Tulips and Tonsils

We have had a crazy couple of days here in Cochran Land!  Last night was our big Spring Program and Open House at CDO!  The theme was "God is Everywhere" and each classroom represented a different country.  My absolutely fantastic co-teacher Blythe and I were given the country of Holland to represent. We spent a long evening at Snuffers and racked our brains to come up with projects to do with the kids.  Blythe's husband Jimmy made us some fabulous flower boxes to hold tulips with each student's name and picture and Blythe burned a tracing of each child's name into each box!  We had windmills hanging and outside our door.  We really had so much fun working for hours and hours to make our vision a reality!  I think we were more excited than the kids when last night finally rolled around!  The room turned out fantastically and our wonderfully supportive parents were so impressed with all of their student's work! 

While Mommy worked late, Daddy was in charge of swim lesson night!  Mer bravely volunteered to come and help out because we need two adults in the water for Liam and Lilah while Caroline takes her "big girl" lesson at the same time.  At pick up time after school, Ms. Sunny and Ms. Vicki mentioned that Lilah had a tough day.  She was fussy and hadn't slept well and just laid on them for most of the day.  Since Lilah spent all of her last swim lesson crying and clinging to me and now screams through every bath time (I guess it causes flashbacks to the terrible swim lesson!), I decided to be a nice mommy and ask Auntie MerMer to keep her at home for snuggles while the little fishies (Caroline and Liam) went to swimming with Daddy!  From the looks of things, Lilah was thrilled with that decision!  She was fine all night and checked out great at the doctor, so I guess it was just the stress of the impending swim lesson that had her down all day!

Daddy made it through swimming, dinner, and got everyone in bed!  He's a keeper!

After a yummy late night dinner with the lively ladies of 4A and 4C, I was reluctantly awake early this morning to take Liam and Lilah to their 9 month check up.  Robert is applying for sainthood soon, so he agreed to go to the appointment with me so that I would not look like crazy Octomom trying to control all of my children in the doctor's office!  He had to leave the 9:30 appointment by 10:30 in order to get to Opening Day at the ballpark on time, so if the appointment ran late, I was on my own.  So, of course, the appointment ran late.  Robert was there to find out that the babies look perfect!  They are developing well, meeting their milestones and Liam (at 19 lbs. 6 oz.) weighs a pound more than Lilah (at 18 lbs. 5 oz.) and is a quarter of an inch longer than her (Liam 27.5 inches and Lilah 27.25 inches)!  Fortunately, the staff at the pediatrician's office is kind and they took pity on me.  After Robert left, Dr. Mix took Lilah and Caroline on a walk around the office while Liam and I got his vision screening done.  When Dr. Mix came back she mentioned that she would like to check Caroline out because her nose was really runny and her ear was draining a lot.  Yes, I am Mother of the Year, I wait for the doctor to notice my child is sick at my other childrens' appointment instead of realizing that my child is sick and taking her to the doctor.  Don't be jealous of my superior mothering skills!  She checked Caroline's ear and it was very infected and so clogged that no drops were even getting to the infection.  Her throat is also covered in pus (sorry for the gross visual) and her tonsils were huge and red.  Yep, right back where we started a few weeks ago when we ended up in the hospital with strep and dehydration.  Dr. Mix decided she needed to be seen by the ENT right away.  I asked if she meant right away now when both babies are screaming hysterically because they had no nap, are starving, and just had their finger pricked and Caroline is hysterical because she had her ear checked and her throat swabbed and I am BY MYSELF with all of them?  Yep, right now.  She called the ENT and he would see us as soon as we could get there.  I am proud of myself for not crying or begging some of the nurses to come with me until they called security to remove me and my screaming friends.  I gathered up the happy campers and we headed to the ENT.  In a flash of brilliance I called my dad who was working close by and he agreed to come and drive the babies around the parking lot while we were in the ENT's office so they could have their morning nap!  My dad the hero!  After two nurses, the doctor, and I held Caroline down and got her ear sucked out (again, sorry for the visual) we left with a 10 day course of high dose antibiotics and more ear drops.  We are really praying that this relapse is just do to the severity of her previous strep infection because if they can't get it under control, we will have to have her tonsils taken out.  She's already had her adenoids removed, so I asked the ENT if he had to go in to get the tonsils could he just go ahead and remove the appendix, the gallbladder, and anything else that might need to come out at any point in time.  We finally made it home at 12:45 from our 9:30 doctor appointment.  After a stop at Sonic of course!  Everyone is sleeping off the effects of a crazy morning and mommy is counting down until bedtime!  Here's hoping for a calm weekend (but what fun would that be?) :)