We’re sick.

It all started more than a week ago—Saturday January 17th is when we first noticed that things were off. Rose’s eyes were all goopy and red. We thought it may be pink eye. By the following Tuesday, though, her eyes had cleared up for the most part and she seemed fine. Then Wednesday morning Jay woke up and barfed. He stayed home from school but was spunky and normal all day. Ok… Thursday morning, Jay woke up with red goopy eyes. “That’s it!” I thought, “off to the doctor we go.” So we went to see the new guy (since Dr. Weaver isn’t up and running yet). So much for never going to the Grandview Medical Center again! The new doctor didn’t introduce himself to us so I can’t remember his name. He stormed into the room and started poking Jay’s eyes and asking questions. He ended by “prescribing” Visine eye drops on a prescription paper. So we got some Visine, but it made Jay’s eyes hurt more so we gave it up.

My cuties between bouts of sickness, when Jay seemed to be getting better and before Rose went down.

Thursday afternoon, Jay got a fever. Friday I started feeling a telltale tickle in the back of my throat and sure enough, on Saturday I had clogged sinuses. I made a veritable vat of chicken noodle soup on Saturday night, and thank goodness I did. Sunday I woke up shaking with a fever, so Jay, Amber, and I stayed home from church and missed Jeff’s talk. (boo!) Sunday night my fever broke and my symptoms distilled into a dry cough and a stuffy head. Monday (yesterday) I decided to keep Jay home from school one more day to make sure he was all the way better. He was very close to his normal self all day, so I was fully intending to take him to school today. But then last night, Rose came down with a fever and I put both her and Jay to bed at 6:30pm. They fell asleep instantly and slept forEVER: Jay slept 13 hours and Rose slept 14 whole hours! That plus a raging sinus headache on my part convinced me to head back to the doctor for the second time in 5 days. So I called and made appointments with the nurse practitioner for all three of us this morning. She was very nice and helpful. $90 worth of copays later, Jay, Rose, and I learned that we all have sinus infections AND the flu. Joy.

Bonus: we got to wear these awesome masks at the doctor’s office. Mine kept funneling my breath upwards and fogging up my glasses. Rose would NOT keep hers on after the first 30 seconds. When Amber saw me with the mask on, her eyes got very big and she stared nervously until I took it off. Then she smiled.

The nice nurse prescribed us all amoxicillin for our sinuses and Tamiflu for the flu. I didn’t even know there was a medicine to treat the flu virus. I thought we were on our own with viruses. Our insurance paid for 100% of the amoxicillin but only about 20% of the Tamiflu medicine, so we only got the amoxicillin. It would have cost us $250 per person to get the flu medicine. Yeah RIGHT. It’s just a virus! We’ll fight it off the old fashioned way: with tissues and chicken noodle soup.

Watching a cartoon, in the calm before the storm. Amber was only interested as long as it took me to snap this picture.

I’ve been wondering something: is the flu like a hurricane—do they name the main flu strain each season? This year it must be Tami, since that’s the name of the medicine. Hurricane Katrina. Tami-flu. Ha, sorry. With this raging sinus headache, I have to look for humor where I can find it.

Sad.

And…icing on the worst cake ever…Jeff came home from school early today with the beginnings of the flu. Amber is the only one of us who is unscathed. (I am SO paranoid about her health now!) How can I breastfeed a baby without coughing on her or kissing her or touching her face or transferring every germ I own? I can only hope that she’s keeping this sickness at bay with all the antibodies in my supermilk. Possibly one of my biggest parental nightmares involves a very sick baby, so I picked up an extra bottle of hand sanitizer while we were getting our prescriptions today, as if that will solve all the problems. The nurse said it would be safest to wear my mask all the time, but… yeah right. Amber is scared of me when I wear that thing, and it’s really uncomfy.

Sunday night, Rose fell asleep sitting up at 6pm. She slept the whole time Jeff was taking out her hairdo and carrying her to bed, only waking up long enough to say “Daddy, I’m too tired. Bunny.”

Jeff didn’t know which clothes fit Amber when he was helping out on Sunday, ha ha ha.

I suppose I should be grateful that this is the first time we’ve had such a long drawn out sick-time in our family. It hasn’t seemed as horrible as I always imagined the flu. I always associated the word flu with throwing up, but officially influenza is not a barfy sickness. I felt rather ignorant when I discovered that nugget of information! I’m always inclined to think that barfing illnesses are way worse than paltry respiratory issues, but then again I did just spend 9 months drowning in nausea. I was joking this morning that no sickness is going to phase me after that awful pregordeal! I have been so low and dehydrated with uncontrollable barfing that a “mere” fever, cough, and sinus infection seem mild to me. Watching my sweet family go through it is where the true flu-agony comes in for me.

And now, to end on a happy note,

Here’s hoping she stays smiley and healthy!

The hAMBERger

The other day, I asked Rose what Amber’s nickname should be and she said “hangaber!” (that’s how she says hamburger) Point for Rose—hAMBERger is a delightful nickname for our sweet little squishy! Ha ha, I’m sure she’ll love it some day…?

Last week this baby fell in love with her thumb. It is adorable now, but I keep having visions of a 5 year old with a shriveled thumb and messed up teeth. Orthodontia aside, I think it’s a gross habit! I don’t want her to always have a slimy smelly thumb. As a child, I sucked my thumb well into my fifth year so I should be more understanding. But I’m not. She’s not even 3 months old yet, so I figure I can at least attempt to redirect her sucking impulse to a non-finger item. The battle of the binky has begun in earnest. 

She took this kind of binky ok at first, but once she found her thumb, she rejected the Nuk bink more and more.

Enter: the Wub. This genius little contraption is a binky sewn onto a small stuffed monkey. Its full name is great: The Wubbanub. The idea is that the monkey will keep the binky in the baby’s mouth, make it harder to lose, and be a fun toy all at once. It works as often as not at this stage, because Amber accidentally yanks it out of her mouth a lot when she’s fingering the monkey.

I ordered this Wub in desperation for a fussy baby Tate back when I was babysitting him last year, and he only really used it for a week or two. It’s been hanging out in our crib ever since, so I washed it and gave it to Amber. If it seems risky to give a used bink to a babe, let me comfort you: One day a few weeks ago, Amber was crying while Jeff was holding her. Helpful Jay went and dug up a crusty old binky used briefly by baby Rose (how did he even find that thing?) and gave it to Amber. Another day Amber was crying in her crib and Rose got there before me. When I arrived on the scene, Rose had stuck the old, unwashed Wub binky into her mouth. I was concerned and grossed out both times, but Amber survived these encounters with nary a sniffle, so I had no qualms about finally washing the Wub and giving it to her officially. She was an instant fan! The shape of the binky is almost exactly like her little thumb. Cha-ching!

In fact, she likes to stick her thumb into the back of the binky, when she can find it.

I’m not sure this is accomplishing the goal of avoiding the thumb sucking habit, but…oh well!

She still sneaks in her thumb more than I’d like, but I guess it’s not the end of the world.

Sometimes she even goes for BOTH thumbs. (don’t you want to nibble those juicy little wrists?)

As for this other not-so-great habit…

…we let it slide with a chuckle.

Thoughts on a walk

This morning after we walked Jay to school, the girls and I decided to extend the walk a bit before going home. The sun was actually shining--how could I resist? So we turned the corner from Harriet Thompson Elementary and walked past the Welch's factory and El Mercado. When we passed the Grandview Medical Center, I had an odd wave of nostalgia that took me completely off guard. Why did I feel a sort of fondness for that plain, skinny brown building? After thinking it over I concluded that it wasn't the building itself or even any fond memories from going inside the building. (it's a doctor's office, for goodness sake-we don’t go there for fun!) Our family doctor, Dr. Weaver, recently switched offices so we won't be going to the little Grandview Medical Center anymore. We'll go to his new office in Prosser instead. I think the knowledge that we won't have any reason to go back to the office where we had all of our appointments for the past 3 years is what brought on the nostalgic feeling. I went through a lot in that building! This line of thought got me a-pondering my most recent medical adventure: being pregnant with Amber. 

As I've been recovering from that pregnancy, I've been thinking about what an amazing experience it was, in spite of the physical agony. We are here on earth to learn things we can't learn anywhere else. There is POWER in personal experience. I already wrote what I learned from my Amber-pregnancy about real life service. In one [of the many] priesthood blessings I received when I was super sick and pregnant, I was told that I was given this trial so that I could learn empathy that I couldn't learn any other way. Experience is the best teacher. There are SO MANY lessons, big and small, that I have already learned from my prego-trial, and I'm realizing more and more that I'll probably be learning new things from it for a long time. We go back to the scriptures over and over to learn new things from the same old stories, so it makes sense to learn new things from my own "same old story" too. 

That was a long preamble for what I started out to say! I wanted to share something that I recently realized/learned from my pregordeal. It involves Dr. Weaver. It is humbling to know that I am alive because of him! Now, there's no guarantee that I would have actually died without all those bags of fluids and medicines for all those weeks, but I think it was very possible. Charlotte Bronte died from morning sickness! That is a huge gift to give a near-stranger: LIFE. Doctors do it all the time. I feel such a deep respect toward my doctor for all he did to help me through such an enormous physical trial. He probably doesn't remember everything he did to help me, but I do! When I was too sick to keep my medicine down, I would call or text him (at all hours!) and he told me what to do. When I was in the hospital for that week, he checked on me every day and told me stories about his latest run or road race so I could live vicariously though his running. He never brushed my constant nausea aside or told me I had to do ___or else. He only helped me. And then he delivered my sweet baby girl and had the good grace to say she was cute, even in her slimy, fresh-from-the-womb state. 

I know it's a doctor's job to take care of his patients, and doctors see hundreds of patients each week. I'm sure all of those faces run together and get mixed up in a doctor's brain. But to each person that receives quality care from that one good doctor, that doctor means something more, you know? Dr. Weaver did so many things for me that I could not do for myself, and I am beyond grateful for his help. That thought made me zoom out and realize something bigger: when we do temple work for the dead, the names all sort of run together and we never really know any of the people we help. But they know us and are thankful for us! I have done temple work for dozens of people. I don't remember their names, but they know mine! I mean something to them because I did something for them that they could not do for themselves. When we help someone, it means something and we are connected  in a small way because of it.

Those were my deep thoughts while I was pushing an 80-pound double jogging stroller past a skinny brown building.

Satur-Monday

Whenever there’s no school on a Monday, it throws me off big time. I keep thinking we have church tomorrow because school-free Mondays feel just like Saturday. That illusion was heightened today because I stayed home from church yesterday (we think Rose has pink eye). Even though Rose’s eye was sick, we didn’t think it would get any worse if it looked at some snow today, so we loaded up the van and headed for White Pass. We made this trip over Christmas break too, so we knew the 2 hour drive would be worthwhile. This time we had to go all the way to the top of the pass to get to the good snow. When I was growing up in west Tennessee, if it didn’t snow in our town we simply didn’t get to play in snow. There were no mountains nearby. It’s great being able to go find snow here—I love the diversity of good ole Washington state.

When we arrived, I fed and changed Amber in the van while Jeff got Jay and Rose snow-suited up. Then they all traipsed off down the road a ways with Grama Leslie, Grampa Dan, and Toby the dog to find a suitable sledding hill. When Amber was ready, I clipped her into the carrier underneath my coat and went in search of the family.

It was a beautiful winder wonderland. [photo credit: Dan White—I mooched his good pictures off of Facebook]

The trees made it difficult to find a good sledding hill near the parking area, and there was a “no sledding aloud” sign on the nearest trail (cross country skiers had priority there. We saw a group ski past and I totally want to try it now—downhill skiing is too fast for me but I think I could get in to cross country skiing). We made due with this funny little side hill. There was another family there sledding too.

The sledding turned out to be rather slow going in the soft deep snow, but it packed down enough for some low-velocity sledding.

Here comes Rose! [photo credit: Dan White]

Going back for more. [photo credit: Dan White]

That white marshmallow is me with Amber hidden under my coat. My marshmallow coat is usually too boxy in the middle (drafty!), but it’s perfect for warming a baby. [photo credit: Dan White]

Jay, taking on the hill.

One second Jeff was up on the hill and the next thing I knew, he was flying through the air—he jumped and landed into the snow drift up to his waist!

Eventually, Jay, Rose, and Dan started snow-jumping with Jeff. Even Toby the dog had fun plunging around in the deep parts of the snow. There wasn’t much I could do with a baby strapped to my chest, but I did take Amber on one sled ride down the hill. One word: OUCH! The snow was bumpy, and I had to lean back because I was holding Amber, so all the bumps crunched me in the tailbone through the thin saucer sled. Amber slept through it, but I decided once was enough and watched everyone else after that.

[photo credit: Dan White]

Jay’s snow-jump

Can you see Jeff hurtling through the air? He’s right above Jay, well camouflaged against the trees.

Rose preferred to snow-roll and snow-slither.

After nearly two hours of snowfun, one of the moms in the other family there took a picture for us (Dan and Leslie left before we did so they missed the family photo). Jeff artistically stuck the sleds into the snow. It’s so symmetrical!

Then we walked along the side of the road back to the van.

Goodbye, snow. And happy Martin Luther King day!

Princess Rose and Queen Mommy

Rose has been thoroughly enjoying her Christmas dress-up clothes collection. I have been loving them too! It makes me want to go to Goodwill at Halloween every year to stock up on fun costumes. Every day Rose goes over to the dress-up box and picks out a dress, shoes, and various accessories. She places all of these sparkly items into a pile and then methodically layers them onto her person. I’m gathering quite a photo collection of amazing Rosella, Rosepunzel, Briar Rose, etc, because I can’t resist taking a picture whenever she concocts a new outfit.

She started insisting upon not one, but TWO crowns, placed on top of her white hat and a Rafael ninja turtle mask, with the fleece Rapunzel hair underneath it all.

Her biggest dress for the win.

One day this week, Rose asked me to dress up with her. I had to inform her that her dresses were all too small for me, so she did my hair and accessorized me as best she could without a dress. Then I remembered that I do have a few dresses of my own, and of course she wanted me to put one on. But when I went to get them out, they were not where I thought they were. I’m finding that I’ve forgotten the location of pretty much everything I put away/organized before I got sick and pregnant last year. It’s like trying to remember a previous life when I look for things: “where would old-Shaina have hidden that?” We spent nearly an entire afternoon searching the house to find my dresses, and finally discovered them in a box under the stairs. Then we had some fun.

My old Boone Home dresses are still awesome…except as a nursing mother I have to say that the back didn’t close all the way when I put it on this time, ha ha.

Rose said “I’m Princess Rose and you’re Queen Mommy! Daddy is your king and Jay is my prince.”

Nephi was a prophet too

One of this year's Primary songs is Follow the Prophet. Jay wonders why there isn't a verse for Nephi, because he thinks Nephi is pretty cool. So on Sunday, Jay invented his own verse.

January should be an adjective

The title says it all. January should be an adjective. The weather is January. Or a feeling? I’m feeling quite January-ish today. It happens every year. The Christmas tree, lights, music, and fun are over. School is back in session. The house feels bare without the school-goers and Christmas decorations.We keep getting insurance statements forecasting MORE bills for Amber. The weather is gray, cold, and bleak. It’s January outside and in.

Boohoo!
[Am I the only person who takes pictures of my kids crying? I think they are so cute when they’re sad! Then I comfort them, I promise]

Only two things help lift my January drearies: good conversation and cute pictures. Today my Mom and I set a new phone call record: 1 hour and 42 minutes! Part of me feels like I overindulged and should’ve done something more productive with that time, but most of me feels so happy and optimistic and GLAD that we got to talk that long. As a dedicated introvert, there is only a small handful of people that refresh me when we talk, and my mom is at the top of the list. The phone call was much-needed and quite rejuvenating. It did wonders to dispel my January-ness.

Cute pictures also help with the January mood.

For you far-flung family members who love my babies, I thought I’d post a long string of the latest Amberfaces. She turned two months old this week and that brought on a photo-taking spree (as if I need an excuse to take hundreds of pictures of her). Seriously, I started a separate folder in our January photo file, called Amberface. It has 193 pictures in it already! In my old age I doubt I’ll regret taking these pictures in their volumes, so I continue taking them. They make hard drives with terabytes of storage now, so I think I’m safe.

Amber had her first shots this week. It required extra snuggling, which I think is another way to keep the January drearies at bay. Squishy baby snuggles—add it to the Cheer-up list: good conversation, cute pictures, and squishy baby snuggles. Yes.

Those CHEEKS! Amber had her first ride (of many) in the double jogging stroller this week, while we walked Jay to school. I think I bundled her enough.

Bare baby! She’s so soft. She weighs 11 pounds 9 ounces and is right in the middle of average for her weight. Somehow she’s only in the 27th percentile for height though, little shorty. She started sleeping for 7-9 hours per night this week! We’re going on 3 nights in a row now. [I hope I didn’t just jinx it]

I love it when she gets so happy she squirms.

She lays in my lap a lot. My little heater.

Help!

A little comparison of Jay, Rose, and Amber at 2 months old.

Smile comparison

That’s me in the top left corner. We don’t really have many pictures of Jeff’s babyhood, and the few we do have don’t have accurate dates on them so…

Here’s baby Jeff at an unknown age.

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day…