Hendricks County Fair Trip

We went for a quick trip to the Hendricks County Fair last week.  I say quick because it was WAY too hot to stay for very long.  I think Ty goes into hibernation mode when it gets too hot.  He just sits so still and kind of zones out.  He's not a fan of the heat!

Does the steam in this picture capture just how hot it was?

 Case had a great time seeing the animals and just being able to walk around.  The heat didn't seem to slow him down at all; however I was so covered in sweat it looked like I had just gotten out of the shower (probably didn't smell that way though)!  I tried to volunteer to be the dunkee in the dunk tank but apparently they don't let just anyone do that!

Pointing to the goat... just in case we didn't see it :-)

Case thought that goat was hillarious!

Tails are made to be pulled, or so Case thinks.  I can't believe
that he is big enough to stand on the fence!  He is turning
into a little boy WAY too fast!

Daddy and Ty... Ty in his "zone"

Poor chicks never even saw Case coming

Case's eyes lit up like saucers as he looked
around the midway but unfortunately he
was only hitting the 35" mark and needed
to be 36" to ride.  Apparently the carnies
practice more discretion than the go-cart
operators!  Who knew?!?!

I LOVE making memories with my boys!

Ty - Four Months Old

4 Month Stats

Length: 25.75 inches (69%)

Weight:  17lbs 4.5oz (81%)

Head:  43.5 (92%)

Dear Ty,
You are 4 months old!  Here's a little bit about you right now...

Sleep: You have become quite the napper when we are at home!  You usually take two pretty good naps each day.  You've been a little better about sleeping at night but it was pretty rough there for a few weeks.  You are usually going to bed around 8 and Daddy or I wake you up around 10 to eat one more time.  This seems to be the trick to get you through most of the night.  You'll wake up one other time during the night and then you are up for the morning around 7.  Hopefully we'll get you sleeping through the night here soon!!!  Mommy is tired!

Eating:  UGH!  That's all I can say about eating.  If you look at pictures of yourself it doesn't look like you have missed many meals but you are NOT the greatest eater.  You eat up to 6 ounces at a time.  The only time you empty a bottle is when you fall asleep eating.  The rest of the time you might only take 2 ounces and be done or if I have the time and patience I'll continue giving you sips over the course of an hour or so and you might take a total of 5 ounces.

Clothes:  Somehow despite the eating issues you are still ahead of the game in clothing.  You are wearing 6/9 month clothes easily now but I think you might be getting closer to the 9 months side of that!  I've finally gotten you into your cloth diapers so you wear those a least a few times day.  When you wear disposables you are in a size 3!  I can't believe how fast you've blown through the diaper sizes!

Play:  You are awake a lot more now and you are SO much fun!  You love to lay on the floor and play under your little gym.

You also like to play with (eat) your feet.  

There's my feet!

Almost got 'em!

You still love the bear that hangs from your carseat.

Somehow you got big enough to use your exersaucer!  You really like being in it.  Case loves to "help" you play in it too!

Could you be any happier???

You (just like Case did) LOVE to talk to the snail!

You also love to watch Case.  Your eyes follow him all over the room!  I think you are going to learn more from him than anyone else (this could be good or it could be bad... time will tell)!

New Things:
You have rolled both directions now, though you don't do either regularly.  You are starting to giggle, which I LOVE, although it gives you the hiccups almost every time.  Your feet are definitely something you've found this month and they seem to spend more time in your mouth than not.  You are a HUGE fan of the TV and anything electronic already.  You'll maneuver yourself around on the ground so that you can get in position to see the TV.  This is probably not the best thing but at least you already know what you like!

You are looking a LOT like your
Grandpa Johnston here!

Falling asleep... not sure what to say about your choice
of fingers!

NO MORE KISSES GRANDMA!

You have such a sweet smile!

There are so many things I love about you!  You are at one of my favorite ages now!  I love your sweet smile, your giggles, the way you look at me like there is no one in the world you'd rather be with.  I love that you are SO quick to smile at almost any stranger (yes, even the weird ones that think they need to touch you or kiss you... seriously... hands off people!).  I take you to "Child Watch" at the YMCA, while I workout and rarely is there a time when I pick you up and someone doesn't tell me what a good baby you are.

You are such a happy baby and SO patient with your momma and your brother!  It is rare that you cry for very long.  I love our middle of the night feedings.  It is just you and me and no other distractions.  I treasure that time with you (even in the midst of my exhaustion).  I am having SO much fun with you and I pray that God gives us many many many more years of fun together!

I love you little boy!

Love,
Momma

Fashion Faux Pas

Don't you hate it when you show up at the playground only to find out that one of your friends is wearing the exact same shirt as you?  You can tell that Case and Andrew were really affected by this...

Epiglottis

"Epiglottitis is a medical emergency that may result in death if not treated quickly."  This is the first sentence in the illness that the doctor mentioned about Case when I took him today.  I'm SO glad I didn't use my Google MD to look at Case's symptoms before I went to the doctor because I probably would have been in an all out panic.  


Before anyone else starts panicking... he is fine.  Monday night he woke up in the middle of the night screaming and trembling.  He was sweaty and seemed SO scared.  I thought he'd just had a bad dream.  After a restless night of sleep he woke up Tuesday morning with a fever.  It got as high as 101.9 (rectally... yeah... I'm that mom that demands accuracy when it comes to fevers and still finds it necessary to pin my almost two year old down for a rectal temperature reading).  He started drooling.  Now let me clarify that Case has never outgrown drooling... I hope that one day he will learn to close his mouth when swallowing, otherwise mommy's dreams of his future as a surgeon are probably out.  So he is a drooler... especially when he is really concentrating or teething but the drool that was literally pouring out of his mouth today was NOT normal.  

Right???  You can even see it pouring out!

There were times today where it was covered from the neck to seam at the bottom of the shirt.  I thought I was going to have to get scuba gear for the poor Paul Frank Monkey on his shirt.  I treated his fever until 3 this morning and when he woke up at 7:00 it seemed to be gone.  He was obviously not feeling well though.  He would all of a sudden just start sobbing for reasons that took me a while to calculate.  I finally figured out (post doctor's visit of course) that his throat was for sure hurting.  I had suspected it all along but wasn't sure. 


 I took him to the doctor. After the nurse passed on the screening notes he came it and his first words were "how's his breathing?"  Ummm... well so far that was one thing I hadn't worried about but I went ahead and added it to the list.  Since his breathing sounded fine (even when the doctor took him and purposely got him upset to listen to his breathing when he was under stress), and he didn't look like a kid that was so sick he needed to go to the hospital, he said he thought it was nothing more than a virus.  At first he wasn't going to treat him but then we discussed it further and he explained his concern... Epiglottitis, he decided to go ahead and do a round of meds.  Now he didn't go into detail on how serious this could be but I gathered that it was not something you want to sign your kid up for.  By the end of the appointment he told me he was going to give him a week on antibiotics (sidenote... he clearly picked the most expensive ones he could find at $50 after insurance... it also didn't help that I was buying one of everything from the toy aisle in hopes that it would make him feel better) and told me to watch his breathing.  


We've since researched this illness a little further and I don't think he has it but you can bet I'll be making hourly visits to his room tonight to listen to his breathing.  I am confident that there is a sore throat though because he's been chugging water all day (of course he's thirsty since he's wearing most of the liquid in his body) but when he took a sip of juice on two different occasions today he started sobbing again.  Juice burns... water doesn't.  Now beyond all that he's been acting fussy but still playing.  I'm wondering if it isn't strep or something like that but the doc didn't look in his throat (remember this wasn't a symptom I was confident of until we got home) so if he is worse tomorrow I will give them a call and update the symptom list.  Either way this antibiotic should treat whatever it is.  So I'm just praying (please go ahead and jump on this bandwagon with me) that there are no new symptoms, especially the scary ones, that the antibiotics kick this quickly, and that no one else catches it, especially Ty and our visitors yesterday.


What a day!  So grateful for my boys tonight and for my mom who left work so I could leave Ty with her and then stayed all afternoon to help!!!

Best Buy, Drugs & Police

What do Best Buy, drugs, and police all have in common?  My new refrigerator!

Wayne's dad and stepmom gave us a refrigerator as a wedding gift 9 years ago.  On our 9th anniversary it went kaput.  Happy Anniversary to us! Rather than spending the evening eating the yummy dinner I had prepared the day before we had to go out refrigerator shopping (with two small children... always fun!).  This turned out to be our most interesting anniversary by far.  Some of the best memories come from foiled plans and this is for sure a memory we will never forget.

We are H.H. Gregg people so we wanted to buy there but they just couldn't compare to the deal we found on a scratch and dent model at Best Buy and since we didn't have an emergency refrigerator fund we couldn't be too choosy.  The salesman at Best Buy told us what a great fridge this was and explained that it was "brand new" but was marked down due to a dent in the door.  I am for sure understanding of a minor dent in the door for a $300 discount!  Still trying to save money and the fact that we currently did not have a working fridge at our house so time was of the essence we decided to load it up and take it ourselves.  My dad brought his Ford Explorer, which my minivan quickly put to shame, when the fridge didn't come close to fitting.  We had to move both kids car seats to the Explorer to make room for the fridge... you can imagine the chaos happening on the Best Buy curb at this point.  Well let me just tell you that the chaos only got worse from here.

We finally got the fridge home.  While I tried corralling a VERY inquisitive 1.5 year old and a sleepy/grumpy 3 month old my dad and Wayne got the broken fridge out and the new fridge in (this entailed the removal of fridge doors as well as our front door and garage door... quite the ordeal).

 We finally thought we were good to go and then I hear Wayne say, "What is this?!"  He had opened the freezer door only to find a baggie containing 7 pre-filled syringes hanging halfway out of the ice maker.  Yes... that's right, syringes!  Did I tell you this was a day to remember????

Apparently these shifted in transport... glad we found them
right away!

After we processed the craziness of this situation I got on the phone to call Best Buy and explain two things to them... 1.  this refrigerator was NOT new obviously and 2. there are DRUGS in it!  By this time it was 8:45 and they close at 9... plenty of time for a phone call, right?  Wrong... apparently they quit answering the phone early because we had three phones trying to get through and kept getting the same "there is one person in front of you" message until it was interrupted with "we are now closed".  SUPER!!!  We have a USED refrigerator with DRUGS inside and no one to take care of it!

Wayne called their corporate office.  We told them that these drugs did not have a prescription label but did have "Cortosyn" written in faded permanent marker.

We had NO idea if that was indeed what was inside or not and didn't want to end up in the middle of a giant drug bust only to find out it was heroin or something.   Some of you are familiar with my neighborhood... this isn't out of the realm of possibility and if you've been paying attention you've no doubt learned that a drug bust might not be the strangest part of this day.  Corporate agreed that we should call the authorities in order to get these out of our house.  So onto the next part of our evening... calling the police.  I was exhausted and Wayne offered to let me go to bed and let him deal with it but I said no way... this time we weren't peeking through the blinds of our bedroom wondering what the police were doing... we were in the middle of the action!   No way was I going to bed!

I called the police and no they didn't "send someone right over."  We live in one county but the Best Buy is in another so we had to talk jurisdiction.  They suggested I take the refrigerator back to Best Buy because that is where the drugs came from and their county police couldn't cross county lines to come to my house (I live ON the line).  I explained that she was totally off her rocker if she thought we were loading this monster back up to get it across the street.  She put me on hold and talked to a detective who then said they would send an officer from our county to get the drugs.  Wayne thought this whole thing was funny... he said if someone smuggles drugs in from Mexico I'm guessing they deal with him where they find him... they don't make him go back to Mexico first!  So police were on their way and we could finally sit down and eat our Jimmy Johns (almost as good as the chicken manacotti I had prepared for our special anniversary dinner).  The officer showed up about 11pm and could do nothing more than laugh and shake his head about the strangest call he received that evening.  He was super nice and took the drugs and left a case number for us to share with Best Buy, who would be hearing from me first thing in the morning... assuming they would choose to answer the phone at that point.

It took about 3 attempts, each one with me sitting on hold for at least 10 minutes before I finally got a hold of someone at the store.  I have a REALLY hard time believing their phones are THAT busy!  The first girl asked if I wanted to bring it back to the store... ummm NO... I want to talk to a manager because I WILL NOT be moving another fridge!  The manager was a little more reasonable and totally flabbergasted by the entire situation.  She called me back and offered a different brand model that her appliance manager claimed was better but needed my answer right away to get me in line for delivery the next day.  I explained that I would need to look at it before making that decision and with two kids in meltdown mode had to hand the decision making off to Wayne at work.  Turns out the refrigerator they wanted to give us as a replacement was a lesser model and did about half the things this one did.  That wasn't going to fly.  They finally agreed to deliver a BRAND NEW version of the fridge we bought at the scratch and dent price and pick up the old "new" one.

So by 4:00, two days after this entire saga started, I finally had a NEW fridge in my kitchen!  Oh and the manager did let me know she checked the "history" (something a NEW fridge shouldn't have) of the fridge and found that it was originally at an animal hospital so the drugs probably were what the baggie said they were!

How's that for a memory making anniversary?!?!  Let's just say Best Buy is lucky we aren't the suing type because I'm guessing we could have made quite the case against them!  I'm just thankful Wayne found the drugs and not Case who thought it was SO fun to play in the new fridge!

Just another day in the Johnston house! HA!