Curse of the Januaries

I don't know what it is, but every January since my son has been born, he has had some sort of weird funky medical condition.  The first time it happens, it just happens, the second time it happens its a coincidence, the third time it happens it becomes a pattern.....or a curse!

January 2010 is when Carter got super sick and had to be hospitalized and then on oxygen for a week.

January 2011 similar situation where Carter got sick, but didn't need the oxygen - April 2011 however is when he got double pneumonia and was super sick.

January 2012 Carter has a sever allergic reaction to a cashew.  No joke this experience freaked me out more than any other illness either child has ever had.  Haylee's fever of 107 is right up there with this experience, but seriously, this freaked me out.

Let me explain our recent curse.

We were at my parents hanging out and my mom had put out some mixed nuts, cheese and crackers.  We have given Carter peanuts and peanut butter before this, so it wasn't as if he had never had peanuts or cashews before.  Carter asked his Daddy if he could have a peanut and Byron of course gave him one.  Byron said the second he ate it, he knew something wasn't right.  Carter immediately began rubbing at his ears and his eyes, rubbing his face, etc.  Then his face began to swell.  He walked around whining a little, so I picked him up and tried to snuggle with him. He didn't want it and kept rubbing at his face.  Byron left to go get some benadryl from our house, and in the short time that he was gone, Carter's face swelled even more.  I called the on-call Dr. who told us to give him the benadryl and then get to the nearest emergency room.  Hearing that I needed to get to the nearest emergency room sent me in to overdrive.  Byron and I got the benadryl down Carter then we booked it up to Children's Hospital - North Campus.  They don't mess around with peanut allergies.  No joke, the second we got our half sheet of  paper with his name and phone number on it, the nurse was out there asking if we were the "peanut" patient.  They whisked us back into triage, took a look at him, took his oxygen levels and then got us back into our room.

The doctor walked in and had us give the run down of what happened.  As she was explaining the peanut allergy to us, Carter began shaking and then threw up everywhere.  All over himself, all over the floor and all over his daddy.  This of course freaked him out and he cried.  We got him changed into a cute gown and daddy changed into scrubs of his own then settled into the bed to watch Lightning McQueen.  They gave Carter some steroids to help calm his system down as well as an anti-nausea pill to help his poor tummy.

A look at his hives - this wasn't even the worst they looked!

After a few hours the nurse came in and trained Byron and I on how to use an Epi-pen.  That added to my level of freaking out.  This is serious.  I know that allergies and Epi-pens are common, but when you have to consider jabbing a large needle into your two year old's thigh if he comes into contact with peanuts, you realize that this is a severe allergy, and if you don't have that pen on you, bad things could happen.  For the doctor to sit there and tell us that in this exact situation if it were to happen again; everything we saw change on Carter, it is absolutely a situation where you would need to use the Epi-pen, scared me.  He was still playing with his legos, he wasn't crying, he wasn't turning blue like you would think when you hear administer the Epi-pen, his face was swollen and he was making noises like he was clearing his throat; I had no idea that his reaction was so severe.

Our plan as of now (less than 24 hours after him eating the cashew) is to train everyone on how to use the Epi-pen, and to get him into an allergist ASAP.   We shall see how it goes.  I have never experienced a real full on allergic reaction from anyone.  To see my little boy swell up, get hives an hour and a half after we had given him the benadryl and be told that this is all apart of what the allergy will do to his little body, it wore me down.

On a positive note, we were close to the hospital, Byron and I were there to see what happened, and now we have the meds we need in case this happens again....

2012 sure has started out jam packed for the Pletcher family!  Here's to hoping things calm down!

Love me my Cricut....

An early Christmas present (back in September!) from my parents was the Cricut Expression.  I got the conservative machine which does 6x12 cut outs.  For those who don't know what the Cricut is, here is a brief rundown.  It is a machine that cuts out shapes and fonts on either fabric, vinyl, or card stock.  You then purchase different cartridges that have said shapes and fonts on them.  I used mine a TON when I did Carter's 1st year scrapbook.  I also used it to cut out letters in vinyl for our kitchen.

I had been bugging Byron that I needed (yes, needed, not just wanted) more cartridges to go with my machine.  I scoured Craigslist and found a Gypsy that had 35 different cartridges with it.  Now a Gypsy is a machine that looks similar to a Nintendo Gameboy, but stores up at 7,000 cartridges on it.  You can use the screen on the gypsy to create layouts using ALL of your cartridges.  You can take images and fonts from different cartridges, and design on one single layout.  As my current Cricut machine sits, I have to use a single cartridge cut out the image/font, and then put in another cartridge, get that image/font and cut it out, then assemble it all onto a separate page.  As one can imagine, this is a time consuming process, and often times I forget what size I used on a particular font. The gypsy solves that issue since you can save your layout!

I haven't quite gotten the hang of accessing all of the cartridges on the Gypsy and creating that way, but what I did get to use was a card making cartridge.   There are so many different types of cards AND envelopes that you can create.  I tested my abilities for Landon's 2nd birthday.  I think it turned out pretty well!

I glued the envelope to his present and then used a font cartridge to cut out the "to Landon" letters.  I was so excited to make the card!

Can't wait, and now that the holidays have settled down; to really learn how to use the Gypsy and Cricut machine to their fullest potential!

Stay tuned for the next project!!!

Where Have We Been?!

First and foremost - Welcome 2012!  We hope that everyone had an amazing wonderful holiday with their families.  We enjoyed the last few months of holiday time, but are so happy that things can return to normal!

Similar to the Halloween post, I'm just going to give a quick run down of what we have been up to since Thanksgiving - and do mostly pictures!

Here we go ~

First Snow

We had the first snow at the beginning of December.  I LOVE seeing the kids all dressed up in their snow suits - they walk like little penguins!

Kim's Baby Shower

I threw my good friend Kimberly a baby shower at our house on December 3rd.  We all had a charm and then some sort of advice or well wishes that we assembled onto a bracelet for Kim.  The intention of the charm bracelet is to be something that Kim can focus on and gather strength from while in the delivery room, as well as life with "little e".  It was such a great turnout for her, and it was so special to see how many important women are in her life to help support her as she begins the hardest, most rewarding role in her life....congrats to Kimberly and Raleigh!

The Train Museum/Seeing Santa

My friend Amy turned me onto Groupon, which is a site that gives discounts on EVERYTHING in your area.  I came across a Groupon for the Train Museum in Golden, and it just so happened to coincide with Santa's visit!  Carter LOVES trains, and it was a cheap outing....there was even a real train that we got to ride one - heaven for a two year old boy!

Haylee's Christmas Program

I love Haylee's preschool.  They do such a tremendous job teaching the kids their ABC's and 123's, but also about God and how to be nice people to each other.  Her school is rapidly expanding with students, but they have such a small school house, so when it comes to the programs, etc at the school, space both inside the school and in the parking lot is limited!  This year, they moved the Christmas program to a local church - GREAT IDEA!  There was plenty of room this year for everyone!   The night before the program, a car hit the light pole just across the street from the church and knocked out the power to the entire block!  A preschool Christmas program by candle and garage lights run from the firetruck generators, yes please!  The program went off great despite the lack of power!

 *I tried downloading one of the videos of her singing (the one where she got to play Mary and hold baby Jesus!) but the file is too big!  

Christmas 2011

House For Sale

Part of the reason why I am sooo far behind on blogging, and what has taken up most of our time is cleaning our house and getting it listed for sale!  I cannot tell you how many hours we have spent SCRUBBING our house.  My parents were nice to take the kids for us on New Years Eve - what did we do?!  Cleaned our house, washed and conditioned every piece of wood in our house, dusted and wiped down every shelf.  Our house will never be this clean again!  We officially put our house on the market on January 6th.  Because of safety and security, we aren't going to show any pictures of our house on the blog, so if you want to see our listing, send me an email, and I would be happy to send you the link!  That has taken a significant amount of time and effort to finish up all the little projects and get the house ready.  We are hopeful that someone comes along and likes our house as much as we do, but are totally ok if that doesn't happen.  We love our house, just need a bit more room in the garage for Byron and Carter to build cars.  If it happens, we are more than happy to find a house that meets that need, and if not, we will cross that bridge when we get to the point of needing more garage room.  

Byron's PRK

Also on January 6th, Byron got PRK (another version of LASIK) done.  PRK is different than LASIK in that the actual cornea of his eye is cut off and then has to regrow itself.  Byron's eyes are pretty bad, and his pupils were bordering on being too large to do the LASIK procedure, so he went ahead with PRK.  He is now 10 days out from surgery and is doing pretty well.  His right eye's vision is coming back faster than his left, but he is able to see fairly well in both.  He will have to go back in a few months and have his left eye worked on again, but now that we know what the recovery is like, I think it will be so much better!

That's about all that we have been up to!  We have been really busy these last few months, and are excited to get back into a grove.  Here's to hoping that 2012 is just as prosperous as 2011 was!  Thanks for following the blog even though I have been terrible in keeping up.  I promise to make sure that I keep up with it better this year!