Keeping us on our toes

As the title of this post mentions, G has really been keeping us on our toes lately.   She is a child with a lot of energy, no fear, and avid curiosity of the world around her.  She loves to climb and explore and to give her mother gray hairs. 

A few weeks ago G woke up with a fever of 101 and it just kept climbing.  I gave her Tylenol a few times and her temp never came down below 103.  Finally around 3 pm I called the doctor to see what they thought we should do.  When I told the nurse that she had been fairly lethargic, she told me to bring G in to be seen.  When we showed up for our appointment G had a temperature of 103.5.  After checking her for the flu and an ear infection and both being negative, the doctor wanted to cath her for a urine sample to rule out a UTI.  That test came back negative which lead the doctor to determine that it was most likely something viral.  She sent us home with instructions to give Tylenol ever 4 hours, push fluids and rest.  She said to watch out for seizures if her temp climbed really high and to take her to the ER if it reached 105.
That night and the next day we battled her fever which reached 104.2 Monday night and then 104.5 late Tuesday afternoon.  I called the doctor and they suggested giving her Tylenol and checking her in 40 minutes, if the temp didn't come down to at least 101 she suggested we take her to the ER to have bloodwork done in case she was having some type of infection after all.   We arrived at the ER and were quickly seen.   An IV was started to give G some fluids and take blood for the blood work.  The blood work came back clean and didn't show signs of dehydration which were all good things, but my baby was still running a high fever.  They gave her ibuprofen and finally she cooled down to 101.  It was so scary worrying whether or not she was going to have a seizure and ultimately not knowing exactly what was causing her fever.

Tuesday night her fever stayed low and she finally slept through the night for the first time in days.  We followed up with the doctor on Wednesday and by then her temp was staying at 101 or below, so we knew the worst of it was over.  By Thursday morning G was finally feeling more like her normal self and was mostly fever free.  By Friday morning she was nearly 100%.  So after being cooped up in the house with a sick baby for 4 days, we needed to do some errands and get some groceries.

I left Steve at home to work on our upstairs bathroom and took G with me to get our errands done.  Things were going great until we got to Walmart.  As usual G didn't want to sit in the cart and I kept fighting with her to sit down and stay strapped in.  But the strap really doesn't do much for us because G can wiggle her little butt out of it and stand up in a matter of seconds.  So through the store we struggled with on another to stay in the cart and made it to checkout.  We get to the checkout, I unload our groceries while attempting to keep G sitting and then pay the cashier.  I reached for the last bag and as I turned and put the bag in the back of the cart, G decided to take a header out of the cart.

I think my heart stopped for a few seconds.  Then I quickly picked her up, she was bawling of course, and checked her out for any obvious injuries but couldn't see any.  She was acting normal, but I was concerned that she might have injured her head in some way, so off to the ER we went.  I called Steve on the way to let him know I was taking G to the ER and why, I think at first he thought I was joking.  What great fun it was to make an ER visit for the second time in one week! Luckily G was fine and didn't even need an xray or CT scan so we were in and out in less than an hour. 

Needless to say it was an eventful week.  One I hope not to repeat for a long time. 

Big plans

I can't believe how quickly time seems to be flying by.  My baby girl is already over 15 months old and my husband and I are talking about having baby #2.  All of that seems so crazy to me! The past few months have been busy and we seem to have lots going on right now.

Steve and I have been discussing the timing of having baby #2.  Ultimately we would love to get pregnant on our own without the help of a fertility doctor, but we are also pretty realistic in the fact that this will probably not happen.  So baby #2 is going to cost us some money, money that we have a limited supply of since I am not working.  But before we have another baby, I want a bigger house. I love our little house, but that's the problem, it's little.  We have three bedrooms, so that would be fine for a second baby, but currently this bedroom is full of stuff: my scrapbooking and craft stuff, extra toys we have for our older nieces and nephews, and just stuff.  In order to use this room for a baby, I need to find a place for all of this stuff to go.  It can go in the attic, but then it basically become unusable. I can put it downstairs, but we already have so much stuff in our living room and the tip out that it really won't fit there. Plus, this is stuff that I don't want to leave out where little fingers can touch and play with it.  

Another problem we have is that our living room is too small for all of Grace's toys.  Some of them have spilled out into the dining room now.  And we can't take down the dining room table and stuff to make that room a play room because then we would have no real place to eat.  Our kitchen isn't an eat in kitchen and sitting on bar stools at the counter doesn't really work as a viable option.  Basically - we need more space!! and storage. 

We have decided that it makes the most sense to put our current house on the market and purchase a new house that is bigger and allows our family to grow.  Once we have the new house, then we can make decisions about when to see our RE to use our frozen embryos. That is of course, if we don't somehow manage to miraculously get pregnant all on our own.  Which is certainly something we are going to try to do.  It might happen, for the first time in my life I have been having regular periods. That's something I never thought would happen, so that's one positive.

Our life the past few weeks has been consumed with packing up all of our clutter and organizing our rooms to maximize their size and appeal to buyers.  We've also been working on some projects in the house like replacing our broken mirror in the upstairs bathroom and painting scuffed places on our walls.  I still need to work on painting all of our trim and the upstairs bedroom doors.  When Steve comes home on his next set of days off we are going to work on our basement and he will hopefully get a few outdoor projects completed (as long as the snow and cold weather don't get in the way).  Our goal is to be on the market for March 1. 

Until then I have been browsing homes online and looking forward to finally house hunting.  We are also planning to meet with a builder next week to see what our options are for possibly building a house. I don't think building is the way we will go, but Steve wants to check it out and I figure it can't hurt to look at all of our options.  I'm sure the next few months are going to be eventful as we try to sell our house and buy a new one with a toddler.  But I'm excited about the possibilities and finding our forever home, especially because once we have a home, we can work on the plan for having another baby and that is even more exciting to me. 

20 things about 2013

I saw this neat questionnaire on another blog last year and thought this would be really fun to do for 2012.  Check out my post here.  Then I thought, why not do try to do this questionnaire every year, so here it is.  20 things about 2013 and I know it's a few days into the New Year, but I am just starting to get back into this blogging thing.

1. What did you do in 2013 that you have never done before? I joined a playgroup for my daughter.  I was tired of sitting around the house and tired of waiting for other friends to have the time to hang out or the desire to hang out, so I decided to go out and look for people who had kids the same age as G and the play group looked like the most fun.

2. Did you keep your New Year's Resolutions and will you make more for next year? I didn't make any resolutions this year and normally I do not make resolutions because I think they are silly and most people don't keep them.  However, I am resolving to try to blog more this year and also to get healthy (but I sort of decide to try to do that all year long when the fancy hits me).

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? My sister in law had a baby girl on October 10.  Her due date was the exact same day as mine was with G.  G finally has a girl cousin and they are almost exactly 1 year apart.

4. Did anyone close to you die? We have been very lucky this year and have not lost anyone close to us.  I am very thankful for years like this when we have not suffered any losses.  

5. What places have you visited? This year has been pretty boring for us.  With a small baby there hasn't been much time or money for a vacation.  The most interesting place G and I visited was Steve when he was working in West Virginia.  We did find some fun places to hang out when he was sleeping during the day.
 

6. What would you like to have in 2014 that you lacked in 2013? More space.  I love our house, but I find that we are quickly outgrowing the space and eventually are going to need more room.

7. What date from 2013 will remain etched in your memory and why? I cannot think of a date that jumps out at me.  Honestly, a lot of 2013 was a blur from sleepless nights and crazy baby schedule. It's been a hectic year, but a good one.

8. What was your biggest achievement this year? Nursing my daughter for one full year, then finally getting her weaned.   

9. Did you suffer illness or injury? No illness or injury for me this year - ha ha ha .. this tells you how bad my mom brain is.  I totally had surgery in 2013, had my gallbladder removed in May.  you know, nothing big, just a major surgery and a miserable baby who couldn't nurse for over 24 hours.  Luckily the surgery was fairly easy and recovery occurred pretty quickly.

10. What was the best thing you bought? The best thing I bought this year was a gun safe for my husband.  I feel so much safer knowing that G and future children cannot get to them and hurt themselves or anyone else.

11. Where did most of your money go? Most of our money went towards our baby and baby stuff - diapers, wipes, food. 

12. What song will always remind you of 2013? I'm really not sure. I don't often associate songs to certain years. Usually songs remind me of people, places and events. Next year I may change this question to read "what songs will you remember most from this year, or what songs did you like the most this year". 

13. What do you wish you would have done more of? I wish I could have blogged more.  I guess the lack of blogging is a testament to how good the year was because I generally do not feel the need to write unless I am sad or things aren't going well.  But I need to work on writing even when times are good. 

14. What do you wish you would have done less of? I wish I would have spent less time on my phone and more time with my daughter.  I find myself getting absorbed in my phone sometimes and it makes me feel like I am not giving my daughter enough attention. 

15. What was your favorite TV program?  It's a toss up between Scandal and the Blacklist.  I love both of these shows, among others, but these two have been the best so far because they are unlike anything else on tv right now.  

16. What was the best book you read this year? The best book series I read was the Divergent series by Veronica Roth.

17. What was your favorite film of the year? I haven't had a lot of time to watch movies because of G, but I did make time to go to the movies to see the second Hunger Games movie, Catching Fire.  I have loved the book series and the movies are proving to be excellent as well. 

18. What did you do on your birthday and how old were you? This year I turned 31 and it was a pretty low key affair.  I honestly do not remember what we did for my birthday.  Let me think ... hmmm ... oh yeah. Steve and my mom and my nephew took me out for dinner at Texas Roadhouse.  G came with us too of course.  I had a drink, my first since way before I got pregnant with G. and I got a little buzz - such a light weight.

19. What national/world event stirred you the most? Hmmm ... national/world event?  yikes, let's try to think of something that I can even remember.  I know that sounds horrible, but when you have a new baby and are totally and completely wrapped up in that life, it's hard to pay attention to what's going on in the outside world.  And yeah, still coming up totally and completely blank.  Sorry.

20. Who was the best new person you met? The best new person I met was actually a group of people, the moms in G's play group.  We are all different and have such different backgrounds, but they are some pretty cool women and I am enjoying getting to know them and their kids.