Family Portrait

As portrayed by Tyler...
Notice anything out of the ordinary?

One day last week while Robert and I were getting ready for work and Tyler was having his asthma treatment, he was drawing pictures on his magnetic doodle thing. I soon heard, "Mommy, come see. I drew our family!" This is really the first real stick figure picture he drew that actually had a purpose, and he sure was proud of it! When I saw that there were 4 people in our family picture, I asked him who was who. He explained that one was him, one was mommy, and one was daddy...and one was "The Baby." Sometimes they say that kids can predict the future. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part and the fact that he really knows we want to have another baby. Either way, I really hope his portrayal of our family portrait comes true someday!

Apple Hill 2008

We took our 2nd annual fall trip to Apple Hill last weekend with the Smith family. We had a good time, and the kids really enjoyed hanging out together. Tyler gets along great with their girls, especially the two older ones, Kelsi & McKena...and I think there's a little crush going on between him and their 6 year old McKena (an older woman, LOL!). I know our family had a great day and really enjoyed picking apples, driving around to the different places, taking pictures, and just enjoying the start to fall! This is really a fun tradition that I hope we can keep doing with them for years to come!

Robert and Tyler taking a break from apple picking to pose for a picture.

Ben & Kody apple hunting and eating.

McKena & Tyler - they pretty much didn't leave each other's side the whole day!

Tyler with his bucket of apples.

Tyler enjoying an apple - look at that beautiful view behind him!

The kids.

The kids - gotta have an annual funny face picture!

Relaxing by a fishing pond as the day comes to an end.

We also took some family pictures for each other, so check out more pictures from the day on my photography blog:
Kelly Williams Photography Blog

Just Keep Trying!

Today was Tyler's 3rd soccer session. Since he is only 4, they don't really play as a team, but focus more on learning the basics of the game. The first session we went to, he did pretty good taking direction from the coaches and doing what they told him to do without too much hassle. Last weekend, however, he was terrible and pretty much spent the entire hour on the sidelines complaining that it was too hot, or he was too tired, or he didn't like soccer, etc. Granted, he did just get out of the hospital the day before, so I guess I couldn't expect too much out of him (his Dr. wanted us to take him to soccer to help loosen up the fluids in his lungs and help break up the pneumonia). Needless to say, I was a little concerned that we would have to go through the complaining every time. Despite his wish to stay home this morning, we went anyways. And he did so much better! He only came over to me a couple times, but pretty much stayed in the game the whole time with only a little bit of complaining. He even got the ball away from the other kids a couple times and was so proud of himself! Although he wasn't heading toward the right goal, I didn't care because he was kicking it and out there playing, so that was more important. We'll work on the rules another time! Guess there's hope afterall!

Taking a water break.

In the game - chasing the ball!

In the game - kicking the ball!
(Ty is the one in the front with his arm up in the air)

Not again!?!?!

Well, looks like pneumonia will be a common occurrence with Tyler. We went back in the hospital again on Wednesday, 9/3/08 just a little under a month after the last time! Seems like the pneumonia is definitely asthma induced, so now they have put him on a 2-times a day asthma medication for at least the next 6 months. Hopefully that will keep him out of the hospital and will eventually bring his lungs back up to normal capacity so he won't be as susceptible to pneumonia!

Man, I can't tell you how boring it is to be stuck in the hospital for 3 days when you're not the patient! I just about went crazy! At least we were close to home this time and didn't get sent out of town to the other hospital. Our local hospital is soooo much nicer...and WAY cleaner! And the nurses were way more attentive to him than the other hospital staff was last time.

Curious to see how much insurance actually picks up since they haven't actually paid for the last visit yet. At worst, our portion of the hospital stay is $200 per admission + the $100 ambulance ride last time. That would be 2 admissions + ambulance for last time ($500) and just the 1 admission for this time ($200). Hopefully our secondary insurance will pick up the copays that the primary requires. Oh, and the new asthma medication is ridiculously expensive! A 15-day supply for $30 our cost after insurance. Again, thank goodness for insurance because the pharmacist said that the medication is over $180 a box without insurance. That's over $360 a month...YIKES!

Now, we have to follow up with a pediatric pulmonologist for the asthma and an allergist to see if the asthma is allergy induced. Just watch, the kid will end up being allergic to cats and dogs...that could be a problem! Anyone want 2 free cats???

A very scary illness...

Well, it has taken a serious illness in my family to get me to blog again. It's only been a little over six months, not too shabby, huh?

(in the 1st hospital, before being transferred to the major hospital/ICU)

Anyways, this last weekend was one of the scariest of my mommy life so far (but apparently not too scary to keep me from taking pictures, LOL)! Last Wednesday night, August 6th, Tyler had a tiny bit of a runny nose and said he didn't feel good. He woke up Thursday morning and complained he still didn't feel good but didn't have any symptoms at all, so off to daycare he went. I got a call from daycare about 9:30am to pick him up because he still wasn't feeling good and wouldn't leave the couch (so very unlike him). When I picked him up, he still didn't have any symptoms of any kind, so I took him to stay with grandpa for the day and went back to work. Grandpa said he was fine all day and he was even playing soccer in the back yard that evening. About 10:00pm Thursday night we tried to get him to go to bed and he just kept saying that he didn't feel good and couldn't sleep but still didn't have any symptoms of anything at this point...his runny nose had even gone away.

About midnight, however, everything changed. He started feeling much worse and his breathing really started to get very quick and shallow. He then proceeded to whimper and cry pretty much all night, and by morning his breathing was so fast that we were getting very worried. This was seriously the sickest we had ever seen him! I took him to urgent care as soon as they opened Friday morning and they could tell he wasn't breathing very well. Before we even finished checking in at the counter, they brought out the blood oxygen tester and it registered at 77 (anything over 92 is considered normal)! Needless to say, they sent us to the ER right away! Now, even though I am usually a paranoid mom, I really try not to run him to the ER in the middle of the night...now that I look back, I should have trusted my instincts!

Ok, back to the story. We got to the ER, and there were about 3 people ahead of us. Despite that, they got us right in before everyone else and started taking vitals and everything on him right away. They put an IV in his arm, put him on oxygen with tubes in his nose, took a chest x-ray, and more. About an hour later the Dr. came back. The verdict? Pneumonia! The ER called his pediatrician and she admitted us to the hospital and said we would be there at least a couple nights, maybe even up to a week! She was leaving for the weekend that evening, so the on-call Dr. took over after she left. Well, the minute the on-call Dr. came in a couple hours later, she took one look at him and said that he needed to be sent to the major hospital right away so he could be in the ICU. The way he was looking she was afraid that he would stop breathing and they didn't have the resources to fully deal with that type of situation there. She started yelling at the nurses to get her mega amounts of the Albuterol and get him on the steroid treatment right away. It was totally like something straight from Grey's Anatomy on TV! The Dr. then left the room and came back a short moment later to tell us she was ordering Care Flight as soon as I signed the consent. Well, at this point, the mega dose of Albuterol breathing treatment had kicked in and he really didn't look any worse to me than he had all day. I declined the Care Flight but consented to an ambulance ride instead. By the time the ambulance got there, Ty was actually feeling much better. Robert had also been released form work (finally...but that's another story) and had shown up by then. I personally don't ever want to ride in an ambulance, so Robert decided to ride with him. When the EMT's tried to put Ty on the gurney, he freaked out (he's a little afraid of heights sometimes and the gurney really scared him). Instead, they let Robert carry him to the ambulance, and he even got to ride in a seat in the back of the ambulance instead of on the gurney. I followed behind them in my car. Since Ty really was fully alert, he thought the ambulance ride was pretty cool. Every time they stopped at a light or something, he looked back and waved at me, LOL! Grandma and grandpa were following behind me because they were very concerned about him, too!

(getting ready for an ambulance ride...at least he was alert enough to enjoy the $100 ambulance ride...thank goodness for good insurance!)

When we got to the other hospital, the pediatric ICU Dr. really didn't see a need for him to be in ICU, so he admitted him to the regular pediatric floor. Turns out, we really could have stayed in our own local hospital afterall. Anyways, Ty responded to all the treatments very quickly, so we ended up staying only 3 days, 2 nights in the hospital and went home Sunday evening. Without going into too much detail, we all would have much rather stayed in our local hospital...it's so much nicer...and cleaner! But that's a story for another post!

(in the pediatric ICU - these are his "angry eyes"...what can I say, we were ALL a little bored!)

Ok, so how on earth did a healthy kid with no symptoms of anything and his last cold being over a month ago get pneumonia so quick and so hard? Well, turns out he also has asthma. Apparently, kids with asthma are way more susceptible to pneumonia. Explains why every time he gets sick it goes directly into his lungs. When he was 5 months old, we had a one night stay in the hospital because he had a bad cold, and they sent him home with a nebulizer and Albuterol breathing treatments. We have suspected asthma since then, but there really wasn't anything else except when he gets a cold that would lead the Dr. to actually diagnose him with asthma. Unfortunately, the pneumonia pushed him into the asthmatic category. So far, we don't have to do any long term or daily asthma treatments, so that's good. But who knows what playing sports will bring! He was actually suppose to start soccer on Saturday, so he missed that due to the stupid pneumonia! He's back to his normal self now and pretty much off of all the medication and treatments. I just really hope that pneumonia isn't a common occurrence for him now!

Sunday Family Day

Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that it's important to take a break from busy every day life and just spend some quality family time together. Since we are so busy working full time, we spend the majority of our days off doing chores (cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping...). We often times forget what's really important in life. I found this awesome quote the other day, and it really hit home for me.

"One Hundred Years From Now,

it will not matter what kind of car I drove,

what kind of house I lived in,

how much money I had in my bank account,

nor what my clothes looked like.

But the world may be a little better

because I was important in the life of a child."

-Forest Witcraft-

As I try to juggle what's really important in life with what's necessary, I often find it hard to come to a compromise between the two. Unfortunately, I don't think the struggle will ever get easier, but rather more difficult as life goes on.


Ok, enough of the mushy stuff. In an effort to spend more quality time together, we had a really good family day today. Robert had promised Tyler last night that he would make pancakes for breakfast when we woke up. Tyler of course didn't forget that promise, and started adamently reminding daddy that he needed to make pancakes as soon as he woke up. Robert followed thru, and we all had a nice breakfast together. And boy, can that kid eat pancakes...he at 8 of them (I had 4 myself and was stuffed).

Tyler has been sick with a fever for about a week, so he's pretty much been couped up in the house since Wednesday. I took him to urgent care Wednesday night, and they couldn't find anything specifically wrong with him except that his lungs sounded like they had some stuff in them. They gave us an antibiotic and sent us on our merry way. He had a cold the week before, and it seemed to go away, but then he spiked the fever about 2 days later and seemed very lethargic. He would get very worn out very quickly. I have a feeling it turned into something like bronchitis or viral pneumonia, both of which aren't treated by antibiotics but just have to run their course. He still isn't feeling 100%, but we needed to get out of the house. So, we decided that it would be fun to go see a movie. My first choice would have been Alvin & the Chipmunks, but Tyler went to see that with daycare a few weeks ago. He's been talking about wanting to see Bee Movie, so that's what we decided. And, it was at the $1.00 theater, so we couldn't beat the price! That theater is kinda run down and old, but for a $1.00, it's well worth the sacrifice.

It really was a very cute movie! It had lots of adult humor that Tyler didn't understand, but he still really enjoyed it and sat thru the entire movie with no problem at all! We will definitely be buying it when it comes out on DVD in March.

That's the kind of day I wish we could have more often! Just some good quality family time!

The Thanksgiving Story...

I know, I know...Thanksgiving was so 2 months ago. But, I have a story I really wanted to get down for the record. Time flies so fast these days, I really cannot believe 2007 is over already, feels like we just had the last New Year's celebration. Anways, the last few months have really flown by with so much going on for the holidays. We had a very nice Thanksgiving with my parents, the Roach family, Uncle John and his boys, and Robert's mom & sister. My mom, Kristi and I spent all day in the kitchen and really did an awesome job with dinner! Since the Roach family moved up in October, it was really nice to have Kristi and her family here to share the holidays with this year!

Now, on to the story. The morning of Thanksgiving as we were walking over to my parents, Tyler tripped and caught himself with his face. He had a scrape next to his nose and a fat lip, but we didn't see any other evidence of injury. A few days later while brushing his teeth, Robert noticed that his two front teeth were turning gray. Turns out he injured them pretty good. The dentist said there isn't anything they can do for them, just watch the teeth and gums carefully for any sign of infection. If that happens, they will pull them but hopefully they will hang in there until his permanent teeth are ready to come in. In the meantime, they are very very gray, almost black. Good thing for Photoshop. And brings a new meaning in our family to the song "All I Want for Christmas is My 2 Front Teeth!" You can see hints of the gray in the pictures I posted last week.

Snow Much Fun!

Ok, I have given up for now on updating on our lives since the last post. I will try to do that slowly over the next couple weeks. For now, I must post about our weekend!

We had TONS of snow! I remember when I was a kid we got huge snowstorms at least once a winter, but it's been quite a few years since we have seen this much snow at one time! And we loved it!!! Tyler has never had the opportunity to go out and play like we did this weekend. Usually when we get our measley little snow, it's a weekday and we have to go to work/daycare. But the timing of this storm was perfect for some much needed weekend fun! Saturday morning started off with an attempt to build a snowman. But, the snow was too frozen and wouldn't stick together enough to get started, so we gave up and just played a little. Here's Ty enjoying the snow and making an awesome snow angel!

Then, we went inside for a little while until we got a call from my boss who was taking her daughter sledding at the nearby junior high school, and she wanted us to join them. So we did and Ty had such a great time! He goes to daycare with my boss's daughter, Ashley, so he had no problem sledding down the hill with her. But he of course had to talk me into riding with him a couple times and I have to admit, it was pretty fun...until I hurt my ankle....sucks getting old!

By the time we were done sledding, the snow had softened up just enough for perfect snowman building material. So as soon as we got home, Ty and I built his first ever snowman. And boy did Mr. Snowman turn out awesome! Ty thinks his snowman is so cool and really enjoyed the whole experience. Grandpa and one of the neighbors also helped, so this snowman went up very quickly. Grandma had the task of taking pictures.

I present to you Mr. Snowman 2007:

But that's not the end of our snow fun weekend. Daddy was home Sunday (he had to work and missed all the fun the day before) so Tyler spent some time outside helping plow/shovel the driveway. Grandpa has a plow for his quad, so the plowing of the driveway is really more fun that it is work!

That's about it for our weekend, wish we could have this much fun and quality family time every day!