A Trip to La Crosse...and the ER

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!

Kalahari!

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.

Grr & his 4 grandkids


the family photo


The little hippo slide was just her size




Swingin' in the coconuts with Soph



Waiting for a tube on the lazy river


Well here's a rare occurence- Rylie playing with buckles


A couple cute little tushies

Just the three of us

zonked!

In her tutu from Auntie Leslie

Rylie and her bestie

The cutest little leprechaun ever!

A picture update

Aside from last weekend, things have been fairly quiet for us. We haven't had a whole lot going on for the past month or so...which has been nice for a change. And we've even spent a couple entire weekends just at home. So this post will pretty much consist of random pictures.

To share the story from last weekend: Rylie and I made the trip to La Crosse by ourselves to see my parents and grandparents, but unfortunately had to cut the trip a little short as we woke up Sunday morning to the start of a snow storm. So I packed us up and hit the road at 8:30. That drive was the least amount of fun I've had in a LONG time. It was a 4 hour white knuckle kind of drive. With about an hour or so left, I was talking to Dan to let him know how we were doing. I had seen at least 3 rollover accidents and several cars in the ditch so far and was worrying about ending up there myself. But it wasn't me that ended up in the ditch...it was Dan. He was on the way to his Aunt and Uncle's house and as we were talking, he started sliding across the road into the snowbank, then spun into a telephone pole and finally a mailbox. It was quite the experience to hear the crash on the other side of the line. Luckily he was fine and the car is drivable, but needless to say, the Murano will spend a little time at the body shop in the near future.


On to the pictures...

Crunch

Playing in the basket

Superbowl

Rylie & Sophie watching the boys snowmobile around the house

Eyeing up Sophie's doll

Brady with his Matthews wig

Touchdown!

Sledding



Helping daddy


Uncle Patrick requested an updated picture

SNOW!!!

Every year since I have moved here we have had at least one crazy snow storm. We've been waiting for it to hit this year so we at least have the opportunity to snow mobile in the area...if we can only find the time. The storm that basically shut down everything- including my office (woohoo!)- finally arrived! We enjoyed a nice day at home with Rylie. It was unbelievably windy, so Rylie and I camped out inside in our pj's most of the day and watched Dan do all the work :-)

Ready to brave the wind...my favorite part? Definitely the goggles.

crazy snow drift


Rylie spent part of her day emptying/hanging out in the coat closet

Dan passed out while playing with Rylie after all that hard work removing snow...so Rylie brought him the remote. And yes, he was sporting his long underwear...don't be jealous ladies ;-)

And because it's such a cute picture...

18 Month Update

Rylie just had her 18 month doctor appointment. In the last 3 months she has managed to gain a one half of a pound! But she grew an inch and a half. So she is weighing in at 21.5 (9th percentile) and is 31.5 inches long (39th percentile). While she's not a real big eater, we attribute the majority of her lack of weight gain to how BUSY she is. If she's not sleeping, she is moving!

While we didn't see a big change in her size, we did notice a big change in her vocabulary over the past three months. And since I don't update her baby book (in fact I have yet to complete most of it), here is a list of words she knows at 18 months in no particular order...they don't all have the proper pronunciation yet, but at least we can understand her.

Uh-oh, wow, milk, cracker, all done, again, thank you, please, go, shoe, sock, bounce, dada, mama, up, down, ow, peek-a-boo, yes, open, close, what's that, outside, bath, night night, hello, hi, bye bye, ball, papa, banana, hot, blue, red, eye, toes, yes, honk, one, two, three, GO PACK GO, and the new favorite- NO. It's pretty much her response to any question these days.

She is in a stage where she loves to mimick what we do...groaning as she bends over (like Grr Mom) and whispering in church (like mommy and daddy). She also repeats a lot of what we say...some recent ones- holy cow, oh man, oh God (thanks to papa)...it was a one time occurence :-)

She points to all parts of her body and then has to immediately identify them on all those around her as well. She loves to "honk honk" your nose (again thanks to papa). She knows her animal sounds for cow, duck, elephant (still want this on video), horse, doggie, kitty, sheep.

She LOVES books, drawing (with close supervision), and baths. We're working on ABC's, counting past three, and putting more than one word together at a time.

We love this age of Rylie...if we could only freeze time for a little while. It's so fun for us to see her learning and discovering new things each day.

And to follow this long post...are pictures from her 18 month "photo shoot"...I only have to take about 50 to get a few good ones :-)