May 18, 2013
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Iiiiiiit’s SUPER LAYLA!!
No one can resist the fun of a furling, whirling cape.
Layla at the breakfast table with her daddy. Love this.
Gabe had a field trip to the Salisbury Zoo this previous weekend, and we took the whole family. The day turned out to be gorgeous.
One of the cutest specimens I saw at the zoo.
Another cute ‘un who asked me specifically to take his picture.
I like these guys.
The kids had a great time running around on the creekbanks at the zoo after lunch while the adults sat and talked,
and while the little people ate chips.
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This was my Mother’s Day, in the spring of 2013. Sitting outside on a cool but sunny day, with my hair in a ponytail and my legs in fuzzy pants, seventeen weeks pregnant with baby number five, with a curly-haired painter at my side, and three superheroes on the loose behind me.
In celebration, Tim hung up my living room curtains for me that I finally settled on (after only 4 years) from Target. Gabe gave me a colorful laminated bookmark that he had made in school. Israel gave me a yellow flower that he cut out and colored and pasted on blue paper. Zion gave me the aforementioned flower that he had me draw for him. Layla was a fussypants with a bad case of Mommy-itis.
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A cutie in the doorway.
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We’ve rigged the big tree in our front yard with two nifty items: a rope ladder and a swing. Both were very warmly received.
(note the inside-out shirt that he dressed himself in. I find this detail endearing.)
The boys also did their own rigging and tied a ball to a jump rope, and the jump rope to the dogwood tree, and they like to hit the ball back and forth, and Layla likes to grab hold of the rope and hike her little feet out straight in front of her and swing – “Wheeeee!!!”
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We’ve been celebrating the spring with a nice round of nasty virus. Boo hiss. Israel got it first and was sick with a fever, lethargy, and loooots of coughing relieved with albuterol treatments for 4+ days. When I took him with me to pick up Gabe at school on Wednesday afternoon and he said that he couldn’t play on the playground because his lungs couldn’t handle it, I called the doctor and they fit him in that afternoon. The doctor said that he does have asthma (which I have suspected for a while now), but thankfully he has never had an asthma attack.
Then Layla got sick, and the two of us went to the ER at 4 AM on Thursday morning with bad croup.
She has almost never had croup symptoms up until this point in her life, but has now joined the croup ranks with her brothers. She remained extremely croupy the whole day after coming home, and I knew I HAD to get her prescribed steroid in her little body before bedtime so as to avoid a repeat of the night before, but every. single. time. a single DROP of about four different carefully disguised concoctions touched her tongue, she would vomit everywhere. Arrrgggh. So, after calling the doctor, we returned to our friendly ER for a (fairly quick) steroid shot, much to Layla’s utter disgust. Her symptoms really improved after the second shot, much to my relief. However, today it looks like she has pneumonia…sigh. Thankfully, the doctor is letting us treat her from home with antibiotics instead of admitting her, as long as her oxygen saturation stays ok, which so far it has.
I sure am grateful for medications such as steroids and albuterol and antibiotics when you need them, even if kids are SUPER CRANKY in the aftermath of steroids. (Phew). Just such a relief to know your child is breathing ok.
