Kherington 3.5 years old update

Kherington is 3.5 years old!  She is such a cute, independent girl.  She loves doing crafty things and 'helping' me in the kitchen.  She is a great big sisters.  I know I've said it before, but she will not take naps when I tell her to, but if she disappears for awhile I usually find her asleep somewhere.  I think the funniest time she asked me for a big carrot and in the minute it took me to peel it she had relocated to the hallway and fallen asleep on the pillow. 

What else?  She...

• will try most food
• loves peppers and hummus
• loves playing with friends
• navigates the computer entirely on her own
• still wears a diaper at night (hoping to cut that out sooner than later)
• tells me her daddy said it was okay when I tell her 'no' (most of the time daddy's not even home to say yes or no)
• love chocolate
• has branched out from her pink, pink, pink color loving
• is still learning her letters but has A, B, E, K and R down
• still calls daddy 'dadoo'

Sibling Photos

I love this photo sequence.  I think it fits my kids so well.  Haha.

The kids like hiding in our closets and this time they found daddy's ties.  Kevin was wearing a red/black one, but took it off to concentrate on the camera :).  Then tonight for FHE after a short lesson (think 1 minute), we sang "Popcorn Popping" and made popcorn.  They both love to help and love to eat.

I might not always be the most patient mom in the world, but we try to have fun.  I like to be able to look back through these pictures and smile.  I have some awesome kids :).

Kevin's 18 Months

Kevin is a happy little man unless he is told 'no' then the world ends and he screams, kicks, cries, and flails.  

Food - He loves to eat.  He knows where the snack drawer is, can open it, and will bring me one snack after the next until I say yes to something.  He never takes the orange bowls/plates because those are Kherington's so when I ask him to get a bowl/plate he runs and throws aside everything until he find a blue or green one...this means that our pasticware cupboard is never organized.

Bed - As of a couple days before he turned 18 months, he is out of the crib and into the bottom bunk of the bunk bed.  He doesn't yet know how to climb the ladder, but can get on and off the bottom bunk by himself.

Sleep - He goes down pretty well for nap time and typically naps a good 2 hours.  He normally doesn't go down until 12:30 or 1, but if we're driving around he'll fall asleep at 11.  After nap he likes to cuddle with his mommy.  However, during the night time or in the morning, he want his daddy not his mommy.  He loves his monkey (named Theodore).


Nursery - YES!  Today was his first Sunday in Nursery.  What a happy day for mom & dad...not so much for Kevin.  He screamed the first hour (like you could hear him anywhere in the church scream) so Ryan ended up going in with him but was fine for the second hour.  Hopefully he starts to love it sooner than later.

Other - He loves music, dancing, baths, the park, dogs, cars, trains, bananas and his sister.  He is very independent (just like his sis) and we love him!

Yet another Kevin the climber picture, plus Kevin the artist and Kevin n' friends :). I watched a friend's little girl for two mornings one week and it was fun. It is amazing to me how much easier kids are when they have a friends around.

Passing the Bug

Kherington started our family with the stomach flu.

Then I got it for two days.  I don't normally catch what the kids have, but apparently it wasn't my lucky day.  I can't remember the last time I felt so weak.  Not only did I throw up multiple times (I will do almost anything to not throw up) but my whole body was in pain and I had zero energy.  I laid on my bed while the kids did whatever they wanted.  I had to go get Kherington from school and I couldn't believe how much energy it took to get out the door and walk 3 minutes to his school.

Next up was Kevin.  Ryan had an all day/night team building activity a couple hours away on a Friday night and I thought I'd get a lot of stuff done.  Kids went down then about 30 minutes later Kevin was pounding on the door.  I opened it up to a great big whiff of throw-up.  I'm not sure how much of it was actually the flu instead of having something large stuck in his throat from not chewing before swallowing.  He came out of his room ready to play and I let him while I sprayed down his bedding and did a couple loads of laundry get get it all clean.

To finish it up Ryan got it and just his luck he got it on a weekend so he didn't get to use his free sick days.

Now that we've all been sick, I'm hoping we are done for the next year :).

Visiting Teaching and Throw-up = Memories Made

Kevin had his fun and Kherington was not to be left out...she got sick, but not nearly as bad/scary as Kevin's seizure.

We had some friends over for lunch/playing right after school.  They left, Kevin was already down for nap time and Kherington had what I like to call 'quiet movie time'.  She can watch a movie but has to be quiet :).  All was well.

I was going visiting teaching so we pulled Kevin out of bed (he woke up happy) and got both the kids in the car.  Kherington fell asleep on the drive over.  Not a huge shocker.  I woke her up when we got to our destination and we went inside and up to the playroom.  She wasn't acting like her normal self.  She went potty on her own while I was chatting.  Then came back and laid on the floor complaining about her tummy.  It might be a bad habit, but for he most part when my kids whine I try to ignore them keep doing what I'm doing.  Finally, I knelt down and scooped her up.  I had almost got her head over my shoulder and she threw up...in her hair, all down my front and back, in my purse (which was unzipped and on my shoulder), and on the rug.  I had to stand straight up without moving my feet so I didn't step in any of the throw up which was a challenge in itself.  The shower room was just down the hall so I took her there...we were both cover in throw-up and just our luck, there was a HUGE spider chilling in the bathtub.  It was so big it looked fake.  Our friend killed it for us and we got Kherington undressed and into the tub.

This wasn't exactly the visiting teaching experience I was going for.  Then Kevin was whining so much that I put him in the tub also.  They were happy, so I went to pull out the lesson from my purse...well, it was covered in throw-up.  Haha.  This just keeps getting better.  No worries, our friend took a couple pictures of this whole experience.  Oh the joy of making memories :).  We'll see if she ever lets me come back to visit.

In the end, Kherington ended up having more stuff come out both ends before we left.  Luckily she was fine on the drive home.  The rest of the day she's just been laying around watching movies and occasionally throwing up her lemon lime soda.

I'm hoping we didn't give any of our lunchtime friends the flu and that now that each kid has had their sickness for the year we can be done until next year

ER visit #4 (Kevin's Febrile Seizure)

We have now been to the ER 4 times. Once at Edith Cavell for Kevin's high fever when he was only a couple weeks old (I deliver him at Edith Cavell which is why we took him there).  Then Saint-Luc is closer to us so we went once for Ryan's kidney stone, once for Kherington's weekend ear infection and now once for Kevin's seizure.

Yeah, that's right, I said seizure.  It was pretty scary.  Here's the details:

Kevin woke up a little warm and had been teething so Ryan gave him some Tylenol before he left for work.  We met up with some friends at the nearby sand park.  The kids played for awhile like normal.  Then a school group (well, daycare since it was a holiday) showed up.  Kevin was at the bottom of a tunnel slide and a much older kid came barreling down and the collided.  He was okay enough to cry his way across the playground to me.  After that he was pretty cuddly.  He just wanted to be held (not normal Kevin at all).  When he did get down he wanted me to go with him.  Not his normal self, but understandable considering the collision and teething.

We stayed at the park for a good 4 hours (the rain held out for the most part).  When we got home both kids were exhausted so we all climbed in my bed for a nap.  I had my arm around Kevin.  He was sleeping next to me and I was getting a couple things done on my laptop.  He kept jerking out of his sleep then going right back to sleep.  Then suddenly his body stiffened and he started shaking.  His eyelids were half opened, with his eyeballs rolled back and shaking too.  Seizure are pretty scary and even more so when you're holding the person who's having it and have no idea what is going on.  I scooped him up and sat on the edge of the bed holding him, then walked down the hall and sat on the couch trying to think of what to do.  He finally stopped, lay still for a second then groggily opened his eyes.  I called Ryan and told him to get home.  I wasn't sure what to do so I gave him a couple spoonfuls of yogurt (maybe not the brightest move...I'm not sure why, but I did) and some infant ibuprofen.  I kept him awake even though he just wanted to cuddle up and go back to sleep.  Ryan got home, I woke Kherington up, grabbed our passports and Kevin's health info book and we hurried to the hospital.  Ryan went in with Kevin while I did the paperwork.  One of the first things the lady said to me was that I should have called an ambulance and if there was a next time that's what I should do.  Not exactly what I needed to hear at the time...and it didn't help that I couldn't even think of what number I would have called...for anyone reading in Belgium you would call 100 for an ambulance.

I switched with Ryan and he took Kherington out to the waiting room (no kids allowed in the ER area).  They hooked up an IV to his hand, drew blood, took a urine sample and had me give him a syringe of medicine...and all this while the young doctor (that's what he called himself...pretty much not a nurse but the doctor's assistant) was asking me questions in broken English.  They said it would take an hour get results.  The normal doctor came in and told me they weren't very worried about Kevin since he had a temperature when he had the seizure.

I passed the message on to Ryan who said he would drop Kherington off at someones house and come back.  I didn't realize how literally he meant that.  When he came back I asked where he took her and he responded, "It worked out perfectly.  I had just gotten Kherington out of the car with her stuff and was knocking on the door when they pulled into the drive way."  I was like, "You called on your way over, right."  Nope.  I am very very thankful to have friends (and new friends at that...they've only been here a month) who will take our kids at the drop of a hat.  The mom took Kherington and sent Ryan with some food (best chicken skewer ever, grapes and water...all of which came in handy at the hospital).

Ryan got back.  In total we waited 2.5 hours for the results...not the 1 hour we were told.  While we were waiting for the results, Kevin decided he was done with the little stickers they put on to hook him up to the monitoring machine and peel them off himself.  He was tired (he cried a lot when they were poking and prodding him and crying makes you even more tired) and wanted to leave but other than that beginning to be normal Kevin again.

Everything was fine.  They said he had a very very very minor viral infection.  I also learned that the seizure was a Febrile seizure that is cause from a spike in temperature.  So it's not so much how high the temperature is, but how fast it goes up.  There is no long term damage associated with this kind of seizure and they are fairly common in toddlers.  A friend told me to think of the seizure as the body resetting itself.  Much scarier for me than for him.

After they told us the results, they said the hospital needed to keep him for 24 hours (overnight), they were cleaning a room for us and someone would be down to take us up.  Well, 2.5 hours later someone finally came.  Let me tell you, Kevin felt fine at this point and just wanted to leave.  He had his shoes and socks on and was wandering the halls trying to find the exit.

When we finally did get up to the room, it was huge and had an awesome view of Brussels...I could even see the Atonium in the distance.  Kevin and I watched the cars for awhile which he loved.  Ryan had left to get things for staying overnight.  He is pretty awesome and had no problem staying with Kevin (side note - I don't like hospital.  I can deal fine with a lot of things, but medical problems are not my strong suit because I don't understand anything and feel so helpless.  I really didn't want to stay and am thankful that Ryan didn't have problem with it).  I'm not sure what happen in the US, but one parent stays if a kid has to stay overnight.

I went to pick Kherington up.  We hadn't even gotten out of the driveway and Kherington was asking when she could go back to play (you think she missed us?).  While we'd been at the hospital she got to run wild with 3 little boys at an amazing house with a huge yard an new toys, go to one of the boys soccer practice and run around there, have spaghetti and chips for dinner and stay up late watching the Octonauts.  I'm definitely not as fun as exciting as they are...maybe they'll rub off on me :).

Back at the hospital, Kevin got hooked up to some fluids for the night.  During the night he pulled out the IV....I guess he was really done.  They didn't make him put it back in.  Ryan and him wandered the halls from 2am - 4am, facetimed with family and Kevin downed the entire container of grapes (only food he'd eaten).  By 11am the next morning Ryan called to tell me I could come pick them up.

If you saw Kevin that day you would never have known anything had happened.  I am very thankful that everything is okay.  I hope it never happens again.  On the bright side, Ryan, Kherington and Kevin are all in the system at the Saint-Luc hospital if anything else does happen.

Football Funday and No Car Sunday

Some awesome new friends invited us to watch a football at the American School.  After some tasty sandwich's at their place we headed over to the school.  They have 3 little boys.  I love watching Kevin play with other boys and with them I feel like he just fits right in :).  The kids had a fun time dancing to the band's music and running around barefoot (no dogs allowed = no poo to watch out for).  At one point Kevin snatch one of the boy's hats...a UW hat.  Got me thinking maybe I should order some kid size hat for him.

We've had a couple new families move in recently all of which have primary age kids and we are loving it!

Here they are getting their groove on to the band:

Sunday was no car Sunday for Brussels. Ryan had woke up at 4 to watch the BYU game with a friend so he drove to church for his meetings (the church is literally across the street from the border of the no-car zone).  The kids and I walked up to the tram and rode that in.  We ended up meeting up with some other families on the tram which made it more fun.  I came prepared with suckers...we had to wait 10-15 minutes for the tram (we were extra early) and those kept the kids entertained the entire time.  After church we stuck around til after Ryan's meetings were done so he could tram it home with us.  Here he is with the little munchkins: