I had totally planned to do a post last weekend as I am trying to do on every week, but last weekend is when things started going downhill for Mr. Lincoln. I was trying to remember what we had going on the week before and all I could come up with was stuff I had on the calendar. Just so we didn't get too comfortable with a less hectic schedule, Jackson started up swim team last week. He had his first practice on Thursday. I usually will just drop him off for practice, but they wanted me to stick around for the first one in case the coaches had any questions. There were just a few kids there and they were already practicing. The coaches just had Jackson do some laps of the different strokes so they could see what level he would be at. I thought he did a great job and the coaches did too. He is starting with a two week trial period and we'll see where we go from there. He has had a few practices now and says he wants to stick with it. I would love for him to be on the swim team but I also love that he is doing it just because it is something he is interested in. He doesn't know anyone on the team and practice is just swimming lap after lap, but he still likes it. It doesn't look like they have hardly any meets set up for this winter but I hope he gets to do a few meets because I think he will want to work even harder after he gets a few races under his belt. I thought meets were a lot of fun :-).
After swim practice, I dropped Jackson off at my parents with the other kids and then Andrew and I went to Ellie's Parent Teacher conference. It went really well. I knew Ellie was really enjoying school and the teacher confirmed that (sometimes she gets upset when she realizes it is the weekend and she doesn't have school). Then it was back to my parents for some dinner and to pick up the kids, then home to make some cookies and a frozen meal to take up to Kaitlin and Zane. Friday the kids didn't have school but we were up early anyways. We decided to make a day trip up to meet Lola. So we headed out that morning to head up to Ankeny. We have also never been to Kaitlin and Zane's new home and they have been there over a year and they are just 2 1/2 hours away. I guess we have had a busy year. It was nice to just get to hang out with them and hold Lola. Owen enjoyed having his cousins there to play with and the kids had fun exploring the new house. Miles and Bennett even made it up their stairs a few times before Zane decided to put up their gate. Lola was adorable and so comforting to hold.
We headed home later in the afternoon and I convinced Andrew to let me make a quick stop at Michael's as we were leaving town to pick up a few sheets of paper for Ellie's birthday party. When we got home that evening, the twins' Halloween costumes had come in. Lissy was planning on making something for them but then she got super, super busy with work. I was excited to find these outfits on clearance online and they even offered an extra 35% off-they were only $9 a piece. Miles and Bennett weren't as excited about them though.
Andrew was out at the ranch all day Saturday and I remember I had a productive day, but I can't remember what I accomplished :-). Andrew got home around 6 and took Ellie out for a Daddy Daughter dinner, which Ellie is always requesting. I was really wanting to get to Payless because I had a 30% off coupon. Ellie needed some shoes for Christmas and the twins needed some shoes. So the plan was for Andrew to meet us at Payless and wait with the kids in the car, but then Lissy told me to just bring the kids by my parents and she would watch them. I originally didn't want to bother them because they got the call from Amanda saying that she was labor. They were trying to finish up stuff and get ready to go. It was probably around 8:30 when I Amanda was talking about heading to the hospital. The earliest flight my parents could get would be the next morning so they assumed they wouldn't get there in time. I slept with our house phone and my cell phone by my bed that night waiting for a call or text message. I hardly slept at all because I thought I would miss it and then I started to get worried that something was wrong. Part way through the night Lincoln came down and ended up getting into bed with me. I tried to send him back to bed, but he didn't seem to be feeling good. He was so restless while trying to sleep and kept waking up crying. I ended up calling my parents a little after 4 since I knew they would be driving to Kansas City by then and my dad said Amanda was just at a 5 and they were going to break her water. I was glad to hear nothing was wrong and she was just taking her time. Then there was some miscommunication around 6 when we thought the boys had come. I texted Amanda to tell her congrats and she texted back saying she was being wheeled into the delivery room. I was so confused. But then she did have an uneventful delivery and little Preston and Grayson were born a little before 8. My parents were able to see their pictures right before their flight took off. I so wish we could go meet them, but they will be back here in less than a month so we will have to wait until then. They are tiny little things with Preston being 5lbs 5oz and Grayson 4lbs 10oz.
Andrew went to the office early in the morning and he came in and took Lincoln out to the couch for a bit. He started crying loudly and I went out to check on him and he had a fever and ended up vomiting just a little. I think he just gagged on some drainage though because he never threw up again. He did go downhill the rest of the day though. He was restless and agitated all day. His neck ended up getting stiff and he wouldn't turn his head at all. I ended up running to the store later that afternoon when Andrew got home since I realized we wouldn't be venturing out any the next day. And I had offered to make Lissy dinner but she was already there waiting for me as I was finishing up my shopping so she started some stuff for me. I already had spaghetti sauce made, she was just reheating it and making the noodles. After dinner, her and Andrew convinced me to go ahead and call my dad about Lincoln. We decided to wait and see what he would be like in the morning. It was another long night of little sleep and a lot of whimpering/crying. He at times also seemed a little disoriented and still had his fever. We ended up taking him in to see Dr. Phillips Monday morning because my dad was going to be in Dallas all week. He did not look well. Along with not turning his head, he would hold his head in his hands like he was having a headache and he said his belly hurt. He also couldn't really bend over. He wanted me to help him pull his pants up and down. He had swollen lymph nodes all along the back of his neck and some on the front of his neck. After looking Lincoln over and determining he had a red throat and ear, he sent us to get a CBC. As soon as the reading came out, the lab tech said, "Oh no." I thought maybe something had went wrong and we had to redo it. But no, she was concerned about his white count. It was sky high. It is normally between 4 & 11 and his was 38. So he ended up getting a shot of Rocephin and is now on a 10 day dose of amoxicillin. I don't think I was even aware of how concerned Dr. Phillips and my dad were. I am just thankful they let us wait it out and try to take care of things at home instead of going to the hospital. We had some rough days but it was definitely better than having to be in the hospital the whole time. We probably would have been there for a few days because his fever kept coming back and I didn't want my parents feeling like they had to come back. Thankfully we were able to get him to drink a little so he was still peeing. Got to love that sweet tea. It is usually reserved for my parents house but I made him his own pitcher in hopes to get him to drink a little. He didn't like any Gatorade or stuff like that and my dad wanted us to steer clear of dairy products. He usually drinks water fine but it wasn't enticing enough to convince him to drink it when he didn't feel like drinking anything at all. He went three days without eating anything. His pants are even hanging on him a little more. He did finally eat a little piece of chocolate that Andrew offered him. Then one night I brought a banana to eat before bed and he asked if he could have it along with some of my grapes another night. Just today he finally ate lunch and hopefully some dinner tonight. Tuesday we went back to see Ron and check his white count again. Thankfully it was starting to go down-got down to 30 in just one day. So even though we weren't out of the woods, things were going in the right direction. It was horrible to see him feel so bad. The first few days he had a lot of trouble sleeping and therefore I hardly got any sleep either. He would sleep for a maximum of 30 minutes before he was moving about and crying again. He was also sensitive to noises and light.But he did start having some better moments probably on Tuesday. He would feel okay for a couple hours, then the fever would kick in again and he would feel bad. I had high hopes for Halloween. After a rough morning, our afternoon was going well. I felt bad because he had to miss his first school party, so I brought out a Halloween game I had made one year that is just throwing embroidery hoops over a witches hat. He had fun with it for a bit and even made it into his Buzz Lightyear outfit before he started feeling bad again. He did not enjoy trick-or-treating at all. The weather was nice on Thursday so I had him come out to help me take down our Halloween decorations. He also decided he needed to water my flowers for me. Earlier in the morning, I was cleaning all of the bathrooms and he came up and wanted to help. I sent him off to clean up the legos in the bonus room and he actually did it. I was so happy to see him up and doing stuff. It wore him out though and he skipped lunch (usual at this point) and slept all afternoon until we had to go pick up Jackson and Ellie. So we picked them up, dropped Jackson off at swim practice, went by the bank and then to my parents house to drop off some stuff and make sure they didn't have any packages setting out. Then we ran by our church's thrift store to drop off some toy donations. We still had a little time before we had to pick up Jackson, so we just played on the playground by the pool. Ellie was very excited that one of her classmates was there. And Lincoln was cautious about playing but did a little bit. His big problem was that he couldn't look up to climb up on things. So they played for a bit, then we got Jackson and dropped he and Ellie off at Little K. When we got home, some of the kids were out front playing and Lincoln wanted to play with them. So we did for a bit and then he came in and was asleep on the couch again pretty quickly. We made one last trip to my dad's office to have blood drawn on Friday. My dad was concerned that he his fever was still coming back and there was still swelling along his neck. He wanted to do a CBC again and then also check for the Epstein-Barr virus which is responsible for mono. I didn't tell Lincoln what we were doing. We ran a dish by the Vincents and took some drinks by the K-Life house for the Dodgeball Tournament. Then we pulled into the parking lot at my dad's office and he started asking why we were there. They didn't just do a finger prick this time, they had to do a vein draw and he wasn't happy about it. Thankfully his white count was down to 15 and we'll have to wait until next week to see what the other test shows. He then slept most of the afternoon after we got home. I finally had him sleep in his own bed Friday night. I felt bad, but I desperately needed some sleep and he seemed to be doing much better. He was getting used to sleeping with me. Andrew said he cried out a couple times during the night and came down once. Hopefully it starts getting better. He has been playing around with Ellie a lot today, which is great. Through this whole process I appreciated everyone's concerns and prayers for Lincoln. There were a lot of calls and texts checking up on him. Lots of calls from to dad to get a status update. Lissy watched the twins while I took Lincoln to the doctor on Monday and Tuesday and she and Molly took Jackson and Ellie out to eat on Monday night to get them out for a bit. There were also a couple people that insisted I accept their help. Kathy Powell offered to help us on Halloween and I told her we would be fine. So then she told my mom I wasn't going to accept her help so she would just order us pizza for dinner. And Leah let me know that she was going to make dinner for us one night and I couldn't tell her no. As much as I like to think that Andrew and I should be able to handle it on our own, I really appreciated everyone's help and that it eased our burden a bit.
 |
| The only thing he wanted to do on Monday-look at his tractor magazine and it only lasted a minute |
 |
| Feeling good and playing a little ring toss |
 |
| Enjoying the nice weather |
Even though what was going on with Lincoln took up most of our week, we still had the other four kids too. We tried to keep the kids in their activities. Ellie still went to dance and Jackson did swim practice a couple times during the week. Jackson and Ellie were very excited about Halloween although our night didn't last too long. They went to a couple of houses before we headed to our church for their Trunk of Treats. It was their first time doing this and it was a big success. They had around 1500 people show up. There were close to 100 cars with candy along with some fire pits for roasting hot dogs and s'mores. They also showed "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on the side of a semi-truck. I think Lincoln was overwhelmed with all the people and was ready to go home quickly. We put the twins in Lissy's soft wagon that she uses for photo shoots. They lasted for a little bit before Bennett had enough (I think it was the seal head always falling in his face). So we didn't get to stay too long but then Andrew took the older two out around the neighborhood for a bit when we got home. Ellie also enjoyed handing candy out to people after she was done and the twins enjoyed trying to find any candy that was dropped on the floor.
 |
| In their monster outfits Lissy gave them |
 |
| This was about when he started feeling bad and didn't want in the picture |
Thursday night Andrew and I were supposed to go to a fundraising dinner for our local crisis pregnancy center. We had a sitter lined up and everything but had to cancel since Lincoln still wasn't feeling well. We were really looking forward to it too. And we also ended up not doing the Dodgeball tournament this year. We were late getting a team together and couldn't find enough boys. I also thought we may be out of town if Kaitlin ended up being induced instead of having Lola earlier. Andrew was fine with it because that meant Jackson could do youth deer season. I feel bad skipping out on a K-Life fundraiser though. But now deer season is upon us. Andrew picked up the kids from school yesterday and took Jackson out for a little shooting practice. Then they left early this morning for the first day of youth season. I made the mistake of forgetting to print off Jackson's tag yesterday so Andrew was in the room at 5:45 this morning asking for some help in filling out all the information to get it printed. So now I am looking forward to the idea of having an extra hour tomorrow morning. I haven't heard much from the hunters except a really dark picture of Jackson's face after he decided to try Andrew's coffee. I think Jackson feels the same way about coffee as I do. With deer season brings the realization that Christmas is near too. It is all going to happen so quickly. Andrew has been gone a lot lately with work and trying to get stuff done out at the ranch and will most likely be gone a lot the next three weekends for deer season. And then it will time for Thanksgiving and Ellie's birthday. Then Amanda's family is coming back for the month of December and before you know it our twins will be celebrating their first birthday (no way!) and it will be Christmas time. My, how life passes by so quickly.
No comments:
Post a Comment