The Ashlan show: 16 months old!!

So Ashlan still has a little something. We thought she was just teething, and she still could be, but she usually doesn’t get a runny nose as a symptom, and that’s what she has. We actually went to the Ped for it, and they gave us an antibiotic, but after many tearful episodes of trying to force medication down her throat, we gave up. We’ll just let her try to fight it off on her own first. We tried so hard to give her that antibiotic, and tried everything! We had it flavored, tried to get her to take it on a spoon first, then syringe, mixed it in yogurt (to which she now won’t eat yogurt at all, and she loved yogurt!), etc. Finally, I just got down on the floor with her, put her on my lap, wrapped my legs around her to hold her arms down, and tried to put the liquid in her mouth. She spit all but a few ml out, so we have no idea how much she got, and it clearly wasn’t worth the trauma we were putting her (and us!) through for those two times a day, not to mention, how fed up each of us got when she would shake her head as we were trying to steady it, then spit it out all over her and us, and try to wriggle away from us, screaming. And on the times that we actually got some in her, she’d just gag herself and throw up afterwards, so she didn’t get any anyway. It was a nightmare and everyone was unhappy. So we hope she can fight this off herself or else we’re back to square one. We called the Ped again to see if there was another way to administer them, and they said no. The antibiotic she was on wasn’t offered in a shot, but it is offered in a capsule, but not at her correct dose. If she doesn’t get better, we are going to see if they can give us the capsule anyway and we can adjust the dose (we do have a pharmacist on staff ;) ), and then we’ll crush it up and hope it doesn’t taste bad in her food. I’m not sure why she didn’t like the sugary liquid antibiotic, but she doesn’t even like any kind of juice or flavored milk, so maybe that’s why. That’s also the reason we couldn’t mix it up in juice. Whoever heard of a child not liking juice and chocolate or strawberry milk?! What a weirdo! Haha! Her mood has already improved though since we stopped forcing it on her, so hopefully she can just fight this off by herself. She doesn’t cough much anymore, and it rarely wakes her up enough to the point where she is coughing so much that she’s throwing up, so that’s good at least. We’re just watching her runny nose to see if it gets worse. Her 10^th tooth hasn’t come in yet, though we can still see how puffy and red her gums are, but I’m sure we’ll know she’s teething when she starts throwing up again, haha.

Daddy started back to work on Wednesday and it was sad to see him go back. We enjoyed having him around even if we couldn’t do much. And it turns out that the spleen they removed from his intestines was his only spleen! Originally, they thought it was either part of his spleen that had broken off, or a second spleen that he was born with. So, now he is spleen-less. Not sure exactly what that means, but we do know it means he is more prone to infections. The doctor is supposed to call him on Monday/Tuesday, so we’ll know more then. However, it just figures that he is in the health-care field, where he has to deal with sick people on a daily basis.

Ashlan's 16th month birthday was on April 3rd. Hard to believe how fast this year has gone. She is a little girl now, no more baby! Unbelievable!

This past Sunday we had an Easter Egg Hunt with a mom group that I’m in down here, and Ashlan didn’t get one egg (not even one, lol!), despite the fact that every child was supposed to get at least 12 eggs (because that’s what most parents brought). She was not very concerned at all though, and managed to fill her Easter basket with a few twigs she picked up that she liked better. She was also lumped together with the 3 and under crowd, so there were a lot of kids older than her running around, and I think she was the youngest walking one there anyway. We had a good time though! There was also food and desserts galore and after we ate, we played at the park while the eggs were hidden. We had to leave early though because Dan was starting to feel some pain, but it was a long enough outing because he hadn’t been outside the house for that long in awhile. We’ll definitely be back next year.

At the Easter Egg hunt...this is what she preferred to do. :)