Mass Chaos

I'm behind on posts, I'm behind on phone calls, and it seems like we're back to the newborn stage where we're just surviving.  I normally try to stay pretty positive on this blog (I'd rather not look back and remember all the tiny annoyances that have happened and focus on the amazing little girl Kalia is instead), but I should probably write at least a quick update to let everyone know what's been going on so no one feels excluded or like we're not making an effort to keep in touch!

These past two months have been absolutely crazy for us.  It started Labor Day weekend.  We went to a birthday party on Saturday and a birthday party on Sunday.  Kalia got sick and was out for the count for a few weeks from them.  By the time she was on the up and up, my Dad and T. Mom came to visit.  That first night they got here, I learned that my Uncle Bill had unexpectedly passed away earlier that day, at the age of 49.

The weekend was a whirlwind of visiting and making arrangements with work, flights, who we were staying with, and for Kodi to head out to Huntsville.  They left on Tuesday and we headed out on our first flight with Kalia on Sunday.  We were in Alabama from Sunday through Thursday.

My Mother in love (:-)) was here a few hours after we got back on that Thursday.  I had a girls weekend planned for Jenny's bachelorette weekend for months for the weekend we got back, so she came to help Chris out with Kalia.  Initially I was supposed to head over to Melbourne on Friday night for Jenny's shower on Saturday, and then drive from Melbourne to Crystal River for the bach party from Saturday through Monday.  I skipped out on the shower with just getting into town on Thursday late afternoon, but I was in charge of the bachelorette party, and still really wanted to be apart of that celebration.

Kalia woke up that Saturday morning with a 103.1 fever.  I almost didn't go to the bach party.  Chris convinced me that between him and his Mom, they had it under control, and I should go.  I didn't want to leave them, but I've got to let Chris take over the reigns every now and then :-), and knew I could use away with good girl friends and that Kalia would be okay.  Her fever would break and then come back again, so I headed back on Sunday in time to get back to help put her down.  Really, I just got her all riled up that I was there :-)...hindsight is 20/20.

Sheila was such a huge help, and I'm not sure what we would've done without her at that time.  Kalia was not in the greatest of moods, and Chris had a ton of work to catch up on from being behind (so thanks Sheila!!).  She left on Monday.

Kalia kept her fever all week long, and finally on that Friday, she broke it.  The doc had said that if she still had it on Saturday, we should come in.  But she broke it, and seemed to be in better spirits for the majority of the week, so we thought she was on the mend.  We had a relatively calm weekend with just the three of us.

My D. Mom came that Thursday to visit.  On Saturday Kalia had a low grade temp and had a circle of something on her crib sheet, and the same color of something coming out of her ear.  It wound up just being ear wax, but we took her in to get looked at.  The doctor said she had a pretty bad sinus infection and put her on amoxicilin.  He said the initial virus probably weakened her immune system and she was susceptible to catch anything from anywhere then.

My Mom left on Monday and Kalia seemed to be doing better.  I still hadn't gotten her 15 month shots from her being sick, and I had the appointment for that on Friday.  Kalia did well all week, and the doc looked at her sinuses on Friday and said the infection was gone, and suggested to go ahead and give her her vaccines, which were the MMR and Chickenpox vaccines.  They wanted to give her a flu shot then too, but I just felt like it was too much at once, so I pushed it off.  I should have done my homework with the chickenpox vaccine though - I didn't realize it was a live virus.  If I would've, I would have waited to give her that shot until she was at least done with her medication, which wasn't until Monday.

Later on that same Friday, the Wells came down and spent the weekend with us.  Kalia and Yulander had a great time being crazy with each other (more on Kalia's end than Yulander's, ha, she's a little bit of a nut right now around other kiddos), but on Sunday Kalia woke up with a rash all over her belly.  I called the ped. and they said that she probably had chickenpox from the vaccine (only a 4% chance of it happening, but it's possible) and that the next 24 hours would be telling.

They were, and she did.  She's kept a low grade fever all week, hasn't eaten as well as she normally does, and has been really clingy, which is totally fine.  Her itchiness comes in spurts, and it tends to be worse at the end of the day.  She doesn't quite know how to scratch per say, she just rubs really hard and starts flipping out.  She threw a few fits at her diaper being on, and I finally figured out that she had some pox down in her nether regions that were bothering her.  She also had some in her ear that aggravated her, but the only ones that she really made scabs were on her hands.  Those one's she could easily get to and they bothered her enough that she did.  Her lotion helped during the day, but at night, we finally gave in on Wednesday and gave her benedryl.

The hardest part of the chickenpox for all of us is that she doesn't sleep.  I don't remember sleeping at all on Monday night, and only for a few hours on Tuesday before she was up for good.  She's been waking up between 11-12, and not going down.  We can rock her, let her cry, give her tylenol, whatever, and it doesn't work.  The benedryl, at night, is the only thing that'll put her back to sleep.  So Wednesday and Thursday night she slept (Thursday day she took no nap at all), but by Friday the pox seemed to be doing better, so we didn't give her any medicine.  Both Friday night and Saturday night she hasn't slept.  She goes down at 6, but then gets up again, and can't get comfortable.  Last night she was up crying at 2, and after we both failed to get her back down a few times, and after leaving her in her crib for over an hour with no luck, we finally gave in and just got her up a little after 6 a.m..  I don't want to give her the Benedryl just to make her sleep, and while she still has a few pox, she doesn't seem to itch them anymore, so I'm kind of at a loss.  With chickenpox, we're not allowed to give her advil, and Tylenol might as well be a cheerio to her.  It does nada.  Or if she does calm down and sleep, it might be for an hour before it's already worn off again.

She was quarantined to the house through yesterday, but today she shouldn't be contagious anymore, so we can finally go out and about...if we have any energy left to go anywhere :-).

Chris is overloaded with work right now, so some days he only sees Kalia in the middle of the night when he's trying to get her to sleep.  We're both running on so little right now, there's just not time or energy to keep up with anything or anyone.

In perspective, it's just chickenpox.  She's fine, she'll get over it, and she'll sleep again soon.  There are a million worse things that could be going on right now.  Perspective is just hard to keep with zero sleep :-).  There have been numerous times this week that we have fallen asleep immediately after putting her down, gotten up sometime around 9ish to eat and shower, and gone back to sleep for a few hours before the chaos of the night begins.  We're just zombies.

So, between all of the visitors and all of the sickness, we're not being the best socially.  Please forgive us for the lack of communication.  I think I went ballistic on Chris the other day for something silly like a bowl being left out (I apologized!), so it's probably best that we keep the mass chaos to ourselves around these parts :-).

We love all of you and hope to be out of the woods shortly!