Angel and Maddie both have pink eye. We think.
Last week, cousin Cayley had yellow discharge coming out of her eyes. The doctor said it was a cold and not pink eye. Uncle Scot affectionately (or is that infectionately?) calls it goopy eye.
On Tuesday, Maddie got goopy eye. I figured it was part of a cold, so I wasn’t concerned. On Thursday, Angel started getting goopy eye too, though not as severe. I called the advice nurse to find out how long they were contagious. To my surprise she said they had pink eye!
She prescribed eye drops to them and said if it’s clear after 24 hours that they are not contagious. She also said that it’s pink eye because the discharge is yellow.
Now this is a serious quandary. Either Cayley, Maddie, and Angel all have something different, or one person is misdiagnosing the situation.
I think it’s an issue of overdiagnosing versus underdiagnosing. I found this article and it makes a lot more sense about what pink eye is. I know, you can’t trust everything on the internet, but this article made a lot of sense in explaining why the babies have such different reactions and the doctor and advice nurse gave different answers.
Whether or not the discharge is viral or bacterial, who knows? I’m just hoping bacterial so that the eye drops solve it!
Jubilee has learned a lot of phonics at school, but the letter ‘Y’ is still only a consonant so far as she is concerned.
One day, we were looking at words and she was confused about the sound of a ‘Y’ at the end of a word. So I explained how the letter Y is also sometimes a vowel. This was quite a lot for her to grasp, but after some examples and explanation her face brightened as if she finally got it.
“Tomorrow ‘Y’ will be a vowel!”
It was a surprise when we suddenly noticed Madeleine has not one, but two molars! Her top right and bottom right molars are showing. This explains why she can bite and chew more foods than Angelina.
Angelina is walking a lot more today. Here are some signs that makes me think she officially semi-quasi-walking:
• I noticed she was walking more than scooting/crawling.
• There were times when she would walk, fall down, then get back up to walk.
• She walked around in circles (though it was more like pacing an oval).
• When trying to get her clothes on, she kept trying to walk away from me.
However, in the afternoon she felt warm and found out her temperature was over 101. I called the doctor and she said, “Yes, come in. She’s had a fever for five days and even though she’s coughing less, she needs to be seen.”
It turns out Angelina now has pneumonia. It doesn’t sound as bad as you think. Instead of the common ear infection, her infection is in her left lung. The treatment is the same: Amoxicillin is the anti-biotic.
No more sharing toys/utensils/food/pacifiers to reduce the probability of Madeleine getting sick too. It’s much harder to do this than you think.
Angelina really loves walking. She adores pushing toy strollers, push carts, kid chairs, even adult chairs. She’s really into pushing and pulling the playzone gate door. It’s quite cute.
Madeleine still prefers to scoot.
I couldn’t resist the title. It’s not what you think.
Tonight Maddie was so close to finishing her milk, but she kept putting it down, then screaming for it. I added more milk, thinking she just didn’t want to tilt it so high to get the final drops. She still was frustrated. I leaned her back and “showed” her how to drink. More frustration. Then I realized she wasn’t swallowing. I took the sippy cup and tried to drink from it. The holes were clogged! I put on a clean top, gave the milk to Maddie, and she was happy again.
You may recall Angelina’s attempt to eat a grape. Today she had success! Jubilee must’ve dropped one on the ground because Angelina had one in her mouth! I got out as much as possible before she could choke on the skin. Whew!
Maddie got a fever Wednesday night but was fine all Thursday. Here and there I noticed Angel and Maddie give a small cough. Angel started to get slightly worse Thursday evening, but only slightly.
Suddenly, we’re at dinner time and David thinks they’re warm. They both have fevers. Then suddenly Angel starts coughing horribly. It’s a barky cough like none we’d ever heard before.
The cough was so strange, it actually made Jubilee laugh. Which in turn made Angel and Maddie laugh. It was nice to have a little humor among all this sickness.
(I’m still coughing too. But no other symptoms, whew.)
The night was pretty bad. They woke up a lot. I took Angel outside for a few minutes so she could breathe cold air which helped. She liked being out there.
Today, Angel coughed a lot. Her fever is still fairly high. Maddie’s temperature is a little high, but it’s not a fever. Their spirits were very good, except for during nap time. They napped horribly. I think Angel would wake herself up when she coughed, then they would both wake up crying.
An hour and a half into sleeping tonight, they also woke up. They were both so sad! I gave Angel some more medicine, or rather tried to because she refused to take it. I think I got some into her mouth. I couldn’t figure out what Maddie wanted. She kept signing more and looking at the Advil. “You don’t have a fever,” I told her. Finally I noticed she seemed a little stiff, so I thought maybe she had a tummy ache. I gave her some gripe water and was then perfectly happy and ready to go back to sleep.
Let’s hope it lasts all night!
A painful side effect of Jubilee’s recent illness is chapped lips.. severely chapped. Tonight I tried to put some chapstick on her lips and she screamed that it was burning. Poor Baby! We ended up using Vaseline instead and that seemed to help.
(Click image for larger version.)
For quite some time now, Angelina loves to shout, “DaDeeeeeee!” She mostly gets it correct, that is, when she sees David walk into the room. But sometimes I’m “DaDeeeeee!” and every once in a while she just says it.
She also is excelling in repeating what you say. So I’ve gotten her to say “Mommy,” and “all done.” She surprises us by saying “amen” every once in a while too!
Madeleine is slowly signing more. Mostly she grunts and points, but today I saw some consistent breakthrough. She clearly signed “music” and “milk.” In fact, I think she was proud of the fact that she knew “music.” The look on her face was kind of like, “See? I’m signing music. I know this is music!”
After BSF, I was talking to a friend and noticed Jubilee’s pants were falling down. It got to the point where she actually let them drop down. “That’s embarrassing,” my friend joked.
I adjusted the inside waist band (think maternity pants). I could only button one side tighter because the other button was missing.
We then went to the library to read some books. I took her to the bathroom and realized how children’s (and maternity) pants are designed: 1) there are two buttons to hold up the elastic band; 2) if a button is missing, only side is secure; 3) if you pull one side of the band, the other side does not stay put because it’s not being held by a button. In other words, in trying to tighten Jubilee’s pants earlier, I had basically pulled out all of the elastic band out of the pants.
Now what was I going to do? Jubilee had to eat lunch and go to preschool. How was she going to do that with pants at her ankles?
It turns out her pants had belt loops! I was able to fasten one end to the inside of her pants, pull the band out of the pants and stick it through the belt loops, then tie the other end to her front outside button. It looked really funny, but it worked! My daughter wouldn’t have everyone singing “I see Paris, I see France” all day to her.