My Toys

We recently found one of the boys' old toy bins and emptied it of their toys and put Meagan's in it. Matthew has a larger toy box and Logan has the shelf and bin system in his closet. We realized that Meagan didn't have a place to put her toys, so we knew we had to do something rather than letting them clutter up the floor where we kept tripping over them especially in the middle of the night. There are not a whole lot of things in there, a few teething toys, some soft squishy cloth blocks, a handful of balls, stacking cups, and a musical star stacker is about it. Most of these toys are hand me downs from the boys. She doesn't care, but Matthew sure does. He must still remember playing with them because he continues to want to play with them. The first day we did this, if Meagan was playing with something, he came over, took the toy, and announced, "Mine!" I encouraged him to share with Sissy and let her play too. He wasn't real sure about the idea at first, but he is slowly warming up to it. I try to remind him that he has other toys that are his in their room. Sometimes it works, but other times he insists on playing with what are now Meagan's toys. Meagan has figured out how to get them back, though. If they take them from her, she starts crying or screaming. That either gets Mommy's attention or they end up giving it back to make her hush. Either way she ends up happy. Mommy's solution is that if she has one of their toys which inevitably happens, they should trade and give her one of her own toys and get theirs back. Again, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm still trying to figure out which of my children is going to be the most stubborn and strong-willed. Right now the race is neck and neck...and neck.

Meagan is scooting around now in her own way and at least getting to where she wants to be. A couple of days ago, I put her on the ground just by my feet in front of the couch. A few minutes later, I looked up and she was across the room at her toy bin trying to get to the toys inside. Smart little thing. She was so cute with her head buried inside that of course, like any mom, I had to take a picture. I had a hard time getting her attention, she was so involved in what she was doing. She can be a very intense little girl already. After a minute or two, she finally looked over at me with this great big smile that said, "See, they're my toys now." Too cute for her own good. I hope she always stays that way.

Today wasn't one of those days, though. Today was a 'worry Mommy to death' day. Last night, Logan had a birthday party to attend at Chuck E. Cheese, so Grandpa and Gigi agreed to keep Meagan so we could be more available to both Matthew and Logan at the party. Things didn't go as planned. She started pitching a fit shortly after I left and cried for an hour straight off an on. I finally had to go get her. She was fine as soon as I walked in the door. When I finally got her home, she felt warm again, and I thought, here we go again with the fever. Yes, it was a fever, 101.8. Just a little too high for Mommy's comfort. It got up to at least 102 in the middle of the night. Needless to say, I took her to the doctor first thing this morning. She has a lovely ear infection in the right ear. She will be on antibiotics for the next 10 days, but we will have to watch her closely as this is her first exposure to penicillin and both of the boys are allergic to it. The one huge fly in the ointment is that she hates to take medicine orally. She does everything from gagging to completely throwing up everything. This is what she did this afternoon when I tried to give her Motrin for her fever that was up to 103.3. I called the doctor because we can't keep doing this, and he had me bring her back in real quick so they could give her an antibiotic shot to help the process of healing get started. She's doing better, but still running a pretty high fever. We did discover that she will tolerate Tylenol with only a little minor gagging. Right now, we're just praying for a good night's sleep, but I'm not counting on it. Although, she is currently sleeping through the raging thunderstorm outside. I can always hope.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Grandma!!!

We love you and miss you lots.

See you in a few months.

FUO not FUN

We have had a not so great 3 weeks lately with Meagan. Every afternoon and evening she runs a low grade fever. At first it was nothing I worried about, but when it kept on for 2 weeks, I took her to the doctor. That was last Wednesday. She couldn't find anything wrong with her, but took a urine sample to be sure it wasn't that with Meagan's history of kidney infection. The results came back normal with no signs of bacteria, but since she was still continuing to run these low-grade fevers, the doctor had me bring her back in yesterday. Her conclusion was that it was an FUO (fever of unknown origin), not my idea of FUN. She took some blood and ran a CBC and two other tests that would check to see if there was any type of inflammation anywhere in her body. The results came back today and everything is normal. Her thought now is that it must either be a virus or Meagan now has a higher normal temperature than most people including the entire family which all have lower normals. Go figure.

Please pray that Meagan's fevers will go away and return to her old normal. Her attitude and personality have been great lately. She has been in great spirits like there was absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, she's doing so well that she gained 8 ounces in 5 days. She now weighs 17 lbs. 4 oz. She's going to outweigh her brother before long. (Like in the next two weeks if she keeps this up.) My concern is that the fevers will go up higher indicating a true problem, so please pray that I will be vigilant without being overprotective. It's disconcerting to pick up your baby and have her entire body feel hot to the touch. When I check, her temperature is never over 101, but still it can be nervewracking never knowing when a higher fever might strike. Please pray that I can leave all of this in God's more than capable hands and not worry about her.

On a fun note, we bit the bullet and joined the crowds. We bought a Wii. We've been talking about it and thinking about it for months now. Now that they're a little cheaper, we decided to buy one. We got a pretty good deal at Walmart. What fun! Even Logan is able to get in on the action. He loves to play baseball and he's not half bad. We're looking forward to the fun and getting a little exercise sorta. As Dennis put it, "at least we're getting our bottoms off the couch and doing something." :-)

More pictures for the grandparents and out of state friends to come soon. BTW, love to Kat, Dee, and Dana. Say hi to Buck, Jeff, Langley, and Day. We miss you all.

Fun in the Sun (and the Shade)

Last Saturday was a lot of fun. We spent the morning in the pool again, all of us, Meagan included. She spent time in her own little pool with just an inch of water. But she sure could splash a lot in that little inch. I think she sprayed as much water as her big brother who was in the big pool doing backwards "dives". We had a lot of fun, even Matthew, who still needed his cup in the pool. He at least got in the pool this week and splashed around a little bit. Mostly he got splashed by his brother like the rest of us. At least he didn't cry about it this week. Here are a few of the pictures I took from the morning. Logan's diving abilities

Matthew and his cup

My little waterbug splashing

We like to sit up and splash too. I like the tongue sticking out like she's soncentrating

Here's a close-up of the tongue.