A LOT of reasons why we are ready to say goodbye to July and August!!!!

July and August have been 2 of the hardest, draining months of our lives. We seriously can't remember a time so exhausting since we have been married! Allow me to recap all that has gone on in our house....
-First week in July I got a call from the dermatologist that a mole they had removed had come back as melanoma and I needed to see a cancer specialist at Kirklin Clinic. Appointment was made for 3 weeks later.
-July 13: Will fell off the bed and fractured his collarbone.
-July 22: Appointment at Kirklin Clinic with Dr. Urist. John and I went in fully prepared to have the doctor remove some extra skin around the place the mole had been taken off and be done. This appointment proved only to be a consultation and we learned the whole surgery was going to be a little more involved than we originally thought. Surgery scheduled for July 28.
-July 28: Arrive at Kirklin Clinic around 10. I had to have a dye injection done first so they could see which lymphnode was feeding the tumor in my arm (when I say tumor, it was very very small). Once they found the lymphnode, they marked it in my armpit and sent me over to outpatient surgery. The surgery lasted about an hour and a half. They had to put me completely to sleep since they removed the lymphnode in my armpit and took out a significant amount on my arm. We got home around 6:00 P.M. It was an extremely long day!!
-July 30: I take Will to the Doctor. He is not acting right-crying a lot and running fever. Holding his ear. Dr. said his ears did not look normal but were not infected, just red and inflamed. Gave us ear drops and a prescription for Omnicef, telling us not to fill it unless he took a turn for the worse over the weekend.
-July 31: John works (Saturday)
-night of July 31: Will's fever spiked so we started the Omnicef.
-August 2: Will started daycare...(you've probably already read this detailed account earlier on the blog)
-August 3: We took Will off the Omnicef. The side effects were awful.
-August 4: Will goes back to Children's to have another x-ray to make sure his collarbone is healing properly. It is. I get a call this afternoon from Dr. Urist that all margins from the skin removed on my arm came back clear but that my lymphnode had some abnormal cells in it. He was not too concerned but wanted me to have a CT PET scan to ensure cancer was not anywhere else in my body.
-August 7: John works (Saturday)
-August 9: I start back to school. Teacher Work day.
-August 10: In meetings at school. Leave about 2pm headed to UAB for a follow up with Dr. Urist and my CT PET scan. If you know me, I do not sit still and do absolutely nothing very well. I had to sit and do nothing for 2 hours for this scan. There was not clock so I couldn't tell if 5 minutes or 50 had passed. I thought I was going to go crazy.
-August 11: I get the results from CT PET scan around 11:00-ALL CLEAR!!!! Meet the teacher started at 2pm.
-August 12: First student day
-August 13: Pick Will up from daycare and he doesn't seem to be feeling well (he has been in daycare 2 weeks at this point). Friday night Will wakes up several times...
-August 14: John works (Saturday.....AGAIN) Will misses out on his friend's birthday party because he has some diarrhea and I was afraid to get him around other kids. My friend Holly comes in town for Alabama's bid day on Sunday. My mom comes over after I put Will down for a nap. I leave with Holly headed for Tuscaloosa for her to go to Alpha Gam's serious night to see her youngest sister that is going through rush. My mom calls me about 2 hours after I left and said that Will is having labored breathing. John is on his way home from work so I tell her to have him call me when he gets there. John calls and says he thinks he needs to take Will somewhere now, he is wheezing pretty bad. I call our after hours number at pediatrician and get Will an appointment at Children's Hospital After hours clinic. John takes Will for his 5:45 appointment. Turns out he has bronchilitis and a double ear infection. Dr. gives him a breathing treatment while he is there, prescription for Augmentin, and an inhaler. John finally gets Will home about 8:00. Holly and I get home from Tuscaloosa about 11:00. Will is up about every hour because he can't breathe.
-August 15: John had to go into work until lunch time (SUNDAY). I am completely over him working on the weekends and really overwhelmed with all that is going on with Will.
-August 16, 17, 18 My mom stays home with Will because he is sick and we don't want to send him to daycare. Will thinks we are back to our old arrangement with Kiki keeping him during the day.
-August 19, 20: Extremely hard daycare days. Drop off was a nightmare! Thursday when I got to work I completely fell apart.
-August 21: Another Saturday.....John WORKS. AHHHH. John had to choose several Saturdays to work between July and December and so he chose them all in a row in August so he wouldn't have to work during football season.
-August 23: My parents leave for Alaska and will not return until September 8 (that's 17 days). I go ahead and prepare myself for Will to get sick again. It would only make sense, since my parents would be gone and unable to help me. Murphy's law.
-August 26: Will has up to this point had a great week at daycare. Drop off is getting easier. That night after dinner we played outside for a while and then came in for bath, books, and bed. As soon as I turned his light out to rock him before bed, he started coughing. That deep cough like he had 2 weeks ago with bronchilitis. It is very croupy sounding and he can't breathe without a rattle. I hold him and let him sleep in my arms until 11. I was really afraid to put him down, for fear he might stop breathing. Around 11 he was not comfortable laying with me so I finally put him in his bed. We decided that he probably shouldn't go to daycare the next day so I put in for a sub. I go up to school very late to make lesson plans and get copies run off for my class.
-August 27: I call first thing in the A.M. to get Will an appointment at the pediatrician. Our pediatrician is out of town for 11 days...go figure. We see her partner. She is very worried about his breathing and gives him a breathing treatment while we are there. She looks at his ears and says they aren't infected, but red and inflamed. We have been hearing this since June. She reviews his chart and said that he needs to see an ENT. She prescribes 2 different inhalers, Singulair to help with breathing, and an antibiotic that she tells us to wait and fill over the weekend if he doesn't seem to be getting better. Luckily, my cousin's brother is an ENT. We were able to get an appointment that afternoon. As soon as Will woke up from his nap we loaded back up and went to the ENT. Will was not a fan. Dr. said his adnoids need to come out and he needs tubes. He did a nose culture and recommended we go ahead and start the antibiotic that pediatrician gave us, saying he was clearly infected and the sooner he started taking that, the better. Surgery is set for the following Wed (Sept 1) and I fill the antibiotic on the way home.
-August 28: in the early hours of Saturday A.M. I wake up feeling very sick. My stomach had bothered me yesterday, but I was so busy with Will that I didn't really think much of it. About 1am I start throwing up. I am freezing with chills and feel very sick. By about 7am Will is awake, John takes care of him while I lay in the bed. And now I am laying in bed, not feeling normal, but not feeling nearly as sick as I did earlier. John is out with Will on this beautiful Saturday at the park and I am stuck here.
Doesn't this make you tired just reading it :) I have never been more ready to say adios to two months in my entire life!!!! We are looking forward to September-hopefully it will be a calm and less stressful fall.

How did we ever clean our house before little man came along???

Sleep

Thank goodness for weekends!! We have had a very restful one and were able to catch up on some much needed sleep. Here is how Will prefers to catch his zzzzzzz's these days...I could kiss those cheeks all day long!

Diggers!

Digger is certainly not a word I would have ever guessed would be part of my regular vocabulary. But I guess Will has changed a lot of that. His newest obsession is diggers and the like-any kind of construction equipment, really, will do. It all started with his favorite book, My First Word Book. There is a picture of a digger. A while back when we were at the zoo, which is being majorly renovated, Will became completely enthralled with all of the construction going on. He showed no interest in the animals, but wanted to sit and watch the digger move dirt around. Last week while Will was sick and Kiki took care of him, he apparently showed Kiki the picture of the digger a lot. So when she was in Wal-Mart the other day, she found this digger and said that Will should have it. This is not your average digger. It rumbles as it cranks up, talks to you, and even plays some rock music. It is definitely Will's favorite toy right now!!

This picture below was taken right when he had hit the music button. He cracks up and starts rocking his head back and forth....I guess because that is what he saw us do when he hit it the first few times :)

Today has been wonderful. After a really hard couple of weeks starting back to work, Will getting sick, and then terrible drop off both Thursday and Friday mornings when he went back to daycare, a lazy Saturday was just what I needed. Unfortunately John had to go in to work this morning for a little bit. But this allowed me and Will to spend some time cuddling in bed watching Mickey this morning. Then we went on a breakfast date to Chick-fil-A, he helped me grocery shop and now he is napping peacefully. This sounds awful, but some days during the summer I would count down the minutes until he went down for a nap. He had worn me out and I just couldn't think of anything else to entertain him with. Today I almost missed nap time because we were having so much fun playing!! I definitely will never take the weekends for granted anymore!

The Perks of Being a Boy

I was cleaning out my car when I saw John with Will in tow go over to the garbage can and get the diaper box out. He carried it back over to the side of our house...curious as to what was going on, I followed and proceeded to hear John tell our son that..."this is a perk of being a boy. You get to do crazy stuff with a box on a hill." Then he started to pull Will down the hill. Will was loving every second (even when he crashed at the bottom and came flying out of the box)and this was by far the best free entertainment we have ever discovered!

Crazy with a capital C

My life has been just a wee bit CRAZY since mid last week. I started back to work on Monday. I like a bit of a routine, so starting work didn't bother me. Except for running around trying to buy last minute things for my classroom and get my classroom set up again made me a little nuts. Several days I only saw Will for an hour or so and there were several nights that I was up at school once Will went to bed. But thankfully by Thursday, the first day of school, life seemed a little normal. I was getting home at a normal hour, Will had settled into his 2nd week of school pretty well. Then Friday came...Will came home with a stuffy nose and was coughing a little. I figured it was just daycare germs and I have been told to get used to the runny nose for a while. By mid-afternoon Saturday we couldn't brush it off as a "little daycare bug." Will was having to work to breathe and it did not sound good. Very rattly and when he coughed it sounded like a car engine was coming out. A trip to the after hours clinic informed us that Will had bronchilitis and a double ear infection. NO FUN! After $100 bucks spent on an inhaler and some augmentin, we were on our way to nursing him back to health. Yesterday was the first day that I feel like he was almost back to 100%. Bless his sweet heart, he has pretty much been in a good mood, except for at night, when he can't breathe. His appetite hasn't been great and his diapers have been hideous, but all in all I think he is over it. We held him out of daycare Monday and Tuesday to prevent him spreading his germs or picking up someone elses and relapsing. He could have probably gone back today, but we figured one more day wouldn't hurt and today is the first day he hasn't had a snotty nose. I am DREADING tomorrow. This morning I was driving him to my mom's house and explaining that today we were going to Kiki's house but tomorrow we would go back to school and see Ms. Victoria and Ms. Tamikya. "Doesn't that sound fun, Will??!!" He proceeded to start to cry at just the mention of their names. Drop off tomorrow should be awesome :) Please say a prayer for Will for the rest of the week. Transitioning back to daycare after all the fun he has had with Kiki is sure to be hard on the little guy.

Day 5...A Survival Account by Will

I survived my first week of daycare. I am not really sure why I have to go there, but Friday I decided it wasn't so bad...I ate all my snack, played with the kids on the playground (they scared me at first so I didn't play with them all week), I ate most of my lunch (there were pickles...YUM!!), and I even slept for 2.5 hours. This seemed to be what my teachers and mommy and daddy were most excited about. You see, earlier in the week, I kept most of my classmates awake because they actually thought that I was going to sleep on this nap mat, basically ON the floor, with some rainforest sounds. Don't these people know that for the last 18 months of my life I have had the pleasure of napping in my nice, spacious, soft crib with waterfall sounds, NOT rainforest. I wasn't buying it...even if there was a monkey on my nap mat. But after 4 days of being there, I was all tuckered out and figured that all the other kids were doing it...so it couldn't be that bad.
Last night mom and dad surprised me with a FROG cookie from Edgar's-the holy grail of all sweet things. They were so proud of me for being such a good boy yesterday. After that delicious sugary frosted cookie, I have decided I could be a good boy EVERY day if I am greeted in the afternoon with that kind of sweet treat.
I had such a fun night playing with my mommy and daddy. They even let me stay up until 8:30!!!!!
This morning was an extra special surprise...I woke up and ate breakfast and an hour later I was still in my pajamas...Mom hasn't gotten ready....there has been no sign of my backpack or nap mat.....Mom must have forgotten to take me today. YIPPEEEEEE!!!!!!!! As you can see, I am very happy about this. Maybe every week Mom will forget to take me for a day or two and I can hang out at home.
Peace Out!