This afternoon, after eating lunch and playing with Cheerios and cars in his highchair, I picked up Alex and discovered a red blotch on his forehead. At first I thought he'd gotten bonked by something ... making for a concerned and not so happy mama ...
My first inquiry of Emmy and Sam got me no where, so I gave them a little time to remember what happened on their beds. Sam came down to tell me one of his cars might have bonked Alex on the head, and that he was sorry. I took that as a reasonable explanation, (although I hadn't seen the bonk happen nor had Alex made any - that hurt - sounds), until another little blotch appeared above his eyebrow... I started to watch it intently ... I played back everything we'd done, place we'd gone, things we'd touched, eaten, sprayed, washed, that day, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing new ... and so, I started to take pictures of the blotches, just in case I needed a second opinion on whether or not this was serious.
By 3 pm Alex finally drifted off to sleep for his afternoon nap, and when I laid him down, I found more blotches, bigger blotches!
I changed the lens on the camera, took more pictures, and called GR for that much needed, calm down he's probably fine, and yes call the doctor just to make sure. I pilled everyone in the car, snapped one last picture of Alex, put the camera in the car, and called the Dr. in route - amazingly they had a 4:15 appointment. Alex cooed and played the entire drive, and wouldn't you know that by the time we got there (3:55) all the blotches were gone. Every single one of them, gone!!
But I had the pictures, with time stamps of when they were taken.
I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to take a pictures of my child and email it to my Ped, and say, Is this serious? do I really need to come in? is it worth the 45 minutes there and back for you to look at my child? I know this isn't practical, but ...
To my surprise, the Dr was glad I had pictures to show him! Looked at them, studied them and felt very confident to assert Alex had hives. He's also pretty sure Alex's body is reacting to a mild cold he has - odd I know, but Dr. says it happens. I also learned that since his hives were isolated to his face and neck, not all over his body it probably wasn't something he ate. So we're watching him, and when he has another outbreak (which he did after we got home from getting some dinner) we're giving him a bit of benadryl, and monitoring his breathing so we can jump into action if things change.
So I'll be taking more pictures of my kids weird bumps, and taking the camera with me to Dr appointments ... just in case.
Spring Break, Friday, 16 March - Sunday, 25 March 2007
My Grandparents turn 90 this year. In January, my dad and his siblings had a 90th birthday party for both of them and all my Aunts and Uncles were there and a few of the grandchildren where also in attendance for this celebration.
I debated long and hard about whether or not to take the children for a short weekend for this celebration, and finally decided we'd wait when we could visit them for a longer period of time and really allow my children a chance to know and experience their great-grandparents. I decided that spring break made the most sense, and so we put it on the calendar, gave ourselves a budget and started to prepare for this trip.
Southwest has amazing ticket prices from KCI to Las Vegas ... but when it's spring break, that isn't the case. When flying was out of the budget, I decided driving would be the most economical way to get from Kansas to Nevada ... 1800 miles.
We left home Friday morning a little after 7am (CST) and pulled in to my grandparents driveway around 10:30pm (PST). I learned a few things along the way:
- A $3 ice bucket makes a great "puke bucket" and will now accompany us on every major road trip.
- Samuel's car seat washes up quite nicely.
- I-70 through southwestern Utah just might be worse than western Kansas - there isn't anything for 100 miles!
- Don't buy gas in Beaver, UT it's atleast $.40/gallon more than the towns before and after it on I-15. Instead, stop and have a cone at the Creamery - you get a huge, cone for less than $2 - yummy!
- The Junction City Doubletree has the most comfortable bed I think I've ever slept in other than my own.
- I now know how to drive down a mountain, very slowly, in a spring snow storm.
- When it's late at night and you have four sleeping babies, staying in a hotel on the ground level where the room door opens to the outside and you can park your minivan right in front of the room, is so nice! Under other circumstances, I might have moved on, but this was exactly what we needed, and they served a full hot breakfast.
- CO and KS are incredibly long states.
- I much prefer making this trip in two days instead of three. We went in two days and took three days to come home ... three days in the car was more than any of us wanted to endure, so next time we'll push a little harder, and do it two.
- Ice can last in a styrofoam cooler for three days.
We had a fantastic trip and I'll be posting at least one more round of pictures of all the things the children helped with in Grandfather's garden. But here are a few pictures from the trip:
The car is packed and we're ready to shove off:
Valley of Fire National Park in Nevada
At a rest stop around Glenwood Springs, CO:
