7.19.11 - A birthday weekend, a trip to Urgent Care and a new addition....

This weekend, we had our 3 nieces and Dustin's younger sister over for our annual birthday weekend!  Since most of the kids birthdays fall between summer and the first part of fall, we like to host a birthday weekend during summer and take them to the water park.  We had a great weekend of crafts, silliness, games, movies, food and fun!  They were here from Friday to Sunday night, so I am exhausted (especially since we had some "incidents" occur **see below), but a good exhausted.  We played til we dropped!!

Friday was an indoor craft day, and we created Duct Tape Bags.  This was an easy, no-sew method to make a cute tote bag, and you can find instructions on instructables.com (a GREAT site, with instructions on how to create ANYTHING you can possibly imagine!)  Here's a few photos of what the girls came up with:

Designing girls!

Work in process...

The finished product!!  SO cute!

Crafting made us hungry!!  Helping make mini-pizzas - Yum!

Saturday we spent the morning decorating the covers of journals with cute paper and magazine cutouts.  I used to do this a lot back in my high school days and thought it'd be fun to have the girls do their own...since school starting is right around the corner!

Decorating their journals

Saturday afternoon we headed to our community pool for an hour or so to take a dip in this Texas hotness.  Boy, with no rain for I don't know how long and over 100 degree weather for as long as I can remember, water activities are the only outdoor outings we take right now!  Of course, we did have a small "incident" happen.  Liam went under water the first time...on accident.  I was standing right next to him in the 1 ft kiddie pool area, and I think I was watching the girls play on the other side of the pool for a second.  The mom sitting across from me caught my eye and she was looking down at Liam.  I immediately looked down to see Liam UNDER water with arms flailing...I scooped him up and he looked surprised and gave a few good coughs and then was fine.  Talk about a split second, although it all felt slow motion....Luckily I was right next to him, but he is out of my peripheral vision when I am looking straight ahead.  Talk about the guilt...now I have a hand on him at all times!!


And since we are on the topic of "incidents", Liam also decided to pull his GTube out of his tummy on Friday night....Yes, this has NEVER happened before.  I FREAKED out.  Especially since we didn't know exactly how long it had been out OR where the darn thing was in the house....AY yi YI!  He was in the kitchen while I was making dinner, and I looked down and saw a stain on his shirt, resembling the stains he used to get around his tube when he was tube fed...I was thinking, thats odd, we haven't given him anything through his tube today...Hmmm, and his shirt is laying really flat right there....I ran over to him and pulled his shirt up and sure enough, no tube, just a hole with NOTHING leaking out.  On the inside, I was panicked, but trying to remain as calm as possible with all the girls over.  I ran to get the extra tube set we have while Dustin took him to his changing table.  After a few attempts to try to insert it, it wasn't going in easily....Dustin and I debated if we should just keep it out (meanwhile, Liam is screaming and crying...) but quickly decided to try to get it back in.  The stain wasn't quite dry on his shirt yet, which told me it may not have been out too long.  But those holes I've heard close up SO quickly.  Finally, with slight pressure, the tube popped back in.  I hate that I even had to apply some pressure....I was worried I punctured something....But, Liam seemed fine, had stopped crying, and the tube seemed to fit like it always did.  Dustin found his old tube shortly after on the floor in the living room, balloon still inflated.  We swapped them out real quick and Liam was good to go.  He was quickly back up and running around again as if nothing happened. 

And if that wasn't enough to panic me for the rest of the weekend, Liam developed a pretty bad cough Sunday.  Sunday morning he was coughing a little more than normal, but given he's been on treatments, and acting fine, no fever, etc. I was just hoping maybe he's getting up more stuff now from his lungs.  Sunday, we all went to the water park.  We stayed about an hour or so in the morning, came home for lunch, and then the girls and Dustin went back to the park while Liam and I stayed behind for Liam's nap.  We met them back up at the park for another hour after nap time, and then came home.    I noticed when we went back to the park, after Liam had his snack, he was constantly coughing.  Not choking or unable to catch his breath or anything, but just coughing a lot to where we all noticed.  My first worry is that he aspirated some water between Saturday's incident and today at the water park or even that his tube was in wrong somehow.  When we got home, he was coughing a lot.  Halfway through dinner, I made the decision to take him to Urgent Care to get him checked out (sat check and x-ray to rule out fluid build up on his lungs).  Of course, Liam maybe coughed TWICE the whole time we were there....And the doc said his lungs sounded great, very clear, no rattles.  I asked for an x-ray anyways, which came back clear as well....It was worth it for peace of mind.  When we got home, Liam's cough was still there but had subsided considerably from earlier in the day.  That night, however, it reared it's ugly head and he was up coughing every 30 minutes to an hour all night long.....LONG night to say the least.

In the past, when Liam has had his tube changed out, I remembered it was always followed by a couple days of sporadic vomiting...This led me to believe he may be refluxing and that the tube change out might have irritated his tummy and caused a flare up.  So yesterday I called our Pedi's office to see if they could phone in a prescription for some Prevacid.  So that's what we are trying now.  Monday, his cough was still pretty bad during the day.  He slept slightly better last night, I think he only woke up 4 or 5 times, as opposed to 10-12 times the night before.  I'm gonna see how tonight goes, and if he is still waking up coughing, I'm taking him back in.  Hopefully, prayerfully, the Prevacid will work and that is what is causing his constant cough.

So our weekend was very EVENTFUL to say the least, AND, we have another sweet adorable baby girl who joined our family this weekend as well!  Dustin's sister Crystal and her husband Andrew welcomed their first child this past Saturday, miss Ella Jean!  We are so excited for them and our family!!  What a blessing!

Welcome sweet Ella Jean!!