Fun filled trip to Arizona

Kylie took her first trip to Arizona. We left late on Friday night and arrived in Scottsdale on Saturday. Little by little Kylie has recovered from her illness and by the time we made it home last night the little, wild, monkey we all know and love was back. Here are some photos from our adventures in Scottsdale over the past few days. We are so glad Kylie is feeling better, it was wonderful to spend a little time together as a family, now back to the crazy work schedules :o)

We stayed at a hotel on our way to Arizona to break up the drive. Kylie enjoyed imitating us and pretending to cut her toast.

As soon as we arrived in Scottsdale we headed to the field to watch Tim (Melissa's boyfriend) play. Kylie sported her crown and sunglasses, wanted to look cute for all those baseball players ;o)

Her first minor league ball game, she seemed interested for a couple minutes.

It was a perfect 75 degrees and sunny, we loved being outside enjoying the beautiful day.

Craig grabbed a ball for Kylie, she was watching a few kids play catch and wanted to join in.

On Sunday we took a walk to the mall near my parents condo.

The mall wasn't open when we arrived so we did a little photo shoot :o)

 Craig, Kylie and I were lucky enough to be staying with friends that live in Scottsdale, Siena (a little girl I used to teach dance to) and her parents Cheryl and Matt. On Sunday afternoon we had the whole group over to Cheryl's house. The whole group included us, my mom, dad, Melissa, Tim, James (Tim's brother), Gianna (James's wife), Johnny (James and Gianna's little boy, 2.5 years), Frank (Tim's dad) and Helen (Tim's mom). We had a great time BBQing, going in the spa and just hanging out during Tim's one day off.

"All this entertaining wears me out."

Little John giving Kylie a hug.

Sporting her SF Giants outfit for bubble time.

Kisses from Johnny

We sat them here and told John to ask her questions, this is what her said..."How's the job? How's your house? How's the Giants? I like your pretty eyes." Kylie of course just sat there, it was so cute!

First taste of whipped cream that Auntie Melissa made from scratch for us to eat with strawberries.

Not a big fan.

Running and yelling in the backyard, ahhhhhhhh.

Gianna, James and Johnny.

Tim and Melissa

Enjoying a little more baseball on Monday, although the weather said it was only 76, it sure felt like 90 degrees out there in the sun.

Wearing her Giants jersey and playing with farm animals, sounds like a good time to me.

Nap time in the car before having dinner and heading back to California.

We had a delicious dinner with my mom, dad, Melissa and Tim before driving back home on Monday night. We walked around downtown Scottsdale and enjoyed the warm weather and lights on all the trees.

Ever since our trip to Scottsdale, Kylie has enjoyed wearing sunglasses, today (Tuesday) she decided to wear mine around the front yard for a while, cute girl!

After dinner we enjoyed a walk around the neighborhood, both Craig and I are home tonight, yay.

Kylie wanted to try and pull the wagon herself.

Bath time fun with daddy.

Daddy loves to do crazy hair styles in the bath, so fun.

This is the "I'm done with this" face.

After looking through all these photos I realize there is not a single one of the three of us. I guess that's what happens when I am always behind the lens. We will have to be better about that or Kylie will look back and wonder who her parents were :o)
-Natalie
P.S. My good friend Liz had her beautiful baby boy yesterday morning, we are so happy for her and hope to go visit her soon!

The sick bunny is getting better.

Although Kylie and I have a pretty rough night (up for 3 hours, fussy, crying, not wanting to nurse) last night, and a somewhat fussy day, overall it is obvious Kylie is getting better. As today progressed Kylie ate more and more, yeah! We are still having a hard time getting her to drink very much, but at least she is eating. She also had a nice, healthy poop today, that might be TMI for all of you, but after a week of illness and not eating food, I was thrilled to see that gift when I changed her diaper. We didn't make it to music class again this morning, we were up and dressed but Kylie decided that she was sleepy after being up in the middle of the night (I was too) so at 9:45 we sat down to nurse before heading out the door and within 2 minutes she was asleep (I was quick to follow). We took another visit to the chiropractor and ran a few errands before coming back home to spend a little time with Craig. Kylie took another quick nap and when she woke up Craig was getting ready to leave for work. She clung to him and didn't want him to go, she cried for about 10 minutes after he left, she was so sad. Ever since last night she has had little bouts of crying/screaming and I am having the hardest time figuring out whats wrong. It's like she is in pain, but I can't find the source. I keep thinking it might be gas since she is starting to eat again, but she doesn't act like her tummy hurts, and she has not had anything move through her that would have been the problem. I also thought maybe she has a headache, but again, she doesn't touch her head, or squint her eyes, nothing that would really indicate her head hurts. When she was so upset with Craig leaving I started to wonder if she was associating me with the trauma of the IV in the ER and she is upset with me and feels safer when Craig is here, I hope not, but you never know.

So after hearing her cry and fuss so much over the past 24 hours, tonight I decided we were going to do whatever it took to keep her from crying. As it turns out Kylie decided she wanted to make up for the lost time this past week by playing and walking until midnight! Yep that's right, we played with almost every toy she has, we walked (holding my finger with one hand and holding other random objects with the other) countless laps around the house, we went up and down the stairs, we visited Melissa and practiced walking back and forth (still holding random objects, but this time by herself), we had multiple snack breaks, a quick walk outside and even two fake out bedtimes (Kylie would act tired, we would come lay down in bed, she would nurse, close her eyes, get completely relaxed, then all of a sudden pop her little head up, start babbling and want to play again. I even tried to act like I was asleep, she sat quite for about 15 seconds then I head a squeal and WHACK she had thrown herself on my head, that's one way to get me up). During this time we did have a first, Kylie's first U-turn. She was walking between Melissa and I, she was half way to Melissa and she made a full left turn and came back to me, it was awesome! She also stood a few times today, completely distracted with toys and balancing beautifully until she realized what she was doing.

Even though she was fussy for most of the day, it was wonderful to see Kylie with a little more energy and life back in her. Today she was almost back to herself, yay, we missed her.

-Natalie

With Grandma and Grandpa the day after her birthday. Thank you for the pretty dress!

Craig about 18 months old, Diana sent this to me, Kylie is looking more and more like him, I wonder if her hair will get this blond.

Photo from Saturday when she was feeling better for a little bit, she actually left the glasses on for a couple min, so cute!

Wagon rides with Grandpa are always fun.

Kylie eating dinner tonight, it's so great to have her interested in food again.

Late night play time with the owl hat on, having way to much fun.

Acupuncture and a visit to the ER

Today Kylie experienced two things that I never have...acupuncture and IV fluid hydration. How did we get here? Here is a quick run down of the past few days...

Saturday- Kylie starts to feel better, has an appetite, fever still on and off, in the evening she even played in the living room and practiced walking between Grandpa David and I.

Sunday- Craig comes home from work and throws up, spends the rest of the day in bed. Kylie starts to look worse again, more diarrhea, still not taking fluids, lethargic, high temp. Thank goodness for David, he kept us going (laundry, trips to the store, you name it). Sunday night I start to feel horrible (called off from work)

Monday- Craig starting to fell a little better, me a little worse, Kylie the same. So we take her to the dr. We weigh her, 20#s 4 oz, so she only lost 4 oz, great. Then we remember that she was weighed naked last time and this time she is fully clothed :o( so she lost closer to a pound we think (she looks thinner to us). We see a new dr that rules our ear infection, strep throat and says she can't find an obvious sign of infection. She recommends we go straight to the ER and have a septic work up done and get IV fluids. We leave and contmeplate our options... on one hand we don't want to miss something serious and end up having something horrible happen, like a seizure. One the other hand we know what happens at the ER, they will draw blood and probably poke her multiple times, start an IV, straight cath her for urine and if anything seems suspicious they will want to do a lumbar puncture. And heaven forbid they decide to admit her, she might end up with another kind of infection on top of it. We felt like the answer we would get from the ER was "yes, she has a GI virus, probably rotavirus and the only thing we can do it keep her hydrated." So why put her through all that when we already know the answer. So we go home and decided to make one more last ditch effort to get her to take fluids. This consisted of Craig holding her in a nursing position and restraining her arms while he forced her to swallow 5 mL of breastmilk every 5-10 min. She would get a little break when she nursed or slept, but he did this most of the afternoon. At 4pm we took her to see Dr. Dale, he gave her an adjustment (she was very misaligned from being sick) and told us he hoped it would help her immune system fight off the bug. She had moments that looked promising throughout the evening, but in the end she still wouldn't take any fluids besides nursing. By this point I am hardly keeping anything down, barley able to keep myself hydrated much less produce extra fluids for Kylie, what a mess. We make it through the night with one diarrhea diaper and one small throw up.

Tuesday - We make an appointment to meet with an acupuncturist that works along side the chiropractor. The hope being that he could also help strengthen her immune system and draw out some of the toxins. It was a great appointment, Kylie did very well and she seemed to feel a little better after her treatment and a nap. We also went to Clark's and picked up some homeopathic remedies to try out, anything to keep her out of the hospital. Things seemed to be going ok, she was even eating little bits of banana and rice cereal, but two things happened that made us pack up and go to the ER. One, Kylie only had one wet diaper all day, she was obviously seriously dehydrated and my milk was not keeping up with her. Two, when Craig tried to give her a syringe with pedalite, she forced herself to gag before he even got anything in her mouth, by the time he got it in, she say up and threw it all up, including the breastmilk she had just got while nursing. At this point I was getting worried, it is so hard to keep anything down and now she just threw up. I was also concerned because Craig had to go to work, so I would be home trying to do the unsuccessful syringe feedings, ahhh. So we decided that we would feel better if she had some IV fluids. We (my mom, sister, Kylie and I) headed to Redlands Community. Why not Loma Linda? We figured the wait would be shorter and a good friend made a phone call for us to try to expedite the process.
     Once we got there Kylie was a whole new baby, she was wanting to walk around, she was babbling, she even acted interested in what I was eating, but she still wouldn't drink anything. We got called back, they weighed her 19#s 14 oz, but this time she was weighed with all her clothes, shoes and a sweatshirt, I was still concerned. Her vitals were ok, heart rate a little fast (which we knew at home) and her temp was 98.8, perfect. So after talking to the dr, he decides that we could do some IV fluids and they would draw some blood when they did the IV to evaluate her electrolytes. So we waited for about 2 hours, in this time Kylie is waving at everyone, playing peek-a-boo with her doll, she even took a few sips of water and had a very small wet diaper. I was feeling like all our efforts throughout the day were working and she was starting to turn the corner. I thought, "if she will take water from me two more times we will just go home and try to make it through the night." No such luck, she went right back to refusing everything I offered her, so IV fluids coming up. We knew the IV would be the worst part, but it didn't make it any easier when they had to sick her two times (thank goodness one two) and when they hooked up the IV it ran well, yay. One of her blood testes did however clot before making it to lab, so they wanted to come redraw the blood. We said no, it was only the CBC and we were going to get more information from the other blood work anyway. So she got about 300mL of fluid over about 2 hours, during this time she talked and played a little, acted interested in our food (we gave her little bits of tomato and french fries, not great, but she was interested, yeah) nursed a lot and even fell asleep for a bit (it was way past her bedtime). When her lab results came back they were not great but also not horrible. Her sodium was low, 132 (normal low is 135), and CO2 was low 18% (normal low 22), both signs of dehydration and need for fluids. So I was glad we decided to get her hydrated, especially because during out time at the ER I visited the lady's room 4 times with my own case of diarrhea, I felt like I needed IV fluids too!
     We got home around midnight, she had another wet diaper! She almost acted interested in eating, but then threw her food on the floor. When we climbed in to bed and turned off the light she let out a big sigh followed by giggling with arms and legs kicking like crazy. As soon as I snuggled in next to her, she latched on, nursed and fell asleep, poor tired girl. She has nursed one more time since, I have offered her other fluids but she still wont take them. I am hoping she will feel better in the morning and we can start feeding her some food and find something she will drink.

It was a long adventuresome day, I will always wonder if she would have done ok without the fluids, but at this point I'm glad she got them. Next time we start to see an illness like this come on, we will be much more diligent with our herbs and homeopathics off the bat and not let ourselves get so far behind. Sorry we are still learning little angel, we will do better next time, we promise.
Craig did go to work tonight but we kept him updated the whole time, he was so sad he could not be with us.
We are hoping for the best tomorrow, I am still hopeful we will all feel better and be able to go to Spring Training in Arizona this weekend like we planned, but we will see.
-Natalie

Over the past 5 days she has wanted to be held like this, the only break is to nurse, then back up on the shoulder.

Feeling good enough to sit up on her own. She smiled and played a little, we even wrapped her dolls hand so they had matching little claws :o)

Not so sure about it sometimes.

unwrapping the IV, almost on our way home, yay!