Asthma Update

When there's not much TV/computer that I want to watch in the evenings, I end up blogging a lot more. Maybe it's a good thing Hulu is no longer free...

Tonight was Robert's last dose of oral steroids. What a feat! The doc warned us that the meds would be bitter and that we should request a flavoring...well, smelling our pharmacy's version of "grape" almost made me gag. Robert could NOT abide the bitterness. Sobbing, wailing, gnashing of teeth.

Eight doses, people. EIGHT!

Enticements like chocolate syrup, doughnuts, and screen time only worked once each and only worked to reduce his torment to 60 minutes. That's an hour of oscillating from moderate distress to the gall of bitterness and back up...gearing up to swallow just 8mls of medicine.

One thing I learned from this: I can't make my kids eat anything they don't want to eat. Robert thought we could pin him down and pour the whole dose into his mouth. I didn't dissuade him of that notion, but it's highly unlikely I would even try it :)

One thing I noticed about Robert: He can do hard things. He's gotten better recently at describing his thoughts and feelings. He even used self-calming techniques that he learned in school (love his 1st grade teacher!). He kept describing his conflicting emotions, "I WANT to drink it, but I DON'T want to drink it." And when it came down to it, he really did it. Swallowed it all. No sputtering, no gagging, just downed the whole thing. Brave boy!

Brave boy and his buddy hanging out in the back of the rental truck a few days ago.

Breathing Troubles

Robert had some trouble breathing last night. He came in from playing soccer in the backyard and he was panting like he was out of breath, but there was a lot of wheezing in there, too. Hours later, when he was asleep, he was still wheezing and panting at the same rate. I found it pretty alarming, but he didn't seem too bothered. Well, until he woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. He sounded so raspy and panty that I took him to the guest room and slept next to him the rest of the night...just to monitor the situation a little closer. If it had distressed him at all, I would have considered a visit to the ER. As it was, Robert insisted he was fine. No pain. No distress. But between the wheezing, a couple nightmares, some growing pains in his feet, and some periodic whimpering and restless tossing and turning, neither one of us slept very well.

Robert was lethargic in the morning, not wanting to eat or talk too much because "it takes too much air." I called the pediatrician as soon as his office opened and got an appointment at 8:30. Yay! Exercise can wait another day (erk!).

The doc didn't have to listen very long to confirm our suspicions. Asthma. This attack was probably triggered by the harvest season (yay, midwestern living!) and all that physical activity outdoors last night. Anyway, he got a couple doses of medication with the nebulizer in the office:

And when Robert's lungs still weren't as open as the doc would have liked to hear, he gave him a dose of oral steroids. Robert found them quite tasty. He commented on the flavor and texture as if he were evaluating a glass of wine. Made the doc chuckle a little. We were then sent home with prescriptions for an inhaler and more steroids and a pile of instructions on how to administer these new drugs frequently over the next four days.

Robert was feeling fine after the first nebulizer treatment. He's been acting very much like his normal self. The doc said we should keep him home from school today and tomorrow, though, as we monitor the situation and get into the new medication regimen. Inhaler today and tomorrow every four hours, also at night if he wakens with breathing/coughing problems. Oral steroids twice a day for the next four days. Once that's over, he'll only need the inhaler when he has trouble breathing again.

My little brother had asthma as a kid. I'm pretty sure he's completely outgrown it by now. There's no way of knowing now how asthma will affect Robert's life in the future, but he does seem to be responding well to the medication, and the whole situation doesn't seem to bother him too much.

The meds are stressing me out, though...which one when and how many times for how many days...argh.

But because Robert was feeling fine and breathing well, I decided NOT to change my plans for the afternoon: a friend helped me rent a truck and haul our big pile of sticks/brush/woody branches to the landscape recycling center. Sooooooo nice to have that done at last.

James is 4!

This picture pretty much sums up James' feelings about his birthday: excited, in charge, and oh-so-delighted about presents.

Happy Birthday, James! There's so much I think and feel and hope about you these days that it won't fit into a single blog post. Heck, it won't even come out straight when I try to put it to words. Let's try to keep it simple, then.

This was the day I first saw you with my own eyes:

This is the first time Alice and Robert ever saw you, too. 

This was the second day I knew you. You were much happier. You still look at me this way sometimes.

You did the funniest thing to our family. Suddenly, I felt like we were full and busy and more whole than ever before. When you got old enough to sit and crawl and interact with us, I just wanted to group us all together and take pictures all the time. It was almost like I couldn't believe I was surrounded by so many people that I loved so profoundly, and who brought me so much life.

Here you are just after you turned 1 year old:

 
And here's a picture of you when you were 2 years old:

That's a face I know and love SO well. Like this one when you were just barely 3:

This morning, you turned 4 years old. You had a nightmare and hopped into bed next to me. I love how you trust me. I love that I can comfort you when you're scared. I love that you tell me important things, especially when it's a really scary dream about losing your silly putty down a grassy ravine.

I kicked you out of my bed this morning, but I let you sleep on the floor in my room. With that single feat, you, dear James, have officially slept longer and more often in your parents' room than any of your siblings.

You are your own person, Little Man.

You have a knack for reading people's moods, and a gift for blurring the line between play and aggression. Your older siblings like to run your life and you like to show them they can't. You've matured a lot this year, though, discovering more ways to interact with kids cooperatively.

Posing by your bday cake that you had decorated with rainbow sprinkles and candy eyeballs.

This is how you paint these days...mixing colors, no real rhyme or reason to it, just seeing what happens.

This is how you prefer to color: focused, deliberate pockets of color. Absolute attention to staying within the lines, very little mixing of colors. You seem content to use one color or many, depending on what's at-hand.

And this is how you draw people and write your name. The people are carefully drawn, slowly, with just the right amount of detail you prefer. Your name is a little different every time you write it...that "s" just throws you for a loop.

And just last week, you came home from church absolutely bursting with pride at this giraffe you had drawn. I was pretty impressed, too.

Happy Birthday, dear Jamesey. I love you fiercely. Here's hoping for yet another year of growth and discovery!

A few pictures from this week

James' "baby love" knows no bounds. Here he's holding his newest 3-month-old friend.

Alice and Robert have been "ice skating" on the tile this week...giving each other letter grades for performance, training like it's a real competition.

The kids enjoying lunch during the Sunday morning session of General Conference. Alice and Robert are looking bored and disinterested on purpose. Matthew and James are following their lead. They actually enjoyed eating on the counter. Don't you love how James forgot to put on socks? Awesomeness. And both little boys insisted on wearing a tie on the outside of their sweater vests. Matthew is developing some pretty strong opinions.

Archery Attempt

Some friends of ours have a little archery range in their backyard. When Robert heard about that, he nearly flipped with disbelief. "Really?! You can shoot real arrows at stuff?! REAL arrows?! When can we go?!"

We brought the whole family for a little archery session. Matthew and James didn't care. At all. Zero interest. Maybe even some fear in there. That's okay, though, because the bows were a bit large for them. Alice tried it now and then, but thought it would be more fun with a bunch more friends. I tried it and smacked my forearm really, really hard with the bow string (forgot to bend my elbow). Bobby had just cut his knuckle open the night before (6 stitches at the ER...yay!) so he wasn't shooting at all.

That left Robert. Totally chill Robert. He's not one to wear his heart on his sleeve, so the only way to tell he's REALLY excited about something is how he focuses on it: 1) he asks about it every 5 minutes, 2) he builds his own target out of cardboard and tape, and 3) even James' pestering can't put him in a bad mood.

Focus.

He pretty much shot arrows the whole time we were there. By the end, he was loading his own arrows and even taking steps back from the target to test his skill. Every single arrow that went in, he would marvel at how deep it had gone. He observed that less dense targets let the arrow go in deeper. Bobby got lucky and took this video of Robert's favorite shot from the whole experience.



It seems like everything Robert tries these days, he loves: reading, math, swim, piano, archery. He could do NONE of these things 6 months ago. Now he likes ALL of them. He's experiencing a bit of a personal renaissance, I think. He's figured out that he can try new things, work on them, and improve. That's something I STILL struggle with quite often ;) Robert's helping me change, though. These kids are good for me in so many ways.