Courtney Update

So, here are a few funny stories about Courtney

Nose blowing:

So, with all of Courtney’s out of control runny noses, once and a while we will use an article of clothing to wipe her nose if we need to. Such as when we are taking her PJ’s off in the morning, and putting her clothes on, we may use her PJ’s to wipe her nose. Or when she is getting out of the tub, I have been known to use her sock to wipe her nose. This backfired on us when the other day she took off her sock and blew her nose in it. Yeah, our fault!

Then the other day I was feeding her lunch. I gave her a tortilla torn up into smaller pieces, as she really likes to eat tortillas. I look over and she is blowing her nose on a piece of tortilla. Now, I know I have never used food to wipe her nose, so that is not our fault! That was just funny!

Future stripper:

So, Hubby taught Courtney how to take her shirt off the other night at bath time. She got her own arms out, and pulled over her head. Yea! Except all day the next day she kept trying to take her shirt off. We went out to dinner with one of our cadets and his family and she kept trying to take her shirt off in the restaurant. Nice.

The next day she finally had forgotten about getting the shirt off. That was because she was taking her pants off all day long. It was impossible to keep them on her.

Finally she forgot about that and has been very focused on her socks. She is big into taking her socks off and putting them on her hands like mittens. She is very hard to keep socks on. I really hope that this phase passes soon, however, it is lasting a while.

She sure is cute! She is so talkative. She was lying down in her crib this morning singing “Happy, Happy, Happy” and clapping her hands. This is her way of singing ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’.

She also has amazed us two nights this week. At bath time the other night Hubby took Courtney’s clothes and diaper off and she sat on the potty and peed!! Now we know she is way too young to be potty trained, so we thought it was a fluke. Until the next night when I did the same thing and again, she peed in the potty! Who knows, we may just have an early potty trainer on our hands!!!!

Life has still been keeping us busy. For me, trying to do 2 jobs at work is very busy. Especially since I am getting to know what to do for marketing more and more. I have a load of stuff I want to do, but not a lot of time to do it in. The office manager side keeps me really busy.

Our new office is getting closer and closer to being done. We have carpet in there now. So they are finishing painting and then they have to do the final inspection. They also have a little million details to finish. My guess will be that we will be moving in the first week in March, when I am all by myself in the office!

Today I am going over to help our friends paint the nursery. These are the friends who lost their baby boy about a year ago. She is pregnant again, and due in about a month. But they are probably going to induce her here in a week or two. So, they have asked for help getting the nursery ready.

Hubby started teaching his first on line class this week. He is teaching Ethical Hacking for the University of Advancing Technology (UAT). He has about 10 students and so far so good. These are accelerated courses, so they last about 5 weeks each time. Hubby has mentioned several times in the past that he wants to teach. And it is a nice source of supplemental income.

This morning we are going to meet one of our cadets and his mom for breakfast. Not only are we close with our cadets, we are becoming close with their families as well. This is our junior cadet and we really like his mom. She was the one who did our Pampered Chef show last November.

Courtney is very into coloring now. At day care they use finger-paints a lot. We use crayons here at home. Nana bought her a little table and some LARGE coloring books and paper. Courtney love’s to color! And she say “color” and “I color” a lot. And she knows the color blue.

We are also in the process of switching her to whole milk. She is doing pretty good back on dairy. And pediasure is so expensive. It will be nice to get her off of it for that factor, and the factor that is has a lot of sugar in it. I don’t like that at all.

Yesterday Courtney had her first play date. We all went out to her friend Ashley’s house. She and Ashley have been in daycare together for about a year now, and the two of them are pretty inseparable. Courtney had a great time, and ‘called’ Ashley that night on her phone too.

Well, I must go work on some laundry before we head off to meet our cadet and his mom for breakfast!

Super Busy

Sorry for the long delay between posts. Life has been so busy. I took my first test at school, and didn’t do so well. But I did get 100% on my article I turned in. I have another article I am turning in on Tuesday, hopefully for another 100%. We have also started working on our final project, which is a marketing plan. It’s going to end up being 20-40 pages long, ugh. So, school work is keeping me busy.

Courtney has been hanging in there. She got over that nasty cold finally, only to start another a few days later. Plus she cut a tooth in the last 48 hours and is trying really really hard to cut another 3. I am hoping that once the 3 other teeth break through, that her nose will stop running. I swear when she is at that moment of breaking them through, her nose runs like a faucet. It’s the strangest thing.

Other than the teeth thing, she is doing well. Her vocabulary is amazing. She knows so many words, it’s incredible. Some are very hard to understand, but some are very clear, and get repeated a lot. Her favorites are apple and Elmo. Every fruit used to be apple. Now it’s either ‘apple’ or ‘berry’. You tell her a word once and she gets it. She really amazes me all the time.

Hubby is home for a while. Which is good, but he has so much work to do that when he isn’t at the office working, he is working at home. He has a lot of deadlines he has to meet soon. Plus, he is teaching an online class starting in two weeks. So, he may be here, but he’s unavailable a lot.

We had 3 cadets for the whole weekend last weekend. Then last night, one of our cadet’s parents were in town. They took the 3 of us out to dinner. It was very nice. Then they came over here to see where there son hangs out all the time. We had never met them before, but they sent us Christmas gifts and everything. Today our other 2 cadets called and said they wanted to come over. They are currently studying on our couch, and we are about to take a cookie break.

We had a different kind of Valentine’s Day this year. We had our friends and their girls over for dinner. Once you have kids, the purpose of Valentine’s Day changes a little bit. So, we had a nice dinner, the adults had some incredible steaks made by hubby. I had spent the night before baking, so we had cupcakes and cookies for dessert, too. The girls got lots of playing in. I enjoyed it.

This weekend has been busy. We went and walked around the mall yesterday morning. We tend to enter and exit the mall through Borders. We need to stop doing that. We are both suckers for a book store. We walked out of there $80 poorer. We got Courtney some new books, 2 gifts and we each got a book or two.

Then that afternoon, the weather was beautiful. So, I cleaned up the dog pen while Hubby played with the dogs in the yard. We also cleaned up and brought in Courtney’s little play set. So, now she can slide and swing in the basement. We got it inside just in time because it’s been snowing on and off all day.

Today Courtney didn’t let us sleep past 7am. Once we got up and ate breakfast, I cleaned for about the next 2 hours. Since we fired the maid service, it’s up to us for the cleaning. So, that was my exercise for the day. I worked up quite the sweat.

Post Surgery

Sorry it’s been so long since I last blogged. Life has been keeping me busy here. So, Saturday after Courtney’s surgery she was a little grumpy, slight runny nose, but overall pretty good. Then Sunday came. Her nose had turned into a faucet; she threw up twice and was extremely grouchy and clingy.

I kept her home from daycare on Monday. She certainly was not 100% plus she had an appointment to see her GI doctor mid morning. That sure was a fun appointment (said dripping with sarcasm). Once the GI doctor found out that Courtney is having a sleep study done, he ordered another swallow study and a PH Probe. A PH probe is where they put a tube up her nose and all the way down her esophagus until it almost reaches the stomach. It will measure how often she refluxes, and how high up her esophagus the reflux goes. She has to be in the hospital for that, and it is a 24 hour test. He wants to make sure the reflux isn’t causing the snoring. Our pediatrician is trying to get us a swallow study at the Children’s Hospital in Denver.

Tuesday she wasn’t much improved, she still had a runny nose and was developing a cough, but I thought getting her back into her routine might help. I dropped her off, and went over to the college to speak with my teacher about my upcoming test. About 20 minutes in to that, Day Care called to say she was running a fever of 101 degrees. So, after I was done meeting with my teacher, I went and picked her up. It worked out well that I had an appointment with my teacher that morning, because I had to miss class because of Courtney. So, I turned my assignment in that morning.

I also called the pediatrician’s office. We went in that afternoon. We didn’t see our regular doctor, but the other pediatrician we have seen a few times too. She said that Courtney’s ears look good! What do you know, the tubes worked! She does have a nasty virus though. And she noticed that Courtney is about to cut 2 teeth. So the poor kid is getting hit with a triple whammy right now.

Wednesday I did take her to daycare for a few hours. She managed okay. And then on Thursday I had to take my first test in 11 years. So, I dropped the kid at day care, and went across the parking lot and sat and studied for an hour. Then I again met with the teacher to get more help. Our test was all essay questions. He gave us a list of 10 questions last week and said he would pick 5 of them for the test. I did well on 4 of them, but the fifth one I just blanked on. So, I know for sure I missed one. But I also got my article back and I got 100% on it! That made me feel good.

So, here we are at Friday. I feel very exhausted. Hubby has been gone since right after Courtney threw up for the second time on Sunday. He will be home late tonight. Good thing, I need some rest. For some reason Courtney was up at 3:45am and I didn’t get her back down until 4:30am.

We were supposed to be moving into our new office space on Monday. That isn’t happening. There is still a lot to be done. Today I picked out the color for my counters. It is starting to look like we won’t be moving until March 1 if we are lucky.

Courtney is set up for her PH Probe on March 5^th, so I hope we aren’t moving that day or close to that date. Hubby and I are going to be wiped out.

Speaking of wiped out, I am going to go get ready for bed really really soon!

We made it!!!

Well, we made it to Courtney’s surgery. It’s been tough, but we made it! We left for the hospital at 5:30am. We waited until the last minute to get her up. We just got her up, put her coat on and headed out. We even waited to change her diaper until we got to the hospital.

Once we got settled in our outpatient room it was a waiting game. Thankfully they have little TV’s you can watch. So, we let her watch cartoons and Sesame Street. We know TV isn’t good for kids, but it was one of those instances where it really helped. Otherwise she would have been all over the place. She was so calm and still, in fact, that when the nurse came in 30 minutes before surgery she said that Courtney didn’t look like she needed the “magic drug”. Whatever drug it is they can give them to calm them down, Courtney didn’t have to have. This apparently also made things easier on the end side too.

We got her dressed in her little gown and the doctor and the Anesthesiologist came in to talk to us. Once we were set there, another nurse came to get Courtney. Hubby took her to the room. There was NO way I would have been able to leave Courtney there, so, Hubby did it. That was when I had to try really hard not to break down. Hubby was able to stay with her until she was asleep. Then he came back to our room and we waited an agonizing 30 minutes. Okay, agonizing for me, Hubby slept.

Then the doctor came in and told us how surgery went. Her tubes went in no problem. She did have mucus behind the ear drum. She did not have an acute ear infection in either ear, which is also good. Her adenoids were small, as are her tonsils (her tonsils stayed). The one problem he did see is that she has a shallow pallet. So, he had to leave part of the adenoids so she can speak clearly and make the K sound. So, they will probably grow back in the future. This is fine as long as her ear canals have grown enough by then to allow drainage.

Then the nurse came to get one of us to take us to recovery where Courtney was. They kept saying, ‘she’s a bit grumpy’. Thankfully I had pre-warning from past experience and friends that ‘grumpy’ is not the word to describe it. Try full out exorcism going on! Courtney was failing and screaming and fighting and drooling. The only way I knew it was her was because of her pink socks. Once I got in there, they got me a rocking chair, I sat down, they gave her to me and I had to football hold this screaming, kicking, flailing, drooling baby until they got some more drugs in her to calm her down. She fell back asleep for about 15 minutes and then woke up and started all over again, but not as bad as before.

Finally we were able to go back to our room. I held her while the nurse wheeled me in a wheelchair. We spent the next few hours in the room, Courtney slept off and on. She finally woke up and drank a large sippy cup of juice. She also ate 2 containers of Jell-O.

We were finally released at 11:30am. We came home and Courtney slept on the recliner with me for about an hour. Then she wanted to be in the lying down position so we put her in her crib where she slept for about another 45 minutes.

After that she was up. She was almost back to normal also. Nana came up to visit her and that made a huge difference. Nana had her laughing and giggling and singing. Eventually Nana left and Hubby came home from getting a haircut and picking up dinner. We gave Courtney macaroni and cheese. She is supposed to be on a clear liquid diet, but the kid was starving! She had eaten several containers of Jell-O, and some sherbet, and drank about a bottle of Pediasure and some Juice. So, we figured mac n cheese might be a bit more substantial for her.

She lasted until dinner was over, and then I took her up to bed. She was half asleep when I put after reading a few books. She has been out since. She had cried out several times, so I assume at some point we will have to intervene with her tonight. Her Tylenol runs out in about an hour. She might wake up and need more then.

I know both of us are exhausted also. I finished my assignment for school that is due on Tuesday, so that I can start studying for our test on Thursday. Hubby is working on setting up my new laptop that the company bought for me! So, I am going to take a shower and go to bed.

Thank you all for the calls and emails worrying about our little girl. She is doing well, and will hopefully only be better from here! (NO MORE EAR INFECTIONS, cross your fingers). We are very lucky to have so many good friends and family!