Scary morning...

Saturday, April 6

Luke and Kitty both had their first soccer game of the season at 8 in the morning.  I took Luke to his game since I help coach the team and DH took Kitty.  The rest of the kids were left at home with M&M in charge - and they were all asleep when we left.  After the games Kitty and DH went home and DH went back to bed because he wasn't feeling too great.  I stopped at the store to buy some balloons for Kay because it was her birthday.  After I got home I found all of the girls downstairs watching the older ones play video games.  I asked if MJ and Kay had eaten breakfast and the answer was "no" so I had them come up to eat.  I gave MJ and Kay some cereal and then turned away to pour them some milk into some cups.  When I turned back and glanced at MJ, she was slumped over in her chair and her whole body was twitching.  I quickly ran over to her and grabbed her and picked her head up and I could tell it was full of cheerios and she wasn't responding at all and I could tell she was having a seizure by the way her body was jerking.  I told Luke to run up and get dad and he came down and grabbed MJ and tried to figure out if she was breathing or not.  We don't think that she was and she was turning very pale so I picked up the phone and called 911.  It was a very scary few minutes before we could visibly tell that she was breathing and coming back to reality.  The paramedics finally made it to our house after she was breathing and recovering.  They thought that she felt warm even though she only had a temperature of 98...  They think that she had a febrile seizure which is one of the more common causes of seizures and is caused by a sudden spike in temperature.  I am not convinced by that diagnosis though because even though she had been sick and we had a sickness going through the family, she had been better for the last couple of days and never once felt warm to me that day.

It took MJ a couple of hours to fully recover from this episode.  I was quite nervous the whole day watching her.  She was kind of babbling a little just before the paramedics arrived, but by the time they got to the house she was whining/crying and could not be comforted for a good 20 minutes or so.  When the paramedics left I took her upstairs to change her diaper and get her dressed and she was still crying through all of that.  I picked her up and tried talking to her and asking her what was the matter.  She finally started saying, "I want ..." but then she would say something that I couldn't understand.  It took a few minutes before I finally figured it out.  She was trying to say, "I want to go with you."  She saw that I still had my jacket and shoes on from the soccer game that morning and she thought that I was going to go somewhere and she didn't want me to leave her.  (And Blondie had told me that MJ had woken her and Kay up that morning crying for me and wandering around the house asking for me.  Maybe she woke up not feeling quite right...)

This all happened right at the beginning of the morning session of General Conference so we missed the first half hour of talks.  When we made it down afterwards I just held MJ on my lap and she fell asleep in my arms.  After doing some looking on the internet I found some other things that can cause seizures that would make more sense to me: one of them is dehydration and the other one is a low blood sugar level.  Since we are not sure what happened or how she was feeling when she woke up that morning it is hard to say what caused her seizure.  One thing I am very grateful of though is that it didn't happen while the kids were home by themselves.  And I hope and pray that she will not have another one...  This was definitely not an experience that I want to have to repeat.

If anyone else sees someone go through a seizure, here are some things that I have learned:

-  There really isn't much you can do when someone is having a seizure.
-  The main thing you should do is to make sure that there is nothing around them that can hurt them while their body is seizing.
-  It usually will resolve itself in a couple of minutes.
-  A seizure is somewhat equivalent to a computer shutting down.  The brain for some reason has too many impulses sent to it all at once so it shuts down and then reboots.
-  The shaking is the body receiving and carrying out the last of the commands to the body from the brain before it shut down.
-  Usually someone having a seizure does not stop breathing.  (MJ's case may have been different because she was eating at the time.)
-  When the body is seizing, the jaw locks and you will not be able to pry it open to get food out if there is anything in there.
-  When the seizure has stopped, you should lay the person on their side.

Lingering sickness

DH ended up staying home from work Wednesday through Friday last week.  He felt so-so on Wednesday, but stayed home more to help me out since I wasn't feeling well.  Then he took a turn for the worse on Thursday and Friday and still isn't feeling quite 100%.  Amazingly M&M managed to make it through without getting sick at all.  Blondie also didn't get it too bad and only felt a little sick on Wednesday.

Sick, tired MJ

Wednesday, March 27

Here is the picture of MJ crashed on her bed on the first day she was sick.  I came out of the shower and found her curled up on her bed without any sheets on it.

The Taming of the Shrew

Thursday, March 14

Luke's 6th grade class put on a modified version of the play "The Taming of the Shrew" by Shakespeare.  They worked on it for the last several weeks before they went off track again.  Luke played the part of Hortensio.  DH worked from home that day so he could come with me and MJ and Kay to watch and videotape the performance.  Here are a couple of pictures of the class afterwards:

Luke is in the back row on the right.  He is wearing a dark reddish vest with a black pirate hat (as the girls' called it).

Exhausted...

Monday, March 11

From a long day at work:

From a long day of play:

P90X

Thursday, March 7

DH has a coworker who has gotten him doing P90X workouts during their lunch break.  DH has been really into it and so we bought the workout DVDs as well so he can work out at home too.  It is a series of 12 DVDs with a different type of workout on each one.  This day DH wanted to do one of the workouts at home and so some of the kids tried joining in with him.  It was funny to watch - especially MJ who was trying to do the same moves as well.  I think the workout they are doing in these pictures is one of the stretching DVDs:

And then there is Kay who thought it was fun to play around everyone - in these pictures she is crawling around between DH's legs.

Fun outside!

Thursday, March 7

We had a long, cold winter and it was nice to take the girls out finally to play outside when the weather warmed up a little.  It took MJ a few minutes to get warmed up and feeling comfortable on the trampoline again.  They started out with taking turns jumping while the other person laid down in the middle of the trampoline and got bounced around.  The girls loved it as you can tell from their faces.  It's fun to hear these two giggling together.  They then took turns sliding down the slide.

Kay thinks it's fun to go down the slide sideways.

Valentine Cookies 2013

Friday, February 15

I had the cookie dough all ready to make some Valentine Day cookies but for one reason or another we didn't get around to it until the day after.  Better late than never though - and this is one of my favorite sugar cookie recipes.  Plus the kids enjoy decorating them.  My parents were stopping by our house to drop off a few things for us right when we were decorating them so they helped us out as well.

MJ just wanted to eat the frosting.  I gave her a decorated cookie and she just licked the frosting off and then asked for more.

Down to one...

Well, I woke up feeling sick yesterday and ended up not making it to my infusion.  Kay and Kitty both threw up twice in the morning and all of us except for DH (who decided to work from home) and M&M (who was at school), just laid around most of the day not doing much of anything.  All of us woke up feeling much better today with the exception of DH who is now officially sick...

Congrats M&M!

A couple of weeks ago M&M auditioned for the Wind Symphony group for the high school she will be attending next year.  This is the top band group at the high school and is composed mostly of juniors and seniors.  The high school teacher came to her school and auditioned anyone who was interested immediately following school.  M&M just found out yesterday that she made it into the group and so did a fellow classmate of hers who plays clarinet.  She is super excited!  The high school teacher has been excited to have her come play for them ever since he heard her play last year when she was in 8th grade.  They have not had a bassoon player the last year or two at the high school.

Realizations

Back in January I was getting MJ dressed in the morning and noticing how big she is getting.  When I thought about it for a minute I realized that this is the longest that I have ever been without being pregnant since I became pregnant with M&M!  The biggest age gap between any of our kids is 3 years which means that Kitty was 2 years and about three months old when I got pregnant with Kay - and MJ just turned 2 1/2!  And later this month I will be taking Kay to kindergarten orientation!  Next year for half of the day I will just have one child at home which hasn't happened since M&M was a baby.

RootsTech 2013

Thursday, March 21

Back in October, DH sent me some info about the RootsTech genealogy conference being held in March of 2013.  Through his work I was able to get a discount on the conference fee and decided to try attending the Thursday (opening) day of the conference.  This is a genealogy conference put on each year by the church and it used to be just technology related, but this year they wanted to expand it to have more classes available to anyone that wanted to attend.  The conference used to be put on in conjunction with BYU and they have condensed that part of into just one day, Friday.  It is a 3 day conference but with my kids and my parents' schedules I thought that Thursday would be the best day for me to go.  So my mom came over in the morning to watch the girls and DH and I took Trax downtown and spent the day at the conference.  We purposely attended different classes to get the most out of the day but we were together for the opening keynote speakers and then walked to City Creek Center for lunch.  It was a fun day and I am definitely looking forward to possibly attending more things like this in the future as my younger kids are getting older.

Three more down for the count...

Last night was quite the adventure in our house.  Kitty wasn't feeling well all day and just laid around not doing much or eating much.  In the afternoon she went to bed and fell asleep.  I needed to change her bed after she woke up and just when I had the new sheets on and she climbed back into bed, she proceeded to throw up all over herself and the bed and also got some on the floor and Kay's bed on the bottom bunk (as well as some toys that were on the floor).  She ended up taking a shower while I changed everything once again...  She had to wait until the mattress cover was clean again before I would let her go back to bed.

Luke spent the afternoon at a friend's house and when he got home he started not feeling too well.  He didn't eat much for dinner and had the chills.

Around 1:30 in the morning, Kay came into my room and told me that she had thrown up in her bed.  It was all over the sheets and pillow and all over herself and in her hair.  I had to strip her bed and then give her a quick bath to get her cleaned up.  When I got her tucked back into bed with a bowl this time, I took all of Kay's bedding and clothes downstairs to start yet another load of wash...

I then woke up around 5:30 and went and checked on the kids and switched the laundry to the dryer and started another load.  Luke woke up while I was doing that and told me that he had thrown up around 3:00.  Luckily he made it all in the toilet.

So today we don't have too much going on other than me doing some stuff on the computer and switching out some clothes for the spring season.  Hopefully the rest of us won't get anything, especially M&M who goes back to school tomorrow.  The rest of the kids are off-track for the next 3 weeks.  Although Luke was complaining that he always seems to get sick while they are off-track!

I'm not sure if this sickness is a continuation of MJ's sick spell last week or if it something new.  Hopefully she won't get something again though!  The older kids are much easier to deal with when they are sick...  At least we made it through the Easter holiday with no sick people!  (I will post pictures of the Easter dresses soon.)

Hopefully my washer and dryer can take a break here shortly!  They have been working over-time the last week.

DH debated staying home today to help out but I told him I could handle it and he would probably be better off at work away from all the sick kids.

Sick kids, piles of laundry (mostly bedding) and bowls for sick kids.

Sick MJ

Last Wednesday, MJ woke up around 5:30 in the morning calling for me.  I went into her room and picked her up and brought her into bed with me.  She went back to sleep for a little bit and then I woke up to the sound of her dry heaving a little - not a pleasant way to wake up...  Nothing really came up and then she was hungry and wanted to eat some breakfast.  She didn't eat too much and then when I went upstairs to take a shower she was complaining that she was tired.  I told her she could lay down if she wanted - not really thinking that she would do that though.  After I got out of the shower I went into MJ's room to put something away and found her sound asleep on her bed.  I then spent the next hour or so helping Kay clean her room and then MJ stumbled into the room.  At first she just wanted me to hold her but then she got down and started playing a little while I continued to clean.  After a little bit she burped a few times and said, "Mom, I'm burping."  That was a sign to me that I quickly needed to get a bowl for her so I ran downstairs and by the time I came back up she was in the process of throwing up all of her breakfast.  She was pretty miserable the whole day and just wanted me to hold her.  She threw up a few times throughout the day and had some diarrhea as well.  She went through several changes of clothes and I hardly got anything done at all - which was unfortunate because I was in the middle of finishing up all of the Easter dresses for the girls!

MJ had a slight fever on Thursday and didn't have much of an appetite so we encouraged her to drink water whenever she would.  I ended up canceling a soccer practice that I was supposed to be holding that evening.

When MJ woke up on Friday she actually had a smile on her face for the first time in a few days.  It was nice to see her getting back to her normal self!

Her sickness has really thrown off her sleep schedule though and she was up until around 2 a.m. on Friday and 1 a.m. on Saturday because she has been taking naps at odd times.  She is also a very whiny kid when she is sick and it has definitely tired me out.  And unfortunately she will very rarely allow anyone other than me to hold her or comfort her or do anything for her...

(I have a picture of her that I wanted to upload with this blog post but I unfortunately left my camera at my parents' house so I will upload it later when I get it back.)

District Honor Band

Thursday, February 21

M&M was invited to play in the District Honor Band this year.  Each school in the district is allowed to send a certain number of students and somehow they work it out with the other teachers so that they have the correct number of each instrument for the group.  They were given the music ahead of time and then they met twice during school hours to practice and then had their concert the evening of their second rehearsal.  The director seemed like he would have been a fun person to perform with and M&M enjoyed having another bassoon in the group.

Here is my low-quality, ipad photo that I took:

If you click on the picture to view a larger version of it, M&M is sitting on the right side of the stage, about the 3rd person from the right on the second row.