Another month blew by without me blogging again, so I'll be posting about several events occurring over the last few weeks. But this time I have an excuse! For the last month or so, our entire house has been sick with 'something'. I don't what variant virus we have kicking our butts, but we have all been miserable, but with Josh being obsessed with 'being a doctor' maybe we'll all get through it.

On to the illnesses...along with battling the runny noses and normal colds that come with this season, everyone in our family traded pink eye back and forth. That was fun! Especially putting in and taking out contacts. (sarcasm) Actually, the first signs of pink eye were pretty scary for me. I was at the RAC with Josh and Audrey. We had met up with Katie Arendt and her girls and were playing. Everything was going fine until the 'day care jail break'. We happened to be there when the supervised day care let all the kids (about a 10 to 1 kid to supervisor ratio) out into the 'supervised general public'. The chaos alone was enough to cause Josh to stand in awe and try to get his little brain wrapped around the comotion and figure out where it was safe to stand. After Josh got aclimated to the new environment, he started playing again. I had Audrey in the Snugli so I was basically just following him around, but I wasn't really prepared for any fast actions.

Josh ended up copying some kids he saw jumping off a 'play box'. I would say it was about 2.5 feet tall. He would jump down, normally 'wipe out', and come up dying laughing 'bragging' about how far he jumped. As he was pretending to be Carl Lewis on the Long Jump, two older kids from the 'supervised' day care where 'fighting'. They were siblings I think, so they were play fighting, but they were pushing each other around and pretend fighting. First off, they were too old to be in the area where we were and secondly, Cassie (Katie's youngest at 8 months or so) was sitting on the floor playing and I was worried they were going to steam roll her, so I was positioning myself to intercept them if they charged towards her. Well I should have been more focused on Joshua, because as they were spazzing out with each other shoving back and forth, they shoved into Josh. Josh got knocked off the 'block' backwards and since he hasn't had too many tumbles yet, he doesn't know how to fall. I got to witness in slow motion as he basically did a full extension, back layout (or something like it) into the hard floor, not breaking his fall with any part of his body except his head! It was a loud crack as Josh's head bounced off the floor like a basketball. I knew immediately it was going to be bad as this was by far his worst fall to date. As I rushed over to him and I think I uttered something rather nasty about the two kids that they and the 'supervisor' heard. I have to learn to control my temper :$ I grabbed Josh and he still hadn't taken a breath yet and he was still in shock, 'loading' up his scream. I knew that with each second that went by without him taking a breathe, his upcoming scream was growing louder and louder. Finally, he let loose and everyone, and I mean everyone knew he was hurt.

So, to paint the picture, I have Audrey in the Snugli and Josh in one arm to the side of her screaming bloody murder. I was trying to console him and he wanted none of it. On top of that, Audrey's trying to pull his hair and poke his eyes...that made him really happy ;) He finally started to regroup enough so that I could look at him, leading me back to the point of telling this story. Looking into Joshua's eyes, 'snot' was running out of his tear ducts faster than any runny nose he had ever had. I had never seen anything like it. I was scared something bad happened from the fall, but looking back, I've learned that that is symptom of pink eye. My understanding of pink eye was simply irritation of the eyes and your eyes get red/irrated and itchy and not this 'runny nose from the eyes.' But I was happy to know from our doctor that this is indeed common. Well, we all ended up fine, but I definately was scared for a bit (so were others at the RAC as they forced me to fill out an 'incident' report because it was such a nasty fall).

So after pink eye, we started up with the ear infections. Actually, Josh and Audrey both went into the doctor to get 'checked' for an ear infection. Audrey was just super fussy for a day or two (out of character) and constantly pulling on her ear, so we thought she possibly had one. Then, Josh on his own told Ann his ear hurt and less than 20 minutes later was screaming in pain, so I was 90% sure he had one. Luckily, neither of them were diagnosed with an infection, but merely had fluid behind there ears. Two bullets dodged. During Josh's visit, a few cute things happened. First, as the nurse was checking us in, Josh was doing pretty well because the Tylenol we had given him had kicked in by then. So he seemed pretty normal. So he was off in his own little world as the nurse questioned me. Then out of no where, "I love Dr Jacobs" (Dr. Jacobson is our family doc). Both the nurse and I couldn't help but smile. Then when Dr. Jacobson came in to check Josh, he looked in both ears and noticed the irritation/fluid in only one of them. After looking in his ears, he tried to ask Josh which ear hurt just to confirm, but Josh was quick to answer, "My ears are all better now!" Dr. Jacobson, I guess you have the magic touch!

During Joshua's visit, I had Dr. Jacobson check my ears because they felt like they were getting 'plugged up'. Too long to explain, but I have ear wax problem due to the combination of narrow ear canals and 'tacky' ear wax. Dr. Jacobson checked my ears and said that indeed they did need to be flushed out, but noticed a bunch of scarring in my right ear. He asked if I had a lot of ear infections growing up. I didn't remember having several but I did distinctly remember a very bad one when I was four years old. I'm not going to go into that here, but I do remember screaming all night long driving my family nuts. So with that memory fresh in my head, I was trying to remember what the 'pain' felt like. I remembered screaming but I couldn't remember the pain as I wondered what Josh's ear felt like. Well, two days later at 4 AM I woke up with 'total recall'. It was the worst pain I could remember feeling in my life. It felt like an ice pic had been jammed down my ear towards my jaw/neck. I couldn't even think straight. I immediately started taking medicine trying to dull the pain and I called the hospital to get in as soon as I could...3:45 PM. I knew this was going to be a fun day. After finally getting to the hospital, all the ear wax prevented them from looking at my ears, so they had to flush them out first which was more pain beyond belief. I was diagnosis with a 'major ear infection' and sent home with prescription to fight it.

Seven days later, seven days with migraine head aches, loss of all hearing in my one ear, and a constant ringing inside my head, I went back to doctor saying things were worse. They gave me a different prescription which finally started to take. So 10-11 days of battle with an ear infection took quite a toll on me - both physcially and emotionally (I was very grumpy). During this battle, it didn't help that we decided to finally try (emphasize try) to stand up to Audrey and make her sleep through the night. That was a mistake. To compound the ringing headaches in my head, Audrey had learned to stand up in her crib and I swear she thought she was at a rock concert in a mosh pit or something - jumping around all night screaming at the top of her lungs. She was relentless. I think she sensed my weakness and went for the kill. My head and ears are hurting again just thinking about this ;) We backed off the 'sleep through the night battle'. I'm happy to say that today I am hearing totally fine again - I will not mention Audrey's sleeping habits.

One more doctor visit to go. Shots! Josh has been pretty entertained with Audrey's latest doctors appointments when she gets immunization shots. He thinks it's pretty funny before the shot, then afterwards, when Audrey is screaming, he of course switches gears into his empathetic brother mode and dotes on Audrey just as bad as we do... It's all right baby girl, it's all right... Well the whole family was going to get Flu vaccinations and I was kind of chuckling to myself thinking that Josh was going to hate the doctor after this visit. Before getting to the hospital, I explained to Josh that the shot was going to hurt a little bit, but that he couldn't cry and after the shot, he had to say thank you to the nurse. I wish I had brought my camera. It started out pretty good. Ann was actually corraling Josh as Audrey and I went in first. I got mine, without crying, and then Audrey got hers and only cried for about 5 seconds. Much better than anticipated! Ann came in and didn't believe Audrey's shots were over already! So Ann got hers, then it was just Josh left. As the nurse was getting the needle ready, Josh was quick to inform her, "It just hurt a littttttttttle bit!" he said with a nod to make sure she knew he was serious. She told him it was going to be a little poke then jabbed him. I saw a flash of pain run over Josh's eyes but before screaming, I could see the wheels in his head spinning and then he remember he 'couldn't' cry, so he fought back the pain/tears. I was impressed with that! Then as the nurse put on a bandaid and told Josh she was done, Josh mumbled "Thanks for the shot" in a tone so far from the truth I almost laughed. They didn't know Josh well enough to read his voice, so she was impressed beyond belief that he was saying thanks for the shot. Josh definately made her day! He got two 'special' stickers for being so nice to the nurses...they all loved him and I could hear them chuckling about him thanking them as we walked away.

We are finally all better now (knock on wood) just in time for our upcoming Florida vacation! We can't wait!