4 years, 4 months, Halloween and a Hospital stay.

This is going to be a long post..you've been warned!



Graham turned four this past week! Hard to believe that he is that old! I've been joking with him and telling him he needs a walker because he's so old...he just laughs...glad someone thinks I'm funny!! We didn't do much for his birthday (because I'm not Martha Stewart), but he did have a party at school. He wanted an army themed party (thank goodness because I don't like character themes...I like simple), so I got camouflaged plates and napkins and made camo cupcakes. Should have taken a picture of them, but I didn't....however, they turned out pretty cute! He had a great time! We go to the doctor this week to see how big he is....which is not very...the kid's little. Good thing he's so cute! :) Unfortunately he also has to get his four year shots....not going to be fun since he really knows what a shot is this year.

Harrison turned four months (almost a month ago, oops!) and he's had a big month, to say the least. It all started about 3 weeks ago when he got his first fever...not surprising since he's in daycare, but I took him to the doctor anyway to make sure it wasn't his ears. His ears looked great, but she wanted to do a CBC to check is white blood count...well, that came back pretty high, so she decided to give him a shot of antibiotic, do a urine culture and see us again the next day. We did all that and the next day he was back to his happy self...no more fevers! yea! Well, then 4 days later he gets another fever, so I take him back to the doctor and sure enough he has his first ear infection. We started antibiotics and he recovered nicely from that...until last week when he woke up with a bug bite on his lip. It looked fine all day and night. I put him to bed the next night and when he woke up the right side of his face was swollen and he was running a fever. Again we go back to the pediatrician (who I love) and she took one look at him and said "time to go to the ER"....kind of what I was expecting, but still frustrating!

This is what his lip looked like before I took him to the ER...when we got there the redness and swelling was all the way up to his eye.

One of the perks of working at a children's hospital is that when you go to the ER they see you fairly quickly. I waited for maybe one hour before I saw a doctor. Pretty good if you ask me! He looked at Harrison and said "hope you packed a bag, because you will be spending a couple of days with us". He was admitted for IV antibiotics, but the next day they decided the now abscess was getting worse, so they consulted surgery to see about it being drained. Surgery came by and said that the antibiotics weren't going to be enough to get rid of the infection and that it would need to be drained. So off to the OR he went. When he came back he had two drains in his lip and cheek that would continue to drain the infection for a week. He was sent home the next day. He feels SO much better and doesn't even notice the drains. He will have them pulled on Friday and hopefully go back to "school" next week.


This is right after surgery. He was so sleepy!

It was very weird being on the "patient" side of things in the hospital. I now can somewhat relate to the things that our patients go through during their many hospital stays. Needless to say, I was very glad to get back home and sleep in my own bed.



We made it home from the hospital just in time for Halloween! Graham went as Luke Skywalker and Harrison was Yoda. They were pretty cute if you ask me! Graham really liked going trick or treating and dressing up. This was the first year we actually took him trick or treating in our neighborhood. He had a blast! My mother-in-law made Harrison's Yoda hat/ears (didn't it turn out great!!) and I made the robe and Graham's jedi robe....so don't look to close at those!