Jacob’s family was still in town for the Fourth of July so we all watched fireworks together:
Ben came into town also:
Brooke and Caroline attached themselves together with glow sticks:
Then Spencer joined in on the fun:
Ben is Spencer’s new best friend. He pestered Ben all night long:
Spencer enjoyed jumping off of a chair over and over again:
Then snuggled down with Grandma to watch the fireworks:
Time to backtrack a little bit and revisit my brother’s trip to Utah. We all had a pizza party for Caroline’s birthday:
Natalie showed of her hula hooping skills:
Brooke went from not knowing how to hula hoop to being a pro in 24 hours. She can even do it on a picnic table:
We celebrated birthdays:
My grandparents:
Caroline and her Dora cake:
The evening ended with balloon animals:
Yesterday was Brooke’s first day of first grade! I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that she’s already back in school. It’s kind of nice though because it’s been so hot around here anyway that we haven’t wanted to do anything, so I guess she might as well be in school. She has a break in September and we plan to live it up big at that time!
I wasn’t anticipating the transition from kindergarten to first grade to be so drastic, but it is! She goes all day! She eats lunch in the cafeteria! She has three recesses! This is all very good and exciting, but I feel like I’m hardly ever going to see her anymore! I’m assured by other moms that I’ll get used to this plenty fast, but until then, I’m mourning the loss of our mornings together. It’s so strange to only have Caroline and Spencer. Our mornings are so…quiet. At lunch I look around wondering where the third mouth is to feed. This is strange territory.
I think Brooke is liking school well enough. She doesn’t say much about it so it’s hard to know for sure. She has two teachers – an English teacher and a French teacher. Her French teacher only speaks French to them (and around them. We had a short parent meeting on the first day and the French teacher only spoke French when orienting us, the parents!)
Brooke seems to have completely recovered from her sickness (though she is still on medication). I’m glad she was feeling well enough to start school.
Here she is all ready to scooter to school:
I am writing this in a hospital room. This is not exactly how I had planned to spend our 24th of July.
It all started a few days ago. Brooke kept mentioning her neck hurt. Dallas and I kept brushing her off thinking she had just slept wrong or pulled a muscle or something. Her neck started bothering her more and more so by Monday night she didn’t want to go to sleep because it hurt her to sleep. She woke up that night in pain. The next day she would hardly move her neck and didn’t want to eat because her throat was hurting now, too.
My sister and I had arranged to meet at a park to play that morning. It was a park that looked like a castle, and I knew the kids would love it. We got there and I noticed that Brooke just wasn’t herself. She couldn’t play very well since she couldn’t move her neck, so she ended up sitting in the shade looking miserable.
I decided to take her to the doctor to see what they thought. I was nervous she had meningitis, but the doctor looked her over and said he was sure she had an abscess somewhere in her neck saying that nearly always when kids come with stiff necks this was the case. He couldn’t feel an abscess, but he said it could be in the back of her throat or behind a tonsil where he wouldn’t be able to feel it. He looked at her quietly for a little while and said, “You know, I’m going to send you to Primary Children’s right now for a CT scan.”
I was completely shocked. Going to the hospital was not even a notion in my mind. Then he said that if they found an abscess she’d be admitted and would have surgery right away.
Almost as an afterthought he said, “We should do a strep test also.” Again I was shocked when we found out the test was positive. Strep? She has strep?! I had no idea. The doctor was still worried about her neck stiffness saying that strep wouldn’t cause that so he thought she had more infection somewhere. I asked if we could just start giving her the antibiotics for strep and wait and see how she does. He said, “Oh no. I wouldn’t do that. With this affecting her neck we don’t want the inflammation to get so bad it starts restricting her air supply.”
So away we went to Primary Children’s. Luckily my mom was home and was able to rearrange her life to accommodate watching Caroline and Spencer indefinitely. Dallas was able to get off work to go with us and my dad was able to stop by and help Dallas give Brooke a blessing before we headed off.
We got to Primary Children’s and Brooke was pretty nervous. She’s very wary of doctors because she knows they often give shots and that idea doesn’t agree with her very well. I assured her a CT scan was easy and she just had to lie on the table while they took pictures of her neck. Then we got there and I realized they needed “contrast” for the pictures which would mean an injection.
Poor Brooke was lying on the huge table already pretty nervous when we had to break the news about the shot. Her lip started quivering and she tried to get up and run. After some reassuring words she got the injection and had the scan done. We usually don’t see much of her big eyes anymore, but they were out in full force as she was nervously trying to take everything in.
After the scan we waited for word. The technician told us the pediatrician got the results and was consulting with other doctors to determine a course of action. After a while the pediatrician called and said there was inflammation and infection in her neck, so he had already made the arrangements to have her admitted and “after a couple of days of IV antibiotics, she should be good to go!”
A couple of days?!
I tend to overreact (especially concerning medical things), but even I thought this seemed like an overreaction.
Nevertheless, we checked her in and waited for a doctor to come and tell us more. From what I understood, the infection had started spreading beyond her throat into her neck tissue. They were worried that an abscess could form or the inflammation could close off her airway. Also, he pointed out that the abnormal part of her CT scan was close to her brain and spinal cord so they didn’t want to see things get worse since those are obviously sensitive areas. Dallas asked if this treatment was overkill and the doctor basically said it was a pretty aggressive way to treat this and oral antibiotics would probably have been just fine. Luckily he also said we likely wouldn’t need to be staying several days and could probably leave the next day if all went well.
Brooke got settled in her bed. She was still scared of every doctor and nurse (and resident and med student and nurse-in-training) and would hardly talk. I think it hurt her to move her mouth much so she just mumbled out monosyllables and did her best to ignore all the poking and prodding.
She felt a little better when we got her bear and blanket and let her watch My Little Pony episodes on the iPad:
I spent the night with her and it was a miserable night. Sleeping in hospitals is the worst. The next morning the doctor came in (waking Brooke up) and she sat right up, moved her neck, started smiling and giggling, and answered his questions using full sentences. I couldn’t believe how much perkier she was. It’s always such a relief when your normal child returns to you after being caught in the clutches of sickness.
We are luckily moments away from being discharged. Hooray! I’m so grateful that Brooke’s sickness wasn’t very bad and that she was able to feel better so quickly.
And just in time – first grade starts tomorrow!
My little Caroline turned four.
She opened presents. Here she got a My Little Pony toy:
Brooke was not too happy that Caroline got the pony instead of her:
She also got a Rapunzel doll:
I love how she’s looking so lovingly at her doll in this picture:
We found out that our ward was having our annual father and kids campout on Caroline’s birthday. When I heard about this I hesitantly mentioned to Caroline that for her birthday she could go camping! And wouldn’t that be fun?! I wasn’t sure if this would go over well. If it were me, camping on my birthday would seem like a punishment, however Caroline was more than happy to have the campout be her celebration, so I was more than happy to say good-bye to both girls for the evening.
Spencer hadn’t taken a nap that day so I put him to bed early and had the entire evening all to myself. It was glorious. I surprised myself by being productive when I had planned to just veg all night. However, my kitchen floor was in serious need of mopping (as usual). I was prepared to ignore the floor until Spencer spilled juice THREE TIMES in THREE SEPARATE SPOTS making my usual spot cleaning impractical. Boo.
Then, I remembered that it was Caroline’s birthday and while we were counting camping as her party, I probably should still make her a cake. She requested Dora so this is what she got:
I was finally getting ready to go to sleep when someone decided to doorbell ditch us at 1:00 AM. It scared me to death. It was probably another hour before my heart rate settled back down to normal and I could fall asleep.
And I didn’t mean to have the campout usurp Caroline’s birthday post, but here’s another fun story. Dallas texted me the next morning saying Brooke had barfed in the middle of the night. In the tent. All over the pillows. And sleeping bags. And Caroline. Can you think of anything worse than having to clean that mess up? All Dallas was armed with was wet wipes. I’m still not quite sure how he made the tent conditions sleepable after that. I don’t even really want to think about it.
But anyway, back to Caroline.
I’ve really been appreciating my little Caroline these days. She is so mellow, so easy-going, so sweet. I feel like it’s easy for her to get lost in the shuffle between a somewhat demanding, spirited older sister and the baby of the family who naturally gets attention for being the smallest and neediest. She takes it all in stride, though. She is such a calm, peaceful child. She is so attentive to Spencer and has taken to watching out for him when he needs help. I can send her out into public with complete confidence that she’ll be kind, obedient, polite, and helpful. She is a beautiful blessing in our lives and we love her.
