Getting Sick

Tis the season of snotty noses and stuffiness at our house. Caleb and Bryce have had colds for what feels like forever. Poor kids, it sounds like they are just full snot and of course they never want to blow their noses to get it all out. We have been attempting to keep them out of Emerson's face but that doesn't really work out so well. On Saturday morning March 1st at about 4am Caleb came in our room sobbing that his ear hurt really bad. I gave him Motrin and sent him back to bed. In the morning he seemed okay and didn't really say much about his ear until around noon and then the poor guy felt horrible. We had planned on going to the Titanaboa exhibit at Morrill Hall and he was willing to miss it he felt so crummy. Luckily our pediatrician's office is open on Saturday and I called to make an appointment. Becky the PA (love her!) called us back and when I told her what was going on she said to just bring in whoever was sick and she would look at them. So the entire family went to the pediatricians office. I wanted her to look at Caleb and Bryce and Emerson was also pretty stuffy so I wanted reassurance that the poor baby would be okay too.
By the time we got to the doctor Caleb's ear drum had ruptured and he had blood and pus leaking out of his ear. I felt horrible for him, but he had given me less than 8 hours notice to get him to the Doctor from the time he complained of his ear hurting to it rupturing. I'm sure Becky the PA thought we were one Giant disaster when she walked in the room. Caleb ended up having a ruptured ear drum from a bad ear infection and also a sinus infection so he got Amoxicillin. Then she looked at Bryce. She asked him if his throat hurt and he said "No". So she let me look at his throat. It looked terrible! It was red and raw and his tonsils were huge. So he got swabbed for strep and sure enough he was positive. Again I felt like a horrible mom, but who has strep and doesn't have a sore throat? Then she looked at Emmy just for my piece of mind. She reassured me that she was just a little stuffed up and that she had probably caught a cold from the boys. She told us to use the nose sucker and saline and to run a humidifier in her room. Poor baby, she was sick at 3 weeks old.
Abby was the only kid that wasn't sick and I attribute this to her extreme overuse of hand sanitizer. I guess this OCD habit of hers served her well this time. Instead of going to Titanaboa we went home to have a movie night and try to get people better.