Chase's Blessing

We couldn't take Chase to church to have him blessed but we really, really wanted family to be there when he was blessed. We would have loved to have both sets of grandparents there but that couldn't be this time. Here are a few pics.

Chase One Month

Here are a few pics of Chase on his one month birthday. I am including a few pics of him after he was taken off oxygen, as well as a couple of cute random pictures.

Abbie

Abbie has such beautiful thick hair and someday she will love it. But lately she has had such a hard time sitting still while I comb through all the knots. So I decided to have it trimmed a little. She looks adorable. The girl who cut her hair says that Abbie has the hair that they would put in magazines. So here are a few pics, enjoy.

Porter

As if we hadn't already had a busy week. Porter decided on Saturday morning to help himself to some Christmas chocolate and a bottle of Children's Tylenol after breakfast. I came downstairs (he was only down there by himself for about 5 minutes) and saw the empty bottle with the little serving cup beside it. I asked Porter if he had any and he said yes. I then asked him how many cups and he gingerly held up both hands with his ten little fingers waving. I asked him again and he replied "a lot." So, what do you do. . .
I called poison control and they said he should be within okay range if we absolutely KNEW he had 3/4 of a bottle or less. Well, since I really had no idea how much he actually drank, Sharon (Matt's most wonderful mother) and I took Porter and Chase (because we couldn't leave him) to the ER AGAIN and left Lynn (Matt's very willing father) with the girls.
We arrived at the ER and luckily Matt was already there on call and it was slow. He came down and held Porter down while they drew P man's blood. He didn't like that so much. The results: out of a toxicity level where 20 is the level where he gets the anctedote, Porter was 19.4. The ER doctor was a jerk to us, but once again we were blessed to be able to go home without any lasting effects.

Makelle

While I was taking Chase to the pediatrician on Friday, Makelle decided to put her hand on a hot stove. She received second degree burns, but the major blessing in that is she only received second degree burns instead of third. The other major blessing is that even though it was her left hand her thumb (which she sucks on constantly) wasn't harmed in any way.

Chase

About three days after we brought Chase home from the hospital Abbie started in with a cold. It did the rounds with the family and settled on Chase. He started with it about 3 days before Christmas. On the Friday after Christmas we thought he was doing better. However, Friday night he started disintegrating and by Saturday evening he was seriously retracting and head bobbing (a really bad sign I found out later). We took him to the ER where they gave him an albutiral breathing treatment. Then they took xrays. Before they even came back with those they calmly told me that Chase and I would not be going home for several days. The xrays looked like this:


If you look on the rights side of his lung (the left side on the picture) you can see a fuzziness. The doctors said it was either pneumonia or RSV, both are very serious for a three week baby who weighs less than 6 1/2 pounds. After a bunch of tests and blood draws they wheeled the two of us up to the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit).
I was very distraught at seeing my son hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes. I have never had a child sick like this before. Here is my pip squeak in his red jail sale.



The final diagnosis: RSV. He was in the PICU until Sunday afternoon. Then we moved to a step down unit and were there until Tuesday night. We asked all of our family to pray we could bring home Chase by Tuesday and sure enough by Tuesday late afternoon they released us with oxygen. We strongly believe it was because of so many of your faith and prayers that he has done so well. I took him to his pediatrition yesterday and he told me that Chase is much better than he had expected.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas. We were greatly blessed to have one set of grandparents for the last few weeks. This was the first time we have had any immediate family come to our home for Christmas. Abbie, Porter, Makelle, and Chase have LOVED having them here. The kids really enjoyed the wonderful gifts from everyone. Everyone had more fun being together than actually getting presents.