Finally Healthy?

Oh, this has been a looooooong month.

Nora has been sick since the first day of summer vacation, which was 15 days ago.

Within a few days of her starting Amoxicillin, the strep and sinus infection were improving and she was starting to feel a little bit better. By day 8, however, she was getting worse. She would start the day feeling sort of OK, but by afternoon she would start spiraling downward again. All of her original symptoms came back, and the sinus pain was so bad she just laid on the couch and cried. I called the doctor on call at 9:00 one night because she had a temp of 102 and was inconsolable. She called in a prescription for Azythromycin and said that if she wasn't dramatically better in 48 hours, she had to come back in.

At 48 hours, she was laying on the couch crying, and she could feel her head throb with each heartbeat. Children's Advil and a hot pack eased her pain, and I intended to call the clinic in the morning.

And then we all woke up, and I looked at my watch and it was 10am. And Nora was all smiles, with her dimples popping out to say good morning. I don't know what happened overnight, but her fever finally broke and she started to actually get better.

And so we baked a cake! Because feeling better after being sick for 15 days is worth celebrating.

Chocolate on chocolate-that'll make anyone feel better!

And since she was feeling so good, she thought it was a good opportunity to spray all of her hair cobalt blue. I guess that's another way to celebrate.

Nora almost busted a gut laughing at the deep blue color of the bath water after she washed her hair twice.

I myself laughed until it all drained out and I had to get out the Soft Scrub. Then it wasn't quite as funny.

And we completed the celebration by putting on our Halloween pajamas and climbing into bed to snuggle.

Today is the first day in 2 weeks that Nora has felt good, hasn't asked for Advil, and hasn't had a fever. It was pretty phenomenal.

See ya, resistant strep! We won't miss you!

Hola

Hello! I am still trying to recover from my first semester back at school. School ended almost a month ago for me, and I have spent that month playing catch-up at home. You know-cleaning things that had been neglected, doing boatloads of laundry, etc. Nothing that interesting. Finals week was exhausting! I can't handle going on 5 hours of sleep anymore. Ugh! However, I got 100% on my bio final, I got 82 out of 80 on my physics final (2 extra credit points), and I set the curve with the highest grade in my communication disorders class, so I can't complain. First semester back and I got a 4.0! I guess this old lady's still got it. At least, I got it when it comes to freshman-level classes. Ha!

Then I chaperoned a handful of field trips the girls took for school:

Kindergarten tug-o'-war at the all-day picnic. Dana's class won! Woot!

Kindergarten trip to the zoo-another all-day event.

Nora brought her own camera to the nature center, so I have no photos of that trip. Oops.

Zak graduated on Wednesday (HOW did that teeny-tiny, under 4-pound preemie grow into a 19 year-old man?!) and I made his cake:

I was a little disappointed with my very rusty cake-decorating skills, particularly with royal icing, but I am my own worst critic-nobody else seemed to notice the flaws. For example, nobody but me could see that I accidentally broke off the Greyhound's tail and reattached it. Also-because I am rusty, it took twice as long to make the East logo as it would have 10 years ago. I also decorated about 65 cupcakes for the party. I used 2 pounds of butter and 6 pounds of powdered sugar to make all of the buttercream and royal icing. Yikes!

Now that all of that is over and the girls are also on summer vacation, Nora is sick.

This morning, after 3 days of strange symptoms and a temp of 101, we took her in and she tested positive for strep. Sore throat was nowhere in her assortment of symptoms. Leave it to Nora to get sick in her own way.

We are hoping that she feels better soon so we can enjoy the gorgeous sunshine and the joys of being on summer break!