What a week!

Last week Patyon, Addison and I got the stomach flu... Yuck! We had a house full of guests for Payton's birthday party (which we had to cancel), but fortunately no one else got sick. Brian dodged that bullet by being out of town. Thank goodness for that! Sunday Brian went to the vikings/lions game in the cities, and I tried to rest and recover at home after all our company left. It really took a lot out of me! By Tuesday I was back to normal and so were the girls.... They have been just bickering back and forth. Payton (our emotional/dramatic kid) has been very whiny and sassy. Wednesday she spent quite a bit of time in her room. Addison is usually pretty laid back, but she has been just whiny and clingy other than when she is yelling or fighting with Payton.

Today we went for Payton's recheck after being put on her inhaler. She is now going to be on Flovent once a day, probably just through the winter and then we will see how she does. We will still use the Albuterol as she needs it, which should be just when she is sick. Her cough has really improved, but it isn't completely gone so her doctor thinks this is the way to get her lungs healthy again. And because she is diagnosed with asthma now she was able to get her H1N1 vaccine today in the office and because Addison is only 2 she was eligible too. So it was a good and bad day. I truly felt like we had won the lottery when her doctor recommended the vaccine and then told me they still had doses available! Lets hope with the upcoming holidays that the big illnesses with stay away from our house...

Payton is Five!

Payton turned 5 this week... I was totally feeling nostalgic. I was thinking back to my pregnancy, delivery and those first couple of years. We have been preparing her for the time when we are going to take away her blanket (she has a blue fleece blanket, she calls it blue goo, that she has slept with and dragged around for years. And she always sucks her thumb when she has it). We are hoping the thumb sucking stops when the blanket is gone. Payton decided several months ago that she was going to give up blue goo and stop sucking when she turned 5. So on Tuesday it was her birthday and I took it and hid it when she left for school. We gave her a leapster2 for her birthday, and that has actually helped. She just loves that thing and it has been a good distraction when she asks for her blanket. We did give her the blanket when she got into bed, after she gave up her leapster, and we told her we were going to take it away from her once she was asleep. She was okay with that. She slept all night fine, and other than a few times a day when I need to distract her away from wanting her blanket she has done awesome. It has actually gone a lot better than we expected. She still wants it to fall asleep, but we are only 3 days in so that is good by me.

Today we went to her 5 year well child check... she is 39 pounds and 42 inches tall, both 5oth percentile. She has had a cough for about a month now. It gets worse when she is outside or at gymnastics... her pediatrician thinks it may be asthma. So we are now armed with inhalers we are doing 3-4 times a day for the next 2 weeks. If her cough is still there she will probably have to go on medication. She is a little young for the spirometry asthma testing, so we will do that in a couple years and hope that we can help her along the winters with inhalers. We will see. I just hope the cough gets better. It is almost like she doesn't know she is doing it. It is sorta like a spasm cough. I really hope this works. I think everyone thinks we are contagious with all the H1N1 around!