Ear Infections and the Beach

|Right now the kids and I are at home in Dallas and it is 34 degrees outside at 11:00 in the morning.  The Hubby is in Playa del Carmen, Mexico where is it 70 and cloudy.  My mom is in Panama City Beach, Florida where it is 50 and sunny.  Neither of them have perfect beach weather but I'd still rather be there than here!  At least it is sunny here.  The Hubby had to go to Mexico for work.  His boss owns another bar there and the woman who runs it was going to be gone, so the Hubby was sent down to look after it.  My mom's friend asked her if she would like to go to the beach, so they packed up the car and drove to Florida for an undetermined amount of time. They plan to read books, look out at the ocean and do some shopping. I hope that when I am retired I can do things like that. 

Both Duchess and Huckleberry have had ear infections the past two weeks.  I got paged at work from the school nurse telling me Duch was in the clinic complaining of an ear ache.  I took her to the doctor and sure enough it was infected.  That makes her 4th ear infection in 12 months.  She had 1 the first 5 years of her life and suddenly she is having trouble.  The pedi was concerned because she said she should not be doing that since she had her tonsils and adenoids out.  So we may be in for another trip to the ENT. 


At the doctor

I let her stay home from school, looks real sick, right?

While we were there she looked in Huck's ears and they were clear.  That was a Tuesday.  Thursday night I knew Huck had an ear infection.  He couldn't sleep and was hitting his ear.  I thought I would try to wait it out and see if it would clear up on it's own.  Friday he was okay but then Sat afternoon he woke up from his nap with a fever of 104.1.  So off to the doctor's we went Sunday morning.  Thankfully our pediatricians has Sunday hours in the winter.  He had an infection in each ear.  That make 7 ear infections for him in the past year!  So both of them were put on Omnicef.  We may be in for an ENT consult for him as well.  I'm more concerned for him because that is a lot of antibiotics for one little guy's gut.  He does take probiotics each time, but still.  I am also getting concerned about his speech.  He has no problems with his receptive speech but his expressive language is made up of about 4-5 sounds.  He imitates syllables and intonation, but most things sound the same.  I think he is very good at communicating, he just doesn't use understandable words.  I am self-referring him to ECI for a speech evaluation.  I'd rather do it sooner than later and I understand the process can take some time.  It could be that some ear tubes will help, we'll see. 

Now this poor baby looks sick :-(

Bubba, thankfully, has stayed healthy.  Just a little bit of congestion.  I am so grateful that we have (at least so far) avoided the flu.  Knock on wood!!!! 

I put some baby clothes and baby equipment in a consignment sale this weekend.  I was kinda sad to see all those sweet baby clothes leaving the house, but we do not anticipate another kiddo in out house needing them.  This sale has a cool on-line system where I can see what sold so I know I made about $100.  I chose not to discount or donate the things that did not sell.  I'll try again next time, maybe lower the price or maybe not.  As a consignor I got to shop the pre-sale.  I got Duch 5 or 6 outfits, a few shirts and a pair of jeans for Bubba and 1 outfit for Huck for $60. 

Sweet baby clothes...

Bubba is going through books so fast we can't keep enough in the house for him.  He loved the Ready Freddy series and just finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Clary.  I love that he loves the books that I read as a kid :-)  I wonder if he'd be interested in Ramona Quimby, Aged Eight?  We need to take a trip to the library.  He made a chart to earn a hamster.  He is doing extra chores to earn each check mark and once he has 20 he will earn his hamster and everything that goes with it.  We told him he has to wait until at least after Spring Break so that we won't need to find a hamster sitter.

We are going to San Antonio and Austin for Spring Break.  We will meet Aunt Sara and the cousins in San Antonio.  We plan to go to Sea World, the Alamo and the Riverwalk.  We may be crazy for the 2 of us to take 5 kids to Sea World during Spring Break, but we up for the challenge!  Then we'll head up to Austin where we'll stay with a friend for a night or two and see some other friends there.  The Hubby will be in Florida for Hank's Open and Grandma K's memorial service. 

Update on our Healthy Eating Challenge: 

Make Your Own Pizza!  The kiddos made these when we had a friend over to play.  I made the whole wheat pizza crust from scratch and the kids liked it. 

 

 

I think we are doing pretty well.  The kids are more aware of what we are eating and frequently ask if something is healthy.  There has been some complaining about "never getting anything yummy anymore" like the donuts they wanted at the store yesterday.  I am so aware of artificial colors- they are everywhere!  I can't look at things the same way anymore.  Duch was invited to a birthday party where the mom made a gorgeous rainbow cake where each layer of cake was a different color of the rainbow.  My first thought was "Wow, that is cool!" but it was quickly followed by an internal cringe at all the sugar and dyes...

 I have slacked off a little on the fruit at breakfast, so I need to focus on that more.  I have cooked more whole wheat goods.  Some were a hit, some were not.  Whole wheat waffles- hit.  Whole wheat mac and cheese- miss.  I think that I did not get the roux creamy enough with the mac and cheese, or maybe I need a different cheese.  I'm not giving up on that one yet.  Whole wheat biscuits- big hit.  Whole wheat pancakes- ehh, kinda in the middle.  I also made mini egg casseroles which were a bit hit.

Round Breakfast- home made biscuits, egg casseroles and clementines

 But on the flip side, I also let the kids buy lunch 3 times last week.  I just didn't get everything together in time.  And we ate out after ballet and had pizza and pasta which was full of white flour.  I blame it on The Hubby for going out of town!