Remainder November in Photos

November 2nd

I took someone to Toys R Us. We were there forever. It was like an indoor playground. 

November 6th

She fell asleep on me in the rocking chair for a late nap. I took advantage of the snuggles. 

We snuggled that night at bedtime too. 

November 9th

Mommy got a new car. We weren't planning on getting a new car yet. We were planning on me driving my Jeep at least until we had 2 kids in convertible carseats, but Colt's mom decided to trade in her Denali so we went ahead and made a switch. It's a 2017 and she'd only had it about a year. When she upgraded to the newer model, we took advantage and got it for her trade-in value. I wasn't sure if I would like driving a bigger car, but I love it. It doesn't feel big at all, and I definitely like the extra room. 

November 11th

Colt got new ceiling fans for the back porch. The whole time the boxes were in the living room, Kinley climbed on them. 

November 12th

Although they ended up being postponed, we were supposed to have pictures the next day. I was making Kinley try on clothes that morning to decide what she was going to wear. 

Sassy pants

Then we did some scooter riding...

... grocery shopping...

... and we went to a baby shower that afternoon. During the baby shower, Kinley came walking around the corner like this. 

November 13th

She was loving her some spaghetti.

November 15th

I got this toy from a mom swap. She loved it. Free toys are the best kind!

Daddy was working that night so we had Mommy and Kinley time. I definitely never want to forget those moments. 

November 16th

Kinley made this turkey during my MOPS meeting. She was so proud of it. 

Here's a video of her showing her Daddy her turkey and telling us what a turkey says... "Gobble, Gobble."

 

November 17th

I used to catch her all the time by the dog bowl feeding Lucky. I still do sometimes.

November 18th

Sweet girl sleeping with her Tigey and her other stuffed animals. Tigey was and still is #1.

Kinley the flamingo or as Kinley says "mingo."

Here's a video of her saying it herself. Oh my goodness... her voice. It was so cute and has changed so much! 

I took down Kinley's crib and took it out of her room that day. At that point, we'd had both her crib and her big girl bed in her room since we moved to Tyler. I didn't talk to her about it when I moved it out. That night when we went in her room and I first put her to bed, she said "No," and looked for her crib. When she realized that it wasn't there, she just got her pillow comfy and laid down. She slept all night. I was expecting it to be a harder transition that it was, but thankfully it wasn't!

November 22nd

Crazy bed hair

Napping on her baby brother

November 26

This was after Thanksgiving when Colt got home from working 3 Sulphur Springs night shifts in a row. Someone was tired.

November 28th

Helping Mommy make blueberry muffins for breakfast. Thanksgiving was over so we were wearing our Christmas jammies.

November 29th

More Christmas jammies and milk in Mommy and Daddy's bed

Thanksgiving 2017

Colt got off the morning of Thanksgiving. Then he headed to work in Sulphur Springs the night of Thanksgiving, plus the two nights after. Kinley and I went to my parents to spend Thanksgiving and stay a few nights. I'm glad we got to spend Thanksgiving with my family and spend some extra time visiting with Giggy and Pa. Whenever we visit them, they never want us to leave and always tell me how quite it is after we go home. I'm pretty sure they would want us to move in if we would. 

This horse has been around for many, many years. All the grandkids still love it. 

Cousins playing

We "helped" Giggy put up her Christmas tree while we were there. 

November 2016 - The month of sickness

We are on a kidless vacation in Florida for the week... so I'm sitting on the patio of the condo trying to figure out what my next post was for November (almost 9 months ago).

November was definitely the month of sickness for us. Kinley had a stomach bug twice that month within three weeks. I wrote about both of those back when it happened so I won't talk about all the miserableness again. The first time was in the middle of the night Halloween night. Colt got covered that time. That time Colt and I ended up a little queasy the next few days but not full on sick.

 The second time is when she had the rotavirus that landed us in the emergency room. I got covered that time. I guess that's what I get for laughing about Colt the first time around. Colt was working when this happened so I sent him the picture below and told him that it was me this time. This round of the bug, all three of us got it. On top of the two stomach bugs, I'm pretty sure Kinley and I both had colds pretty much the whole rest of the month too. 

This was at about 12am on November 21st... after I finally got us both cleaned up while she was screaming her head off. 

She thought it was morning time and that it was time to play dolls. 

You could tell she wasn't feeling good though. 

That next day she acted better. We were playing in the floor and even went for a walk around the neighborhood with the dogs. She was even dancing. However, that night she started having diarrhea in full force. That's the night, we ended up having poop on our kitchen floor.

After she continued to have diarrhea all day on the 22nd, her bottom was the reddest I've ever seen. When she still wasn't getting better and was actually acting worse and acting weak... is when we ended up at the hospital on the 23rd. Since Colt was working, Josh came up there to make sure the doctor was doing what Colt wanted. I didn't know until way later that he ended up with the virus too. This stuff was NO JOKE!

After being pumped with 2 rounds of fluid, she was drinking a little before we went home.

One of the nurses brought her this dog when she was in the hospital.

This was November 25th. I was super sick at this point. Dede and David came to get Kinley that afternoon so I could get a tiny break and clean the house. We were told to sanitize as much as possible because she could catch it again, and we didn't want that. After I cleaned as much as I could, I ended up sleeping in bed and watching the Gilmore Girls reunion on Netflix the rest of the night. 

Colt toughed it out at work everyday and just had to make frequent visits to the rest room. He was working 6a-3p shifts those days and would come home and immediately fall asleep. He would sleep on the couch until bedtime and then move to the bed to sleep some more. It was a miserable few days and month of sickness for us!

Rotavirus/Thanksgiving 2016

Now that I think we have finally recovered and are getting back in our routine, and while the horribleness of it is fresh on my mind, I guess I will talk about the rotavirus that took over our household the last week.

 In my last post, I mentioned that Kinley had a stomach bug. She started not eating well on Saturday, November 19th. The first time she threw up was that Sunday night. She also threw up on both Monday and Tuesday night. At the same time, she was literally pooping about 15 times minimum a day. One particular day, she pooped about 6 times within an hour. That same night, I had to refill her bath water 3 times because she kept pooping in it. Even though I was using diaper cream, along with Neosporin and Aquaphor on her bottom, because of how much she was going to the bathroom, it couldn't keep her protected. Her bottom looked awful. I even started to put her in the tub so I didn't have to use a washrag on her when I changed her, and I gave her baking soda baths. By the end, every time she would go to the bathroom, she would cry bloody murder. I felt so bad for her. I let her run around bare as much as I could but that led to poop in our kitchen floor and a kitchen rug that I just threw away.

 On Monday I thought she was starting to feel better because she ate a little breakfast. I even thought the worst was over and I was mainly going to be dealing with healing her diaper rash. I actually messaged her pediatrician that day solely about the diaper rash to make sure there wasn't something else I could be doing. However, the rest of Monday she ended up not eating and having lots of diarrhea. Tuesday was a lot of the same. She would play and act like she felt a little better in the mornings. Then as the day went on, she would go downhill. At nighttime she was always the worst. She would throw up and then be up so I would end up putting her in bed with me and watching TV to try to wind her down since Colt was at work anyways. Up until Tuesday, even though she wasn't eating, she was still drinking a lot for me and drinking a lot of Pedialyte. However, when she threw up again on Tuesday night for the 3rd night in a row, I remember saying to Colt that she wasn't improving at all. Wednesday morning, she woke up and was pretty pitiful. Once she woke up, she was still acting exhausted and was just wanting to sleep and lay on me all day. She seemed worse and also wasn't wanting to drink anymore. I know she had to be exhausted and weak. She even seemed to be walking wobbly and wasn't steady on her feet. She also hadn't wet her diaper very much, if any, the night before.  Both Colt and I were starting to get a little worried about her getting too dehydrated, and Colt thought we were a little behind the curve. Colt was going into work at 2 that day. Initially, he had told me just to message her doctor on a computer system they use. However, I went ahead and text her and she immediately called me back from her family Thanksgiving. She said she was willing to prescribe something for the nausea but that she thought we were already past that point. We actually had already tried the nausea medicine because we had some at the house and it hadn't helped. She recommended that we go ahead and take her to the emergency room to get her checked out. Unfortunately, Colt had just went in to work at the main hospital so I got us ready and we headed to Children's. Luckily, they were slow and we didn't have to wait. Colt had also already called the doctor and one of the nurses to let them know what was going on so they were ready for us.  Of course, Kinley hated them putting the IV in her hand. We wrapped her up in a sheet to hold her down, and she wasn't a very happy camper. Then she kept trying to chew on it. They brought her a stuffed animal and bubbles to try to distract her and keep her happy, but it didn't do much good. It didn't help that it was prime nap time when I took her in either! As soon as they started the 1st bag of fluid, she passed out in my lap and stayed asleep until the 2nd bag was almost done. Since Colt couldn't be there, Josh came and sat up there with us to keep us company... and I'm sure he was there to make sure they were all doing everything Colt wanted done too. All of her blood work came back fine, and her stool sample ended up coming back just saying that she had rotavirus. They let us go home after the 2nd bag of fluids. They also sent us home with some cream and paste for her bottom that cleared it up super fast. From the fluids alone, she looked so much better and lively when we left than when we went in! It made me feel a lot better. By Thursday morning, she was definitely getting back to herself and slowly eating a little.

I thought that since Kinley had already been sick so many days that both Colt and I might be in the clear and not get it, but boy, was I wrong! On Thursday, I ended up throwing up about 5 times and felt pretty miserable all day. The worst part of it was that my head was pounding constantly. Colt was off that day and although he wasn't sick quite yet, he didn't have an appetite and stayed on the couch all day too. I had actually planned on cooking us steak for our Thanksgiving since it was just us and we aren't that big on Thanksgiving food. That didn't go as planned though. My Thanksgiving meal consisted of pretty much nothing. I made myself a smoothie, but threw it up. Colt said he wasn't eating anything I had cooked or touched so he made himself a frozen pizza for lunch and managed to eat one slice. Then he had some ramen noodles for dinner. Because of how miserable I was on Thursday and the fact that we thought Colt was coming down with it too, Colt's mom ended up coming to get Kinley on Friday afternoon to give us some time to get better. Colt had to work Friday but didn't feel good. As soon as he got home on Friday afternoon, he fell asleep on the couch and then he started throwing up later that night too. I think he was just a day behind me. I thought I was doing better by Friday night, but then I started sweating and aching while I was in bed. It was hurting in my back though and almost felt like when I had kidney stones. I was laying there achy, and Colt was throwing up. We were pretty pitiful! The only good thing that came out of it is that I watched all 4 episodes of the new Gilmore Girls on Netflix at the same time. I don't know how Colt went to work on Saturday morning but he did. I woke up Saturday and actually had an appetite so I ate a little and then got busy cleaning the house. I tried to disinfect everything and bleach all the bathrooms so that hopefully Kinley won't end up getting it again. Colt ended up coming home from work Saturday and falling asleep on the couch until bedtime again. By the time he woke up, he said he was feeling kinda back to normal and that he guessed he needed lots of sleep to get over it. Since we were in the clear and also because Dede and David were going to work on Monday, I woke up on Sunday morning and headed to Forney to pick Kinley up. It took me 2.5 hours to get there and 4 hours to get home. It definitely wasn't the day to travel! However, I know Kinley had a lot more fun playing there than she would've had being home with us sickos!

Overall due to the rotavirus that took us out, we lost about 13 lbs. as a family. Kinley lost a whole lb. I lost 5 and Colt lost 7. It was bad, bad. I hope we don't have it again for a LONG time, if ever!

I would much rather be sick than see her be miserable and sick. If she felt like I did, I don't know how she managed to play as much as she did those few days. 

That was our fun Thanksgiving this year! Colt was working the day before and the day after so he wasn't planning on going anywhere. I had debated on staying here with him or going to visit my family. I ended up planning to leave on Wednesday to go stay with my family a couple nights and be there for Thanksgiving. Those plans changed when I ended up taking Kinley to the hospital. I still thought that I might go over the weekend, but then of course, I ended up sick too. I do think I am going to go this weekend instead to make up for it though. 

Week 24: November 21st-27th

The first few days of Week 24 are on the previous post. On the 24th, I had lunch at Jason's Deli with Melissa from work as she was passing through town. While I may not miss going to the office everyday, I do miss all the people that I got to see everyday. Afterwards, Kinley and I had to go to the hospital for her checkup with the GI specialist. 

She weighed15 lb. 4 oz. at her checkup. I thought her weight gain had slowed but the doctor was happy with it. Before her appointment, it seemed like the blood in her stool had gotten worse. I thought it seemed to be after eating eggs so the Sunday prior to her appointment, in addition to the milk, soy and gluten that I had cut out, I went ahead and cut out eggs, as well as her vitamin that she had been taking. At her appointment, the doctor said there were no signs of Chron's disease, Celiac, or anything like that. He recommended that I keep eliminating for another week and if she improved to start adding back to my diet one by one. He went ahead and referred us to an Allergist and gave me a sample of amino acid hypoallergenic formula to try in case she didn't get better or I got tired of trying to determine what was causing the issue. The only additional thing he mentioned was sedating her and putting a scope up to see if there was an issue, but since she was gaining weight and there were no other issues, both him and us didn't see the need for that. Fortunately, she seemed to get better shortly after that appointment.  As I started to add back to my diet, nothing seemed to irritate her so thankfully I was able to start eating normally again and we cancelled the appointment with the allergist. Around this time she was also waking up every hour or two! I was wondering when I was ever going to get to sleep again! We tried to put her in her crib around then but since she was waking so often and it seemed like she might be teething, we caved and she was back in our room for all of our sake! 

I didn't get any pictures from lunch but here she is strolling to the doctor.

Resting at home after our day... I know I've said it before, but her cuddled up like this on me was my favorite. Ignore the nipple shield in the background... that was our life those days!

The 26th was Thanksgiving day. Colt was sleeping that morning and working that afternoon and night. Rather than staying home alone, Kinley and I went to the Parker brothers' house and hung out with them and Robb and Alicia for a while. 

These are two of my favorite pictures from her first Thanksgiving!

... And some more in our second outfit that day!

Plus, a couple videos from the week.