Some advice

When I discovered that Rae had lice I immediately got online to find out everything I could on taking care of it. Almost everywhere I read people were saying that the plastic comb that comes with lice shampoo is not a very good comb and won't work very well. So I was bummed when I went to Walmart and discovered that they didn't have any other combs. That night I was picking through Rae's hair, using the stupid plastic comb and after about an hour I sent Roy to Walgreens to see if they had any better combs. He came home with a pretty decent one that I have been using the past two days. But that night I got online and ordered one from Amazon that got AMAZING reviews. We have Amazon Prime, so I paid the extra shipping to have it sent faster. I am so peeved, because it didn't get here on Wednesday like it was supposed to.

Anyway, so I used it for the first time this morning and WOW! It is an amazing comb! It got out eggs that I never would have known were there. Seriously guys, after spending hours and hours just to pick out a few eggs, this comb got them out within minutes! No matter what treatment you decide to go with, the key to getting rid of lice is to get EVERY SINGLE egg so that they don't hatch and make more lice that lay more eggs! So, this comb is a must!

So, now for my advice: BUY THIS COMB! Buy it now. I know, your kids don't have lice, and they may never get lice, but this comb is only sold online, so you won't be able to go out and buy one if your kid does get lice. And you will want it immediately! And you will want to give it to your friend when her kid gets lice. You WANT to have this comb on hand! Guys, I am so serious. It is the best 10 bucks you will ever spend. It will save you time and money. If you don't have Amazon Prime, let me know and I will order it for you so you don't have to pay for shipping.

By the way, Rae got to go back to school yesterday. Our school's policy is that there can't be any live lice. Some schools have a no nit policy. Guys, have you ordered this comb yet? Do it! :)

Walking

Isaac has been taking more and more steps these days. Rae and Blaise were a lot more interested in walking but I think Isaac realizes he can get to stuff faster if he crawls. And there's a lot of stuff he has to get to quickly before we snatch it away! He has way better balance than the other two did. He can go from standing to sitting easily and can squat and hold his balance to pick stuff up. I haven't been able to get a very good video of it because he's so grumpy and sick lately, but here is what I have so far. Rae helped me out!



And, just for fun, videos of Blaise and Rae when they started walking. Blaise didn't have very good balance, he would just go as fast as he could to get to something to balance on. Rae was the same way, but the video I have of her is after she had been walking for a while. Sorry about my big ol' bum in the background of Rae's video. Oh, and at the end of Rae's video (taken with the webcam) she sees herself on the computer screen at the end and it is so cute!

Pictures courtesy of Rae and other random stuff

Rae wanted to take some pictures the other day, and even though she has a digital camera of her own, it's just not nice enough quality for her to be able to snap pictures quickly and be able to see what she is getting. So I let her use my camera and she headed into the bedroom and did a little photo shoot with the boys. I can't believe how well they both cooperated!

Isaac is wondering if she is done yet.

The other day Rae declared that it was "orange day", so lunch consisted of mac & cheese, baby carrots and orange punch. Rae wore her orange shirt and Blaise wore his orange apron.

We got a massive amount of snow Sunday during the day and then all night long. Then the wind picked up and blew the snow all over the place. This is our neighbor's roof -awesome huh?
This was the pile of snow after our landlord came through with his snowplow and dumped it at the end of the sidewalk.

So there is a ridiculous amount of snow outside and freezing temps, so I guess it's a good time to be stuck inside with lice. Yup, Rae has lice. Bleh. She'll be staying home from school all week and we have already run out of fun activities. But I feel like we've got the situation under control and hopefully by the end of the week we will be non-contagious!

Spoke too soon

I enjoyed the 4 or 5 days of Isaac sleeping well. Now he has a cold and is teething, so not only will he not go to sleep without nursing, he won't even go to sleep with nursing! Also, I've been introducing more solid food and it has made him gassy at night and two mornings in a row he has pooped at 4am. Ugh. His naps have been about 30 minutes long, if I'm lucky. He's so tired, I'm so tired!

Just wanted to mention it because last week I talked about what a lovely sleeping baby he had become! It was nice while it lasted! Babies with colds are just so sad, so I'm okay being his human pacifier for now.

Isssaaaaacccc!

This guy is such a rascal! His favorite place to be is under the computer desk.





Anytime we track in snow he tries to eat it. Well, this time it was packed down into the rug, so licking it was the way to go! So gross!

Ergh!

This happened last year too. The St Louis temple is closed during our spring break....AGAIN! This time around I really wanted to go to St Louis because Disney on Ice will be going on during spring break. How perfect would that have been?? I am so incredibly bummed. Oh well, maybe we'll just go to St Louis during spring break anyway. Or, maybe my parents can fly into St Louis and we'll pick them up and go to Disney on Ice? Sound good mom and dad??

Has anyone ever been to Disney on Ice? I bet Rae would LOVE it - she's obsessed with ice skating.

I'm so bad....

Last year I did this post - ya know, the pay it forward one? Of course I haven't sent my people their handmade item - let alone figured out what the handmade item is going to be!! But I am still going to do it! I wonder if Katie is going to do it...hmmmm.

No, Blaise is a boy.

If you looked at the recent pictures of Blaise and thought his hair was ridiculously shaggy, you are right. I've been meaning to give him haircut for a long time. In the hospital everyone kept thinking he was a girl based on his name (seriously?) and I was thinking that the shaggy hair probably didn't help. Tonight we finally got around to giving him a good buzz. Although I like his beautiful long hair, I definitely prefer a nice short buzz.

Everyone in the hospital commented on how much he looks like me. I think he really has my cheekbones. Man, I love seeing this boy happy and healthy!

Should have kept it simple

Last Friday, in the weekly newsletter that is sent home, Rae's teacher asked that the kids make containers to put their valentines in. It could be something simple, like a paper sack, or you could go all out. Well, I immediately had an idea and I knew it would be fun to make, but time consuming, so we started right away on Friday afternoon. She was supposed to take it to school on Tuesday so they could fill it before the party on Thursday.

So we worked on it Friday and ran out of some supplies, which I got that evening. Saturday Blaise was sick all day, so we didn't get much done on it. Sunday we all stayed home from church, so we got most of it done, but ran out of supplies again. Sunday evening I went to Walmart to get more medicine for Blaise and I was naughty and bought more tissue paper. Of course Sunday night landed us in the ER and hospital. Monday night Roy and I switched places at the hospital at 11pm and when I got home I stayed up for about an hour to finish the box and attach suckers to Rae's valentines. Of course Tuesday morning school ended up being canceled because of snow! Ergh! But at least the project was done! It would have been a fun project if things hadn't been so crazy on the weekend!




Everyone knows that Jeppsons don't just send a paper sack to school. Here are couple of examples from my sister's blog. Once my sister did a project of a paper mache head full of spaghetti for brains. Hmmm, 8 kids + creative projects = not a lot sleep for my mom! I'm glad I'm way less creative! (Oh, and it looked better before I sent it to school. Some of the tissues fell off at school and it got a little smushed)

Pictures

Okay, I promise this is the last of the hospital experience - I just want to get it all documented.

This was taken either Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. As you can see in the other pictures, he wore the same outfit for quite a few days :)

Monday morning. His fever had finally gone down, so he had a little more energy and more color in his cheeks.

Not interested in his breakfast! (Those scrambled eggs were so gross!)

Tuesday afternoon - feeling a lot better.

Annoyed with his IV.



Wednesday afternoon, IV out, just waiting to go home!

Back to normal

Blaise is home now! Woo hoo! He has to get lots of rest and stay away from other kids and crowds for a little while so that he doesn't catch anything and has to take antibiotics for a week, but other than that things are getting back to normal! Roy and I aren't feeling so great, but I think that getting some decent rest will be enough for our bodies to heal themselves. We are definitely being careful about not sharing germs around here!

Rae is a little out of sorts....craving attention, not being very mature, not sure how to act. Hopefully she'll get back to normal soon.

Isaac knows we "abandoned" him several times and is holding a grudge. Unfortunately and fortunately, this experience forced him to start sleeping without nursing. It's unfortunate that it had to happen without mommy and daddy there to take time and comfort him when he needed it, but that's what happened, so it's nice to see the silver lining and it's nice that he is sleeping better now.

I think Blaise enjoyed being the "only child" for a couple of days and hanging out with us all day - coloring and watching tv. He liked eating in bed and getting attention from pretty nurses. When it was time to leave today he said he didn't want to go home. But he is also enjoying being home. He's just extremely tired and moody and still doesn't have much of an appetite.

You know when you take your kid to the doctor or the ER and you are sitting there in the waiting room looking at your kid that doesn't seem to be sick at the moment and part of you wants there to be something wrong with him just because you are there and feel dumb if nothing is wrong? And of course more of you wants him to be just fine so you can go home. Blaise kept falling asleep in the ER, so he looked totally peaceful and un-sick. Of course I'd prefer that we had been able to go home that night, but he really was sick, so it is good that I took him. I wish I had caught it earlier though. Bleh.

Things I learned:

*It might be hard to ask for help, but people like to help and you can't do everything alone, so just ask.

*Doctors really don't mind if you call on the weekends. They are "on call" - they expect to get calls and answer questions. And sometimes they can tell you a lot just by hearing the symptoms. Blaise's doctor predicted pneumonia. I mean, she didn't say he had it, she just said it could be that or several other possibilities. She said to try ibuprofen to see if his fever would go down (we had been using acetaminophen) but not to be worried about taking him to the ER and to at least bring him into the office immediately in the morning. Well, before I could even try ibuprofen, his fever hit 105 and I took him to the ER. I tend to try to avoid taking the kids to the doctor for every little fever or cough, but I'm going to be calling the doctor or advice nurse a lot more often now.

*It is okay to lose your patience with your kid even if they are hooked up to an IV. There is only so much coloring and tv that a 3 year old can stand and when they start to act like a bored 3 year old it is a sign that they are getting better.....which means you can get annoyed with them :)

*Hospital food is not nearly as tasty when you haven't just given birth and are starving. And the scrambled eggs are inedible no matter how much salt and pepper you put on them.

*I hope that the next time one of my kids is hospitalized the hospital has a better tv watching system. The remote had one button - you push it to turn it on, change channels going up and then it clicks off when you get to the end of the channels. Lame.

Ummm, I lost whatever train of thought I had. Man, I'm really tired. I'm like zoning out in front of the computer. It's not even 7 yet, but I'm going to bed!

Update on Blaise

I spent most of the morning with Blaise and his fever went back up to 103 but then they got it back down to 98 by 1 or so this afternoon. After his fever went away he finally woke up and ate a little and let me change his diaper and clothes. Then he really perked up and even colored some pictures. It was really great to see my boy smiling and talking again! A very kind friend took care of Rae and Isaac for 4 hours so that Roy could teach his classes. She is the first non-family person to babysit Isaac, so I owe her big time! Roy is sitting with him now and we are going to take turns through the night. We still aren't sure how long he has to stay, but when we know we'll let ya know!

Breaking News

Blaise went to the hospital tonight with a fever of 105°. He has pneumonia and strep throat, and will be staying there for a while.


Update: Fever's gone now.
Update 2: He woke up this morning right before a nurse came to take his temperature and blood pressure, and was yackety-yacking to her about using his toy doctor's kit at home with Rae, and how they don't have a fancy wheeled table to put breakfast on. Looks like he'll be fine.

It's Tang-tastic!

Okay, it's not actually Tang, but close enough. He broke through the foil top and was really enjoying the orange tartness!

"Sometimes you think people are judging you when really you are just judging yourself and driving yourself crazy in the process!" ~A.R.W

We hadn't been making much progress on potty training, and I was completely stressed out about it. Then I realized that the method I used with Rae might not be best with Blaise. Rae was eager to please and less spacey, so she got the hang of it pretty quickly, but it still took her till she was almost 4 1/2 before she wasn't having accidents. I decided to take a different approach with Blaise.

Now he wears pullups everyday instead of underwear. Progress is slow, but at least I'm not following him around watching to see if his butt cheeks clench and asking him if he needs to poop. I was getting him to poop on the potty occasionally, but most of the time it would end up on the floor on in his underwear. Since I put him in pullups he hasn't even attempted to poop on the potty, and I don't care! He will tell me every once in a while that he needs to pee, but he usually pees in his pullup too. I don't care! I know he'll figure it out eventually, and if he doesn't figure it out on his own then I'll push him when he is a little older. For now he has a sticker chart and when he pees he gets one sticker, and if he ever poops he'll get two stickers and his candy bar. When he fills up his chart he gets to get a toy from the dollar store.

And I'm much more relaxed! If I hadn't changed my approach, his candy bar would have been long gone by now - because I would have been desperate enough to eat Hershey's!

I'm glad he didn't choose something tastier!