THE BIG 2!

Building his taco-his bday dinner request.

I have to say it was not the most exciting bday for the family but G didn't seem to mind. At this point in October Charito and I had pneumonia. T had an ear infection and C was getting eye drops to prevent an eye infection bc I was freaking out about pink eye in T's class. There was no energy flowing through the house other than T n G's. The plan was to sneak out with T to drag my sick butt to Toys R Us. I so did not want to leave the comfiness of my home but I was determined to make it out for a bday present for my lil man. As T and I snuck out G whined to come along. Of course, he could! How was I to turn him down when it was his bday afterall. I think I was in that crazy busy place for almost 3 hours! Primarily in the Thomas aisle, of course. Over $200 later and we were headed home. I never thought in a million years I would spend that much on Thomas (remember how much I didn't USED to like him n all his pathetic friends?) but things have changed.

The rest of the day was low key. Naps. Taco Bell. And a candle in his Oreo cookie bc that is all I had energy for. Guilt was all over me that day but I just couldn't muster up all the mommy goodies I had in store for that little boy.

The boys had a great day as far as they knew. They were content and smiley and playful all day long. Total brotherly love. It was the best thing out of the day seeing my view from the couch gave me a front seat to it all.

The worst part of the day for me-I didnt get to share in the low key festivities with my family at all. We couldn't expose them to our pneumnia and other illnesses. And the only reason Mamac n Titamel were in on the action is they just happened to stop by as we were blowing out candles.

It was difficult for me. I was grateful to have what I did in that candle-lit moment but felt like I was missing out on so much more. Like I was living my bday vicariously thru G's moment. You just couldn't help but wonder.

The rest of October (which I dont even recall if I ever blogged about) was spent recovering:

The day after G's bday (Monday, Oct 11th) G slept the whole way to treatment. As he woke he all of a sudden sounded horrible. That was true wheezing without a doubt. He was NOT like that the day before, not even before he went to bed the night before. They immediately ran a chest xray. No fluid-thank goodness-no mommy n daddy's pneumonia. But his lungs were inflammed. We tried a nebeulizer treatment but it didn't improve much. I could tell on Kwon's face he did not know what to try next. Belmonte was paged right away. They were not sure if he would even respond bc he was on rounds in the hospital. Nurse Jennie placed GRAYSON in the page. Within minutes Belmonte called back and said to meet him down in his department in 10 minutes (Have I mentioned how much we love this man?!). After seeing Belmonte he determined that the chest xray indicated a respiratory infection tweaked even more so with G's asthma. It had returned. We knew it was more of a seasonal thing but did not think we would have to deal with asthma meds again til winter. Well this respiratory infection with the asthma component made all this sneak up on us overnite. So we left with a 4 day steroid to kick the infection's butt and were to continue his asthma meds until the weather improved (Spring). We needed to return the next day for Belmonte to listen to him one more time and see if it had improved even the slightest overnight. It did a bit but he was still wheezing. The steroid we were given did it'sjob by the end of the next day and the wheezing was gone by Wednesday. Belmonte even called Friday to check in on us (He is so good to us).

That week I had been to one or more doctors 5 days out of that 7 day week, including Saturday. Whether it for a kid or myself. It was tiring.

Other than the drama of G's respiratory infection and spending all of Oct nursing ourselves back to health it was an uneventful weekend. The weeks flew by. So fast and with so many germs that I did not see anyone from my side of the family until Oct 29th. Amy and Ayden were able to visit. It was much needed. I saw friends only bc they took on the duties of taking T back and forth to school. And we saw Mamac n Papac n Titamel bc they often dropped by with food or cleaning assistance.

And considering he had a respiratory infection that could have dangerously spiked to pneumonia having two parents carrying it and whatever other germs our house was breeding, G's numbers were surprisingly good that month. He only needed two transfusions-one early in the month and one later in the month. At one point his ANC was over 2, 000. Awesome. It was numbers like that that convinced me it was ok to take him to T's Halloween bash at school, shopping at Carson's (I may have boys but they really do love to shop! I taught them well!). His weight hovered around 19.5. It was a really good month in my eyes, even if it ended with a hospital stay. It was to be.

G's Taste buds that month-a whole lot of bologna (this baffles me bc the only way I could eat it as a kid was with miracle whip n lettuce and my kids eat it plain-gross), broccoli (yay, finally able to get more veggies in him. I gave it to him until he was gonna tell me he was tired of it! He still is eating it almost every other day for almost 3 weeks now), yogurt, cheese sticks, ham, and Lance Variety Pack of sandwich crackers, chocolate goldfish and the most recently discovered bread w/ mayo n ketchup. He didn't care for any mcds. Milk was still his number one drink.

So grab your glass of milk and let's cheer to a healthy-every-member-of-the-Carper family in November. CHEERS to that!