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| The family went to our favorite water park in Lindon for Bailee's 6th birthday. |
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| Aunt Jill, Ashton, Bailee and Madison. |
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Bailee got lots of nice presents. |
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| Happy Birthday sweet girl, we love you so much!!! |
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| I didn't get to go swimming with them for Bailee's b'day, because I came down with pneumonia during our visit to Orem. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that. We still had a nice time though. Thanks to all of my family for helping me out. |
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| Ashton got ahold of a pink marker that Bailee had gotten from school and had left in the van. I had a good little laugh when we got home and I saw he'd drawn a pink goatee on his chin. Jeff didn't seem to think it was as funny as I did. :) |
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| When we got home from doing some errands, Bailee and Ashton wanted an ice cream cone. He's in his white undershirt in this photo because he'd stuffed a big piece of food in his mouth and thrown up on the counter and on the button down shirt in the photo above. Also, around this time, Ashton, Jeff and I were at Wal Mart doing some shopping. Ashton had a piece of gum I'd given him and it had gone down his throat a little causing him to gag. He also had a cough and cold, so gagging came pretty easily. He ended up throwing up all over himself, in my hands and on the floor. We quickly booked it to the bathroom in the back of the store. Luckily we were able to take off his jacket which removed a lot of the mess. We cleaned up the rest as best we could and saw that a store employee was cleaning up the floor when we came out of the bathroom We'd taken some paper towels with us to clean up the mess, but were glad to see they were already taking care of it. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but we survived. ;-) |
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| A sucker in each hand and one in his mouth! This boy loves lollipops! |
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| I took these pictures of Ashton playing with the Thomas the Train set on the day he started to finally feel better from having RSV and the ear infection. It was a big relief to see him up and around and playing. |
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| He was still looking fairly pale. |
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| He started to eat food again and dump it out as well. A sure sign he was feeling better. |
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| I took Ashton in for a follow up visit on Friday the 8th. He seemed even worse that day even though we'd been using the prescribed medications. They checked his oxygen level and it was low so we had to put him on oxygen. A lady from the home health care place came over after we got home and showed us how to use the oxygen machines. He didn't like having it on but tolerated it for a bit from being so worn out. He wouldn't leave it on while he was sleeping in his crib though. He was feeling quite a bit better on Saturday and pretty well on Sunday. He and Jeff stayed home while the girls and I went to church. Today (Monday) he was feeling lousy again and was crying a lot. Finally, this evening Jeff and I both thought I should take him into urgent care again. We weren't sure if it was his respiratory system or what, but we knew something seemed to be wrong. I took him in tonight and he has an ear infection in his right ear and his left ear is looking close to being infected as well. I picked up his antibiotic and ear drops tonight at Walgreens. I'm so thankful for their easy drive thru pharmacy. Ash does not like taking medication one bit. Between Jeff and I, we were able to get most of the rx and Tylenol into him. He spit some out, but hopefully enough got in to help. |
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| I'm so thankful for modern medicine, good caring doctors and nurses, and a clean and friendly medical clinic. I'm thankful for antibiotics and for the other medical equipment that's used to administer medication and pure oxygen. I miss my energetic, silly little boy and I hope he finally gets all better soon. |
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| We are having some rough times at the Redford house. We found out yesterday when I took Ashton to urgent care, that he has rsv. |
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| He's doing better with the breathing treatments. He cried the whole time during his first treatment, but now he's a lot calmer. |
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| Jeff broke his ankle Wednesday (the 6th) night. He slipped on ice on the front porch as he was heading out to the garbage can. He flew up in the air and landed on his right ankle, he hit his head as well. His stomach is sore as well as his ribs and neck and he has a little scrap on his right elbow. |
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| Madison took a picture of Bailee too. |
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| It seems to work best when Jeff holds Ashton on his lap while I use the nebulizer on him. |
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| We're going back to the doctor today for a follow up visit. |
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| I still can't believe that Jeff has another broken ankle. It was almost 1 year ago that he'd broken his left ankle. At least this break isn't quite as bad as last years. |
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| *Warning* Bodily functions mentioned below. As I mentioned, Ashton has been sick with a stomach virus. He's getting better but the sickness has taken on a different form in the diaper zone. He hadn't vomited for a couple of days, until yesterday evening, when he upchucked all over our back patio. That was fun to clean up. I've seen way too much curdled milk lately. And, just this morning I was watching Rooks, he overate and spit up/threw up a lot of formula, mostly down my shirt. Thankfully he was facing me with his blanket between us, so a lot of it got on his blanket. Bailee said, "Eww it's dripping down your arm." I said, "I know." I changed shirts and got things under control. Phew! I will be putting in another load of laundry promptly. |
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| Here's an easy and cute craft I made yesterday. I already had most of the supplies, I just had to print out the labels, I got them off of the Studio 5 website. |
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| This was my favorite, "Rotten Witches Teeth", with candy corn as the teeth in the jar. |
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| I also made pumpkin bread, which I love! Things were going along really well yesterday and all seemed right in our little world...and you know what happens then... |
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| Poor Ash woke up from his nap and had vomited in his crib. I was hoping it was fleeting, but the sickness continued through the night. I've been giving him anti nausea medicine which seems to help. He's doing okay, but not quite up to par. I'm crossing my fingers that the rest of us don't get it. |
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| Bailee in the pink and her friend Sophia in the other wig. We finally found out that Bailee will be in afternoon Kindergarten and she'll have Mrs. Robbin's, whose in our ward, as her teacher, yay! I know I'm feeling more relieved and excited now with having more information. It will be fun to see Bailee going to school and being a big girl. Fun but sad too :-/ We took Bailee to the Otolaryngologist (whoa!) on Monday. I'd noticed her tonsils were quite large, which runs in the family (from my side) so I thought we'd better get them checked out. Dr. Catten is so crazy and silly with the kids, he reminds me of myself with his zany ways! ;-) He told us that her tonsils are currently infected and that we could either try medication to treat them or have them removed. Initially we thought we'd have them removed, but on second thought I decided we should try medication first and Jeff agreed. She's taking amoxicillin now and it seems to already be helping, I'm so glad. Maybe she'll get them removed sometime over the next few years. Better to have it done when she's younger, I speak from experience!! |
 Madison all ready for her first day back. Too bad she wasn't able to go. |
| Today is technically the first day of school, but not for Madison. She threw up yesterday evening. We were hoping she would feel well enough this morning, she got all dressed and ready for school, but just felt too queasy. She seems to be getting better, so hopefully she can go tomorrow. She was so disappointed and was crying this morning, when we both decided she shouldn't go. She's so excited to meet her teacher! I hope all will go well tomorrow. Madison had her first experience of floating the Green River yesterday. I haven't even been river rafting! I hope to go sometime. They floated the A-section, so it was pretty mellow, especially with the rivers being lower this year. :-( She had a fun time with her friend and her friends dad. He's an experienced river guide, but Jeff and I were still apprehensive about her going without us. He assured us he's been down that river at least 2,000 times and has been going on the river since he was a toddler. That helped to calm our fears a bit. She had a great time and a new experience! |
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| I'm happy to report that this spot on the couch, has remained Madison-free 50% of the time today. Yay! |
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| Madison has felt miserable and has had a fever on and off (mostly on) since Monday (the 25th) evening. The main symptom she had was a fever, up and down it went, the highest it got was 103.7. We went to the doctor three days in a row. They ran all kinds of tests, and they all came back with negative results. We did learn from the tests that Madison's white blood cell count was quite low, so the doctor put her on an antibiotic to help keep her resistant to any infectious stuff she might come across. |
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| She broke out in a rash yesterday, thankfully it didn't get too bad and is mostly gone today. Did I mention she absolutely hates the antibiotic?? She does. I finally came up with the solution of putting it in milk with a lot of chocolate syrup. It helped, she and I were sooo relieved! |
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| She thought this photo of herself was hilarious. You can see a bit of the rash under her eye. |
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| I'm so relieved she's starting to feel better. She woke up with a temperature of 100.1 instead of 102.9 like it had been the other mornings. It's so nice to feel her forehead and have it feel cool, not blazing hot. It's tough seeing children stuck inside feeling yucky when they should be out playing and having fun, it goes against the laws of nature. I can't even imagine the stress and weariness of having to deal with this long term, like some parents do with chronically ill children...heartbreaking. |
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| Notice anything out of the ordinary in the photo?? Unbeknownst to Ashton, his lollipop from the clinic was stuck on his pants. This boy was a handfull for me yesterday. He gagged himself with his hands and made himself throw up a bit on his shirt, he likes to do that, ugh! :-/ He also fell, dove, and slipped under the water like five times in 30 seconds in the little pool in our backyard. I was right there watching him, but he about gave me a heart attack. I brought him inside and he cried about not being able to play in the pool, but he was just too scary (fearless) in there. |
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| This summer Madison is trying out tennis for the first time. She's really been enjoying it! She and I played tennis in our driveway last week. It's a really fun sport, too bad we just can't keep the ball in play for longer. I'm sure we'd do better on real courts. ;) We'll have to try it some time. |
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| It's fun to watch the kiddos do activities that they like. |
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| Jeff took all of these photos last Wednesday (the 6th). He should have been at work that day, but I had to ask him to take the day off to help look after the kids. I was having some major shoulder/neck pain and needed to go see the doctor. Turns out I was have back spasms in three different areas on my shoulder and neck. If you've ever had a stiff neck, it feels like that, times 10! This happens to me from time to time, seems to be a weak point in my body. Thankfully now I have some muscle relaxers to take when I need it, although the pills make me quite tired, so I only take a small nibble before bed. |
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| Jeff was great to ask for the day off and tote the kids around to their activities. They enjoyed spending some time with Dad as well. |
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| Here's cute Bailee at her swim lesson. This is the first time Bailee has taken swim lessons. She is the child towards the top of the photo, against the wall. I've been really impressed with the swim coaches and swim program at the rec center! Next month Madison and Bailee will do another session of swim lessons. Bailee is doing much better with putting her face in the water. Today they wore life jackets and jumped off of the diving board into the water with the coach waiting to catch them. Bailee was pretty nervous at first, but she did it and had fun!! I was proud of her for working through her fear. |
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| Here's Mister Ashton watching the action! |
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| Getting the cast cut off. The saw was Loud!! Jeff got his cast off on the 4th of May. He's still waiting to get released from the doctor to go back to work. He has a follow up appointment this Friday, the 18th, hopefully he'll be signed off then. The following week we're going to Las Vegas, so he'll be missing work then as well. It's been great having him home, but it will be a relief to have our normal income again when he starts back to work. |
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| This is what his foot looked like before he got his cast on. Ouch!!! It's amazing how long it takes for bones to heal. Slowly but surely! |
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| I get a little emotional looking at these photos again. This was a tough time in my life. Four years ago today, I had brain decompression surgery. I'm so grateful for my visiting teaching partner I had at that time, Sarah Simmons. She's a nurse at UVRMC in Provo and works on the same floor as the neurosurgeons. Because of her connections I was able to get quick attention and answers. I have a testimony of how important visiting teaching is and what a blessing it can be in someones life. I'm ever thankful for the trials and blessings that I've been given in my life. I love my Heavenly Father, my family and my friends. I'm so grateful for all of you who love and care about me. Thank you!!! |
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| Here are the 16 staples that were in my head. Thankfully it didn't really hurt to get them removed, just a bit uncomfortable. You can still see the bruising on my arm from the IV's they had in me. The bruising was so dark it looked like someone had drawn on me with a purple marker, it was kinda cool lookin'. |
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| Here's a simplified definition of what Chiari Type 1 Malformation is. The cerebellum doesn't have enough room due to the shape of the skull, therefore it's squeezed down into the spinal column. For me it caused equilibrium problems. It sucked. I still deal with balance problems to this day, but it's a lot better. I'm so thankful for the amazing surgeon I had, Dr. Reichman. |
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| Two more days, and Jeff gets to go get his cast removed. Yay!!! He's been walking without his crutches for over a week now. It's been so nice for him to have some of his freedom back. On a sidenote, we went to this park in Lapoint yesterday. Isn't it pretty? I love the blue skies out here in the Basin. |
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| It's been really nice having Jeff home with us. It'll be strange with him back at work. It will be good to get back to normal, although we'll miss him a lot. When Ashton notices that Jeff isn't around, he yells "Daaad.....Daaad!". It's so cute, I'm sure there will be quite a bit of that going on. |
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| Jeff spent a fair amount of time on this spot on the sofa. He made good use of his time by reading to the kids. |
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| He also had to fix the vacuum. See, you can still be helpful even with a broken ankle. ;) Ashton tried to be helpful but really wasn't. The look on Jeff's face says it all! |
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| Our friend Ryann was over one morning and joined in on the lap sitting. |
