Downhill.

I've joked with The Husband that it's all downhill after a person hits 30.  

(TMI alert...)

I woke up last month on my 30th birthday to a bleeding c-section incision.

Freaked.Me.Out.

The Hubs and Ryan took me to the doctor to get checked.  You know how with certain surgeries you have a drain left in so that fluid can drain out?  That's not the case with c-sections.  But I apparently had some fluid that needed to come out and out it came via a tiny hole in my incision.  To top it off, my doctor stuck a stick in the hole to make it bigger and then pushed more fluid out.  I warned you about too much information.  Then as if that wasn't painful enough, she stuck another stick in the hole that had silver nitrate on it that burned like crazy and turned the skin around it black.

Happy freaking birthday to me!

Luckily, the day picked up.

We had dinner and cheesecake at my parent's house to celebrate my day and this little man:

slept long enough so that I could eat my dinner uninterrupted!

He knew just what to get me for my birthday.

February.

In February the girls learned how to ride their bikes without training wheels!

This video of them cracks me up!  They're getting better every time we take the bikes out.

Now this picture cracked me up also.  It's the perfect example of just how different my daughters are.  The paint set on the right is Maylyn's and the one on the left is Kaeleigh's.

And they butt heads every.single.day.  

My Valentine's gift this year was a 4D Ultrasound of baby boy.

It was so exciting to see his precious little face!

 And his little feet.  :)

The end of February brought The Husband's family to town.

I love my in-laws.  Last spring my sister and brother-in-law came down to visit but this time they brought three of their kids along as well.  I hadn't seen them since our wedding almost 3 years ago now! I dug up this picture of Ty and Jake from their last visit in 2009:

 to compare it to the one I took of the two of them during this visit.

Jake is HUGE!

February also brought pneumonia for both kids (which got them each 2 shots...the kind that aren't given in the arm.)  Poor kiddos.

So far March has been a much better health month. 

(Knock on wood.)

Parties and pox.

The kids just had another fun weekend.

On Sunday we celebrated the 6th birthday of our friend John at Chuck E. Cheese.

 These are their excited faces. 

They had so much fun and Kaeleigh didn't even cry when Chuck E. came out.

(Which has happened before. Ha, ha.  Poor Kaeleigh.)

Then when we got home I noticed Maylyn had some red bumps on her upper torso and it turned out to be chicken pox!

It was around this same time last year that Maylyn got so sick and ended up in the hospital for 9 days.  I'll take chicken pox over hospitalization any day of the week!  Luckily, she's got a very mild case with only a few spots.  Her doctor said that's usually the case if you get them after you've been vaccinated.

 She missed the last 2 days of school for the semester.  She was pretty upset...not because she was missing school but that she was missing all of the parties!  I had emailed her teacher and she was nice enough to send home all of the makings for the gingerbread house that Maylyn missed out on.  Her teacher even sent enough stuff home for Kaeleigh to make one too!

She's such an awesome lady.

I love how happy they look here.

Maylyn.

My hopes of getting released from the hospital on Sunday

were dashed when Maylyn started to get worse.

Even after the surgery she was still in a lot of pain.

And then she started to display other symptoms that had the doctors speculating on a completely different diagnosis.

I've decided not to post the diagnosis publicly on the internet, but I'll tell you it's rare and she'll require ongoing monitoring.

Once they made the diagnosis, they started treatment and within half a day you could see she was improving.  The difference was amazing.

We did eventually get released on Wednesday afternoon after a 9 day stay in the hospital.

The new children's hospital is wonderful and aside from one bad nurse, the staff was so great with Maylyn.

The poor baby went through so much.

She got blood drawn 3 times.

Went through 2 CT scans.

One treatment session and a another procedure.

She had her IV moved between both hands multiple times.

She's such a trooper.  I don't know many people that could handle everything she went through and she's 5!

It was so hard for me to watch her in pain and not be able to do anything.

I had a couple of mini meltdowns.  And aside from running to my parent's house to shower (they live closer to the hospital than we do) I was by her side the entire time.

I'm extremely lucky to have the family and friends that I do.

My parents kept Kaeleigh for me almost the entire time we were there.

The Husband was so supportive and between him and my dad, they kept me fed and laughing and distracted so I didn't break down in front of Maylyn.

My dad was so amazing.  He spent nearly as much time at the hospital as I did.

And we had so many friends reach out to us and offer support and meals, I'm truly blessed and can't thank everyone enough.  It meant so much to me.

We've been home for two days now and I can't even begin to tell you how happy that makes me.  And Maylyn too.  She's told me that she's glad she's home as well.

Holding the friendship quilt her classmates made for her.

Hospital.

When I blogged Tuesday morning at 3am about Maylyn's trip to the emergency room

I wasn't expecting to be back there a couple hours later...

Maylyn didn't improve at all Monday night/Tuesday morning

 so when 8am rolled around I made a call to her pediatrician who told me to take her straight back to the emergency room.  She called ahead which helped grease some wheels so as soon as we got there they put her in a room of her own in the ER and admitted her to the hospital.

We had to wait about 5 hours for a room on the pediatric floor but at least they were able to hook her up to an IV and get some drugs into her right away.

The infection in her lymph nodes on the right side of her neck caused her neck to swell considerably.  She's been in so much pain that they've been giving her morphine as well as broad spectrum antibiotics to fight the infection that caused this whole mess.

After two full days (Tuesday and Wednesday) of IV antibiotics, and no change, they decided to do a CT scan Thursday morning to see what was happening in that neck of hers. 

They found an abscess had developed and decided to do surgery to drain it.

They did the surgery yesterday (Thursday) and it went well.

The surgeon left the drain in her neck and she should hopefully get it removed tomorrow.

She hasn't eaten since we've been here so they're hoping now that some of that pressure has been released that she'll start feeling better and be able to eat.

I had to coax her to eat a few bites of dinner tonight but did get her to drink most of a can of PediaSure so at least she's getting some vitamins.

Depending on how she's recovering, we may be out of here on Sunday.  Fingers crossed.

There's so much more to write here but I'm pretty sleep deprived and on the verge of an emotional meltdown any minute so I just wanted to get part of this down while it's fresh.

I'll try to keep the blog updated with her condition...

This week...

Yikes.  A week and a half since I last blogged? 

I would blame the holidays but that's only part of the reason.

The last time I blogged Maylyn was fighting pneumonia, the flu and an ear infection.

A couple days later, Kaeleigh got an ear infection as well.

By the time Christmas rolled around I had a sinus infection.

And here it it, three days after Christmas and Maylyn is sick again.  :(

Last night we made a trip to the emergency room because she started running a fever again and the right side of her neck swelled up.

The poor child had to get blood drawn, and an IV put in, and have an ultrasound done on her neck.

She fell asleep in my lap.  :(



My view of the waiting room...Maylyn's IV and the tv.

It turns out that she has a deep lymph node infection.

She looks so miserable it's breaking my heart!

The ER doctors said to keep an eye on her, that she might have trouble breathing with all the swelling so I have her sleeping next to me on an air mattress in the living room.

I'm not able to sleep because I'm listening to every sound that she makes so I figured since I'm up at 3 am, I might as well catch up on some blogging!

On one of the few days that we were all relatively well, we took a trip to the zoo with our friends.  Apparently, right at about 10am is the perfect time to visit the zoo.

All of the animals are getting fed or are about to be fed and are up walking around in anticipation.

We saw a ton of animals that we normally don't get a few good view of.

 Christmas Eve was spent with my dad's side of the family...it's tradition.

I got this awesome shot of all of the "little" kids.

They're not so little anymore!

 We took a TON of photos.

Here's a pose that my mom requested.

My parents with their children.  The spouses of their children.  And the grandchildren.

I thought I had loaded the pics from Christmas day on my computer but I guess not.

Imagine us in our pjs and that's what a lot of the pictures look like.

Only a couple of more days until the new year.  Here's hoping everyone is well at our house...