First E.R. Visit

Wild as Kate is, Matt and I assumed Kate's first visit to the Emergency Room would be for stitches. Not so, as we experienced our first panicked hospital trip today. Not the kind where you throw the child in the car and speed there yourself, but the kind where you get a call that your child is being sent in an ambulance and you're 50 miles away!

Let me start at the beginning...

Today was Kate's last day at her current day care, as today was closing day for our house and then we move on Friday (yay!!) so I had my camera with me to capture a few shots of her with her first school friends.

 She arrived in style, in her newly-turned-around car seat, and joined her class of rowdy two-year olds

and Matt and I went on to Nashville, where I worked a half day before Matt picked me up at noon. We grabbed lunch at Wendy's, and just as we were gathering our garbage to head off to the closing, the phone rang.

It was the director of the day care, saying Kate was having a lot of trouble breathing. She'd woken up from her nap with a croupy cough and couldn't catch her breath, was grabbing at her throat, etc. At first it seemed they thought Matt should just come pick her up and go to the pediatrician (they know he's usually local, while I work far away) but upon realizing he was in Nashville too, they said they needed to call an ambulance. Panicked, we told our realtor, etc., that we wouldn't be able to close today, and headed back to Clarksville as quickly as we could.

The director called us again on our way to say Kate was sitting up in the ambulance, getting a breathing treatment, and she was doing fine. So, we unclenched a bit and didn't worry quite as much the rest of the way. When we arrived, Kate was sitting there in the hospital bed, in her own clothes (that comforted me, since I wondered if she'd be in a hospital gown), being calm and sweet. The day care director and assistant were there with her, and she had her naptime blanket and a stuffed puppy they'd grabbed for her to hold. She wanted the pulse-reader-thing that was taped to her finger off, but otherwise, was very calm.

We joked that she had to make a grand exit on her last day, and the teachers actually said an ambulance had been there just hours before for a show-and-tell sort of thing--Kate must have decided she wanted to ride in that thing! That, or she just really doesn't want us to move to a new house!

The diagnosis was croup, which she's had before. We've done the take-her-out-into-the-cold-night-air thing and she gets better, but this was apparently much worse than those incidents. She also has a somewhat chronic cough (though it's actually seemed better lately), so we've wondered about athsma, but they didn't seem to think that was the problem. All we know is we're not letting doctors write it off as "the beginnings of a sinus infection" anymore! They gave Kate a chest x-ray (she did great!), another breathing treatment (she flipped out!), and a steroid to help open her airways. The steroid would have been painless if she'd been willing to drink it in apple juice, but she refused, so she had to get two shots. She's a trooper, though.

She even felt good enough to "help" with the packing this evening, and is sleeping soundly with a brand new humidifier!

Messy Mother's Day

Kate and my Mother's Day tradition (all two years of it) has been to go to Starbucks before church and enjoy some girl time. This year, I was even going to be delivering the sermon, at Matt's request. (Nothing fancy, it was basically a compilation and expansion of these two blog posts about what motherhood has taught me about God.)

But then Kate woke up at 2 and 3 in the morning throwing up, and kept it up a few more times after sunrise (once ALL over me--fun fun), so we decided she needed to stay home. Matt read my message for me while I stayed home with a subdued and cuddly toddler. Watching some Abby and Elmo (or A&E to make her sound a little more refined) and a nice long nap on the couch perked her up enough for us to go out for Chinese that evening.

And while she slept, I packed a few boxes in preparation for our move in less than two weeks! Our house is so messy right now, with the living room full of boxes. Shelves are getting barer, and yet there still seems to be so much more to pack!

Kate doesn't really get the concept of "moving," I'm sure, though I think the changes are making her uneasy. When I moved some chairs in the dining room to make room for more boxes, she emphatically told me, "no, Mommy!!" When I ask if she's excited to go to the pool a lot this summer in our new neighborhood, she says, "no!" When I tell her, "You're going to have a big girl bed in our new house!" she says, "no!"

That said, she has decided she is done with the crib (perfect timing!), preferring to sleep on the couch, on her mattress on the floor, or on the floor itself... or in this case, on a box of books (just for a minute).

So, we're getting all the fun of putting her back in "bed" numerous times at bedtime, and corraling her back to bed when she decides to wander around at one in the morning!

Monday night, Matt and I came down with Kate's stomach bug. Me first, and Kate got out of bed every time I threw up to stand there in the bathroom (right by her room) and say "Mommy's sick" over and over, as she does when I have my usual nausea. And given that I threw up just about every hour, it was especially tough getting her to stay in bed that night. Then Matt started getting sick about 3 in the morning, and we were both sick, sore, and tired the next day. (Thank you, Granna and Opa for providing emergency child care so we could recuperate!)

So that was our messy Mother's Day and its aftermath. How was yours?

Big News!

Our family has gotten some big news in the last couple weeks:

We're moving back to Nashville!!

We are so excited about this change, glad to be going back to the area where most of our friends and some of our family are, where I work (goodbye 50-mile commute!), and where Matt and I feel at home. Matt doesn't want to reveal the church that he's being appointed to until he's sure all appropriate parties (i.e. the people at that church) have been told, but from what we know, it looks like it's going to be a good fit. AND, it doesn't have a parsonage, which means we get to buy our own home. The church move will be in June, so we are looking at houses and hope to move in late May or early June. We are so, so excited for this opportunity.

I bet you thought our "big news" was that we are pregnant again, didn't you? 

That's what people always think when they see a post title like that.

And in this case, you would be right!

We're expecting another baby!!

We are due October 30, and are so excited for another addition to our family. I'm only 8 weeks along, but we felt ready to tell the world. With Kate, we kept it just between Matt and I for four weeks, telling family at 8 weeks and everybody else not long after that. This time, we found out literally moments before I took Matt to the airport for his Israel trip, so I just had to tell my parents and some close friends right away, at 4.5-5 weeks, or I would have gone crazy while he was gone. We told Matt's parents as soon as he got back from Israel (so that he could be there when we told them) and have been gradually letting the cat out of the bag since then.

I've been in the "exhausted" phase for the last few weeks, totally useless in the evenings and napping whenever I can on the weekends. I started feeling sick last week, and the "morning" sickness is picking up some steam, I think. I got sick throughout my pregnancy with Kate, so I would expect no less this time. Preggie Pop Drops are my friend.

Kate--to the extent she can understand--is excited about the baby. She loves babies, and I can ask her, "Kate, where is Mommy's baby?" and she'll point to my stomach (which is already pouching out a little, I think. I hear you show a lot earlier with subsequent children, but it could be just a subconscious decision not to suck in my baby-flab anymore. Who knows.)

We used this cute "big sister" shirt to share the news with the grandparents.

So in short, 2011 is going to be a big year for us!