What can I say? Holidays throw everything off, even if we haven't actually had that holiday yet. We are very much looking forward to Thanksgiving in a couple of days, and having cousin time for the kids. Kurt's brother and family will be joining us for the occasion. We've been working frantically on our basement in the meanwhile, a work in progress. Eventually, we want to have a play room, laundry/bathroom, spare bedroom, storage room, and workshop down there. It sounds like a lot, but the basement is the whole area of the house, minus the garage. I dream of having a 2 car garage, but I think I'll have to admit that that will be a different house. But I'm happy with the results of the basement so far. We have shelves sectioning off the different "rooms," and a foam rubber floor on what will be the play room. I moved all the toys downstairs, so yay, no more clutter in the kids' bedroom! There is also a TV and DVD player and bean bag chairs. As I said, a work in progress, but so far, Dorian and Faith love it. And I think the cousins will too. And eventually, Quinn will join in the play down there. First he has to master other things. Here's one thing he's got a pretty good handle on. He hates being on his stomach.
So he takes care of that.
and rolls over within seconds of being put down.
He doesn't got from his belly to his back yet. Why would he? He doesn't like that view. But he's getting pretty mobile, and he'll also now reach for toys. So I think we're making progress overall.
He also loves his swing. Good thing too, otherwise I don't think I'd ever get dinner done.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I haven't slept much this week. It's been a transition for Quinn to get used to sleeping without covers. I tried layers with long sleeved onsie, socks, pajamas, and a sleep sack, with the space heater going, and then a few days later added a cap to the whole ensemble, and he still woke up around midnight freezing. I finally broke down and added a crocheted afghan, as in, lots of holes for ventilation, but that seemed to help quite a bit, and now he isn't so cold anymore.

The whole ER experience seems a bit surreal now. Did I really go into Quinn's room and find him unresponsive? Did we really have 10 emergency responders in our living room working on him? Did I really sit outside the CAT scan room at the hospital and picture the worst? Unfortunately, the answer is yes to all of them. We do what we can to prevent such things, but they do happen sometimes.

And now Quinn appears to be sick. I don't know whether he got it at the hospital or from something the older kids brought home from church, but he's congested and coughing. I'd asked our doctor at what point I should call her, since I'm not used to bringing sick kids to the doctor, I'm used to treating them at home. She said if he looks like he's having trouble breathing, then call, and he definitely isn't so far. Let's pray it stays that way.

In other news, Dorian had his first teeth cleaning this week. That was exciting. I was worried how that would go, since we've tried in the past and he wouldn't open his mouth. But he did fine this time, and his teeth look good. Yay! Maybe he didn't get his parents' perpetually weak teeth. Today was also his debut in the Primary program. I of course missed it, being home with Quinn, but Kurt reports he delivered his line on cue, and he wasn't the most distracting four-year-old on the podium. And Faith was very sad not to be up there performing as well, surprise surprise. I'm glad it went well, but I'm really sad I missed it. I hope I don't have too many more instances like this. I feel like I'm choosing between my kids, and it's an awful feeling. I felt like that through most of Quinn's NICU stay, where I wanted to be with him, but my older kids needed me as well. I'm hoping the winter goes by quickly. And we know it's coming. This morning, there were three deer in the trees behind our house. We only see them when it gets cold, so winter must be setting in. I'm getting cold just thinking about it.

Back when I updated this blog daily, I found myself composing that night's entry throughout the day. It got revised based on different events that happened, but by the time I sat down to write, I had pretty much mapped out in my mind what I wanted to say. When I shifted to weekly updates, I did the same thing, only the entry got revised over the course of a whole week. This week's entry probably went through the most drastic revision yet. I had planned to talk about Quinn being weighed this week at 12 lbs 7 oz, and having a physical therapy session, and how much more personable he is becoming day by day, but Friday night changed all that. And just to "spoil" the ending, he's fine, and we are pretty sure it was an accident and won't have any lasting effects, but it was nothing short of terrifying.

Friday evening, I put Quinn down for a nap. I didn't cover him at all, but there was a down comforter at the other end of the crib. About an hour later, as Kurt and I were getting Dorian and Faith ready for bed, I needed to get something out of Quinn's room. He had turned himself completely around in the crib and gotten the comforter over his head. I pulled it off, and he was still breathing, but completely limp and unresponsive. I picked him up, called his name, brought him into the light of the hall and the noise of the other kids, and there was no change. I called 911, and within minutes volunteer EMT's were at our door. Fire stations are plentiful in our heavily wooded area, and we have one just down the street from us. They gave him oxygen and tried to stimulate him until the paramedics came. When they came, they did a heel stick to test his blood sugar, which he didn't even react to. But by the time we'd decided to head to the hospital, he had opened his eyes and was attempting to focus, and his hands and feet weren't quite so blue. Our neighbors saw the lights and came over and stayed with the older kids while Kurt and I went to the ER. By the time we were there, Quinn was starting to move around by himself again. Three or four doctors and as many nurses surrounded him and fired questions at us about his medical history and the night's events (They also complimented us for using cloth diapers. Yay.) Since he was awake and aware, it wasn't as dire as it could have been and things were done pretty methodically. They took blood and urine, looking for infections, and sent him to have a chest x-ray and a CAT scan. He complained about the blood sample, which gave us a lot of hope. It had been frightening to see him so inert earlier. By about 1 a.m. we had the results from the x-ray and the CAT scan, both of which were normal. At that point, they recommended he stay overnight for observation, but everyone was pretty sure it was a one-time event, related to suffocating under the heavy blanket, and that he would be okay. The main doctor we saw was named Fred, and totally reminded me of my uncle Fred. When I asked him what happened, he said "What happened is you got the bejesus scared out of you, but he's going to be fine and dandy." He then commented we must have done something like this before, Quinn being our third child. We said no, and he was incredulous. I described for him the only event remotely similar, which was when Dorian, at two and a half, fell and gashed his scalp open, and we went to urgent care for stitches. He just shook his head and said we were overdue in that case. I'm not sure how I feel about that, whether it's comforting, or foreboding. But we were assured life would resume, as long as we quit using blankets in the crib. That will be a big change. It's cold here, and layering clothing just isn't enough. Hopefully a space heater will take up the slack, but I'm worried about keeping Quinn warm this winter. And as we've already discussed, this didn't happen with my other kids, and I hadn't realized how mobile Quinn had become. To go from relatively stationary to capable of moving two feet away is a big step for him.

After things started to settle, and it was clear that Quinn would be fine, Kurt and I began to comment that this was shaping up to be the most positive experience we'd had at a hospital. That we weren't annoyed with anyone would have been good enough. But everyone was uniformly pleasant to work with. And they were all sure we would go home in the morning. Morning came, and the attending pediatrician came through on his rounds. He was a perfectly affable guy, and Quinn smiled and giggled at him, which was music to my ears. He said Quinn looked great and would get ready for us to be discharged. I called Kurt, who had gone home at about 2 to sleep, so that he could come get us. But here's where the story gets revised a bit. We thought, "This is great. We've had good people to work with, we've identified the problem and how to avoid it in the future, and we're on our way home." But the ensuing 5 hours isn't accounted for in the general slowness of a hospital's pace.

The pediatric resident needed to sign Quinn's discharge form. I had mistakenly thought that seeing the attending doc would bypass all that, but I guess I'm still unfamiliar with the medical feudal system. When the resident came in, he said we needed to repeat the blood sample, because they had too many anomalies in it. It had been taken through an IV in the ER, and that apparently messes with the chemistry enough to account for the problems they saw. Either way, it didn't do good things for my confidence in the ER staff's ability to do things right.

For some reason, it took the phlebotomist more than an hour to come take Quinn's blood. And then we had to wait for it to come back. Kurt and I asked the resident if the results would change whether or not we went home, as in, could they call us with the results and we'll deal with them, whatever they are, through our own pediatrician? But he kept assuring us that it wouldn't be much longer. And then he came back and said the urine sample also had too many anomalies in it, and that needed to be redone. Now I really didn't have any confidence in the ER. Maybe they just aren't used to patients Quinn's size. Let's hope. The resident said what they were seeing was consistent with type I diabetes, and that didn't make sense, given Quinn's age, and a lack of family history, therefore, we needed to do them all again. The urine sample involved taping a bag to Quinn and waiting for him to fill it. Fortunately, that didn't take to long, and by the time it was sent off, the blood work had come back and was normal, so we were released, and told we'd be called with the other results. Thank heaven.

I can't quite describe how we're feeling about it all at this point. I don't think the shock has entirely worn off, so if I seem like I'm describing it with some disconnect, that's probably why. But no mistake, this is the stuff parents' nightmares are made of, and we're feeling blessed that Quinn is fine. We're also feeling better knowing that it isn't because he was a preemie, that this could have happened to any baby. That may seem like cold comfort, but considering what we've all been through this year, knowing that he has normal tendencies as well is oddly comforting. And I'll need that during our long cold winter, where I don't expect to get much sleep.

On a completely different and much lighter note, among my earlier iterations of this entry, before Friday's nightmare, I included this story, for those who enjoyed my pumpkin story last week. Be warned: the f-bomb is dropped at least once. Despite that, I just about busted a gut when I first read it last year. Now of course, I empathize. Where do these vegetarian dogs come from anyway?

Faith called this a princess cheerleader outfit. She must be a princess, no matter what. And that's not a pom-pon. It's a magic wand. Alrighty then.
Dorian got pretty hot in this outfit. Despite the snow earlier this week, we had a pretty mild day.
And here's baby bee.
The whole crew.
We went to our immediate neighbors and that's as far as we could really go in our spread out neighborhood. Then Kurt took the two older kids to the mall, which was packed, from what I hear. They loved it though. They've asked a few times since when we're going trick or treating again.

We tried to get into a few more of the Halloween traditions which we hadn't done in past years. This is the first year we carved a pumpkin with our kids, and it obviously wasn't meant to be. Kurt sat down with the kids in the kitchen and carved your standard jack o'lantern. Then we made the mistake of leaving it there. We put the kids to bed, and Kurt got in the shower. Then I heard this odd noise, like wood being ground up. It wasn't wood, however. It was our obnoxious hound eating the face off our jack o'lantern. We were thoroughly unimpressed. Kurt thought maybe it looked scarier afterward, sort of like a Phantom of the Opera jack o'lantern. So we stuck it on the porch and lit it. Then some creature of the night came along and ate its other eye and made off with the top, so by morning we had about one-third the pumpkin we'd started out with. Not to worry, the neighbor's dog came over and finished the job. I might just take that as a sign and not do it again next year.