Category Archives: Cate

back at home

Posted on by

An update on that last post: we’re all home now. We thought Catie was going to have to stay a second night in the hospital, but since she hadn’t needed additional oxygen support since last night, and since we have the nebulizer at home to manage her asthma symptoms, they discharged her late this afternoon. I cannot begin to tell y’all how happy I am to have my baby girl at home, and to not have to spend another night in a hospital recliner.

The main problem right now is that we have to give her an oral steroid for the swelling in her airways, and it makes her crazy hyper. So she’s running around, which in turn makes her winded, which leads us back to square one with her asthma. We (meaning me, Dave, and the grandparents) are trying to contain her movements, with limited to zero success thus far. We’re keeping cartoons on the TV in the hopes that something will catch her attention and mesmerize her into sitting still for a while.

It sucks that this happened while the in-laws are here – last year when they came to visit, we all got the flu. This year, we end up with a sick kid in the ER. I can only wonder what’ll happen when they come next year. Broken bone? Small pox outbreak? Place your bets now, we’ll see how it goes in 2009.

But on the up side, it was really nice to have two extra sets of hands around to help out with Catie, especially when she was throwing up and I needed tupperware bowls, or cool wet rags, or whatever. And it was lovely to come back from the hospital to find that the kitchen had been cleaned, there was food in the fridge, and the laundry was switched from the washer to the dryer so it wouldn’t mildew (although that last one might’ve been Dave, I’m not sure).

Here’s hoping the post-steroid crash happens sooner than later so we can all get some shut-eye. At least we’ll be in our own beds tonight, which makes everything else seem like gravy.

live from the children's pediatric wing, AGAIN

Posted on by

Catie got sick very suddenly on Saturday night. She had been fine; we’d met up with Cat, Tony and Elizabeth that morning for brunch, and we drove around downtown Raleigh with my in-laws, and she was fine during all of that. She took a short nap in the car, then played outside with some of the neighbor kids, and was still fine.

That night, she suddenly got really irritable and she seemed a bit congested. I gave her her steroid inhaler (Pulmicort, for those of you who know asthma) to try to fend off any pending asthma attacks. It didn’t work so well. I brought her to bed with me and Dave because she was waking up every twenty minutes or so. Around 5 a.m., I noticed she was wheezing a lot. Dave gave her some albuterol through the nebulizer, then I did it when I got up with her at 10.

Two more albuterol treatments, and at least five barfs later, we called the doctor’s office because I was worried about her getting dehydrated. (Every time she threw up, it seemed to be mostly phlegm. Poor thing was too congested to keep anything down.) They told us to bring her to WakeMed’s children’s ER, so that’s what we did. We’ve now been here 22 hours and counting.

Once we got here, they gave her multiple albuterol treatments, they gave her an IV for fluids (seriously, the IV was hands-down the worst part of the whole thing; I almost cried myself, it was so awful), they gave her lots of steroids to help reduce the swelling in her airways, and they gave her some Zofran for any nausea issues (since she had barfed so many times). Then they admitted us to the pediatric wing for the night. We finally got a room around midnight. (We first arrived at the ER around 4 p.m.)

Right now, her fever is down, she’s been drinking a lot of water and juice, and (most importantly) keeping it down, plus she doesn’t seem to be wheezing at all anymore. So I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to go home today.

Sorry this post is sort of scatter-brained; I’ve barely slept the past two nights, and I’m borrowing Dave’s laptop to write this while Catie is zoning out to “Wow Wow Wubbzy” on the hospital TV. I’ll post more as things develop.

"it's a tree! A treeee!!!"

Posted on by

My in-laws got here last night, and they’ll be staying with us until the 18th. Since they come all the way from England, they typically stay for a while when they come to visit. But it’s fun, since we usually only get to see them once a year. And Catie has changed so much since they saw her last December, it’s been a hoot so far. She’s kind of figured out how to say Grandma already, although “Grandpa Roger” is a mouthful and she hasn’t even attempted that one yet. She seems to have decided they’re both pretty fun people, though, since all of their attention is focused on her.

Today we went out for lunch and to buy a Christmas tree. You wouldn’t think that would take a very long time, but somehow it ate most of the day. We did manage to get the tree decorated when we got it home, which is cool, and one more thing I can cross off my to-do list.

The only downside of having the in-laws here is that I did so much cleaning beforehand that I pulled something in my back and I’ve been in unbelievable pain for the past day and a half. I don’t really have to clean that much, but you know, it’s that Southern hospitality gene of mine, I can’t have people come visit me when the house is a mess. So I overdid it, which is dumb, and now I’m popping ibuprofen like M&M’s, because this 30-pound toddler of mine won’t stop demanding that I pick her up. Oy.

Anyway, things are sort of hectic here with the company, but I’ll check in with pictures and whatnot over the next week or so.

P.S. The subject line is what Catie said when she saw the Christmas tree in our house. It’s pretty awesome when they’re so little and everything about the holidays is still magical and fun.

roarrrr!!!

Posted on by

Here’s my child explaining all the various animal sounds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbKuvr9SisQ

The dinosaur is my favorite, although I forgot to ask her about the pig in this video. She doesn’t say oink, she makes this unbelievable snorting nose that sounds like an old man snoring. It’s hysterical.

Oh, you’ll also get to see her do her “I don’t know” thing, complete with very exaggerated shoulder shrug, which never ceases to crack me up.

About halfway through, we got sidetracked into some “Wonder Pets” reference that most people probably won’t get (unless you’ve seen the episode where they save the baby kangaroo 10,000 times like we have), then she made up her own song, which… huh. Yeah. No idea where she came up with it, although I definitely heard the words “Wonder Pets” in her song, so maybe it’s her interpretation of the theme song? Who knows.

back in NC

Posted on by

The 6 p.m. flight home yesterday was indeed a very bad idea on my part. Our flight from Jackson was a little delayed, but not too major. We had an hour and a half to make our connection in Atlanta, so I wasn’t worried. But then we sat on the tarmac for half an hour because the Atlanta airport was apparently shut down due to bad weather. And once we finally got going, we circled Atlanta for over an hour, since the weather had caused a huge traffic backup. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or not that Catie took the opportunity to fall asleep – on the one hand, it’s nice that she wasn’t awake and cranky on the plane, but I also knew that her dozing off at 8 p.m. was going to cause us some major problems later on.

We should’ve missed our connecting flight in Atlanta because of the delay; we landed a few minutes after our next plane was scheduled to take off. I had been making a backup plan in my head, trying to decide what I was going to do if we were stuck in Atlanta for the night – try to get a hotel, call my uncle and cousin (who live in Atlanta) to see if we could crash with them, or rent a car and drive the rest of the way to Raleigh, praying that Catie would sleep in the car. Fortunately (I guess?) our connection was also delayed, so we made it. We got home a little after midnight. Blargh.

Btw, I know that toddlers are often quite literal, but I really have to start being more careful about how I talk to Catie. At some point during the flight, I had told her that after our ride on the airplane, we were going to see Daddy. She got down, grabbed my hand, and led me to the back of the plane. I thought she was just exploring, and at the back of the plane was the restroom, of course. I figured, what the heck, might as well go while we’re here, so I brought her into the bathroom with me. She proceeded to pound on the back wall of the bathroom, screaming, “Daaaaaddy!!! Where aaaaare youuuu?!?!!!” So yeah, she thought that “after the airplane” meant that Daddy was literally behind the plane. Oops. Poor kid, I have to figure out a better way to explain the concept of time to her.

Oh also, our descent into Raleigh was really bumpy, and Catie got sick. I could tell she didn’t feel well because of the way she was burying her face in my chest, then she coughed, then sort of cough/gagged, and I knew I had about 0.2 seconds until she barfed. I quickly aimed her head over my arm into the middle of the aisle, and just in time. She only heaved once, but still, poor baby. The lady sitting behind me tore up her SkyMall magazine to basically wallpaper over the barf so all of the other passengers wouldn’t have to walk through it on their way out. I was grateful, I knew I needed to cover it up somehow, but the magazine idea never would’ve occurred to me.

Catie and I were both thrilled to see Dave at the airport; her face positively lit up the second she saw him. I drove home so he could ride in the backseat with her. They talked and giggled the whole way home.

As I expected, Catie was all well-rested from her nap, so she ended up not going to bed until close to 3 a.m. She woke up at 8:30, and Dave (God bless that man) got up with her and gave her some milk, then brought her to bed with us. It didn’t take long for her to go back to sleep, and we all slept until noon. I couldn’t believe it, she has never done that in her life. Since she slept so late, I figure that we’ll just push through her nap today and hopefully get to bed at a decent time tonight. Fingers crossed.

NaBloPoMo day 28

Posted on by

It’s getting a little difficult to keep coming up with blog posts every day, especially while we’re out of town. So here are some random notes:

1. Catie turned 22 months old yesterday. I meant to write a milestone recap for her, but I was cooking for most of the day. I’ll owe a post on that later, especially since her verbal stuff is exploding all over the place.

2. Thanksgiving food. So good. Ate too much. Yum. Also, urgh.

3. Today my sister and I posed Catie at my parents’ house to try to get a picture of her for our Christmas card. We got a few that turned out really cute, I hope we can get a good card out of it.

4. Tonight we’re going over to our friends’ Mike and Nicole’s house for a little playdate. Should be a lot of fun, I can’t wait.

5. We fly back to North Carolina tomorrow. I know my parents will be sad for Catie to leave, and she’s going to be heartbroken without her constant audience, but I’m really looking forward to being home. Besides, we’ll see them all again in a month, when they come to NC for Christmas. So that’ll be good.