charlottezweb

Have taken my friend's list back as far as lj will let me which is just before wiscon. Trying to find and friend ppl I talked with and make some kind of coherent con report other than "amazing, sleep now."

I go by tuppence or charlotte, am medium tall, curvy and have short red hair and glasses.My kids and spouse will be with me so I'll be doing a lot of running back and forth from childcare to panels and food supplies. I love meeting new ppl, especially those I mostly know only online, but wiscon sends me into a tailspin of impostor syndrome, since everyone is so much cooler than I am!!! *deep breaths* We'll be getting in Weds and leaving Mon am, and in between I'm up for karaoke or lunch or hitting the children's museum if you're also looking for some kid entertainment.... I

Such a nice day yesterday:
Slept in, thank goodness, was so tired!
Went to Moe's for lunch and ran into friends
Headed to B&N for magazine reading and train table playing
Grabbed our swimsuits to go to Splash Island--spent a couple of hours wading and watching the kids slide and splash. Al. tried to drown himself and then decided he's had enough of the water.
Drove out to their grandpa's house for fried deer meat and putting together hotwheels track

Came home, got ready for bed, watched old futurama, went to bed...

Today, A is fishing so we're hanging out at home.

Alistair has another bladder infection. They gave us meds on Thurs at the Children's ER and sent us home. Today, we get a frantic call from the ER--the culture came back and the bacteria isn't what they thought--no oral antibiotics for this. Taking him back into the ER shortly for another culture and probably to be admitted and have IV antibiotics. I'm just hoping that it's not another 10 or worse 14 days of IV meds. :( And he has awful veins, like his mom and gramdma, so it takes them forever to do the IV and then it goes bad after a few days and they have to redo it...

I keep thinking about all the worse things he could have, and on one hand I'm grateful this is it, but OTOH, it still sucks.

Wow, so I have the chance to post but I'm balking...where to even start! Maybe bullet points are my friend, or subject headings:
Alistair:
Did I mention he almost died? I still haven't fully processed that--we never even had a close scare with Royce--he's never even been to the doctor for more than some of his shots and a check up or two, but now Alistair has had the full workup. It was terrifying and heartbreaking and strange and we are so so lucky. There were kids on his floor who had been there for weeks and weeks and kids whose parents left them alone for hours, either because they had to or wanted to (sadly) and kids who weren't getting any better. As awful as it was to watch them spinal tap him or redo his IV or take his blood over and over, we knew he was getting better and we would be out within two weeks. Honestly, I don't think either of us realized how serious it was until we saw how relieved the doctors were that he was getting better and noticed how much they were checking on him those first few days---by the end, we barely saw anyone other than vitals checks a couple of times a day and rounds in the mornings.

But he's been home since Sun and it was lovely to hang out with him in the big bed (I hadn't slept laying down in over a week, so it was heavenly to get back to our bed and cosleep). He had a pediatrician appt on Tues which was just a followup and then he has some yucky testing tomorrow am (we have to get up super early, bleah)--he has an ultrasound of his kidneys and urinary system and then a VGUC which is a test that involves a catheter, dye and watching where urine goes in his system to see if it's flushing the wrong way. Once our medicaid gets approved (fingers crossed) he gets a urology appt and we'll see if they want to do anything else to prevent this from happening again--they may want to test Royce too since sometimes it runs in families. Oh, and have I said what it is? Can't remember. His ureters (sp?) are swollen and may be flushing urine back into his kidneys or something like that. Makes him super prone to urinary tract infections. As he gets older, the infections will be less dangerous than this one was, but they want to make sure that his kidneys aren't being damaged.

In non-illness related news, he was 12 lbs 4 oz on Tues and 7 weeks old, so he had gained an ounce a day for the last 18 days ( his last pediatrician appt). Perfect! He eats all the time, when he's not pooping or kicking. :) He's very happy and makes the cutest squirmiest faces when he's sleeping and when he's laughing. He's in 3-6 month clothes for a while anyway and we had to upsize his diapers and get new covers in a larger size--the little newborn cloth diapers barely fit on his enormous butt. I will post some more pics when I have a minute--my MIL brought us her digital camera since she got a new tiny one, so yay, I can take pictures again!

Acey:
Doing great! Accepting his new role at work, getting a much better schedule where he actually has days off every week (3!), and very happy with his two sons. :)

Royce:
Still adorable. Says the best stuff very day. Has gotten used to the fact that Alistair is here to stay and likes to kiss him. I barely saw him while Alistair was in the hospital and it was awful--was so glad to get home and be with all my guys. He's barely let me out of his sight since then. Can't believe he's about to be 4! Will be going to playdates this next week to try to start finding him some friends.

Me:
So glad to be home, sleeping in our bed, with a healthy family. Doing some major spring cleaning which is about as fun as you might imagine with the kids, but it's going pretty well--am just working on one section at a time. School is going ok--we're on spring break so I've got a chance to catch up on things, thankfully.

Whoops, he's up! off to snag him out of the swing!

I will post more fully about this when I have time but wanted to get this out there while I had a chance. Alistair went into the MUSC children's emergency room yesterday about 5am with a 104 F fever. After a battery of tests, some of which are still on going, they've determined he has a bacterial infection in his urine and blood, which they are fighting with IV antibiotics and fluids, plus tylenol for the fever. He's got an IV (obviously) and several monitoring devices attached to him. He'll have an ultrasound today to check his kidneys and then tomorrow an unpleasant procedure in which they will catheterize him, inject dye into somewhere and watch where his urine goes to make sure it's not flowing anywhere it's not supposed to. He'll also have more bloodwork tomorrow--if the urine and the blood from tomorrow come back clear, and he's fever free we'll get to take him home, after getting lessons on from the home health people because he'll have to have 14 days of IV antibiotics at home.

He's really sick. I don't think I realized how sick he was yesterday--I was so focused on the spinal tap and catheter and IV insertion that I wasn't thinking about the rest of it. (took them four attempts to get the spinal tap and three to get the IV in) But now that he's not grey anymore and no longer whimpering, I can be scared and relieved.

Will be taking the laptop back to the hospital--ran home for shower and clean clothes--and will update if anything changes. Healing thoughts would be highly appreciated!

If you search youtube for charlottezweb1971, you can see some videos of Xmas and of the newbie. The site is still processing some of them, but they're all uploaded finally.

If I sent you any pics when Royce was born (I know that was forever ago) please email me copies!! When my hardrive crashed, I lost all of them. :( I have the ones from his first month in general but not the ones from the hospital and from those first few days...