birthday and pneumonia

A week ago last Monday the week started out rather nicely. I had a birthday and Lonnie made me breakfast and sent me beautiful flowers.

Tuesday Maya started feeling sick. Wednesday we went to the doctors (#1 Maya) because her breathing had become shallow. I had Max checked out too (#1 Max)...because, if one kid is sick it won't be long before the other is sick. The doctor said Maya's breathing was a concern. He put her on antibiotics and told us to call back in the morning if there was no improvement.

We had already planned on having friends over for dinner and we thought it might be a good idea for Maya to have a blessing so we went ahead with our dinner plans. Max was thrilled with the attention of these to lovely girls. I don't think I have ever heard him so chatty.

Maya was pretty lethargic and she just sat on the couch the whole time.

With Maya still not feeling better on Thursday morning I called the doctor again and we went in for him to have a look at her again (#2 Maya). He said he could hear crackling in her breathing and he suggested we go into the hospital for a chest x-ray.

So we headed off to Starship Children's Hospital. We picked up Lonnie at work on our way to the hospital, so he could help take care of Max. Max was thrilled to play with all the toys at the hospital, but Lonnie took him home for a nap around noon. We were given a bed for Maya within 15 mins of arriving at the hospital. Within an hour she had a chest x-ray. The x-ray confirmed what our family doctor had suspected, pneumonia. The doctor wanted to keep her in the hospital for a couple hours for observation. She didn't want to get out of bed and was refusing to eat. Thankfully after a couple hours and doubling her antibiotics Maya started to feel better. She even got up to play with the ride-on toys.....so we got to go home.

We spent the weekend at home. Over the weekend Max started coughing and his breathing was also labored. Monday we went into the see our family practice doctor again to check up on Maya (#3) and Max (#2). Thankfully Max's cough didn't sound like pneumonia, but the doctor started him on antibiotics because he sounded raspy. He asked us to come back again at the end of the week and to keep the kids at home.

We admittedly watched a lot of TV, but I also tried to keep the kids interested in coloring, puzzles and helping with cooking. Both kids are still pretty worn out and haven't had a lot of energy, which makes it easier to keep them inside, but they have missed seeing friends.

Thursday we went back to the doctor again. (Maya #4, Max#3) the kids are improving but they were put on another week of antibiotics and the doctor said we should continue to keep them out of public places where they could be exposed to other germs.

It has been a long two weeks. Both kids are improving, but they are still worn out. We are grateful for good medical care, including short waits at the doctor's office and hospital.

Total cost:

7 Doctors visits

1 Emergency Room visit

4 prescriptions

$55 NZ (~$37 US) Pretty amazing considering even with good insurance back in the US this would have cost us about $320 out of pocket.

We spent a lot of time in pajamas.

riding bikes

We posted this video a few days ago, but I wanted to catch up with some comments about it. When we moved into our apartment in February, Maya and Max quickly discovered all the toys of our next-door neighbors' 4-year-old boy. One of his toys is a balance bike that soon had Maya's attention. She started grabbing the bike at every opportunity and pretty quickly became quite good at riding on her own.

As an interesting side note, Max tends to be more adventurous than Maya. At the park, he'll wonder off on his own more readily than Maya will. He'll go down slides and climb ladders sooner. When Maya began riding the bike, we thought Max would want to join in and that they would soon be fighting over the one bike. But for whatever reason, Max didn't show any interest in the balance bike until recently.

After a few weeks, we bought a tricycle for Max, which he was thrilled about but in which Maya had no interest (only the balance bike for her). At that point, we were taking walks with Maya on the balance bike and Max puttering along on the tricycle. The difficulty was that the two kids would go entirely different speeds with Maya would cruise along on the bike (especially when going downhill) and Max moving at turtle pace. The video gives a glimpse of this difference.

Since taking the video, we have purchased a couple used balance bikes, and now Max has more interest in the bikes. We're enjoying the ride of watching them grow up.