Bob's visit with Santa

We went to see Santa today. Bob was excited the whole time we were on line. He kept on talking about what he was going to ask Santa for. When it was our turn, it was like a scene from A Christmas Story. Bob stood there with his jaw dropped in awe. The only thing he could say was "You're Santa?!!" We had to cue him to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas. Then we asked Santa if he could come a couple of days early so he could celebrate Christmas with Mommy and Daddy here if Phoenix before he and Daddy left for New York. Santa said that he could arrange that.

We are going to do what would have been a mortal sin ten years ago. We are going to celebrate Christmas on my birthday. But, I am going to have a birthday cake, and it is not going to have poinsettias on it.

Bob announced that Santa should get Q a new collar for Christmas. Needless to say, I am going to have to shop around for a new collar for Q from Santa. The one he is wearing is a couple of years old now. It was reflective at one point in time. So far, the only pet store I have gone to was the one in the mall where Bob saw Santa. The only collars they had there all have rhinestones in them. Needless to say, I am not going to put a rhinestone collar on my dog.

I hope everyone is in good health and having a happy holiday!!

Bob's cold - shared

Bob did share his cold with us. Jim and I went to a walk-in/ urgent care center together. It was a romantic date. We each received prescriptions for Augmentin. Needless to say, we have his and her bottles of Augmentin. Romantic huh? I have been sick for a week and a half and Jim has been sick for two weeks. We better start getting better in the next day or two.

Bob announced that he wanted to go to school today. And I would have sent him to school if he had school. He is feeling much better. He will go back to school on Monday.

I am very sad, but I will be unable to go to NY for Christmas. Jim and Bob will have a Merry Christmas without me. I will probably work on Christmas day to keep my mind off of the fact that it is Christmas.

Bob's cold

I finally took Bob to the doctor. He said his ears hurt and he needed to go to the doctor so he could look at them. He had not really been running a fever. Although the other night after I gave him Motrin for an earache, he woke up an hour later covered in sweat. Needless to say the pediatrician said Bob has sinusitis - something I hoped he would be spared - mommy's sinuses. He started on an antibiotic. Hopefully he will be feeling better in a couple of days.

I am going to try and get to sleep early. Bob did share his illness with me. And I haven't been sleeping because I hear his coughing on the baby monitor and it wakes me up.
I will keep all of you updated.

cute Bob stuff

I am running out of titles for blog's, so forgive the unoriginal title. But even though Bob has not been feeling good, he has been coming out with lots of cute phrases.
Jim went to the dentist for part 2 of his root canal. Before we left, I explained to Bob that the dentist had to finish fixing daddy's teeth. When we got to the dentist's office, Bob told everyone that walked into the office that the dentist did not do a good job fixing daddy's teeth so we had to come back.

We also watched The Polar Express. I thought Bob would LOVE that movie because it is all about a choo choo train. There is one scene that the little boy looses the little girl's ticket and you see the ticket blowing away. Bob was in full blown tears because he lost the ticket. The ticket finds itself back on the train, but Bob was VERY upset by that point and required rocking and cuddling. I am glad we didn't spend $50 at the IMAX theater to see that movie. I am sure we would of wound up leaving the theater at that point with a waste of $50. When it was over, Bob said that we had to bring the movie back to Costco because it was too scary. Maybe Bob will like that movie next year.

When we were at Costco, I was talking to some woman - small talk about the weather, etc... Bob then asks that woman if she had a grandma Mazie. It was really adorable. Grandma Mazie had sent Bob a Christmas card with stickers, which was a wonderful thing, so he had to tell everyone about Grandma Mazie.

Bob did, however, share his cold with all of us. We kept him home from school on Thursday. He woke up and did not feel good. He crawled into bed next to me right at about nine AM - right when I fell asleep. Every time I dozed off, he kicked me awake. I was thankful when he decided he wanted to wake up, go by daddy, and watch Clifford. I had to work Thursday night.

Tomorrow I will thankfully start on my regular schedule. I will be 11 AM to 11 PM - an "off-shifter". I come in at the same time as two more providers arrive (MD, PA, or NP), so they can open more beds. What is nice is we do "team nursing". A nurse is not assigned specific rooms, rather a group of nurses are assigned a group of rooms and everyone takes care of the patients in those rooms. This way if a nurse is busy with one critical patient, the other nurses will take care of the other patients. I know that when I did clinical for paramedic class, if a nurse was busy with one patient, her other patients were neglected because no one would take care of a patient if it wasn't their patient. With that system, it takes longer for pain to be relieved, orders to be carried out, and patients to be discharged. You turn patients around a lot faster if everyone works together. It is pretty nice.

Bob and Q are currently lying on the floor next to me, next to each other. Bob even put a blanket over Q. I should get going so I can rescue Q.
Merry Christmas everyone.

Developmental Pediatrician

I hope everyone is doing well and having a happy holiday season.

Bob saw the developmental pediatrician yesterday. Actually, he saw the pediatric nurse practitioner for part one of his evaluation. He will see her one more time for another evaluation before he sees the developmental pediatrician. (She broke her foot and needed surgery, which is why Bob's appointment was postponed) Part one of the evaluation took about two hours. They gave me a packet of information to fill out at home, as well as a packet of information for his teacher to fill out. I have to return those two completed packets before I can make the next appointment. She said the wait is only a week or two for those appointments - and she needs at least a week to "grade" the paperwork we give her.
There are many surveys. One of the things they are ruling out is autism - which I am 99.9999% sure that Bob does not have. One of the surveys asks "What makes you think this child has autism?" I had to answer "nothing". The whole page dealt with the answer to that question, so I had to answer "n/a" on every question.
She said she noticed that Bob does some things that are common with autistic children during the evaluation. He tends not to give eye contact - but that is with strangers, he has eye contact with people he knows. He also does "hand flailing" when he is excited. He also likes to line up his cars and he gets upset/throws a tantrum if someone disturbs his lineup. But just because he does some things that are characteristic of children with autism, that does not mean he is autistic. They tend to overdiagnose autism. Besides, Bob is one of the most sociable children I know. He goes up to strangers in the store (or calls out to them when he is sitting in the shopping cart) and says hi and strikes up a conversation with them. He tells them that "this is our stuff" and "We have a Q dog at home" and things like that. Some people ignore him, but most people respond to him. If they ignore him, he says "Excuse me, I am talking to you!" and "Please speak to me!" I joke that he did not start talking until he was almost three years old, so now he is making up for lost time. He does not shut up. But, I have yet to get tired of hearing the word "mommy" from him. I am so thankful that he can talk, that my heart still skips a beat every time he says "mommy".

We did buy the Polar Express, but Bob was too tired to watch it last night, as were we. I am unfortunately working the next three nights, so we won't be able to watch it until Friday. I want to watch it as a family. It is playing at the IMAX theater, and I had the idea that we could go there to see it, but it would be about $50 just for the tickets (and we have to buy popcorn at the theater). It was $9.99 for the DVD at Costco, and we can microwave some popcorn. Not quite the same thing, but Bob will love it none the less. Bob has two versions of the book already - one of them came with a poster of the train that is hanging in his room. The other one you can shine a flashlight through the pages so the images appear on the wall in front of you. Bob really likes that one. Bob likes to see the trains on the wall in front of him. Thank you 99 cent only store.

I will keep everyone updated on Bob's progress.
Talk soon!
Elizabeth

Latest stuff

Bob seems to get bigger every time I turn around. He is doing well now. Part of the reason I have not posted recently is because he has been sick. Thanksgiving week he was home sick on Monday and Tuesday. I sent him back to school on Wednesday as he was feeling better. By Friday, he was sick and running a fever again (He was well on Wednesday and Thanksgiving day only). He was out of school all of last week. He was actually feeling better on Wednesday and Thursday, but he still had a cough and a runny nose, so I could not send him to school - he would get the other kids sick.

We started decorating the house for Christmas, but have not gotten to the tree yet. We have lights in the windows and around the front door. Bob says he wants it to be Christmas already.

My new job is going well. I am still on orientation. The hospital I am at, however, is a level 2 trauma center - I misunderstood them. Their sister hospital which is about nine miles south is a level 1 trauma center. They just opened a third hospital last month which is eight miles to the north which is not a trauma center yet.

The hospital will pay for all of the certification exams they require and that they would like me to get, and they will reward me with a $2/hr raise once I pass the certifications.

Jim is doing well despite a root canal he got a couple of weeks ago. The dentist office messed up his appointment to get rid of the temporary filling and place the permanent filling. He told them the dates I was available. They gave him an appointment for one of those dates, but they recorded it for the wrong date. As a result he will have had his temporary filling for almost a month when it is replaced on Friday.

Q dog is sitting next to me acting really neglected. He is sleeping on his pillow with Jim's old pillow that Jim was getting ready to throw out until Bob gave it to Q. Q then adopted it. His left back leg is arthritic. He limps on it occasionally, and that joint is bigger than the one on his right leg. I think I am going to start slipping some aspirin with his supper again. We stopped a few months ago because he wasn't limping anymore and we wanted to see how he was without the aspirin. He did fine. But the last few days he has been limping. Then again it has been raining, so that probably has something to do with it. His nose still looks funny. It looks better when I remember to rinse it with saline daily - something that Q hates. He sees the bottle of saline and runs the other way. I think the weather here is generally too dry for his nose.

I had to learn how to use the windshield wipers on my new car for the first time. I even have a rear windshield wiper that works. It has been raining for the last couple of days. I found the Weatherpulse alerts (from the national weather service) amusing. The forecasts were calling for one-half to one inch of rain so flood warnings/alerts were going off every couple of hours for a day or two before it started to rain up until it stopped this afternoon. We then had a wind advisory until this evening. In Binghamton it would rain one half to one inch in an hour. Raining that much in a twelve hour period was enough to fill most of the washes, and flood many roads. Water just doesn't soak into the ground here. It just runs right off.

I am going to attempt to post a picture of Bob from Thanksgiving below. I will see how it comes out: