups and the downs of both our lives. One of the things I really love about E is that she is up for anything. Mention that you want to meet up for dinner and she will jump in the car and drive over an hour to meet you. My only wish is that her family lived just a bit closer so we could see each other more! Go on over and check her blog out it is worth the read.

Now on to my honorees. I belong to two "special" interest groups as I am both a lesbian mom and a preemie mom. So my google reader list is a funny mix of blogs on both these topics. So I think I will choose a blog from both sides of my blogging family.

So my first honoree is a blog I just started reading. We actually met the author with her partner and son in p-town when we helped them out of bind. She is a great writer and I have enjoyed reading through her post archives and getting to know her over the past few weeks. I find it so interesting to read about other gay families and how it "works" for them. So go and check out the blog Out With Mommy. You will see my cute family and our friend Sandy featured in the top post!

Secondly if there is one thing I learned this year is that no one understands what Shazam and I have been through this past year like other preemie moms. I don't know what I would do without these moms who have laughed, cried, bitched, celebrated and morned with these women over the last year. I feel so lucky to have a group of women to travel this road with. One of these women Trish not only writes a great blog but also started a wonderful message board for all her preemie friends. She tells it like it is, is smart, and is dang funny to boot. She has been through the ringer but has a great attitude and is always there to help another preemie mom out. Her blog Fertile Hope really gives you a glimpse into a preemie mom's world. It shows you the joy but it also shows how having a preemie really changes you. It is not over when you baby comes home from the NICU and everything isn't normal even when your baby is chubby toddler. I am so thankful to have Trish to show me that even though it is not how we planned it kind of is an honor to be a preemie mom. Trish had pre-eclampsia/hellp too so she knows just how scary that can be. She wrote this post a few months ago and I couldn't agree with her more.

So ladies, now for the rules….post the award on your blog, link back to the person that gave it to you, and give it to whomever you want to, as long as they are beautiful!

I am working on a Family Week re-cap. Hopefully it will be up soon.