Madison was not herself yesterday and seemed a little warm that afternoon. We check her temp around 4 p.m. and she had a fever of 102. She started vomiting around 8 p.m. We gave her some baby Motrin and that seemed to break the fever for a few hours. She didn't seem much better this morning so we took her in to the doctor. They did some chest x-rays because they suspected pneumonia. Fortunately it is only Bronchitis and we are getting her some antibiotics this evening. She has been a bear all day and isn't eating much. I hope that she gets over this quickly and no one else gets infected. I really don't know where she got it. Nobody else is sick and we try to be very careful about washing the hands. I figure that it must be me, coming into contact with all those filthy people at work.
She is up again. Got to go.
No, No, No, No, Nooooo! Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad! No! No!
This I heard coming from the bedroom yesterday morning. At least I think it was yesterday. From the bedroom where Kari was supposed to be sleeping late, so that I could get a nap before the red eye flight that I was going to have to do that evening.
We had stayed up later than usual and celebrated more than usual. Our good friends, Scott and Stella, along with their two kids just returned from Singapore and stopped by for a visit. Scott worked as a pilot out there, flying an Airbus, and we had not seen them in about four years. Not to mention, this was really our first social contact, other than family, since Reagan was born. So we stayed up later than we should have.
At any rate I was moving slowly at 6 a.m. when both twins started shrieking. The night nanny, Mary Ellen, was getting ready to leave at seven so there was little point trying to go back to sleep. Rylee and Reagan were already stirring as well. So Mary Ellen left, it was Hilda's day off, and Kari was still sleeping (for the moment). I was on my own.
Things were actually going pretty smooth, for a little while. I had the twins playing on the floor, the big girls in their high chairs, and decided that coffee was a priority. This is the day that the coffee machine decided to quit working. I spent about twenty minutes fooling with it before the kids demanded my attention. Reagan is cutting more teeth, so she has been a bear. And the crying is contagious, once Reagan got going the twins joined in with volumes set to high. I was doing the best I could to settle them down without waking Kari up, but I was feeling a little out numbered. I guess that it is good that Kari woke up when she did. Otherwise the stains might have set.
Yes stains. The dogs rarely have trouble controlling themselves in the house and they had been out not more than nine hours ago. But this day one or both had a BIG problem. I am pretty sure that is was Bunker who emptied his bowels at the foot of our bed, but I am not sure who vomited and who urinated. It was quite a mess.
You know when you are at a restaurant and someone offers to pay the check, but you reach for your wallet anyway, just to be polite? Well, Kari didn't even give me the equivalent of a "wallet reach" as far as cleaning up was concerned. I knew that the clean up was going to be all me. Not that I blame her, she didn't look to be in any condition to deal with that.
So there I was, about as tired as I have ever been. No caffeine in my system. Gazing in to the disaster area that had been our bedroom. The smell of feces, urine, and vomit wafting to my nostrils and the shrieks of two babies and one toddler assaulting my ears. I was vaguely aware of Kari gagging behind me. And I was thinking that this must be some kind of cosmic joke. Do you ever feel like the universe is conspiring against you?
So I spent the rest of the morning with a bucket, a scrub brush, and a shop vac. Try to make our only real sanctuary a livable space again. I did get my nap and was fit to fly when departure time rolled around at nine o'clock. All in all it was a long day.
In other news:
Madison is rolling over pretty regularly now. Jordan is moments away from crawling, she rolls across the room.
Madison is sick again. This evening she had a fever of 102.2 and we are a little concerned. We gave her some Motrin and that brought it down, but she has spiked again and her nose is getting stuffy. Kari is thinking about taking her in to the hospital if she doesn't improve tonight. I guess at this point, as long as she isn't dehydrated and the Motrin is breaking the fever, there is not much they can do at the hospital.
It is hard to accept that we are really dealing with normal babies now. We have spent so much time worrying about them when they were premature that it is hard not to overreact.
Thanks to those who post comments. I really like to hear from all of you.
We are still working on more discipline with the big girls. Or maybe I should say that Kari is working on me. I guess that I am a push over. Even when I think that I am being pretty tough on them, I am told that I am not. I am redoubling my efforts to conform and the struggle continues.
Rylee continues to be amused by the twins and really enjoys helping out.
She was getting a little frustrated here because Madison kept moving her head. (And I know how she feels.) So she finally just held her head in place so that she had a stationary target.
It has been really fun to watch all the girls develop. I especially like watching how they problem solve, like trying to feed a baby who won't be still.
They are definitely individuals, all of them and I feel blessed just to be able to experience them.
While the twins are eating better, they are still being difficult. They are not screaming in pain like they were, but they are not as excited by the bottle as they used to be and it makes for some long days. I sometimes feel that when we start the day we are only waiting for it to be over. Just get through it and this will get easier eventually.
It was Hilda's day off today, but she still came downstairs and helped out several times during the most chaotic portions of the day. I tried to let Kari sleep in for a bit, but it is difficult to keep all four of them quiet for any length of time. Kari stumbled out to see what all the screaming was about when I was trying to give the twins their Prevacid. It is not easy to administer. We have tried mixing it with formula, with oatmeal cereal, with water, mashing them to powder, and we have finally just started to stick bits of the pills into their mouths and hold it against their cheeks till it dissolves. We have wasted a lot of medicine figuring this out. We can now give it pretty regularly without making them gag and vomit.
So I am not worried about them losing weight any more. I am sure that they are getting enough food to grow. However, they are very needy. We did get them to nap for a couple of hours this afternoon, but aside from that one or both have been held all day long and Jordan was up all last night. I keep thinking that we are soon going to come to the point that we will just let them cry it out, like we did with Rylee and Reagan, to get them to sleep through the night. It is going to be tough for all of us. We have been conditioned since the day they arrived to cater to their every whim. And they have been trained that the slightest whimper will summon at least one, if not more, people to sooth them.
It is going to be interesting.
I think that the big girls have been getting a little stir crazy. The weather has been pretty rainy lately and they have not been out of the house for awhile. So today we went to McDonald's to play on the jungle gym and eat some ice cream. Don't you wish that was all it took to entertain you?
That is all for now.
Things are going much better. Kari says that they both ate 31 oz the other day. That is great news. They seem to be sleeping a little better too.
Jordan is rolling over at will, from front to back and back to front. Madison continues to be a little lazy in that respect. She seems perfectly happy to lay on her back and suck on her fingers.
Kari, are you up? I thought that by chance you might be up late and read the blog.
I dropped my phone and it bounced off my knee. I thought nothing of it, because I have dropped it many times and it still works. Only this time I didn't hear the "clunk" of it hitting the floor. Instead, I looked over and found that it had landed in my steaming hot coffee.
Needless to say, it is not working at the moment. Also, did you know that our home phone will not take collect calls? I didn't. But it won't.
Check your email for the hotel number.
I will go and try to dry out my phone with the hair dryer.
Happy Valentine's Day.
I Love You.
M
Kari's Spanish has been improving. I know that Hilda has been working to improve her English also, but what results in their exchanges is not really English or Spanish, hence Spanglish.
We are so American.
When I spent time in Europe I noticed that all the Americans stuck out like a sore thumb. Not just from our clothing, but our language skills are abysmal compared to the rest of the worlds population. We, as Americans tend to go for the "just say it louder and slower" method of communication as opposed to trying to learn anything. "If they want to talk to us, they should learn English." right?
Well, we are trying to actually learn something, but the louder and slower actually does serve a purpose. At least the slower does, and it seems hard to speak slower without dialing up the volume. I figured that since Hilda wanted to improve her English, I would speak in complete sentences and have her do the same for me. That has not worked for us very well. There remains a huge communication gap between Hilda and me. Kari on the other hand uses the broken English. She and Hilda understand each other very well. I often have to have Kari translate for us, even though she really doesn't speak Spanish all that well yet. The only down side to this is that Kari has gotten so used to speaking in broken English that she speaks it to people who understand English. She is now often speaking to me in broken English or broken Spanish as a matter of course. That is just what comes out if she isn't thinking about it.
Kari and Hilda were at the grocery store the other day. Kari was picking out tortillas and the lady working behind the counter ask her if she would like butter flavored tortillas. Kari didn't understand what she said, so the lady said "mantequilla?" and Kari answered "Si." They both know English as a primary language and here they are speaking Spanish to each other.
Kari has always been more expressive with her body language than I am and I think that helps too. Most exchanges between Kari and Hilda are accompanied by wild gestures. I think that if you saw them with out hearing the conversation, you might think that my wife was epileptic. Obviously, I am over stating that, but her father used to joke that if you held her hands down she would be unable to speak. And it sure is fun to tease her about it.