TWO YEARS!

Happy birthday to my sweet TWO YEAR OLD girl today! I can't believe how fast the time has gone and how much things have changed.

CB is such a sweetie. She's starting to have a little more attitude from time to time (she definitely knows the word "no" now and sometimes I think she says it just because she wants to assert her independence) but she's overall a really agreeable, loving, hilarious little girl.

Here, in no particular order are some of CB's favorite things at the moment of turning 2:

• Pink baby, the doll I made her for Easter with the crazy pink hair. She already looks like she's been around for YEARS and has been washed multiple times, but CB carries her everywhere. I'll be curious to see if she gets a little break since she got a second Mommy-made baby for her birthday this morning. (Seriously. The Elsa pattern from Wee Wonderfuls makes a doll that is just the perfect shape for little hands to carry and to tuck under little arms. I've made two for CB, three that have been given as gifts, and one that I'm still deciding about.) 
• Daniel Tiger. After a brief period of boredom with Daniel during which she preferred Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, DT is back in full force. Thank goodness for more seasons being available on Amazon. 
• Cheese, Noodles, Yogurt and ice cream. (Or, "tees, noo-nles, dodurk and i-meam") I think these might constitute her absolute favorite foods. She's not a bad eater for a toddler (although it very much depends on the day) but these are most definitely her preferred foods. (I have my friend Debra's Cream Cheese Chicken in the crock pot right now because you serve it over noodles and CB always eats about 5 servings, so it was no contest what I should make for her birthday dinner.) 
• The park - going there, sliding on slides, swinging, and making mommy climb the stairs. 
• Going for walks to see the horsies. She LOVES the horses around our neighborhood and going for a stroller ride to see them. She got a wagon for her birthday (thank you, guy selling a BRAND NEW RADIO FLYER on KSL for super cheap!) so I'm excited to see what she thinks of walks in that. (Daddy is already a fan because of the super long handle.) 
• Movie nights with popcorn. She LOVES watching popcorn pop and she loves snuggling up on my bed to watch a movie. Sadly, we only own like 4 kids movies so far, so we're working on that. She really loves Sleeping Beauty at my parents' house, and since that was one of my favorites when I was little, it's on my list to acquire. 
• Going to Mama and Papa's house. This is her favorite thing ever. She asks to go to their house multiple times a week. She loves to play with them and she loves to play with their toys, and she really loves is when her cousins come too. 
• The color pink, with blue and purple coming in close behind.
• Trying on Mommy's bracelets and necklaces, usually all at once.
• Getting her toenails painted and showing them off to everyone
• Reading books at bedtime, especially books where she gets to respond, and especially if that response is an animal sound.

Other things of note right now: 

• I think she inherited my ear for song lyrics or my memory or something, because she knows the words to a ton of songs. She'll mostly just sing the last word of each line or say the last word of each line in books, but sometimes I'll hear her singing more of the songs to her stuffed animals when she's going to sleep. Every once in awhile I'll test a book or song and my mind will be blown all over again because she'll know the whole thing, even if we haven't sung it for a long time. (I started this random testing a few weeks ago when I picked her up from nursery and her leader said, "She's very good at singing 'I Am a Child of God.' Someone must be practicing with her at home!" And I realized we hadn't sung it at home in several weeks, so she was just remembering it from week to week at nursery.) Her favorite songs for bedtime right now are "Baby Mine," "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus," "Heavenly Father Loves Me," and "You Are My Sunshine." 
• She's definitely going through a second language explosion right now. (Her first started around 15 months.) She's suddenly putting words together into phrases and short sentences and really starting to communicate, not just say individual nouns. She asks me if my food is good ("Mommy - noonles good?"), or where her toys are ("Hmm. Baby go?") She makes hilarious "Hmmmm. . . " noises when she's making a decision and her eyes roll up like she's thinking really hard. She's SO expressive in her face and her over the top intonations, and I can't get enough of it. (And it's probably my fault for being a crazy person on that front myself.) 
• She is starting to like picking out her own clothes, and sometimes that means she tries to put on Sunday dresses to play in the dirt, or winter coats when it's 90 degrees outside.
• She's really good at identifying colors and pretty good at counting to 10 (although she likes to skip 2, so often when she is doing a count for something it comes out, "One, Three, Four!!") 
• Her hair is much longer than it looks because it is delightfully curly right now. Both Eric and I had curls as kids, so I'm not sure it's going to last, but oh, do I love it now. It's so crazy and cute and unpredictable, and I love it. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

I love you, baby girl! 

A post of updates.

Oh hello there, sad lonely blog.

Here are the highlights of my life at the moment.

• I've hit 30 weeks with the pregnancy, which is AWESOME. It seems like it came so much faster than it did last time, and although I'm starting to feel a bit huge and miserable, 10 weeks doesn't seem like an eternity right now, which is a nice place to be. (I'm much less sore than I remember being with CB, probably because my body has made room for a baby once before and isn't protesting as much this time.) The baby was head down at my appointment yesterday, and she's wiggly as can be, and CB is finally starting to understand that there is a baby in mommy's tummy. Today she said, "Baby? Tummy?" out of nowhere, so we talked a little about how the baby would be her sister, and she said, "Baby sister. Tummy." She's stopped telling me the baby is in her tummy and seems to kind of get it when we listen to the baby's heartbeat at the midwife. Hopefully that will make it less of a shock when we bring little sister home.
• We're gearing up for CB's birthday, which is soon! I can't believe she's almost two. I'm working on finishing a quilt for her new big girl bed (actually my old big girl bed) so that we can make the transition this month and have room for little sister when she comes. I'm terrified of making the change, but the quilt is quite nice, and CB picked out some sheets with horses on them that she's excited about. 
• I really like making dolls. I made one for CB's birthday and then made one for her cousin who turned two yesterday. I'm starting to be okay at it, and I really like how they turn out and how they're all so different. It's a fun, cheap hobby that also leads to joy for my daughter (she really loves the last doll I made for her and carries it EVERYWHERE, and I had to hide the doll I was making for her cousin so she wouldn't cart it off too) and joy for my husband because it helps to quell my mom desires to buy lots of dolls and toys. The toys still make their way into our house (and a few other people's houses now that I'm getting more confident), but more slowly and less expensively, and hopefully more meaningfully since I'm making them myself with whoever gets the doll in mind. 
• This morning, after many weeks of searching, being disappointed because Costco sold out, trying to convince Eric that this is something we will use, etc. I managed to acquire a wagon. I found someone selling a Radio Flyer Pathfinder on KSL - brand new in the box for about half what it goes for on Amazon - and I jumped on it. It will be for the family, but we're going to reveal it on CB's birthday. 
• Daniel Tiger season 2 on Amazon Prime. Yes please. (Although for some reason on Prime it's listed as seasons 3 and 4. Not sure why.) CB was out of Daniel mode, but she's gone back and I was really tired of all of the episodes. New ones are nice. 
• Eric is nearly done with the craziness of early summer in the conference-filming business. We'll be excited to have him back a little more. 
• They started a little playgroup in our neighborhood, so I now actually know some of the other moms, which is nice. We really live in a very nice place. 

That's all for now. I imagine I'll try to post for CB's birthday. We're getting some 2 year pictures done tomorrow, so cross your fingers that she cooperates! 

20 Months

I'm blaming my blog death on the fact that I no longer have a laptop and my monitor often gets appropriated by the company for jobs and doesn't return. However, now I have a monitor of my own (that will by the name of my Virginia Woolf inspired book) and maybe I will blog from time to time.

So first of all, I think I should say that CB is 20 months old now, which is NUTSO. I was just looking over the post from 15 months and it is insane how much things have changed since then. Most significantly, when I last wrote about her, she had about seven words that she said regularly. Seven.

I have officially lost count of the number of words she says now. I will attempt to mention categories instead.

1. She is OBSESSED with animals (which is a word she says) and knows the names and sounds of SO MANY, which she can also identify by sight. It's a really fun game to say, "Hey, can you be a ____________?" and then throw out an animal. She's really good at the names and sounds of cows, kitties, doggies, fish, owls, snakes, bats (bats don't make a sound, but they do wiggle their fingers at you - same with spiders and butterflies or "bu-bies", but they don't say "bat bat" while they do it), giraffes (which stick out their tongues), foxes (ring-ding-ding, of course) horses, elephants (el-poot), lions, tigers, bears, dinosaurs, ducks, and more that I'm not remember. She also likes to say hippo, piggie and octopus (oc-poos) and calls monkeys, frogs and chickens by their sounds (ee-ees, ribbits and bok boks, respectively). We recently took her to the zoo and it was so fun to see how into it she was. She told us what things were and what they said and requested animals. (I assume when she roared it was because she wanted to see the tiger.) 
2. She knows most of her body parts - all of her (and your) face, plus arms, hands, legs, feet, belly button, and armpit. (Daddy taught her that one.) If you ask where her armpit is she will show you - and then she will expect to be tickled. 
3. She knows how to say and deliver hugs and kisses, which is fun, especially now that they aren't open mouth kisses. 
4. She knows meals (breakfast, snack and dinner, or befuss, nack and nin-ner) and her favorite foods (cheese, bread, yogurt, cracker, cookie, cupcake, milk, juice and water) and she requests those things often. She'll also accept almost anything if you tell her she can dip it. 
5. She's really interested in the potty and will tell me when she's about to poop ("Stinky?") but I don't feel at all like we were ready to do the potty training thing, so I'm just encouraging her to be interested and to tell me in the hopes that it will help things along later. She also likes the bath and loves "buddles" (bubbles) in her tub.  
6. She loves babies and knows her baby cousin by name. She knows a lot of her cousins, but she's especially enamored with Grandma ("Mama") and Grandpa ("Papa") and Maggie, Nancy ("Nana") and Samantha ("Manna"). She also recently started calling me Mommy in addition to the "Mom" that I'd been getting for a few months now. She can say her own name, but she pronounces is "Wadda." Useful to all of you who don't know her real name, I know.

After a month and a half of being very unsure of nursery, a couple of weeks ago CB decided it was the bees knees. She goes running toward the door as soon as sacrament meeting is over, anxious for her "nack" and toys, especially the "boks" (blocks) and "puddles" (puzzles).

She is at the climbing stage, which is frightening. She loves blocks and crayons and puzzles, and she's starting to play more imaginatively with stuffed animals and other toys. She'll make things "nance" (dance) and eat dinner, which is pretty adorable.  (She LOVES to dance and asks for music to dance to at least a couple of times a day, which is really delightful. She's kind of a great dancer. We're especially fond of her "Elvis hips" move.)

Here are a few pictures of her in recent months (I am so behind on my picture uploads.) Most of them are her enjoying her room in our new apartment.

She doesn't need glasses, but she figured her bear didn't either.

Babyface Long. Wanted for coloring on the walls in three rooms. 

Master of hiding, isn't she?

She really loves cuddling her babies. 

Coloring is one of her favorite things right now, although I keep taking pencils and pens away from her because the temptation to chew off the eraser or draw on herself is too strong. 

CB showing off her newest shirt. She really likes butterflies, so she's a fan. ;)

Defeat

I feel like this poor neglected blog has become the place where I either talk about CB, or I talk about how angry I am about medical billing and insurance companies. I have plenty of amazing things to say about CB, and I could tell you about our awesome new apartment and lots of other things that are happening, but I feel so frustrated AGAIN about the insane way our health care system operates, and I'm going to vent again. Sorry.

Since October, CB has been on a steroid for her lungs that she takes through a nebulizer every night. It's supposed to strengthen her lungs so that when she gets a cold she doesn't immediately end up in the hospital again with low oxygen. She'll take it through the winter and cold season, and then hopefully she'll at least be able to be off it for the spring and summer.

Having a breathing treatment with Dad and Daniel Tiger.

The medicine she has to take isn't cheap. That's okay - she's worth it, and we want to do what's best for her. We're grateful that we started saving money when we did so that her medical expenses haven't been huge burdens. They're mostly just frustrating. Our insurance doesn't cover much of them, and it seems like every time we turn around they cost more.

The other night we went to pick up her prescription, which we'd just had transferred to a pharmacy down here now that we've moved. As I was giving the technician my insurance information, she told me that the insurance wouldn't cover the medicine until Feb. 6th. I asked why, because she had a 30 day supply that we picked up on Dec. 26th, and she only had one night's worth left. She said our other pharmacy had been charging us for a 55 day supply, so we weren't supposed to be out yet. After several more trips to the counter, we finally left without the medicine but with a plan to call and talk to our pharmacy in Centerville.

The next day we talked to the pharmacy, and they told us that no, it just costs that much. No explanation about why the insurance wasn't covering anything. but it was really just twice as expensive as we thought it was. Eric looked online for coupons and found one, then called about 5 pharmacies asking about prices. CVS said they had it for almost half what we were paying for it, so Eric drove down to Provo to buy it there.

And of course when he got there, it was the same price that it was everywhere else.

I just feel like we are constantly dealing with this. No matter what happens, we end up spending hours on the phone trying not to get cheated by the provider or the insurance company. No one seems to know what's going on, so we end up calling back and forth and spending hours talking to these people, and then it doesn't matter. We're really trying to be thoughtful consumers who ask questions and try to pay attention, but it seems like no matter what we do, we don't get the benefits we're paying for or the discounts we've been promised.

A couple of months ago we got CB's ambulance bill for her hospital trip. The bill was for nearly $2000. The price of an ambulance trip is actually set by the state legislature, so although I think that's an insane price for a half hour ride in an ambulance, especially when I pay taxes for things like ambulances, I'm not sure what they can do about it. However. Our insurance claimed that it covered 70% of ambulance bills, so we were expecting a little help there.

Then they told us they were paying about $450 of the bill. It's been awhile since I've had to do a lot of math, but I'm pretty sure that's not 70%.

Both Eric and I spent hours talking on the phone to different people. We were finally told that the insurance company just things that the price the ambulance charges is too much so they set an amount that they think is what it should cost and pay 70% of that. That amount was something like $570.

Don't get me wrong - that's closer to what I think it should cost too. But $570 is nowhere close to the $1700 price tag that actually came with that ambulance ride, and the ambulance company wasn't going to accept that. They said they would appeal for us. They got nothing.

Apparently we were also "out of network" in our "choice" of ambulance. But the closest "in network" ambulance was about 40 miles away. So yes, I'm definitely going to take the time to research that next time and wait the extra 45 minutes while my baby can't breathe and needs to go to the hospital. (Hopefully you can hear the dripping sarcasm and contempt here.)

The thing about it is, I feel frustrated by the fact that this wasn't even an instance where I had a choice, and they are apparently penalizing me for it. I was told CB needed to take an ambulance, and the ambulance was called for me. Obviously I would do it all again if I needed to. But I hate, hate that the insurance company who gets my money every month then gets to turn around and say, "Well, you should have used a different ambulance service I guess, because then we could make them take what we offered." And my only recourse is to send ANOTHER appeal, which will probably also be ignored. And let's not even talk about the hospital bill that was supposed to go around the insurance so we could get a significant discount, then was put through the insurance anyway, but was also more than twice the estimate they gave us at the hospital.

It just seems like it happens every single time we pay any medical bill. I don't know how we could be doing things better except to have better insurance, but I feel like we are trying to ask all of the right questions and figure out how we can make good decisions and pay our bills like responsible people, and it never matters, because everything is so entrenched in bureaucracy and ignorance and stupid deals between providers and insurance companies that mean no one ever has any idea what anything costs. I feel so defeated by the system, and I don't know how to change it. I'm currently researching birthing centers for the next time we have a baby, because I would really just love to be able to avoid the entire mess next time, and birthing centers give you price lists on their websites, which is so refreshing. Of course, I'll probably end up having some kind of emergency and ending up in the hospital anyway, and then I'll have to pay one more bill.

Sigh.

15 Months

Well, now that we've gotten through all of the medical craziness (including a relapse second cold that took us to the doctor again, but not to the hospital, thank goodness) CB is healthy, but gets to have breathing treatments ALL WINTER LONG. The doctors have determined that she has "reactive airways," meaning now that we have had a second incident, they think she's got an asthmatic element to this whole thing. Eric had the same reaction when he got sick as a kid and he grew out of it, so hopefully hers will go the same way.

In other news, CB is 15 months old tomorrow! She's so much fun. She's a little firecracker, still friendly and happy and curious (sometimes too curious, like when we're trying to take her to the store and she wants to touch everything and run everywhere). She's jabbering up a storm. She regularly says "hi," "doggie," "kitty," "daddy," "yum," "yup," and "duck." She's also started saying other random words, which is so much fun. My parents just got home from their mission, and I taught her to say, "Daisy," which is what my nieces and nephews call my mom (Grandma Daisy). It sounded so much like some of the other words she loves to say that it was easy. My other favorites have been "balloon" and "cheese" (which sounded like "bah-oon" and tchee-se" but were in proper context) and FINALLY "bye." She says Mama, but rarely in the proper context. (It's okay. I know she likes me best.) She also makes some awesome dinosaur/lion roars, and she is really good at whispering. She can point to her belly button on command, and just today she pointed to her nose on command, which was fun. When she can't say something, she just makes a jumble of conversational sounds and gestures, nods and head shakes. It's so cute when it seems like she's trying to tell her own version of events.

She loves shape sorters and can put the shapes into the holes if I help her figure out which holes are the right ones. She loves taking things out of their boxes/baskets/bins, lining them up, sorting them, and putting them back in. She also likes getting the boxes all loaded up and carrying them to other places to do the same thing. The other day she was loading my mom's basket of decorative eggs (after arranging them on the end table very carefully) and my mom tried to move the basket closer. She went and deliberately moved the basket further away and continued carrying the eggs from the table to the basket one by one. She loves arranging things. Earlier this week she took the gourds that we bought for our Halloween decor and placed them very carefully on the doormat. It was a stunning effect, but we had to move them so we didn't trip our guests. She loves, LOVES stickers. She puts them all over herself and everyone else, and when she puts them on your cheek, she's likely to pat it to make sure it's secure.

She loves opening and closing doors, yelling in places that echo, waving goodbye to people and blowing kisses. She loves telling you when there is a kitty on her shirt. She notices everything. When we put our our Halloween decorations last week, she was the first to notice all of them, pointing and talking about them. When she wants to touch something, she points and crooks her finger at it like when you want someone to come, but upside down, like she's waving with one finger.

Pointing to a grasshopper

My favorite game is when I hold out my arms and she runs over and hugs me, then walks away and does it all over again. She loves being tickled by my dad, who hovers his tickle hands over her belly for a few seconds until she starts giggling in anticipation. When he stops tickling, she sticks her hand up and makes tickle motions at him so he'll do it again. She loves her daddy, and gets a huge smile on her face when he gets off work. They played their first game of hide and seek the other day, with Eric running around corners and hiding, and CB coming behind him and giggling like a maniac whenever she found him. Eric likes to take her on long walks, and she gets excited when we go and get her jacket and hat so she can go. She loves helping Grandma, which is so fun to watch. The other day my mom was wiping down counters and CB pulled a rag out of the door and started standing on her tip toes to try to wipe the counter herself.

Helping Grandma

She just started understanding clothes, and sticks her arms out to help us put her jacket on and her feet up so we can put her shoes on. She's more helpful with these articles of clothing than any others, I think because she now knows they mean she gets to go outside. While she runs away when I try to put on her pajamas, she is nothing but obliging when I try to put on her jacket.

She's starting to get more picky about her food - less excited about vegetables than she is about candy (incredibly) but she is great at feeding herself . . . and at begging for food. I think we'll hang onto her a little longer.

All in all, she's just about the sweetest baby that ever was, and we love her more every day (especially daddy, who thinks she's a million times more fun now than she was as a newborn).

And a couple more recent videos just for fun:

CB Goes to the Hospital

If you follow me on facebook, you probably saw a few posts about our unexpected adventure in the hospital this weekend. Now that she's feeling a little better, it seemed like time to write about it. It will probably be long, so if you want to know the whole story, get a snack or something. 

Tuesday morning, CB woke up with a totally innocuous runny nose. She was a little grumpy, but we went to the park and played on the slides and she was fine. Wednesday morning she woke up happy and delightful, even though she slept a little longer than usual. During the day she got grumpier and grumpier, but I assumed it was just the cold running its normal course. That evening she clearly wasn't feeling great. She wanted to snuggle a lot more than usual and didn't have much of an appetite, so we put her to bed early and she went down without any protest.

Snuggling with my sick baby - totally normal. 

And then she woke up every twenty minutes. All. Night. Long. As soon as she started getting into REM sleep she woke herself up coughing and started crying, and then she would start falling back asleep and the process would start all over again. Around 10:30, we decided to see if she would do better if we tried to let her sleep with us for a little bit. Eric gave her a blessing of comfort in the hopes that it would help her get through the night. She slept for a little longer at a time, but continued waking up (plus she was hogging the bed.) She also seemed to be having a hard time breathing, but it didn't seem too out of the ordinary for a stuffy nosed baby at night. After a couple of hours, we tried putting her back in her crib, but we were starting to get a little frustrated (plus we were sad she was so miserable).

Around 1:30, Eric called Teledoc, a service we have through our insurance where we can call a doctor whenever we want so we can check before going in to the doctor (since our insurance isn't amazing). They told us that her consistent waking up and heavy breathing were normal for a baby with a cold, so Eric and I decided to just ride it out and take shifts. (Side note: we will be cancelling Teledoc shortly. We found out that our pediatrician has a night line, and CB's own doctor was on call that night.)  Eric took the first one and snuggled her on the couch and tried to doze, and after a few hours I did the same. By the time Eric woke up, CB's breathing sounded awful, she was exhausted and totally lethargic, so we decided to take her to the doctor. Eric had a job, so he held CB for 10 minutes while I threw on clothes, and then we ran to the doctor while he got ready and headed to the Women's Tech Awards. (Both of us were in slightly exhausted stupors.) We thought she might have croup or something like that, and when we called our pediatrician, the nurse seemed to think we should come in right away.

Thursday morning, just before we went into the doctor. 

One of many positions in which she fell asleep, then woke right back up after about 20 minutes.

By the time we got to the doctor's office, CB was making really audible sad noises with every breath. I didn't even finish checking in before the nurse had us in the back room to check her oxygen. She put a little band-aid with a sensor on her toe. After a minute she said, "I'm going to check her other toe. She isn't blue enough for her oxygen to be this low." And then she checked the other toe. And then the nurses started pouring into the room with oxygen masks and Albuterol.

At that point, CB's pediatrician came in and told me that the Albuterol (which is a medication they use for asthma patients) would hopefully help relax her bronchial tubes enough that her oxygen could get up to normal. But, she explained, if they couldn't get her breathing better pretty quickly, we would need to go to the hospital. And because her oxygen was low, we would need to take an ambulance, because that was standard procedure for respiratory problems. At this point, I started crying like a crazy person and the nurse offered to call Eric. (At some point they asked if there was anyone else they could call to be with me - Grandma or someone, and that made me cry harder because my mom and dad will be back from their mission in a WEEK, for crying out loud.)

Well, when they stopped giving her oxygen it immediately dropped back down, so the next thing I knew I was running to my car for the carseat, and when I came back there were 4 guys standing in the hall with one of those giant scary stretchers. They strapped the carseat to it while they asked me some questions, and then they buckled CB in and hooked her up to all kinds of monitors.

On the ambulance ride, the ambulance guys (paramedics? EMTs? Firemen? I'm just not sure, but one of them was named Roundy) tried to make small talk, probably because I kept crying. CB relaxed and fell asleep on the way there (probably because she was so happy she had air). My favorite moment of this ride (if you can say such a thing when you're in an ambulance with your 14-month-old) was when one of the guys said to the other, "Okay, now what's the most important thing to do?" And the other guy started saying something about checking her levels of something and the first guy interrupted him and said, "No. Get her a stuffed animal!" So CB got a teddy bear from her ambulance ride, which she wrapped her little hand around and held through most of her treatments.

We got to Primary Children's Hospital and they got CB started on another treatment of Albuterol. They explained to me that she probably didn't have asthma, and even if she did they wouldn't diagnose that until she'd had more than one episode and was over two years old, but since she was responding to asthma treatments, they were going to keep giving it to her until she was breathing better. They told me I would have to keep her mask on while she was getting the treatment because she wouldn't like it, but she was so exhausted and sick she barely touched it.

Albuterol treatment, ambulance bear, sad baby.

At some point, my brother texted me and asked what he could do, and I told him it would be nice if Eric could be there, so he went and relieved him from where he was filming the Women's Tech Awards. (Clearly we were not thinking like functioning people, or we would have come up with this solution earlier, since my brother is Eric's business partner.) Eric came up to the hospital about the time that the doctors came and told us that they thought CB was going to need to stay over night, which floored me. I knew she was sick, but it hadn't even occurred to me that she would be staying in the hospital.

They told us that they were going to the Rapid Treatment Unit (the RTU) which they use almost exclusively for cases like this - kids who aren't sick enough to be admitted the hospital proper, but who are sick enough that they need to be observed for about 24 hours, so they need a more comfortable, long-term room than the ER. (For the parents, that is. There wasn't anywhere to sleep in the ER room.) They wanted us to be able to have her off the Albuterol or off the oxygen because they didn't want to send us home with both, so until they could decide which was helping more, we couldn't leave. On the bright side, the RTU is cheaper than a regular hospital room because it's kind of between outpatient and inpatient care. It also has doctors in the unit at all times because their goal is to get the kids home as quickly as possible, so they get pretty intensive care.

Before they moved us to the RTU, they gave CB another treatment of Albuterol and my brother, who had finished his job, came by to give CB a blessing with Eric. The blessing was really lovely and helped me feel more calm about the whole thing. (Funny side note: in our church we use consecrated olive oil to give blessings of healing. Eric carries a little vial on his keychain, but he hadn't changed it out for a little while and it had gone kind of green. They were debating whether that mattered when our nurses and respiratory specialist came in, and when we asked if we could give her a blessing before they put in her IV, the respiratory specialist (Steve) asked if they needed oil. Because of course they had that at the hospital. Eric couldn't get over the strangeness of Utah and the prevalence of Mormons.)

We moved to the RTU and they put an IV in CB because she was dehydrated and too lethargic to drink much, and they said this would help loosen up her congestion and perk her up a bit. They did this by turning off all of the lights in the room and putting a flashlight under her hand so they could see her tiny little veins. The nurse who did this was so excellent and got it in perfectly on the first try with minimal fuss from CB, although that was probably partly because she was just so out of it.

Sad baby IV

We got settled, had some lunch (first food either of us had eaten all day at about 3:00) and then Eric headed home to pick up a few supplies to get us through the night. Poor CB had to have another Albuterol treatment, and she was much more distressed about it this time, which I assumed was because she was starting to feel better. It took a long time to calm her down. Weirdly, we found a station on the TV that just had calming music and fish (like an in-room aquarium) which she LOVED. She was more perky than she had been all day looking at those fish. She also ate a little applesauce and some cheerios, which made me very happy.

Watching the fish (Friday morning, not the day she went into the hospital.)  So happy.

The next few hours were rough. Lots of treatments, lots of calming, more treatments, more calming. None of us got much sleep through the night with people in and out to test vitals and give treatments, but the nurses decided to stop giving her Albuterol and try suctioning her nose out instead (which was HORRIBLE for CB and horrible for me to watch) and it seemed to help even more than the medicine had, so we kept on that route. In the morning, the nurse asked if CB was a light sleeper at home because she kept waking up when they came in. I told her CB has been sleeping through the night since she was 2 months old and bit my tongue so I wouldn't say, "Maybe she kept waking up because you kept coming in and flipping on the lights and poking her. Ever think of that? That wakes me up." (She really was a fine nurse, but this struck me as a slightly ridiculous thing to say. I realize you have things to do and need a light, but she didn't wake up when the tech came in to do vitals because the tech left the dang light off.)

The night was also long because the monitor on CB's toe kept falling off or coming loose, and then everything would start beeping and we'd all freak out and wake up, until it had happened multiple times and then I was just mad about all of the stupid loud instruments everywhere because I was so tired. Someone finally put more tape on her toe at like 5 am.

When we woke up the next morning and they suctioned out CB's nose again, she was downright perky. They gave us a toddler menu and we ordered her some scrambled eggs, a blueberry muffin, and a strawberry smoothie. She was delighted about the eggs, and it calmed her down very quickly post-suction.

After breakfast someone brought us a stack of books, and then CB wandered around the room a little. She was acting so much more like her normal self, and it was good for all of our souls. After she'd wandered around a bit I snuggled her to sleep.

Exploring her room

Oh hey!

Eric was calling around because he wanted to take care of our bill before we left. We have insurance, but we have a high deductible and wanted to try to pay in cash because we'd heard you could get a discount. After three phone calls and a trek to the financial office, he found out that if we decided not to have them go through our insurance at all, we could get a 25% discount, and if we paid it off within 30 day we got another 15% off. 40% off for not using our insurance. Our bill was pretty much our whole deductible, so we would have paid all of it anyway. Kind of still amazed about that one.

(We also told our nurses we would be paying cash at this point, and weirdly, suddenly we were on the fast track out of there and they were asking if we wanted them to give her tylenol or wait until we got home. Obviously they didn't skimp on care and we didn't ask them to, but the perspective is different when they know your insurance isn't paying it all for you. Nuts.)

One more suction and a check by the doctor, and by 2:00 we were on our way home - with an oxygen tank and an order to be able to go to the suction clinic as much as we needed for the next week. We all felt so relieved to get off the IVs and the monitors and out of the hospital. CB had a huge smile on her face as we pulled into our garage. She walked around her room with new delight and was especially excited to see the beads that she loves to wear all over the house.

Final check with the doctor

Heading home!

The oxygen tank has been fun - she's basically on a leash, and although she has been pretty tolerant of the cannula in her nose, she gets frustrated and tangled. It's hard to go up stairs, and if she starts to wander off, I basically have to jump up and follow her with the rolling tank or else she gets pulled back by her face. We've been reading lots of books (Eric even stopped by DI and picked up a stack of new ones for her), taking long baths to help clear out her nose, and taking walks so she'll hold still and rest without being frustrated. Tomorrow we go to the doctor and I'm hoping she can get off the oxygen. I'm so grateful that she recovered so quickly, and I'm so grateful she's been such a trooper through all of this, and that I had Eric to go through it with me. Initiation into the terrors of motherhood complete, I guess.

A couple of final notes: I found it weird that once we got settled in the hospital and the treatment started, I felt very calm. I knew that the doctors were doing what needed to be done, and I wasn't scared that CB wasn't going to come through it. I feel very grateful for this gift of peace, which I am sure came from my Heavenly Father.

We have had such wonderful support from our friends and family. I received so many sweet texts, emails, and messages sending love and offering help if they were near by. Once we got home, my sweet neighbor brought us her delicious cinnamon bread, and my sister-in-law sent us dinner Sunday night even though her own kids are sick. We are so grateful for the prayers and warmth we have felt from the people who love us and our little one.

And now some pictures of being home with an oxygen tank!

So happy to have this laughing little girl back. 

Saturday afternoon walk to the grocery store for fritters. 

At home church.

Daddy sure is hilarious. 

Checking out some new books

Walking, Working, Etc.

Okay blog, it's been awhile since you had an update that wasn't a CB monthly, and it's time to at least be a normal record-keeping blogger. I'm going to take a page from my friend Melissa's book and at least try to keep a log of our general goings-on, since I'm also blogging elsewhere.

Eric is getting ready for his business partner (my brother) to come back to the business this month, and it's exciting. I think having more than one person who can do everything that needs to be done is going to be really beneficial, and I think it will also be more fun for him. They have a big job coming up at the end of this month in Wisconsin, so they get to start off with a business trip together. Meanwhile, he fixed our dishwasher last week like a boss, and now he's trying to figure out why the lawn mower won't start. Such is the never-ending stream of excitement that is our life.

I have started putting in more regular hours for Mustache Power, and have started working on some more regular blogging, some website tweaks (we put up a new website recently, but it isn't quite finished yet, partially because it went up and then everything got put on the back burner while all efforts went to InstructureCon). CB is taking more regular naps now and being generally more independent in her play, so it seemed like a good time to get back to a regular schedule, even if it's only an hour or two a day right now.

My parents will be back from their mission sometime in the next month and a half (!) so we've started thinking about our plans when they get back (or rather, we have been thinking about them but now have a better idea of what we're doing, sort of). We've decided we'll probably stick around here until the end of the year, and then we'll move into an apartment a little closer to the business partner brother. Of course, this plan has changed several times in the last few months, so we'll see if we stick to this one. For a few weeks we toyed with the idea of buying, but we decided we aren't quite ready for that level of responsibility yet. We'll give it a year or so. Meanwhile, I'm having fun thinking about furnishing our own place again, contemplating how well I could refinish furniture on KSL, making plans for organizing CB's room, realizing that it might finally be time to throw away some of my socks. (Seriously. I have a whole (not small) drawer packed full of socks. I'm not sure how this happened.)

CB is walking! It's so crazy to see her stand up and toddle across the room. Crawling is still her preferred mode of transportation, but she's walking more and more and seems tickled with herself when she makes it a long way without falling. I love that she makes herself laugh now.

Last night we were playing in her room, and she was just thrilled with Eric. She was giggling and stealing his glasses (and gloating about it) and just generally being delighted with him. I said, "CB, give Daddy a kiss!" which is something she has kind of been doing lately, but not consistently. She walked right over to him, leaned over and gave him a big, open mouth kiss on the cheek. Eric was so pleased he kept chuckling to himself for a couple of minutes after. It was a very sweet moment.

Church is getting harder with CB again. This week, it went like this: Arrive at church. Realize CB needs a diaper change. Change diaper. Go to class. Repeatedly try to keep CB from distracting the Relief Society by talking to the baby behind her ("Hi bebe!") and making him giggle. Finally give up when she crawls around to play with his toys. Smell a suspicious smell. Head to the diaper changing station again. Come back for Sunday School. Five minutes in, take CB to the mother's room to chill. Head back into class. Let CB walk down the row until two minutes later she falls down and bites her lip. Leave class holding a shrieking baby. Calm baby. Notice blood flow. Go back in a panic for husband. Calm baby and mama. Walk the halls with baby to calm her down and distract her. Go to Sacrament. Fight to keep baby on bench. After sacrament is passed, smell another suspicious smell. Diaper change. (Seriously, I don't know what she ate.) Finish meeting with lots of snacks, books, jabbering to the back row. Come home and collapse. Wonder if they'll take her into nursery 5 months early.

Luckily, this weekend also included a trip to Park City (we had an awesome coupon for a $20 gift card and a sheet of 20% off coupons) where Eric and CB both got new pants, and I bought myself a shirt and a pair of shoes, plus we bought some raspberry salsa. Didn't know such a thing existed, but it was tasty. On Friday night we went to dinner at City Creek and then let CB play on the splash pad, which brought her great joy.

Finally, we recently got our pictures from our Houston trip. We had one year pictures taken of CB and her cousin, and they are so adorable. Observe a few of my favorites: