Emergency Room Update

William is finally better although it has taken several days. Everyone in the family got the stomach virus, although the duration was much shorter for everyone else. Now that he is finally better, I am going to be washing everything in the house and steam cleaning the carpets (if you're not sure why I'm doing this, go back to the entry titled "Emergency Room Visit" and it will all become clear).

First Day of Pre-K!

Sarah Kate started Pre-Kindergarten today. She was so excited. It turns out that she has the same teacher (who she absolutely loves) that she had in the 2-year old class. Several of her friends are also in her class again.

Although I know it is healthy for her to be able to seperate from me without a problem, I was kind of hoping for a bit of a hesitation or a worried look, but instead she marched right to her chair, pulled out her markers to start coloring and said "Bye mom!" I sort of stood there, unsure of what to do next. Luckily, William helped me pull it back together with his screaming because he was afraid I was going to leave him at school too.

After school, Sarah Kate reported she had a great day. In fact, she's already filling up her social calendar. She and her friend promised to tell their moms that they wanted to have a play date together soon.

Emergency Room Visit

A cautionary note: for those with a weak stomach, you may want to skip this one.

It started out as such an ordinary day. But, after William woke up from his nap in the afternoon, he didn't want a snack. This was the first sign that there was a problem because he never turns down a snack. He ended up eating a little apple, but appeared lethargic. After an hour or two, he was getting fussy and didn't want to play. I was straightening up a little bit when he started yelling "mama." When I saw him, he had thrown up and it was all over him. He was scared. He drank some juice and then about 15 minutes later, that came up. Michael came home and William continued to throw up multiple times and refused to eat or drink anything. He was starting to look pale and did not look well.

After a couple of hours of consistently being sick, I am getting worried. (Did I mention that now it's only an hour away from Sarah Kate's open house for Pre-Kindergarten and she is all dressed up and ready to go?) So, after packing a few toy cars, a book, and an extra change of clothing for William and Michael, Sarah Kate and I follow Michael and William to urgent care just a couple of miles down the road.

Sarah Kate and I go to the preschool open house (which is about 5 minutes away) while Michael waits with William. When we come back, the doctor has determined he does not have the flu, but he needs to go to the emergency room because of his age and the fact that he is continuing to throw up everywhere. Michael's t-shirt is soaked with throw up and I am the next victim as I unsuccessfully try to use the pan they gave us at urgent care when William gets sick in the car.

Upon our arrival at the emergency room (about 8:45pm), we meet the nice cleaning lady who told us how cute William was. It was a good thing that we made her acquaintance as we needed her assistance about 5 minutes later when he threw up in the emergency room. She was very kind as she cleaned it up, and as she started back down the hall she was quickly summoned again as William had projectile vomit that landed all over Michael and I. After seeing the doctor, they wanted to see how William tolerated a little bit of juice. As you can guess by now, that did not go well.

At this point, Michael is holding William and I look at him and ask Michael if he is ok. He says "yes" and I look at his shirt and pants that are soaking wet and his leg that has something that is dried and purple running down it (which I assume to be a popsicle that we tried earlier with William). I tell him that I'm referring to his clothing and the the throw up all over him (Michael used his extra shirt I brought him to clean off William). He appears oblivious and said he doesn't even realize how dirty he is and he doesn't care. At the moment, I was reminded that he is the absolute best dad in the whole world and I am so lucky to have him in my life.

William is given I.V. medications, to which he doesn't even put up a fight because he is so exhausted, and within 10 minutes he appears so much better. By the time we get home, it's a little after 12:00am and we all quickly get to sleep.

Now, it's time for round 2 this morning as Sarah Kate has been sick on her stomach!

Sarah Kate is 4!

It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted because I have been caught up in the frenzy of planning a 4 year old birthday party. The amount of time, planning, and effort that go into a child's party is mind boggling, yet I made it through another one.

About 12 children and their family's attended "Sarah Kate's Carnival Party" at the Maher Home. The carnival included games (ring toss, treasure hunt, ducks, bean bag toss, soccer kick, whac-a-mole) and prizes as well as crafts, tattoos and face painting, a bouncy house, and child's size roller coaster. Three dozen balloons decorated the carnival area along with festival flags. Inside we enjoyed carnival style hot dogs and chips and ate ice-cream cone cupcakes while some children participated in karaoke. Michael provided the party music mix which included old-school "carnival" tunes along with Sesame Street, Laurie Berkner, and Choo Choo Soul.

Sarah Kate wore her light pink ballerina princess dress with her party crown. When we got ready to sing "Happy Birthday" I said, "one, two, three..." to which William then added "four" which got a lot of chuckles. Sarah Kate beamed when everyone sang to her and she blew out her candles. Each child left with a balloon, a bag of cotton candy, and their prize bag.


As much work as it took, seeing how great my Sarah Kate felt during this special day makes it all worth it. However, when she said, "Mommy can I have a carnival party next year?", I paused with a look of fright on my face and quickly distracted her so that I didn't have to answer. Who am I kidding? I know I'll do it all again. And so the countdown starts, 364 more days.

Since she goes to a Private Christian Preschool, Sarah Kate is easily influenced by the word of God. Needless to say, I have used this to my advantage (I'm pretty sure God wouldn't mind).

We like to play with cardboard building blocks. Sarah Kate loves to build high towers, boats, and houses. Being a typical almost 22 month old, William loves to destroy Sarah Kate's wonderful creations by knocking them down. She becomes very frustrated and is constantly trying to find ways to secure her designs from their certain fate at the hands of her brother. She usually ends up yelling at him and getting really angry. To try to diffuse her anger,I explained to her that William was only doing was he was instructed to by God. I told her that God tells babies before they are born that they are to knock down any structures that they see (blocks, legos, etc). As a baby starts to grow bigger, they slowly forget what God told them and by the time they are preschoolers they start to build their own structures without destroying them. Luckily she believed it, and I even point out that now that he is a little older he hesitates to destroy it (because he can't quite remember what God says), but then he remembers and topples it down. Here is one of her latest creations (Michael is holding William back behind the camera).

Dance Camp

After wearing her light pink leotard for almost two days straight Sarah Kate finally got to start "Princess Dance Camp" today. Pooler is small, so I shouldn't have been surprised when we recognized most of the girls at the camp. When the teacher asked for anyone who knew Sarah Kate to raise her hand, almost every girl did which made Sarah Kate feel immediately comfortable. She had a great time and said they learned about "improv dancing" (pretending you're various things through music- such as animals) and they learned how to hold their arms when doing ballet. She is very excited to return tomorrow! We are off to buy "real" ballet shoes tonight!

My big boy!

While on vacation at my parent's house, William decided he was ready for a "big boy bed." Michael and I had very little to do with this decision as William simply refused to sleep in the pack 'n play. I had firmly believed that he should be in the crib until well after two years old (Sarah Kate was almost 3). I believed this in spite of the fact that he had climbed out of his crib on at least 3 occasions. After one restless night of screaming in the pack 'n play at my parent's house, we decided to let him sleep in my brother's bed with a safety rail (my mom was so prepared). He slept through the night and continued to sleep well in the bed for the rest of the visit. Upon returning home, we got the toddler bed out and William grabbed his puppy and "Kiki" and didn't look back. The next day he was extremely proud wanting to "hang out" in his bed even when it wasn't nap time. Today I purchased some car/truck sheets and a pillowcase which William helped put on. This week Michael will take down the crib and I definitely feel nostalgic as we no longer have a baby in the house.