A Crazy Week

This past week has been ridiculous. It's been a roller coaster of crazy.

It actually starts at the end of last week. On Thursday Ellie got up from her nap and had a fever of almost 102 and was having trouble breathing. She'd been coughing for the past couple of days. I grabbed her (after calling my mom) and headed to the doctor, hoping to make the walk-in despite it being 4:00 in the afternoon. I remember turning the rear-view mirror so I could see her in the back seat as I was driving and she was all slumped over and kept nodding off. She looked so miserable and I could still hear that her breathing was bad. I don't think I've ever prayed so many times in one sitting.

When we got to the doctor, they said that they weren't taking anymore walk-ins because they were closed the next day for schedule maintenance and they had to have everyone out of the building by 6:00 p.m. I'm sure Ellie and I both looked pathetic because the lady looked at us and said, "hold on a minute, let me see what I can do." 10 minutes later we were in waiting for the doctor. Every nurse, every technician, every one we passed heard Ellie breathe and said that she had pneumonia. She was burning up, the Tylenol was not taking her fever down, and her heart beat was going so fast the doctor checked it twice because she couldn't believe it. Ellie had blood drawn and her finger pricked and a chest x-ray and the whole time she was screaming and wiping snot all over her face. We were the last ones in the lab, right before it closed. We were the last ones in x-ray, right before it closed. Once again, everyone said she had pneumonia. I was figuring out how to get to the hospital (which was actually on the same street), get a hold of Will, and find out how to manage with my baby in the hospital.

The chest x-ray was clear. No pneumonia. Even the doctor was confused. We were all so sure. I almost cried I was so relieved. The doctor chalked it up to an ear infection and sent us on our way, after having the pharmacy open (it had closed) just so that we could get Ellie's medicine. Everyone was so nice. I swear it was a miracle. We left the building at 5:45, when everyone was supposed to be out at 6.

She's doing so much better, even though she still has a cough and a snotty face. She's gotten pretty good at taking her own temperature.

My poor sick baby. She was getting up once or twice a night until last night, when she only got up once before we went to bed. I blame it on the coughing.

Anyway, this weekend was crazy because Ellie was feeling so crappy... and then Will got sick. Now Will doesn't get sick very often. And it usually passes quickly. But he suffers from... let's call it the Man Cold. 

So Will and Ellie are both sick. So on Sunday we did not go to Stake Conference. We stayed home and mostly slept and were lazy. 

On Monday I spent a crazy day taking Ellie to the doctor, going to the grocery store, doing laundry, and cleaning. That night (around 11 p.m.) my brother Ryan, his very pregnant wife Jenni, and their daughter Ashlynne showed up. It was late, Ryan had gotten up at 3 a.m. and worked all day, Ashlynne hadn't really slept in the car and we were all very tired. But Ashlynne didn't like sleeping in a strange place. None of us got much sleep that night. Except Ellie. It was the one night she actually slept through the night. But then she got up at 5:30.

Tuesday, Jenni and Ashlynne also had colds and Ryan stayed in his pajamas all day. We ate, talked, played the zombie game, watched kid shows and generally had a pretty good time. Will and I made a dinner (Jenni has celiac disease, so it had to be gluten free) and it was pretty good. Even Ashlynne ate it. For some reason I didn't take very many pictures, but here are a few.

Will was home sick, so he got to play with us too. After the babies went down, we played the zombie game (it was super close!), watched Tangled and ate gluten-free brownies and ice cream. It was awesome. Then we all went to bed.

Ellie got up in the middle of the night and wanted to watch Curious George, but Ryan and Jenni were sleeping in the living room so that Ashlynne could sleep in our spare room. So Ellie kept me up (and probably almost everyone in the house up) for a couple hours until I finally brought her into bed with us. She lay there for about half and hour, mostly quiet but randomly twitching and shouting things like "daddy!" and "no!" for no reason. Finally she said "night-night", so I put her back down and she went back to sleep. I didn't get much sleep. My throat had started to hurt.

Wednesday I woke up just after 7 and heard Ryan and Jenni moving around. I got up and let Will sleep because he was still sick. They informed me that Jenni was going into labor and that they wanted to go home. (It's a 4 hour drive). I tried to convince them to stay, since we were under a severe thunderstorm warning, and have a hospital close by, but Jenni talked to her mom, who is a nurse, and decided that they needed to go. I did what I could to help and they left. She wasn't due for 2 more weeks.

From what I understand, they made it home through pouring rain with only 4 or 5 hours to spare until Ethan Michael Rollins was born that afternoon. 7 pounds, 9 ounces and 19 1/2 inches long. It took them a day or so to come up with his name, but I really like it. Yay for a Leap Day baby! It was a stressful day of worrying for me, but I can only imagine what they went through.

Did I mention the severe thunderstorms and that it rained all day? Here's our proof:

That was after sweeping a lot of the water down the drain in the floor.

The paving stones were completely under water. We used a bag of potting soil, a couple bags of leveling sand, and a wooden board to keep most of the water from coming in. Thankfully it stopped raining soon after.

But not before totally washing out our driveway. It even washed away the neighbor's tire. Thankfully that evening one of our neighbors (I wish I knew who) attached a snow plow to their tractor and pushed all the gravel out of the way and fixed the bottom of both our driveways. They deserve a medal.

So then Thursday all three of us were still sick, Ellie had been up for several hours in the middle of the night and I found dead ants in our cough drops, which I had been eating like candy and apparently not been paying close attention to. Holy gross. Yesterday morning I felt like crap and I was definitely not myself. So Will made me go back to bed, where I slept for several hours and woke up smiling. No more grumpy Mama. Last night was the first night I had gotten full night's sleep all week. Blech.

So today I am feeling all better, Will is feeling mostly better and went back to work, and Ellie is still coughing and covered with snot. Things are finally starting to look up. It's nice and warm (for now) and I actually have energy to do stuff. And my flowers are blooming :)

I'm not sure what they are, but they're pretty.