Dan, Erin, Rylie, Reagan, & Rory

Rylie has had cold after cold so far this year (as have I) and another one started last week. She had a rough overnight on Thursday night at Grr and Grr Mom's. Dan and I were attending an event for United Cerebral Palsy of SE WI. And the following day we were picking her up on our way out of town to La Crosse. My Grandpa turned 88 on that Friday and my Uncle Robin flew home to surprise him, so we were heading there to celebrate. So of course, Rylie developed a fever :-(

We decided to chance it and take her to La Crosse for the weekend. We met the whole family at Sloopy's on Friday night and Grandpa, Grandma and Robin came over for dinner on Saturday night. Rylie's fever was kind of on and off all weekend. She would go almost an entire day without ibuprofen and then it would creep its way back up.

Happy 88th Birthday!

Reading the morning paper

On Sunday we headed back home. During the car ride back, Rylie seemed really lethargic...more than she had been all weekend and seemed to be making more of an effort to breathe. As soon as we got home, I took her temp while Dan unloaded the car. It was 103.3 and we decided we needed to take her in. We couldn't decide if we should go to Community Memorial or directly to Children's. We decided to try Community Memorial first since it was close to home and if we didn't like the way things were going, we could always go to Children's instead.

Waiting...

The ER doctor was really good with Rylie. He explained everything they were testing for. They ended up doing a nasal swab, throat culture and chest x-ray. The result of the x-ray was pneumonia :-( They gave Rylie an IV antibiotic and an IV to hydrate her. While she had been drinking well, they wanted to be sure. Originally, following the IV's, they were going to send us home with oral antibiotics. In the mean time Rylie fell asleep and her oxygen levels dipped to 85%, so they had to give her some oxygen. And for this reason, they decided to admit her.

Medicine is kicking in...

Getting a little oxygen from her penguin friend...she wanted nothing to do with the one that goes in the nose after having that nasal swab

We spent 2 nights in the hospital with Ry. We didn't get up to our room until 1:30 am and the machine that monitored her oxygen beeped just about every hour. She also had nebulizer treatments every 4 hours. So needless to say, we didn't get much sleep. And unfortunately Dan and I had made the decision to go out the night before with Elaine (a night where we were already going to lose an hour of sleep due to daylight savings) until 3am.

The next day Rylie was acting more like herself. Her doctor came to visit and wanted us to stay one more night because they wanted her to be off the oxygen for 24 hours before they sent us home, which she was able to do the next night. So we were all able to get a little more sleep that night and were discharged the next morning.

Multi-tasking: working, eating fries and snuggling

There's that smile!

All three of us in bed

Taking a stroll in her room...cute little diaper butt

Our awesome view

Playing...

I'm outta here!!

Rylie went through a lot of things that I don't want to ever have to put her through again. She was not a fan of the nebulizer treatment...I have never seen her so upset. And there were points in time where the mommy in me had to say no. While I know that she needed the nebulizer treatments, she needed her rest too. The respiratory people seemed to show up just after we calmed her down or just after she fell asleep, so we had to refuse the treatment a couple of times. But we had some great nurses, including one that wanted to take her home :-) How many toddlers say "thank you" after they've been given medicine, had their temp taken, had an IV, etc.

We were so happy to bring our little peanut back home again. It's been difficult trying to get her back into her routine. She's had quite a few ups and downs. In the hospital she had little sleep, a lot of paci, a lot of tv (since she couldn't leave her bed), and a lot of sleeping with mommy and daddy. And now that's she's back home...she wants the same. So we've regressed slightly, but are hoping to get back on track in the next couple of weeks. She's already doing so much better!

A couple of weekends ago, Jerry and Trudy treated us all to a weekend at the Kalahari. This is just what Dan and I needed...to get away from work, house projects and winter. We had such a great time. This was the most uninterupted time I was able to spend with Rylie since I can remember. There was no work, laundry, house cleaning, or errand running to get in the way. We went down some water slides, had a few beverages and relaxed on the lazy river (where Rylie took a couple naps).

We celebrated Jerry's birthday on Friday night and had an early St. Patty's Day party on Saturday night.