Sick Kate

Well, surprise of all surprises, Kate has strep throat again. In our hotel room on Saturday night, Kate woke up crying at 2am, and cried on and off for 2 hours. She made it clear to us that she wasn't going back to sleep, so we packed up and drove home. (Sorry to our Sunday School class in Moore for ditching you!!)

I got Kate in to the doctor this morning - I was sure it would be strep again, and sure enough, it is. We looked through Kate's chart and reviewed her history - June and July were the only months all year that she didn't have strep. Her doctor and I agreed that it's ENT time, and that we need to look into having her tonsils removed. She said that in general they like to wait until a child is 2 to have their tonsils removed, but Kate might be one of those cases where it's simply necessary.

So I tentatively have an appointment scheduled for Thursday afternoon... However, I have a friend who is a pediatric nurse at a hospital and she wasn't particularly thrilled with the 3 hospitals this doctor does surgery at, so I'm not sure if we're going to stick with this one or not. She's going to give me a couple phone numbers to see if we can get in anywhere else in a reasonable amount of time. We tried to get into Children's Hospital, but they aren't taking new patients until November. Because of insurance, we'd have to get this all said and done before January 1, so I'm just not sure that leaves enough time to get everything accomplished, not to mention 2-3 more rounds of strep in that time frame!

It's very stressful though, I'm dealing with some guilt wondering if I'm just being impatient and we should wait until she can actually get into Childrens, or if some of the other hospitals will be just as good??? I don't know. All I know is that I hate being in this situation, but if it improves her health as I've heard from many others it will, it'll be worth it. I'll just be a total nervous wreck when D-Day comes.

Funny Kate

We are in Oklahoma City this weekend for one of my college roommate's wedding. We are having a great time! Anyway, we took Kate to the mall this morning to kill time before we went to the wedding. The first store in the door is Old Navy. Kate turned to look, and saw the group of mannequins standing in the entryway, one of which was a dog mannequin. She FLIPPED. (In a good way!) She started barking, and RAN to the dog! When she got there, she gave it a HUGE hug. She spent a good 5 minutes with that dog, hugging it, petting it, and trying to climb on its back! This sure is one dog-loving kid! Hmm, I wonder who she got that from? :)

Catching Up

I was reminded by my friend, Stephanie, tonight that it has been too long since I've posted. So this is just for you Stephanie!

I guess I just feel like no one is reading my blog anymore, I guess Stephanie is. :) I'll start off with our trip to Chicago - we went to visit my sister, BIL, and nephews Micah and Dylan. We had SO much fun and our visit was way too short. There's a bunch of pictures on Facebook, so rather than post them here, I'll just refer you there. We did take the kids to Portrait Innovations, though, to get a good picture of the cousins.




Boy was that a harrowing experience! I really didn't think we were going to get one with all 3 kids, but thankfully the chairs kept Kate and Micah occupied enough for about 10 seconds that we could get a decent shot! It was very sad to go home, but it was made easier knowing that we'd see them again in Texas at Thanksgiving. I wish we lived closer.

Ever since we have come home, Kate has been having another mini verbal explosion. She has added moon, moo, and shoes to her vocabulary, among a few others I can't remember at 11 pm. :) Her FAVORITE word is shoes. (Such a girl!) Although, her version of "shoes" sounds more like "joos." It's so cute. Every time she sees a pair, or is looking for them, she'll walk around the house saying, "Joos? Joos?"

Her other big smarty-pants moment of the week was that on Dora the other night, they were talking about cows and how they say moo. Kate moo'd, then walked over and grabbed a book, opened it to a cow, showed it to me, and moo'd! What a smart baby. :)

We are officially DONE with the pacifier! We really did need it (and used it!) on our trip to Chicago, but as soon as we hit Texas soil again, the paci disappeared again and has been gone since. I can't bring myself to throw them away though. I feel like I need to get rid of them, though, just so I don't go grab one in a moment of desperation! Maybe I'll keep my favorite one to put away with her stuff as a keepsake... Or is that gross? 25 years from now, when she'll care, it'll probably be all decomposed and nasty. I should probably just take a picture and throw them away. :)

Paci Weaning

Or maybe I shouldn't call it weaning since we've gone cold turkey?

I went out shopping yesterday afternoon and Jeff put Kate down for her nap. When I came home and got her up, I couldn't find her paci anywhere - Jeff said that he had forgotten to give it to her. He said she cried for about 30 seconds, but fell right asleep, and she took a GREAT long nap, like 3 hours!! She never missed the paci!

So, I thought I'd try and see what happened that night if I put her to bed without a paci. She never missed a step! She went right down, never cried, never asked for it or anything! Amazing! So I continued today. Everything went well without a hitch! I guess we'll keep this going, but I can't believe she's taking this so well. I thought this was going to be a battle for the ages! I suppose there's still time for it to get ugly, but so far so good!

The only thing I'm nervous about is our trip to Chicago starting Thursday. I'm not sure how she's going to react to the plane, and the paci is always a good measure to quiet her down... But at this point I'm worried that giving her the paci just that once would undo everything we've worked at this week. I suppose I'll bring one with us and use it only in case of emergency. :)

She is feeling a little bit better today. She felt a little warm but I never took her temperature, I wouldn't be surprised if she was still running a low-grade. My mom is going to watch her tomorrow, because while she was out sick from daycare, a stomach virus swept through the place! So maybe we're fortunate she got what she had, and not the stomach bug! Since we are headed up to Chicago, I REALLY don't want her to catch that, so I want to make sure the virus is completely gone from daycare before I send her back!

Here's a quick picture I took of Kate tonight. You can tell she's not 100% - she looks so pale! Anyway, we're fired up for college football around here!

Sick Baby

Kate had a great stretch of health this summer. This was the longest she's ever been healthy! But we knew it had to come to an end sometime. And of course she picks 1 week from the day we fly to Chicago! I NEED her to be healthy for this trip - not only for her benefit, especially for her ears on the plane ride, but for Micah and Dylan too! We certainly don't need her bringing germs into their house. So I need to do whatever it takes to get her healthy again!

We are supposed to be going to Oklahoma this weekend to visit the in-laws, but I'm just not sure. She has a congested/runny nose, cough, and a fever. I'm not sure how well she'd do on two long car rides and not being able to sleep and nap in her own bed. We will re-evaluate how she is feeling in the morning, and make our decision. We are just running out of time for her to get over this before we head for Chicago!

Of course she has to pick THIS week to get sick!

15 Month Checkup

We had our 15 month appointment this morning! Kate weights 27.8 pounds (95%) and height is 32.5 inches (95%). Her head is back down to 25th % , down from ~40th% at her 12 month. They're not concerned about it though!

Overall everything is great. The Ped said she'd like to see her using 3-6 words, and was floored when I told her Kate has a good 15, if not 20!

The only thing we're watching is the weird skin reaction Kate gets when she eats Oatmeal & Cream of Wheat. The Ped said to wait a month or two, give it to her again, and if she reacts she'd like Kate to see an allergist.

So that's about it!

Where does Dada live?

Unfortunately Kate doesn't get to see Jeff much during the week, if at all. He works late most of the time, gets home after Kate is in bed, and leaves in the morning before she gets up. On weekends he sleeps in late, while I get up with Kate. Whenever I get tired of waiting for him to get up, Kate and I go into our bedroom and wake him up.

A couple times this week I took Kate into our room while I changed out of my work clothes. Both times, as soon as I opened the door, Kate says "Dada? Dada? Dada?" And runs over to his side of the bed! I love that she thinks he lives in bed! LOL!