Croup and a very cute boy

Many of you may already know this, but last week was a super hectic/exhausting one for us all. We took Alder to the ER Sunday night at 2am with croup - he was having a hard time breathing (very audible inhales = 'stridors'). He was very upset and not able to be calmed down. It was terrifying. They gave him a steroid shot and then a racemic epinephrine breathing treatment. He calmed down and we fell asleep together on the ER bed for a while. They gave him another breathing treatment and by 5am they decided to admit him. There is a chance of relapse after the epnephrine treatment and had to watch him for 24 hours. He did not get out until Tuesday morning. He was fine by Monday afternoon, a bit bored, but thankfully there was a playroom with a 'choo choo'. He stayed home Wednesday and then went back to school Thursday and Friday. He still has a nasty cough (but the doc says no infection to speak of) and seems a bit spoiled/whiny from the whole experience, but we are thinking he will be back to normal by Monday.

As much as I like my job for its felxibility (summers off, flexible in and out times) I have to be there each day to teach my classes. This was very tough. We were able to juggle it ok, but Jason was amazingly adaptable and put his work more on the back burner than I was able to this week. I am trying to imagine how we would have dealt with this with two kids and no family in town!? The answer...somehow and all would be ok.

So Grammy and PaPa are coming up today to let Jason and I go out on a date! How exciting. On Valentines day no less! We are so grateful.

So here is a recovering Alder in the cutest darn outfit ever - dad couldn't resist taking some morning pics in front of the wood pile before going to work on Friday

Alder's Grammy and Papa gave him a book called "From Head to Toe" by Eric Carle that he LOVES. It is very interactive and asks him to "stomp his feet like an elephant, kick his legs like a donkey, beat his chest like a gorilla". Without the book anywhere around(i.e., a parking lot), he will just fall on his hand and knees and kick his leg out behind him looking up at us to say ' are you kicking your leg like a donkey?!" He laughs.

We have added the "move your mouth like fish" because it is just so cute to see him make a fish face:Here are some other funny faces:


Another favorite activity of Alder's these days is to act out the motions while we sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" - here is a video clip: