Scariest Mom Moment (sorry, it is a little long and wordy)

So, with Liam, I often have scary mom moments. And by that, I mean, he does things that get the adrenaline rushing and my head goes really fast to figure out what went wrong and if a trip to the ER is in order. Case and point, a few weeks ago, he swallowed one of those balls that go with the magnetic pieces so you can build things? Do you know what I am talking about? Well, anyway, he comes up to me whispering, which is always a bad thing, and says "Mom. I choking." My heart about died. First off, I didn't really want to do the Heimlich on him, but was prepared to do it if necessary. That hurts. I choked and nearly died when I was 10, so I know what I am talking about. So I froze for a second and noticed he was breathing. Good sign. This stupid ball thing he swallowed and got lodged in his throat. My next thing is, if this doesn't go down, we have to head to the ER to have this removed from his throat. So, I took him to the kitchen, let him sip water to see what would happen. Eventually it got down past his throat and he was on a high fiber diet for about a week to make sure it came out. Scary moments, right? Well, even that doesn't compare to what happened to Jordan the other day. Holy smokes. It took me almost a full 24 hours for the adrenaline to come out of me from this. Here's what happened. So my brother and his family came to town for a few days and we were all crammed into my parents house. So while trying to figure out sleeping arrangements, my sister who lives here in Ridgecrest said, "Why doesn't Jordan just come spend the night with us and Kristi and Liam can share a bed." Sounds like a plan. She went over for FHE which was swimming, then was to stay the night. My sister called at 10pm and said that Jordan felt like throwing up. So I drove over there and got her. I think she was nauseous because it was just too hot. My sisters house was around 80 and Jordan was wearing winter flannel jammies to bed. So I drove her home and cooled her off and she was feeling better. Well, I have a bunch of friends who are really into the essential oils, and there is one that is supposed to help your stomach feel better. So I decided to give Jordan one drop orally and rub some on her belly. Within 10 minutes she had hives everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. She didn't have any on her belly where I rubbed the oils on. But everywhere else. We immediately gave her two tsp of Benadryl, but were still watching the hives take over her little body. Her lips were swollen to two and a half times the size they should be. And all of this happened within maybe 15 minutes. Even though we had given her Benadryl, with her swollen lips, we were packing up to head to the ER. Since it was so late at night, I was already in my pajamas, so I went to change. When I came back out, Jordan (who was sitting on my mom's lap right then) had finally started to stop swelling everywhere. Since this was an improvement, we waited about another 5-10 minutes. The hives were finally going down. And her lips were starting to go back down in size. Why do I mention the lips so much? The hives all over her body, while not normal, weren't as scary as her lips because if her lips were swelling, her throat was next. About 30 minutes after her first dose of Benadryl, we gave her another 2 tsp. Did I mention that by this time it is after 11pm? By around 1am the swelling was almost all gone all over her body. I put her in bed next to me so that if she needed anything I was right there. Thankfully, the next morning she was fine. There was no residual swelling, only a little redness behind her knees and on her thighs. I still took her in to talk to the doctor. We will likely never know what set her off, but after talking to the doctor, we don't actually think it was the oils. They may have aggravated it, but she started with the hives while at my sisters house. Should it happen again, we head to the ER and will be given an Epi-pen for her. But in the meantime, since she has always had severe allergies (every doctor has told us just by walking in the room to examine her that he allergies are not in control), it is time to seriously consider an allergist and possibly allergy shots. But I felt much better after talking to the doctor. And that, my friends, is my scariest mom moment to date.

Mothers Day

Sorry that my posts aren't in order, but I am trying to catch up and keep up at the same time, so you get what you get. Our nephew was blessed on Mother's Day. Which is kind of a big deal for us. To make it more special, he was named after my Grandpa, Robert Ross. So they made the trek to Ridgecrest all the way from Denver with both my grandparents and my aunt. It was fun to have everyone there. First, on Saturday evening, my brother, who lives in Tracy, California, came down. His birthday is the day after Ty's. So since both guys were there, and their birthdays were just a few days earlier, we had a birthday picnic dinner at the park. It was great to just let the kids run too. Most embarrassing part? A few minutes after the kids had run over to the toys, Ty looks over and then lets me know that Liam and dropped his drawers and was peeing in the sand with people everywhere around him. And not being discreet about it at all. Oh man. What do you do with that? You try not to laugh when you run over there, but at least he didn't come whining to me that he needed to go potty. Anyway. So Sunday we had the baby blessing. It was pretty special, but even early in the morning we could tell my grandpa wasn't doing too swell. We were hoping it was just the three days of driving that was getting it him. We had them over for dinner that night, and we could tell that he was sick. There was something seriously wrong with him. He needed to use the bathroom and it took three people over 20 minutes to get him out of the bathroom and down the hall. My sister had to pick his feet up and move them for him because he was so weak he couldn't even do that. Since he was so bad, we knew he needed to go to the ER. And since we could hardly move him, taking him ourselves wasn't an option. So the fire trucks and paramedics were called. I kept all the kids out front so as A)not to pack more people into the tiny room, and B)help them stay busy but also understand what was going on. At first the kids thought it was pretty cool to have the fire truck and ambulance show up. Then they realized why and they were all sad. My grandpa ended up staying in the hospital here for 8 days. That is pretty amazing when you consider that the first few days they weren't sure he would survive at all. Then, they thought he would need to be in a hospital for weeks, then it just went down to a rehab place for a few days, to finally, wow, he is strong enough to go home. He is now doing well in case anyone cares. I do have some pictures somewhere of all of our family that was there for the pictures, so I will have to find them and add them later.

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