Rachel has Pneumonia

Sophia and Rachel have had a cough since last Friday. It seemed to get better over the weekend and then got worse again on Monday. Suddenly yesterday, Rachel developed a fever. I noticed she wasn't being herself that morning. She didn't want to eat, and she was just sitting in a corner with her eyes all glassy. I had changed her diaper an hour before the fever came. She had felt fine. When I noticed her just sitting in the corner, poor baby was just burning up with a temp of 102.5.

I tried giving her tylenol, but since I have to hide it either in food or a drink, she wouldn't take it because she just didn't want anything. I worried that her fever was too high so I was determined to get some Tyelnol in her. I ended up feeling like the worst mother in the world because I tried to force it on her and she threw up. I put her down for a nap and called the advice nurse at our pediatrician's office. She was concerned and decided to have our doctor call us. He was concerned that she might have some sort of infection since she developed a fever a few days into her "cold."

So my sister came over to babysit Morgan and Sophia and I headed to the doctor with Rachel. By this time, poor Rachel was miserable and her fever had even gone up. While Dr. A was checking her ears, and listening to her lungs, she was so upset and ended up throwing up all over my leg. Oh well, that's part of motherhood, right?

He didn't find anything wrong with her ears and her lungs sounded okay to him. However, he had a suspicion that she may still have pneumonia so he sent us down the hall for an x-ray.  She did better than I thought she would during the x-ray. It was over pretty fast, so that was good.

We went back to the exam room and Dr. A came in and confirmed that she does have a mild case of pneumonia in her right lung. I was shocked. She was literally running all over the house the day before.

It's been difficult getting her antibiotics into her. As we all know, Rachel has issues with anything going into her mouth. There is NO WAY that she allows us to put a medicine dropper in there. I've tried and she throws up every time. I was able to mix it in with her yogurt yesterday. Today was a different story. She had no appetite almost all day. For breakfast, we mixed the meds into her milk. She only drank half of it. I ended up giving her a little bit more in some yogurt for lunch. After lunch, I couldn't get her to eat or drink anything for the rest of the day. I was pretty sure that I'd have to bring her back to the pedi's office for a shot. He had said that if she won't take her meds, that we'll have to have it injected into her. Finally, tonight around 9pm, she woke up and I was able to get her to eat a little with her meds.  I hope she will want to eat and drink tomorrow. I worry about my little peanut!

She did do a little better today with her energy at least. Her fever was down around 100 ish so that was better. I'm very thankful that Sophia's cough is better and she never got a fever. Morgan, so far, is healthy as can be! Let's hope she stays that way.

This has been a LONG week. I've barely had a few hours of sleep each night. As I type this, Sophia is awake and fussing. She has been waking up several times a night lately. Combine that with Rachel being sick and UGH for me and trying to sleep.

So I'm off to go tend to my sweeties. Hopefully, I can get Sophia back to sleep.

Ps... I'm not reading this to proof read so if I sound like a dumb a$$, I'm too sleepy to care. Oh and I almost forgot to mention that my sister rocks. When Rachel and I came home from the pedi's office, she had washed my dishes and cleaned the play room. I have the bestest sister!

Late night ramblings....

There are so many nights that I tell myself to sit down and write something. You know, something like.... Morgan is constantly singing the Barney "I love you, you love me song." You would think it's annoying, but she is so much cuter than the purple dinosaur that I could listen to her sing that song all day long. Hey, what do you know... I DO listen to her sing it all day long. I'm just so burnt out by the time I sit down at night, that blogging hasn't been a priority lately.

Rachel is really into counting. She counts to ten over and over again. My favorite thing is that she says, "sayyen" for "seven." Morgan does too. I love, love, love it and don't want to correct them. 

Sophia really loves to say what things are. We have a book that has pictures of all sorts of things. She likes to say, " It's a butterfly," it's a banana... then she says "yaaaayyyyyy" when I say "good job." Her favorite food right now is chips. Not the most healthy thing, but that girl can eat cheddar sun chips like they are going out of style. She even asks for them. She'll come up to me and say, "chip, chip, chip." It's so cute. It's not so cute when I have to tell her no and she throws herself down on the floor to show me who she thinks is the boss.

I have two out of three who are sick again. I know! We were JUST sick. It's so frustrating. Sophia and Rachel have been coughing since the weekend. And to make things extra special, they started puking today. Poor girls are coughing so hard that they are puking. It took me until 11pm to get all three girls settled down and asleep tonight. The last 2 nights, I've only gotten about 2-3 hours of sleep. Those poor little coughers are keeping this mommy awake. It makes me so sad to see them sick again. So far, Morgan is in the clear. I'm wondering if they picked this up at the pediatrician's office last Friday when we had their two year old check up. The check up, by the way, went very well. I don't have their stats, but they were all between 25-28 pounds, which is in the normal range and Rachel is no longer considered underweight. Woo hoo for that! Ah, and would you believe they are all 36 1/2 inches tall. Hello basketball team!

Oh and last week Rachel pooped in the bathtub. I'm still surprised the girls are 2 years old and that has only happened twice. Not too poopy!

Hmm what else has been going?

I've kept the house clean for a week. Seriously! I should get an award for that. My sister and I went through the girls' toys and organized everything and tossed a bunch of the junk. Now everything is in bins and we don't have ALL their toys out at once anymore. It's actually really pleasant. I think the girls are able to focus on one thing at a time and not be sitting in a sea of toys everywhere. I'm also having them clean up the playroom each time we leave the room. They do really well with putting things away.

I've been cleaning the kitchen each night before I go to bed too. Well, not tonight. This is the first night in a week that I am letting the dishes sit there. It took me way too long to get the girls to sleep. No way am I going to go make noise in the kitchen!

Anyway, just having a clean house has been a huge accomplishment for me. I'm more tired and have less down time, but at least I'm not waking up to a messy kitchen or tripping over toys at 7am. 

In other news, I'm most likely going to be having surgery pretty soon. I'm about to get TMI....so for you men-folk or women who don't want to read about girl parts, you may want to hit the X and close this window! You've been warned. 

I have had so many issues since having three babies in one day. It started with seriously long and irregular bleeding for the first 18 or so months after the pregnancy. Then for the past year or so, I've been having horrible cramps. The past 3-4 cycles have been just terrible. A couple of weekends ago, I spent the entire weekend in bed curled up with a heating pad barely able to move. I thought I threw out my back because the cramping started there, but then it got worse and moved over to my right (front) side and all the way down my legs to my knees. I have a long history with Endometriosis and haven't had a "clean up" surgery in almost 10 years. I'm sure the c-section and cutting into my uterus didn't help one bit. Anyway, my doctor was advising a hysterectomy when I was bleeding for almost a year straight, but since I had triplets under a year old, surgery just wasn't in the cards. Now that they are 2, surgery still doesn't seem like a good idea, but I don't think I can handle all of this pain much longer. It's really getting worse. I could either continue to be in pain for who knows how long, or I could get it fixed and feel better once I recover from the surgery. So we're doing an ultrasound first to double check for issues and then we'll be doing either a laparoscopy to clean up any endo that likely has returned, or depending on how things look, my doctor may just do the full hysterectomy. I got that news today. It stresses me out because I know I need to have this done, but I just have a lot going on right now. I guess there never really is a good time to have body parts removed, is there? hahaha.... Gotta laugh so I don't cry. 

Alright... it seems the girls have all settled into sleepy land, and after the last few nights of almost no sleep for me, I think I shall hit the sack myself. Here's to hoping the girls are feeling better tomorrow!

Slimy Green Monster

Two weeks ago, the girls enjoyed a really fun day at the park. As I mentioned before, we all got sick just a couple of days after the fun. I'm not one to place blame on a specific activity and say that's where we got our cold, but these pictures speak a thousand words! 

Morgan takes after her mommy. She likes guys with some meat on their bones! She simply couldn't resist this big green caterpillar climbing monster-ish thingamajiggy. She spent a lot of time getting very personal with it's face. It didn't matter how much I tried to redirect her attention to something else. She would always run right back to this thing's face and kiss it. She's an open mouth kisser too.... Lots of licking! I thought I had a picture of her actually kissing it, but it wasn't on my camera when I uploaded the park pics. I must have deleted it by mistake.  Bummer!

So here she is getting to know her new boyfriend. She's about to go in for the kiss. Pucker up slimy!

Here she is after I told her, "no kissing." She's like........ "I already did mom and I'll do it again, get over it." GOSH!

We mostly recovered from the germs within about a week. Poor little Morgan did not. Well, she got better for about a day and then she developed a worse cough and congestion. I took her in to see her pediatrician and she is currently taking her first ever round of antibiotics. Her cold turned into a sinus infection.  Poor girl has been miserable with the sickies! Thankfully, she should be nice and healthy again within a few days!

I guess that's what happens when you go around kissing playground equipment. I hope she learned her lesson. :)

Valentines Day Surprise

Two years ago when we first brought the girls home from the hospital, we quickly realized how expensive those preemie diapers would be for three babies. Seriously. We were going through a $10 pack of preemie Pampers in one day. That translated to $70 a week. Then there was the Neosure formula at $16 a can. And you guessed it, we went through a can every 24 hours. It was insane and was totally draining our budgets.

We had to figure out a way to pay for all those diapers and cans of formula so we had to really look at our budget. We were so busy and sleep deprived and realized we almost never used our cell phones/ Bob's iphone. So we got rid of them (and sold Bob's iphone) and bought these crappy little pre-paid things for around $200 a year. We thought, why not?

I've been using this horrible phone for two years now. For the first year, I really didn't care at all. I was too busy to ever use my phone for anything other than necessity. For the past, oh I'd say about 6 months, I have loathed the crappy phone so much. It stopped ringing so I'd miss calls and I couldn't text with it. I missed texting. And there were so many times when I wished I had my camera with me when out with the girls. 

So I've spent the last 6 months dreaming about a better phone. Today, Bob surprised me with this!!!!!

It's the new HTC EVO Shift 4G. WOOO HOOOOO! Hubby did good! It feels so good to FINALLY have a real phone. I'm so excited that I had to blog about it. I'm okay with being a nerd because now I am a nerd with a cool new phone! 

I love this guy!

Finally, a therapy update!

I haven't written an update about the girls' progress in therapy for a while. Honestly, I've been pretty overwhelmed with it lately. Rachel has food therapy on Mondays. They all have "motor gym" class Tuesdays (it helps with gross and fine motor skills), occupational therapy on Wednesdays, and speech therapy on Fridays. We also work in a physical therapy session twice a month for Morgan and Rachel. And if we're not busy enough, every Thursday this month I'm attending a class about toddler/childhood behavior.

The class is a state requirement so that we can continue Rachel's food therapy sessions. Her eating therapist, Stephanie, thinks that her issues are 50% sensory/oral issues and 50% learned behavior. So we need to bring in a behaviorist so that we don't do the wrong activities to help Rach learn to eat more foods. I'm learning so much about where a lot of her behaviors may be coming from and how to handle them. I'm really looking forward to the home visit with the behaviorist so we can start moving forward with all of this. The sensory/oral side of Rachel's food issues, and all the problems she has eating and accepting texture, are all signs of autism. Because she used to frequently go to "Rachel land" and not participate in any of the therapy sessions, she is still being watched for signs of autism. It's been really confusing. She has a total of 5 therapists that see her on a weekly basis. 4 of them used to think she may be somewhere on the autism spectrum. However, she recently started to participate and engage with us and really show such improvement with her communication. So we're not thinking she's on the spectrum anymore. Stephanie still thinks that it's a possibility because of the food issues. It's been a struggle for me. I've been going back and forth on whether or not I want to have Rachel evaluated by a specialist. Bob and I haven't made that decision yet. We just don't see the immediate need for it anymore. Thankfully, we live near one of the top autism research centers in the country, so if we need to have her evaluated, we won't have to go far. We don't have to worry about whether or not she will qualify to be tested. It's already been approved by our case worker so all we have to do is make the decision. I'm so thankful that our state has this wonderful beneficial program for children who have developmental delays. I don't know what we would do without these services.

Other than the food issues, the girls have made so much progress that it is simply unbelievable. Amy, one of their OT's, said that she is seeing the girls do things and say words that she didn't expect them to be doing for at least another 3-6 months. She says she is constantly having to come up with new things for them to do because they are learning so fast. Hearing that just made my heart smile. Sophia is asking for help when she needs it and is saying phrases like, all done, shoes on, and it's a cow. She says something new every day. She's really big on... It's a dog, it's a shoe, it's a whatever! She likes to label everything she can. Rachel is even using the phrase and signing properly for all done. She lets me know she's "all done" every time I try to brush her teeth, because you know..... the toothbrush has to go in her mouth and she hates anything in her mouth. Morgan is repeating everything and has a memory like you wouldn't believe. There's an episode of Barney where they learn about fire safety. The kids on the tv all crawl on the ground so Morgan does too. It's the cutest thing. It's been such a blessing that they are able to express their needs and communicate with me more. I love watching them learn or say something new each day.

So that's it for the therapy update. I am bummed that we are all sick this week. I had to cancel 5 therapy sessions, which make our days at home a lot longer! I think the girls and I could really use an outing. Too bad I still don't have the energy. We're hoping to hit the zoo this weekend, but we shall see how we're all feeling! Next week, we'll be right back on our busy schedule!

Oh and I never mentioned it, but I caved and took one class this semester. It probably wasn't my brightest idea, but I realized that if I quit now, I'm not sure when I'll ever finish. It's just ONE class this time. Sociology. It's not that difficult. I'm in week 3 and doing just fine! I'm such a glutton for punishment, aren't I? Okay, sleepy time! Don't know why I always stay up so late.

We have the sickies

We're all sick. All 5 of us. It started with Sophia, then Rachel, me and Morgan, and now Bob has it too. I wish they had a vaccine for colds. Being sick isn't fun at all, especially when I can't call in sick. I still have to be the mommy.

My poor little sickies kept me up almost all night last night. Poor things were so miserable. So far, tonight is already better. I should be asleep myself, but I took a nice long nap today thanks to Bob for staying home from work to take care of us. So I guess I kind of got to call in sick. It was like a half day at the office, I suppose. I still had to feed them dinner, do laundry and such. Oh how I crave just a whole day in bed watching movies and eating bon bons.

So yeah, I should be sleeping. I'm finishing up with some grocery shopping (God bless Safeway online shopping and delivery). I heard one of the girls coughing so I went into their room to check on them. All of a sudden, I realized how big my "babies" are. They are so big in their cribs. They look like little people instead of the teeny babies who came home from the hospital under 5 pounds each. It feels like just yesterday I was swaddling them and burping them and enjoying their first smile or the first time they rolled over. How did two years go by already? Wow. Just wow!

We're only on day 3 of this lovely cold. I think we picked it up at the park last week. Since we were getting our new tile floor in the kitchen installed, the girls' two occupational therapists and I took the girls to the nearby park and library for one of our sessions. There was a big caterpillar play structure thing with a face. Morgan kept kissing that face. It was pretty funny to see, but I knew we'd catch something. Sure enough, they had lovely runny poopies all weekend long and now we've got this cold. Awesome-ness all around! Oh I even have a picture of Morgan kissing that stinking play structure too. I'll have to upload that off of my camera one of these days.

Okay, I'm just rambling now. Time for me to get some sleep. I have a toddler behavior class I have to attend in the morning. I'm so behind on my blogging lately. I have to attend this class so that we can get further services from the girls' program. It's for Rachel's eating issues. Lots has been going on in that department, but I'll have to save that for another update. I'm sleepy and my grocery shopping is done! Woo hoo!

Happy Birthday to our three little sweeties!

I simply cannot believe that it has been two years since we were blessed with our three precious daughters. I remember the day they were born like it was yesterday. I was 35 weeks, and 1 day pregnant. It was 6 weeks farther than my perinatology team expected me to get. Even at 35 weeks, the girls were so tiny at 3, 4, and 5 pounds. Rachel's little head fit in the palm of our hands. Sophia was a feisty little sweetheart and made it out of the NICU in just over 12 hours. Morgan, well she was Bob's mini me all the way. She still is. I got to meet her first at 10pm after delivering around 5pm. She looked like my husband, only a heck of a lot smaller. I had an instant bond with each of them. Their birthday was the day I finally new how deep a mother's love really is. There is no other feeling like it in the world. I'm so thankful I get to be called, "Mom."

We had the girls' birthday party last weekend. We had a small celebration with just family this year. (Well, and one of my friends who helps us on Mondays, but as far as I'm concerned, she is family!) The girls loved all their presents and enjoyed all the attention they got. They were so spoiled. Here's a cute picture of them opening gifts.

The girls are really starting to talk so much more. Sophia is putting two words together. Her favorite two words are, "need help." She is very into lining up blocks so she can try to sing her ABC's (just like a Barney episode.) And she loves, loves, loves books! Morgan loves to sing. Well, she tries to sing. I think she has an amazing memory. She can spout off all the lines in a lot of Barney episodes that we watch because YES, that purple dinosaur is the king of the world in our house right now. Rachel's speech is starting to take off too. The cutest thing she says right now is, "shoe" while doing the sign for "more" when she is hungry. The sign for more and shoe are very similar and she gets them confused. I love it though. It's too cute when she comes up to me and says shoe when I know she is really asking for food. 

I'm excited to see what the next year is like with the girls. I know we're right on the verge of talking more and communicating better. It's such a cute stage right now..... Difficult of course, but oh so cute which makes it fun too!