Worst Way To Wake Up In The Morning

Guess what everybody? I just discovered the worst way to wake up in the wee hours of the morning (after having stayed up the majority of the night putting out vomit-related fires, doing load after load of laundry AND barely having the opportunity to hop into bed myself).

The Worst Way To Wake Up In The Morning is to have your 10 month old vomiting ON YOUR FACE! Yeah, you read that right: My baby vomited ON MY FACE. TWICE. Because the first wave of vomit didn't exactly wake me up immediately. Oh and it was pedialyte. So it reeked of grape flavor (and no, I didn't taste it but the SMELL was incredibly strong) Talk about disgusting.

Now that I've made you throw up in your own mouth, I'll sign off.

Penny Bitner, Mother of three very sick little girls

Okay! Just One More, I Swear.

So, I'm supposed to be cleaning because Ariel is coming to visit, TONIGHT. But my Malia and Matilda are sick and between taking care of them and all the cleaning, I'm tired. So, I'm taking a break and watching viral videos.

I LOVE this one:



I wish I could travel around the world, DANCING!!!

P.S. Mayah wants me to type her name, so I am. MAYAH. MAYAH!!!

Never a dull moment.

Just when I thought we were all getting back to feeling healthy, Mayah surprises me.

Last night we got the girls to sleep at a decent time and we were feeling quite good about it. Duane decided to take the child free time and play some Halo 3 and I caught up on my friends blogs. While we were happily doing our thing, we heard a suspicious cough come from the girls room. The coughing soon became a gagging sound so Duane and I ran into their bedroom in time to find Mayah projectile vomiting all over herself, the pillows, the sheets, the blankets and even a tiny bit on Malia's pajamas.

Luckily Duane was thinking on his feet and he grabbed Mayah and rushed her into the bathroom in time for the next round of vomiting. I followed them and tried to help clean up but I started gagging as soon as the smell hit my nose. Seeing the vomit didn't help matters, either. Curse my pregnant gag reflexes!

Anyway, Duane sent me packing because he didn't want me to throw up as well. So I crawled out of there (there was no way I could walk at that point), I let my stomach settle for a moment and I got to work on finding clean pajamas for Mayah. I threw those into the bathroom for Duane to put on poor Mayah. I then started working on Malia and I stripped off her pajamas and moved her to the toddler bed (the girls have been sharing the big girl bed). I was thankful the Malia slept through everything and continued to sleep while I cleaned her up.

I then began stripping the bed, all the while holding my breath and trying not to look at or touch the vomit. I was quite proud of myself because I was able to do so without losing my dinner. I then made the bed with clean sheets and blankets and got it ready for Mayah to go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, Mayah had other plans. She didn't want to go to sleep as she was wide awake at that point. I brought her to our room so she could lay down and watch her favorite Planet Earth episode (Ice World) and I could go to sleep. I soon passed out but that didn't last long since Mayah started crying and coughing again! I bolted out of the bed and yanked Mayah out with me. I was able to get her to the bathroom in time for her to start vomiting again. Duane came running in the room (he was still up playing Halo or something) and helped Mayah while I started cleaning up the bathroom floor. At that point, Mayah's first set of pajamas were already washed and dried so I went and got them while Duane stripped the other pajamas off of Mayah.

We got her cleaned up again and she was very tired at this point so we put her back into our bed (after we covered it with very thick towels, just in case). Duane decided he would sleep on the couch because he said he didn't want to be thrown up on (yeah, like I wanted to be thrown up on). Anyway, Mayah passed out and I did too all the while hoping the morning wouldn't come too soon.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to sleep for a very long time because a sneaky little kitty (Malia) woke up and crawled into bed with Mayah and me. I use the word 'kitty' because Malia was literally in kitty mode. She was crawling and pouncing like a playful kitty would. She also was not speaking; just making kitty noises. I have no idea why she was so wide awake and being so playful since all the lights were out and everyone was asleep at that point. I forgot to mention, it was around 2 AM.

Lucky me, I got to stay up with 'kitty' for a while. I don't know what time it was before she finally curled up and passed out. I may have passed out before she did, I am not sure.

All in all, it was a very odd, sleepless night. We still don't know why Mayah was vomiting as there was no temperature and who knows why Malia woke up and decided it was time to be a kitty.

But yeah, never a dull moment at our place. Just imagine how much more "fun" it will be around here once I have this baby.

Poor little "stinky ear" Malia

This morning I discovered that my little Malia has a horrible, horrible ear infection. Its pretty bad. No, it is SUPER BAD! She's got a lot of junk coming out of her ear! I haven't seen anything like it before in my life. I didn't even know that such a thing was possible.

Anyway, I rushed her to an urgent care facility and they prescribed some ear drops and an antibiotic. According to the doctor, she should be better within a week. I hope the doctor is right.

In the meantime, my poor little girl has a horrible ear infection that I really can't do that much about besides give her medication. She also has a very stinky ear. :-(

This picture was taken sans ear infection.

My goldie locks has chicken pox

As I was getting the girls ready for church this morning, I discovered a few suspicious spots on Malia. I freaked out immediately because I know for a fact they weren't there yesterday evening. I hoped that a bug had gotten to her last night but my suspicions were confirmed after closer examination of Malia's spots--she definitely has chicken pox!!!

It turns out that I exposed Malia to the chicken pox because I had shingles. I thought that if she was going to get chicken pox they would have shown themselves at least a week ago. I didn't know that it takes 12-14 days for the chicken pox virus to incubate before showing up on the skin. I feel so stupid because I would have known how long chicken pox takes to incubate had I done all the research ahead of time.

Luckily, I haven't taken Malia to church for 2 weeks--Conference Sunday and the week before that because I thought Mayah had pink eye (turned out that she didn't have pink eye, she just had something in her eye) and I still had shingles--and of course I didn't take her to church today. Anyway, Malia hasn't really been in direct contact with other kids over the past two weeks. The handful of kids that she has been around were all old enough to have been vaccinated against chicken pox--I think.

I am sure everyone is asking why on earth I didn't finish vaccinating Malia. I am asking myself the same question.

The last set of vaccinations Malia received was when she was 9 months old. Soon after that, Mayah was diagnosed with autism. While I have never felt that Mayah's autism was caused by vaccinations, I personally know a lot of parents who swear that their children were neurotypical until they received a certain vaccination. Hearing these stories really scared me and I decided to wait on vaccinating Malia further. I fully intended on getting her vaccinations done by the time she was old enough to attend public school but I just wanted to spread them out a little. Unfortunately, my plan backfired and now my child has chicken pox.

Moral of the story: vaccinate your children.

Side note: As of mid-September, Mayah is fully vaccinated--so no worries there.

It's raining, it's pouring...

Things have been a bit crazy in our house for the last week.

Earlier in the week I discovered that the "bug bites" on my back are actually shingles. Apparently the pregnancy is not only lowering my immunity but it is also stressing me out enough to bring on the shingles. Luckily I don't have more then a small patch on my back. They already seem to be healing up but they are quite itchy and sort of hurt. For anyone that doesn't know, shingles are a form of chicken pox. Only people who have had chicken pox can get shingles. I cannot give shingles to anyone but while I have shingles, I can give chicken pox to anyone that hasn't had them yet...I think that is weird. Anyway, I am trying to keep from stressing about it because I don't want to get more shingles.

Mayah stayed home from school yesterday and today because she has pinkeye. Now that she is going to two different preschools every day, she is exposed to twice as many germs. I am sad that she has pinkeye because she really loves school. She has been so bored at home. We don't have any cool or fun things to keep her entertained. I hope the infection goes away and doesn't spread to her other eye because I don't want her missing too much school.

If the pinkeye wasn't bad enough, Mayah had to get 4 stitches yesterday after she accidentally sliced her leg open with scissors. I know, I am a bad mother. I shouldn't have let her have the scissors to begin with. This is the first scissor related emergency in our home as I am usually monitoring Mayah when she has scissors--she really likes to cut paper and she is really quite good at it...until now. Anyway, Duane just got home from work so I took my attention from Mayah to talk to Duane for a few minutes. It was during that time that she somehow sliced the skin on her right leg--right next to her knee, on the outside of her leg.

The cut is about one and a half inches long. Although the cut wasn't super deep, it was deep enough that she needed to get stitches. Even though the doctor numbed the area, poor Mayah screamed long and hard while the doctor stitched her up. Duane and the nurse had to hold her down so the doctor could give her the stitches. It was so sad.

As a reward for being so brave, we took Mayah out to eat at Ikea--one of her favorite places to eat. She ate very little and then told us that she was tired. We then took her home and soon after, she was passed out. She slept well last night.

There have been other things that have happened quite recently such as our second car--my car--having issues. As of now, it is not working at all. We believe it has to do with the battery as it is a cheap battery and sort of old. The wires connecting to the battery don't look good either. Duane hasn't been able to do anything about it as he is quite busy at work this week. Hopefully he will be able to get around to it this weekend. I don't like not having a car.

Anyway, despite all the craziness, we are all still alive and kicking. As hectic as things have been this week I know that things could be way worse. I am very grateful for what we have. I am grateful for our wonderful health insurance--without it we would be paying a pretty penny in medical bills as our family has been to the ER twice in the last 2 months and there have been a lot of doctor/urgent care visits made in the last two months as well (both urgent care visits were in the last week). Don't even get me started with the amount of prescriptions that we have had to pick up lately. I am just so grateful that the co-pays for all of the recent medical care is quite reasonable.

I know that we are being blessed through our trials. It is that thought that comforts me the most. :)

The photo at the beginning of this blog is actually a year old--from last September. I accidentally broke our camera this summer. If anyone is keeping track, that is the third camera I have gone through in 4 years. Duane isn't too happy about that. We joke about getting me the new fisher price camera that is made for toddlers. They are made tough so they won't break when dropped. My question is, why don't they make ALL digital cameras tough like that? ;)