R. S. V.

I didn't really know what it was, but I had read about it in passing on my Facebook newsfeed here and there. 

I was already thinking I was way behind the last few weeks on blogging. The holidays tend to do that, and I haven't done one single Christmas craft this year. :-(

McKenna woke up on Christmas morning seemingly a little congested. We just figured, ehh a case of the sniffles. We'd been traveling and it's winter season so they were bound to happen. She's such a well-tempered baby that we didn't think much of it. 

Flash forward to the day after Christmas, Friday. She woke up even more congested. We gave family fair warning and headed to my parents' house to open up gifts. That afternoon she didn't seem quite right, and she fell asleep on my chest. During this relatively long nap session her legs began to feel uncomfortably warm and I could feel heat radiating off of her. I also noticed a rattle, what felt like congestion in her chest as she breathed and snored. 

She woke up in what I will describe as delirium. Face flushed. Burning up. All signs pointing to a fever (in addition to her face being a faucet). What concerned me most was her mannerisms. Her eyes were half-mast, rolling back (as if she was asleep), she was groaning, and she essentially felt limp. I had to support her head as I held her. She was just kinda floppy. She was most certainly awake but didn't feel present. We had been using an ear thermometer up until now; but that thing was reading nothing in temperature compared to how hot I felt her temp should be. So I braved the most tried and true method of taking temp. And I just watched that thing tick, tick, tick upward to 102.5 before she kicked me away. 4pm the day after Christmas. Doc's closed. I called Kevin and told him I wanted to go to the ER (a close friend confirmed my concern when I told her what we were experiencing). We waited for daddy to hurry home and rushed up the street to the hospital. 

One of my biggest fears in life. Germs. I would do anything to avoid the ER, but we committed to going. Something in me said my baby was not right. While fevers are common and are an indicator that your body is fighting something, they can be dangerous if you ignore their red flags.  The day after Christmas, as you can imagine, the wait was overflowing into the parking lot. 

From the moment we got in the car to three hours [of mostly waiting] later when we got her RSV diagnosis, I was my biggest enemy. It felt like one huge 3 hour panic attack. I second guessed my decision for us to bring her. They gave her Tylenol as soon as we were admitted to bring down her fever, and she was beginning to act like herself as we continued to wait. What if she was "just teething"? What if it was nothing? Did I put the three of us through hell (and potentially in contact with something worse) to have them give her Tylenol and send us home? Technically that's all they did (after some lab work and a chest xray) but learning she had what could be a potentially deadly virus was alarming and nerve wracking to say the least. 

As a virus there's nothing they can give her to make her better, just let it run its course. We have to monitor her closely the next couple of days to make sure it doesn't get worse and follow up with our ped. 

Once we were discharged, we loaded up in the car and I just broke. The range of emotions I felt during the last 4-5 hours was immense. Kevin held my hand as I held hers as we drove home. I was tired, scared, anxious, and sick myself. I also felt validated. The weight of my decision to take her to the ER was huge, and I feel as if my mommy intuition had been confirmed. I often worry that I'll make decisions based on anxiety as opposed to reality. As someone who struggles with anxiety, there are more times than not something doesn't "feel right", even things that are totally fine. Through a difficult day, that feeling of validation has helped build my confidence to make sound decisions based on a gift that nature gave me to know my child best. 

It's been a long couple of days, and an even longer couple of nights. It seems as if the mucous in her chest is loosening up now, and I hope we'll have our healthy baby back soon. 

Blips of our Christmas Disney trip

I won't go into a full account of our Disney trip. But I will say it may be the best trip I have ever taken to Disney World.  McKenna's eyes were big and bright the entire trip. She loved the Christmas decorations, the lights, the people, the food, and mostly... the Characters!!

Kisses for Mickey

To boot, we sprung for the savanna view room at Animal Kingdom Lodge. I wasn't sure if she would care to see live animals at a distance, but let me tell you. We could have sat on our balcony all day.

We did the Very Merry Christmas Party for the first time ever. We were a bit concerned because it starts late and goes into the wee hours, but McKenna was a trooper for a long as we needed to be there.... just enough time to see characters dressed in holiday attire, eat cookies and drink cocoa to our hearts' content, watch the castle show and fireworks, and hop on a few rides.

There is no better time to visit Disney World than Christmastime. As much as there is to see and do at Disney, it is multiplied by 500000 at Christmas.

10 months old!! (2 weeks ago)

Wow have I had a difficult time finding a few minutes to right up McKenna's 10th month! After Thanksgiving McKenna and I had that nasty flu bug which took us straight into out Disney vacation, then taking a few days to get us back into the groove followed by a busy weekend and here we are. I'm having to pull myself away from wrapping presents to get this on paper. Whew! Anywhoo, McKenna is TEN MONTHS OLD.

 

Yup, you guessed it. This was the best we managed to get being just McKenna and me. This child wants nothing to do with doing nothing.  She is always moving, always on the go, always up to something and getting into something. She is so sweet and loves giving kisses, but really isn't the cuddle up and zone out in front of the television type.  She LOVES books and even more so loves animal books.  This about sums up our shoot:

 

 

She is pointing at things she wants to go to and pointing at things when you ask her where something specific is. Dog, Chief, Boogs, Dada, Mama, Nose are all things she will point to when asked. She is also problem solving things, for example sticking blocks through a hole and opening up a hatch door to retrieve them. She's beginning to stand without holding on to things, but still in the experimenting phase. I think walking is right around the corner, but I'm really in no rush ;-).

My heart melts.  When the boys go barking at the front door and I tell her daddies home, she does her little Chihuahua shake, smiles, and squeals. I say the Chihuahua shake because when she gets super excited she kinda stiffens her arms up and trembles in excitement. It is the most endearing thing in the world.

She has several days a week she only takes one nap, and on those days, she goes down so easy and sleeps like a baby at night. On days her second naps are a little to "high-quality" she wakes up wanting to play for a few hours in the middle of the night.

I never thought in the world a human, let alone anything, could bring me this much joy in life.  She is such a happy, inquisitive, hilarious, quirky, spunky, smart, sweet little baby girl. And now I'm having one of my moments where I want to go wake her up just to hug her.

Farewell again, Disney

We're on our way home from another incredible Disney trip. 

This was by far the best trip ever. They just keep getting better and better. McKenna rolled with the punches, stayed up late, napped when she needed to nap, pushed through naps during meals, and the best part... LOVED the characters. It was amazing. 

To boot, we stayed with a Savanna View at Animal Kingdom Lodge, so we got to watch giraffe, zebra, wildebeests, and all sort of animals graze from our own balcony. 

This was the first trip in a long time where I just kept repeating "do we have to leave?!!" a gazillion times to Kevin as we packed out stuff up. 

Luckily Kevin and I made the decision to become Disney Vacation Club members this year so it felt so much easier to tell McKenna "we'll be back soon!" because we have our Disney trips planned out for us for the next 30+ years. 

Christmas trips are a special breed too, aside from the parks and resorts being decorated, because you can't feel too sad about leaving...  We are heading home to Christmas just around the corner!! 

I can't wait to get home to upload pictures from our trip. I will be sure to share the best of what we captured of our little Disney Princess. 

McKenna's first fever

McKenna had her first official fever yesterday. It was maybe the scariest thing that Kevin and I had to deal with to date. What do you look for? What temperature is acceptable? How long will it last? What do we do? What can we give her? As first time parents, I had already anticipated being freaked out about her first fever because there's really not a whole lot you can do. You feel out of control and helpless.  

Such a poor baby. You could tell she was miserable. She seemed to get better after we started her on medicine (after checking in with the ped office). Through it all though, she was the snuggliest she's ever been. 

She went down to bed last night relatively easily too. Then about an hour after she went to sleep she decided she wanted to wake up and play. She had essentially slept and nursed all day (after refusing to nurse for several hours at the onset of the fever). So we let her mess around in our bed since she was in good spirits and wanting to play. 

We let her sleep with us, and each time she woke to attempt to play or nurse, Mommy felt worse and worse.  That's right, I'm sick today too. She seems to be doing fine, a little groggy, but she's playing and laughing like herself. I'm just trying to keep us well-rested and hydrated because we leave for vacation on Friday! 

McKenna's first Thanksgiving

With a new addition to our family this year, Kevin and I decided it's time to start creating some new traditions. One of them being trying our hand at hosting our first Thanksgiving. 

I was a bit anxious because I had never cooked multiple dishes at the same time for more than just Kevin and me. But when Kevin said he'd head up the meats- turkey and ham- it definitely took a little pressure off. 

I had begun shopping a couple of weeks in advance, and we began prepping a couple of days in advance so when the real day came it wasn't a chaotic madhouse. 

Kevin did a rum honey glaze that we perfected a couple of years ago on our Ham, and brined and smoked our turkey. It came out like heaven in your mouth. 

I made 3 dips for apps: Blue Cheese Herb Spread, Homemade Hummus, and Spinach Artichoke dip along with few block cheeses. 

For the rest of the meal I made 3-cheese Mac & Cheese, baked mashed potatoes, green beans with bacon bits, asparagus with bacon bits (asp is one of Kevin's faves so we HAD to have some for him), and sautéed carrots. Mom brought sweet potatoes, stuffing, and spinach casserole. 

I'd say our first spread turned out pretty impressive! 

(The greens are in the way back corner! lol). 

I spent a lot of time fine-tuning my time management in order to not overwhelm myself the day of. Even so, we told our family we'd start around 4 but dinner might not be ready at that time. Kevin and I did so well at planning that the last dish came off of the stove literally at 4PM.  We were lucky we didn't have to be cooking while our family arrived. 

McKenna tried almost everything (minus the Ham because of honey, and the stuffing because of walnuts). She loved it and thoroughly enjoyed sitting at the table eating with everyone. It was a blast. 

Grandpa, cousin Maddie, and McKenna 

We finished off dinner with Apple Pie, brownies, and ice cream. [Pie was from Publix, maybe next year I'll try my hand at homemade pie!]

Kevin took charge after dinner and started on dishes without any request... quite a man to be thankful for! After family left and baby went down we finished up all of the dishes! I often here one of the stresses of hosting is clean up. We just dove right in, got it done, and will wake up tomorrow to a clean home! I will say Kevin did most of the dishes though ;-).  

All in all, it was an incredible evening. Kevin and I both thoroughly enjoyed the process, to my surprise! I have so much I be thankful for. 

And now..... Time to prep for CHRISTMAS!!!

Octopus Baby costume

McKenna's Halloween costume ended up being a major hit this year for Halloween.

Yup, you guessed it, she was an octopus.

In all honesty, I was concerned it wasn't going to come out the way I had envisioned because it really came down to the wire. I hadn't tried the whole finished product on her until the day before Hallowen so there really wouldn't be much to do if it hadn't worked out! It turned out better than I had envisioned!

I came across several tutorials on how to make this costume easy and inexpensive. Per Usual, I made this craft project more difficult than it needed to be, and I often do that. It's just my personality. Why have things simple when they can be super complex?!

What you need for the tentacles:

• 4 pairs of stockings/men's socks (or 8 pairs if you want to keep the stockings)
• Thick Elastic (I used 1.5 inches)
• Pillow Stuffing
• Sewing Materials (needle/thread)
• 1.5 inch ribbon (optional)

What you need for the hat:

• Beanie
• Buttons
• White felt
• Plastic string
• Hot glue gun

I was originally concerned because I was finding stockings at like $5/pair... I was not looking forward to forking over $20+ on octopus tentacles that I could never use again. I lucked out finding pink stockings on major discount .... $1.50 a pair! I was able to nab all the same color too!

#targetdoesitagain

There is a way I have read to do this in order to salvage the stockings (hence the suggestion for 8 pairs of stockings), but it seemed complex and I found them at a good enough deal to not worry about it. I believe you end up tucking the second leg into the first leg.... but again, my brain was frazzled so don't quote me on it. Not sure what we would do with identical pairs in the same size and color anyway!

I started by stuffing the legs of each of the stockings with pillow stuffing (which a $5 bag was MORE than enough).

I then cut the legs off of the stockings. I suppose you could cut them first, but since this was my first try I didn't know how far up I wanted to stuff them.

With all 8 tentacles stuffed and cut, it was time to start attaching them to the elastic.

To get the elastic ready: measure around the child's waist and then double it. The reason you will be doubling the elastic is because you essentially will be sandwiching the top of each stocking within the two layers of elastic. I started out affixing them the tentacles with safety pins.

 

You'll want to do this so you can space the tentacles out evenly around the elastic. The spacing may depend on if you are making this costume for a crawler or a walker, then again, you'd likely want them space around the back with a gap in the front either way.  That way there is a bit of space in the front for their real legs to crawl/move/walk.

With the tentacles pinned, I began sewing.  NOW, I AM NOT A SEWER. I don't know the first thing about sewing.  But I figured just taking a needle and thread in and out a ga-jillion times would make the tentacles stay long enough to make it through the night. And to make it a little more appealing, I sewed both the top and the bottom of the elastic so it looked finished off (I don't have a picture of this, but I don't need to go flashing my awful sewing skills around the internet anyway).

The beanie was a hat we had lying around that had never gotten any use. I just cut oval shapes out of felt, glued on 2 black buttons, and cut some plastic-y type string from the craft store for the eyelashes.

I paired it all with a basic, pink onesie, again, that we had lying around.

 

And to address the [optional] pink ribbon. Since I used white elastic and her entire outfit was pink, I wanted to mask it in some way. Additionally, I also wanted something that was darker pink somewhere else in her costume other than her hat.  It helped pull the whole costume together. All I did was measure out a ridiculous amount of ribbon, centered it in the front/middle of the elastic, and ran a couple of stitches through it. I didn't sit perfectly over the elastic, but just kinda flowed around it and took attention away.

 

My Little Octopus was a hit.... and now, Momma is just having a hard time finding out how to store these suckers.  Because of course, there's no way you can get rid of Baby's First Halloween costume!

You can see a few more pictures of her Halloween Costume here.

McKenna's First Halloween

McKenna's first Halloween was wonderful! She was a homemade pink octopus.... any chance I get to make something homemade I do it... I love unique, one-of-a-kind stuff, even if it doesn't come out as good as something that you could just buy.  We also snagged a few more Pumpkin Patch pictures for your viewing pleasure. You gotta scroll through them to check out Octopus McKenna ;-).

I'll just share some pictures of her costume and from our Halloween. I'll do a separate post on how I made her costume since it was such a big hit!

While the tentacles looked best sprawled out while she was sitting (and hilarious while she crawled!), this is how most people saw her as an Octopus!

My precious little Octopus.  She was such a trooper because it took a while for her to get used to them around her!

We were joined by our friends the fairy and strawberry to get a little Trick-or-Treating in.

McKenna got just the right amount of candy for Mommy and Daddy to split... I'm sure in coming years that won't be the case!