Spring According to my Phone

I love that phones are accessible and are able to catch the moments where I don't have my big camera in tow. Spring according to my phone looked like this:

Crew finally overcame his fear of water thanks to his amazing swim teacher. We saw her twice a week all spring and summer. It took him months to stop crying and exerting his feistiness long enough to realize that he actually could swim. Fear was the only thing holding him back and we were so proud and so grateful when he became comfortable in the water.

We ate many packed lunches poolside after lessons.

We celebrated a friend's 30th birthday with a girls' night out at our happy place.

We did a few Sunday evening walks on the beach boardwalk, always ending at the swings.

One Sunday, we came out of church and it was raining. It's always a big deal to pull the umbrella out because it rains so infrequently. 

Another Sunday, Crew came dressed in the same shirt as his buddy. What made it even more coincidental was that both shirts were hand-me-downs from their older brothers. 

All that excitement wore Crew out. I'm a sucker for sleeping in the car photos because it happens so rarely.

Or snapshots of the boys sleeping anywhere but in their beds. 

Crew was pretty mad on Easter that his brothers got to stay up later than him to play a game. He snuck onto the stairs and stood his ground as long as possible before crashing.

Poor Crew also had a series of unfortunate hospital visits. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time when his friend knocked a frame off my wall during preschool. The glass shattered and sliced the bottom of Crew's foot. I should have taken him to get stitches right away, but it didn't seem that bad. What I didn't think about was how hard it would be to keep the bottom of a foot clean. Ten days later it became severely infected. I took Crew to urgent care and he was put on an antibiotic. 

At urgent care, I was actually much more concerned about Finn because his SpO2 (oxygen level) was dropping to the low 80s (anything under 93 is risky). They hooked him up to oxygen and breathing treatments and had all sorts of doctors rushing in to assist. Finn responded well enough to the in-office treatments that we didn't have to be admitted. But in the meantime, Crew kind of fell off the radar. When you have a child who isn't breathing, a foot infection seems dull in comparison. 

However, the next day, Crew's fever kept climbing and we could see a red streak climbing up his leg from the point of the infection. We took him to his pediatrician who sent him straight to ER. He had to do a whole bunch of blood work and get an x-ray to make sure there wasn't any glass still in there and to see if the infection had spread to the bone. They didn't find anything alarming so they gave him strong IV antibiotics and monitored him till midnight.

He was pretty wiped out the next day from the late night of poking and prodding.

During all of the hospital commotion, we were simultaneously making offers on two houses. We were in the thick of house hunting and had to act fast or risk losing them. I'll never forget signing e-documents from the ER and making calls to our agent in between Crew's tests and shuffling our other boys between parents. Somewhere in there we had to do a huge 3rd grade project with Blake as well.  It was a wild few days. A night out for dinner was in order to celebrate some semblance of normalcy after some pretty big scares back-to-back with our younger two. And we needed a distraction while we waited to hear if our offers were accepted.  

Sometimes this stage of life feels like we hop from one crazed moment to the next. I'm learning to appreciate the small, still moments in contrast to the typical chaos. One of those moments came when I drove down a street in my neighborhood after preschool drop-off one morning. The spring blooms and purple blossom dust covering the sides of the streets stopped me in my tracks. 

Life is beautiful, especially in the spring.

Winter According to my Phone

The camera in my back pocket captured some winter happenings I don't want to forget. Let's just pretend the quality of the photos is better.

Even though it's nice out all year round, the temperatures drop enough in January that if we look really hard, we can find signs of fall.

We checked out a new park after haircuts one Saturday afternoon.

The neighbor girls got motorized scooters for Christmas and the boys love hopping on the back.

We took a preschool field trip to Trader Joes.

The boys were fascinated with the box crushing machine they let us watch in the back room. 

Crew also had a preschool St. Patrick's Day party which is the only thing we did to celebrate aside from setting out a box of Lucky Charms that later ended up all over the floor. St. Patty's is one holiday I try to breeze over with minimal effort.

Finn had a tantrum one Saturday morning because I would only let him have one of the leftover donuts from the church cleaning and not two. He flung himself into a chair and what started as a bruise quickly spread to become an entire black eye.

Two year olds are equal parts adorable and frustrating.

We got a lot of stares when we were in public. I was sure glad when that eye healed up.

Blake is the game instigator on Sunday afternoons.

It wouldn't be normal to go more than a few weeks without someone winding up at the doctor or hospital. I drove through heavy fog at midnight to rush Crew to the ER when he could barely breathe. He ended up getting diagnosed with croup and wasn't having an asthma attack like I thought, but it sure gets scary when the boys' fevers spike and oxygen levels drop.

He fell asleep in odd places the next day while he burned off that fever.

I braved taking all four boys to the pediatric dentist at the same time just so we could get it over with. They loaded them up with lots of goodies to make it more bearable.

Nash's baseball games started in March and I think Crew might have been happier about that than anyone.

Any chance to display his manhood.

Crew sometimes dozes off while we are carting his brothers around to after school activities but long gone are the days of him napping in his bed.

We went to a birthday party at an adventure park full of every little boy's dream; trucks and mud.

It didn't take long for the boys to become completely covered in a layer of dirt.

There were giant bricks for the boys to build with as well.

Nash relaxed, as per usual.

Crew started back up in swim lessons which meant Finn got to dump water to his heart's content at the side of the pool.

I snagged priority tickets to America's Got Talent and jumped at the opportunity to attend a live audition taping. We battled LA traffic for 2.5 hours and stuffed our faces with tacos while running through the security line but it was so worth it for our prime seats ten feet away from the judges.

It was so fascinating to see what goes on behind the scenes. My shining moment was when Simon made eye contact with me and asked if I had liked the last performer who was a darling singer/songwriter. I've never really watched the show aside from a few performance clips but I'm excited to tune in this summer.

We were all a little starstruck and agreed it would be a hard night to top.

In the blink of an eye we went from Christmas to Spring Break. As usual, we could hardly catch our breath in between.

Another Day, Another Hospitalization

Exactly one week after Crew received his cast for his broken arm, we wound up in the hospital again.

Finn was on his typical two week rotation of coughing and wheezing but I didn't think much of it because he is sick more often than not. We amped up the breathing treatments when his symptoms worsened but I wasn't concerned he was in life-threatening danger. Although his breathing was labored, I had heard him sound much worse in the past.

Still, I was grateful that he had a well check scheduled the morning after his fever spiked so he could be examined.

The minute we arrived at the pediatrician's office, Finn coughed so hard that he vomited in the waiting room. The nurses took one look at his chest caving in and out and immediately sent us back to check his oxygen. When our pediatrician listened to his lungs and recorded his SpO₂ level, she determined that he wasn't well at all. We would have to reschedule his well check because he needed to be immediately admitted at the children's hospital.

His pulse oximetry reading was 86% which is extremely low. Anything under 92%, especially in a child, can be life-threatening. 

We did a few breathing treatments at the pediatrician's office and got him stabilized enough that I was given the clear to drive him to the hospital instead of having to ride in an ambulance. I made some phone calls to make arrangements for the other boys and we were on our way.

When we arrived at the hospital they had a private room waiting for us with a toddler crib set up. They hooked Finn up to a machine that would constantly monitor his oxygen.

It's a good thing we had his nie-nights with us because he had a long night of breathing treatments ahead of him and he needed all the comfort and familiarity he could get.

The volunteers from Ronald McDonald House brought in some toys for Finn to play with during the moments when his breathing was unassisted. We were grateful for the distraction but his movements kept knocking off the monitor wrapped around his toe and setting off the alarm.

He was not a fan of being in a confined radius.

After spending all afternoon and evening at the hospital, we saw his oxygen level rise a bit but it dropped each time the albuterol wore off. At 88%, I knew they weren't going to let us go home. We settled in for the night because oxygen tends to drop even more when sleeping. They ended up putting Finn in isolation, which meant that no children were allowed in the room and anyone who entered had to put on a mask and gloves.

Finn's SpO₂ dropped as anticipated throughout the night so they put him on oxygen in addition to his routine breathing treatments. It was a rough night. I had to crawl in the crib to lay down with him multiple times. He decided around 11pm that he was ready for a meal. Each time they gave him a breathing treatment it woke him up. And when he realized he had tubes taped to his face, he was less than cooperative.

I went for about 24 hours with no food because somehow there wasn't a system in place to let the parent leave the room. Troy couldn't come take a shift because he had our three other boys and they weren't allowed. I couldn't exactly leave my two year old alone and they didn't have any cafeteria meal delivery options. Finally after an entire day, I was in tears because I was so tired and so hungry. The nurse agreed to find a volunteer to sit with Finn for a half hour so I could run down to the cafeteria to grab some food.

The good news was that after a night of treatments, Finn's SpO₂ leveled out around 98-99% which meant that when the doctor made her rounds, we were given the clear to go home.

Finn was in much better spirits as his lungs offered him some relief.

Thank goodness for that thumb to help us through a traumatic night.

We decided to invest in our own pulse oximeter so we can measure Finn's SpO₂ at home. It's tricky to know when he is in danger and when he isn't because he coughs and wheezes so frequently with his asthma. I brought him to urgent care and the pediatrician twice in the past when I thought he sounded worse. I was sent home both times with instructions to "continue breathing treatments," so I wasn't exactly rushing to the ER this time around. Now we can know for certain when his SpO₂ is low enough for action and when we're okay to continue breathing treatments at home. We're taking a more aggressive maintenance plan with daily steroid treatments to reduce the irritation and swelling of his airways, which in turn will hopefully help us avoid additional trips to the hospital. 

Because as much fun as it is to sleep on a futon or in a toddler-sized crib with a two year old, I'd rather stay in a less-expensive five star hotel and eat regular meals. 

I'm only half kidding. In the end, I'm so grateful for the doctors and nurses that made my baby well again. We feel so blessed to live at a time when our children can get the assistance they need to restore their breathing. That's kind of an important thing for survival.