Sunny, Sunny AZ!

Well, we finally made it down to AZ last night. Our 2 day driving trip was pretty uneventful, and the kids did such a good job while we were driving through the day for the first time, instead of through the night like when they were younger. Silje didn't get car sick this time, which helped too. Elias has been feeling great, and so have all the other kids, but Knut started feeling sickish at the end of the first day driving. He woke up with a slight fever in the morning, but alas, we continued on, and here we are. Knut is napping a bunch and is starting to recover. The kids should be napping, but they're having a tough time as they are still so excited.
I have just a few pictures to show. I'm sorry I wasn't that great at taking pictures during the drive. But here we are, and I'll try to remedy that. My sister, Heidi, and her son Jack came over this morning, and she took some pictures that I'll try to get later. I didn't get the camera out until she had already gone home to put Jack down for his nap.

Here's Silje and Grammy hanging out and reading books. I'm not sure who's having more fun! Silje asked Grammy if she had any dress up clothes, and Grammy lemented that she did not. I asked mom if she still had my old flower girl dresses from when I was little, and Mom was so excited to see them get some use again. Here Silje is wearing the dress I wore to my mom's cousin's wedding, Pam and Stewart. It's not a really good shot of the dress, though.

This picture of Knut is crooked because I don't know how to fix it on my mom's computer. Knut slept, woke up and read, and is now sleeping again. We're all hoping he feels better soon, especially Papa who has saved some T-Bone steak just for Knut for this visit that is marinating now.

This is a picture of what I saw before naptime today. If you will notice, there is a firetruck on the ground. David had asked me earlier if he could play fireman. I assumed he meant he wanted to play with the very annoying and loud firetruck, so I told him to go play it outside. As you can see, there is the firetruck, but no David. I was beginning to get worried, so I called for him, looked all over the house, all over the back yard, until I looked on the side of the house and found this...

David playing fireman. I hope the neighbors don't mind that David watered their lawn too. He was out here by himself, got the hose hooked up by himself, and started "putting fires out" all by himself.

Here's Elias just playing on the floor, and very happy. As you can see we're back in disposables for vacation...but it's really not a vacation if you have to wash diapers!

We frosted and sprinkled sugar cookies for Valentine's Day today, which I'll try to get pictures of for later. We're just having fun hanging out today! We're so glad to finally be here after so much delay with Elias in the hospital, and making sure he was up for the trip! Thank you all so much for your prayers.

Another hospital stay...

Well, some of you may know...we're not exactly in Phoenix yet for vacation. We were supposed to start driving down there Friday morning, but that didn't exactly happen. David had a bad cough all weekend, and on Monday, he started having a small fever. On Tuesday morning, he started out of the blue screaming at the top of his lungs...saying that something was biting his ear. I wasn't able to calm him down for over 30 minutes, and he kept screaming more and more, so I called our doctor, and packed up everyone to head on down to the clinic. Poor David screamed the whole way to the clinic, in the waiting line in the reception area, in the waiting room he screamed and fought me as he wanted to go home, and in the examination room, I had to pin him down so that the doctor could look at him. Hysterical is an understatement. So turns out he had an ear infection in both ears, and we were sent down to the pharmacy where David screamed for 20 minutes while they filled his prescription. Fortunately, Silje and Elias were great for the trip, so I didn't have to deal with multiple kids crying.

Elias started having a bit of a cough around that time, and when on Tuesday night he started running a bit of a temp, I decided I would bring him in the next day. Normally I would just wait out a cold, but with our trip coming up on Friday, I didn't want to risk him getting an ear infection while we were on the road. Wednesday morning I mentioned to Knut that I wanted to go back and get Elias checked before our trip. He mentioned I should make the appointment in the afternoon because he thought he might be done with work early and could stay home with the other kids. We also noticed at this time that Elias seemed to be wheezing as well.

So just before 3pm, I got Elias in to see our doctor, and he did have an ear infection in one ear...and RSV. For those who don't know RSV is an infection in the lungs that can lead to pneumonia and other serious health issues. Babies who are born early like Elias are more likely to get it. He strongly recommended that I check him into the hospital for observation. There's no treatment for RSV, but they can give oxygen and nebulizers (sp?) (which is basically asthma medication in newborn form) to make them more comfortable, in hopes that the body will fight it off better on it's own.

So we went into the clinic on Wednesday afternoon, and we just got out today, on Saturday early evening. I was able to stay with Elias in the hospital. (Yeah for pull out recliners!) And Knut stayed home and looked after the older two. Wednesday night/ Thursday early morning was the worst as he was trying to cough up some mucus, and they had him on oxygen, but he was really struggling, and the doctor was debating whether to send us to Fargo or not. But he got better with some strong coughing (what a strong boy I have!), and the next day he just had to be on oxygen, with no major episodes, and while I thought we'd be home on Friday, he had another...much smaller episode Friday morning, so I knew they'd probably want to keep an eye on him longer. Today (Saturday) he was on room air all day, and did fabulous so they said we could come home. He still occationally runs a small temp (below 100) but the doctor is pretty confident that he's over the worst of it.

So the trip was postponed, but fortunately we were planning on driving, so flights didn't have to be changed, and our doctor said that we'll be able to make the trip sometime next week. He actually said that Phoenix weather would probably help him feel better quicker anyway. Elias will have a cough for awhile...probably a month or so, but he is over the worst of it. I think getting some fresh, warm air will help!

I'm sorry I don't have any pics of his hospital stay this time, and blame Knut that it wasn't posted earlier. I asked him too, but after entire days alone with Silje and David, I think he didn't want any jobs on top of that!

For those who knew, thanks for your prayers. Elias was so good for all of it. He got quite the reputation among the nurses as a very smily baby! I think we have a charmer on our hands!