A Comedy of Errors

But not that funny actually. Ben came down with a headache, fever, and sore throat yesterday. This morning, after being very suspicious that he has strep, I decided to take him over to the pediatric urgent care clinic (I don't think I should say which one - LOL).  Joel stayed at home with Rebecca and Caroline, claiming he's had his fill of doctor offices this week - a fair point.

Error #1 - the nurse got Ben's weight and then wrote "32 lbs" in his chart, instead of "32 kg". I happened to spot that one and corrected her. If Ben weighed 32 lbs we'd have a bit more of a problem than just strep....

Error #2 - after doing the strep test the nurse apparently got it mixed up with another strep test that had been done just prior to Ben's, so the doc came in and told us his test was negative. I was a bit bewildered because I was pretty darn sure Ben had strep. Fortunately Ben asked for a popsicle, which delayed our exit long enough for someone to catch the mistake. We were herded back into the exam room, given the proper set of patient education materials (the ones that say "Strep confirmed") and a prescription was called over to our pharmacy.

Error #3 - Joel offered to go out to get his prescription once we got home and soon discovered that the doctor had prescribed giant amoxycillan pills. Yes it's true that Ben can swallow pills, but of the small capsule type variety. Joel had to get them to change the prescription to a liquid. Then to be on the safe side he double checked the dosage and the weight that the pharmacist had listed for Ben to make sure everything was correct.

I think we may not be visiting this particular urgent care facility again ;) Also Joel knew the physician who saw Ben, and I will leave his opinion of her out of this post! Apparently Joel thought I was taking Ben to the regular urgent care right across the street from us. I presumed a pediatric one would be better for him. Apparently I was wrong ;) At least now he has his medicine - I shudder to think about how miserable the next few days would have been if we'd been sent home thinking he did not have strep....

Getting Reacquainted

Lap Dog

Clara thinks she is a lap dog. There is a big doggy butt in my face.

Update

So we came home from the hospital yesterday around noon, everything was fine, Joel showered, got a hair cut, ate lunch, played with the kids, etc... Unfortunately all was not fine for long and he started bleeding again during the night, though not as bad as earlier this week. He ended up back in the hospital, where we thought maybe we could find a surgeon to do a once-and-for-all operation to fix things (which we'd been putting off before now because it is, you know, like surgery). However due to the holiday weekend the preferred surgeons are not around, and since it's not an emergency (he stopped bleeding again), it looks like we'll wait at least till next week to talk to the surgeon and find out when we can do this. He's still at the hospital but if all goes well he can come home tomorrow. Again. I am learning my way around that place way too well. Which for me (directionally challenged that I am), is saying something - I have been there WAY too much lately!

The good bit of news today was the return of Ulysses! Who apparently Ben spotted sitting on a neighbor's front porch, and scooped him up and brought him home. Ulysses has been missing for 2 months, and I had given up hope to the extent that I had put away his food and water dishes and thrown out his cat litter. So I had to go borrow cat litter from a neighbor when I got home from the hospital. I have a theory which is that a couple of days ago, some missing cat flyers (without picture) went up in the neighborhood, and I am wondering if someone "found" Ulysses and took him in as a stray and then lost him again. Hence his appearance back home roughly coinciding with the lost flyers going up. I called and left a message at the number on the flyer, but no return call yet. In the meantime I need to get Ulysses a collar (though he has to date refused to wear one) and possibly get him microchipped and maybe tattoo my phone number onto him someplace LOL... I do not want to lose that cat again! So happy that he has returned home, and just a couple days before his 11th birthday, which otherwise would have been a sad occasion!

The Prodigal Son Returns

After a two month absence we are shocked at this minor miracle! And wondering where he has been hiding!

Bottom Dollar

Ben's down to his last dollar in a fierce game of Monopoly Jr.

Shadow Puppet Theater

Deja Vu

So about 13 months ago you may recall Joel ended up in the hospital with intestinal bleeding. Last night we returned to the hospital with a similar (though fortunately not as severe) episode. A colonoscopy today revealed bleeding at the same site as last year, which this time the doctor cauterized so hopefully this won't happen again. Joel is scheduled to come home tomorrow, though he is already nagging the nurses about going home today, which I take to be a good sign ;)

Passover 2013

With special guest uncle Mike!

A Recent Accomplishment

I put this book case together on Sunday while Caroline was napping. Uhhh... Apparently Caroline could use some more books....

Becca and Uncle Mike

Practicing!

Caroline has been very stubborn about walking. She often just flat out refuses to walk even when coaxed. Finally though last night she started "practicing" on her own, and spent a good 20 minutes at least parading the length of our bedroom - maybe she just likes the feel of soft carpet on bare toes?

Stomach Bug, Round 2

Rebecca's turn - oh how fun! NOT. Apparently, over half the kids in her class are also sick. Some are throwing up. Some are having diarrhea. Some have fevers. Some have a combination of all of the above. Rebecca at the moment, luckily I suppose, only has diarrhea. I REALLY HOPE it clears up faster than Caroline's did!

Spring Pictures

Rebecca's proofs for spring pictures are now available for ordering online, so grandparents and other relatives, if you want any send me an email and I will give you the link so you can peruse the proofs and place an order. No I am not offering to order any for you, I'm cheap. Ha ;)

She's Just Gassy...

So yesterday Joel and I had a little freak out over Caroline's ginormous belly, deciding it just did not look normal. After texting a picture of her belly to a couple pediatrician friends who also agreed it didn't look normal, we decided to skip the usual step of taking her to the pediatrician (where I am sure the gassy diagnosis would have been provided and with much less fanfare) and take her straight to Joel's office for an ultrasound (no appointment necessary of course). Now, this marks the second of our children that we have brought to Joel's office for unnecessary medical workup (Hear that Ben? Some day it will be your turn....)

Caroline was EXTREMELY upset with us because we did not let her have breakfast before the ultrasound and because she is now in a stranger-anxiety phase where she cries if someone looks at her or gets within arms reach. The ultrasound of course yielded nothing more alarming than a bellyful of gas. Maybe next time we will learn our lesson and just go to the pediatrician. But, probably not :P

Dance Party

Rebecca went to a friend's birthday party yesterday, and the theme was right up her alley - she pronounced it to have been the best birthday party she's ever been to ;)

Warm & Sunny Weekend

Don't get too jealous because it has now gone back to being cold and rainy. We had a great weekend though of sun and temperatures in the low 70s. Ben had his first flag football game on Saturday afternoon, and Rebecca had soccer skills clinic on Sunday afternoon in preparation for her first soccer game next weekend, and between the two events I actually got a pretty impressive sunburn. Ouch. Ben slept over at a friend's house Friday night and Rebecca went to a birthday party yesterday morning so between those activities, sports, Hebrew school, errands/grocery shopping, it was a pretty full weekend. Caroline slowly recovered from her intestinal troubles during the weekend, so that by this morning (thankfully) I pronounced her cured and packed her off to day care ;)

Pee & Poop Update

Yes let's discuss bodily fluids some more, since we haven't done that enough lately... ;) Caroline is seeming improved today, fortunately. Only one poop so far and it was diaper-contained. And she did not wake up covered in poop this morning either, like she has almost every day this week. So - keeping fingers crossed. She is home with me again today anyway (she has made it to day care for all of 1 and a half days this week). I could not in good conscience send her today knowing she had diarrhea like 8 times yesterday even though she seemed much improved this morning.

Rebecca had a urology follow-up this morning, where I explained how the Detrol seemed to have made her symptoms much worse and that once I took her off it she was much improved though still a bit leaky. So the new theory is that she has pelvic floor dysfunction, not bladder spasms. The nurse practitioner who has been following her seems quite confident that this is what it is, though her symptoms are a bit muddled and a little contradictory - if she has pelvic floor dysfunction she should have trouble fully emptying her bladder, which when we do the pee-and-then-ultrasound at the doctor's office, is not the case- her bladder has always been empty afterwards. However her pee-test thingy, which measures flow rate and, umm, force of pee or whatever, shows a result consistent with pelvic floor dysfunction. So the long story short is that now she will be starting on Flowmax, with another follow-up in six weeks....

Too Close to the TV

Poopy Baby Day 6

Remarkably happy even in pair of pants #5 of the day. Mommy, not so much.

Taxes, and More Diarrhea

So after fooling me into thinking she was on the mend, Caroline's intestinal troubles returned with a vengeance yesterday, forcing her removal from day care at around 1pm... Fortunately that was just in time for her nap, so I was able to get another couple hours of work done after I brought her home. Unfortunately I was up at 4 am this morning giving her a bath and changing her sheets. If this morning has been any indication, she'll be staying home with me tomorrow too. She's on her second change of clothes already and it's scarcely 9am.

Joel and I did our taxes last night, which followed the predictable pattern - the phrase "We should have voted for Romney" did come out of Joel's mouth once (and I reminded him that it wouldn't be "tax night" if he did not say something like that at least once). He abandoned the effort to go put the kids to bed, leaving me to whittle down the 18k deficit we faced after entering income/before deductions, to about 5k when we finished. Which wasn't much worse than last year despite more income, so we called it a success and got everything wrapped up and e-filed.

So there you have it, two very pleasant subjects, taxes and diarrhea ;)

Look Who Baked her Own Matzah Today

Somewhere in this blog I am sure I have a pic from Ben's matzah baking day when he was at CJP also..... Ah yes here it is... :)

Clara's Turtle Encounter

I forgot that turtles don't run away... I kept thinking as we got closer and closer that it would make a break for the pond, but I guess he weighed his options and decided retreating into his shell was the best alternative :) I don't know if he gave Clara a little nip on the nose when she tried to stick her nose inside the shell, but she pulled back in a hurry. It rained this morning and then the sun came out and it warmed up to the mid 60s, and the turtles were out in force on our walk.

Diarrhea Baby Strikes Again

The fact that she woke up covered in poop on Friday morning should have been a tip-off I suppose... Caroline was sent home around 3pm Friday for having diarrhea, and she continued having diarrhea right on through the weekend and woke up covered in poop yet again this morning. I took a personal day mostly, and devoted myself to numerous diaper changes and loads of laundry... here she is sporting her third change of clothes of the day....

Officially Spring

According to Rebecca at least. The long range forecast is for temps to reach the low 60s every day this week though, so I'm hoping she is right!

Not off to a Good Start this Morning

So this morning I offered to drive Ben to chess club, which starts at 7am, which he readily agreed to, instead of waiting for the bus which has been late the last few days. All fine and good until I was most of the way home (which involves driving past the high school at total-traffic-jam-everyone-trying-to-turn-in-there-at-once time), and I realized that Ben had left his backpack sitting on the back seat of the car. After uttering a few expletives I made what I am pretty sure was an illegal U-turn and headed back to the school. Which was also total-traffic-jam-central-everyone-trying-to-drop-their-kids-off-at-once. I walked to the library, only to be told that chess club was cancelled for this morning, due to standardized testing. Oh, the irony. I walked to Ben's classroom, where apparently he has been trained to sit as his desk and read so studiously before class that he did not even look up when I deposited his backpack in front of him. "He'd leave his head in the car too, if it weren't attached," his teacher said to me. Umm, yeah that about sums it up. The drive home was uneventful and the traffic in front of the high school had thinned out, fortunately. I arrived home, having wasted over 30 minutes of my morning for a non-existent chess club meeting, and went upstairs to fetch Caroline from her crib. Caroline was sitting in her crib covered from the waist down (and all over her sheets) in poop. As if to say, hi mommy, please waste even more time cleaning me up :) Miraculously I did somehow manage to drop her and Rebecca off just a few minutes behind schedule and get to my desk by 9... Hoping the rest of the day goes a little more smoothly!

Not Much Going On!

This is just a "so you don't think I've fallen off the face of the earth" post. There just has not been much going on lately. We had some snow flurries and then rain on Saturday, which cancelled Ben's first flag football practice. He had a friend over for a play date instead, after we did some errands (hair cut and getting a book for his school biography project - he chose JFK). Rebecca went to a birthday party Saturday late afternoon, and then we all reconvened for dinner at Portofino's followed by Pinkberry. Two of my favorite places ;)

Sunday Papa and Mary babysat so Joel and I could go see Zero Dark Thirty, which almost didn't happen because there was some glitch involving online theater times, so the time listed online was actually an hour later than the actual movie time. So we showed up at 5:20 thinking the movie was at 5:30 when it had actually started at 4:30. We quickly came up with a Plan B though, and grabbed a bite to eat and then saw the 6:30 show at a different theater. There were many other people at both theaters scratching their heads in bemusement; apparently it was some nationwide glitch.

Kid update- Ben: Good, Becca: Since our urology visit and starting on the different medication her problems have actually gotten MUCH WORSE, to the point where she is coming home from school every day having had an accident and, a couple of times, actually puddled on the floor. I stopped the medication late last week so now we're back to square one. I need to follow up with the urologist again.... Caroline: good, but still not showing much interest in walking unless coaxed. She much prefers crawling or cruising, even though she can take a dozen steps unassisted. I try to "practice" with her but often she is just not in the mood to perform.

Snow Flurries

Key Lime....

Mmmmm....