The Events that Lead Up to Easter

A month and a half ago, knowing that Easter was quickly approaching at the same rate of speed as my inevitable decline in productivity, I made early plans. I bought the plastic eggs, I bought the candy, I put together the Easter basket and I even put all the candy IN the eggs... a month early. I even bought his Easter clothes so we could take some nice pictures. And then I made plans with my parents to do Easter at their house since it was a few days after my mom's birthday and Adam would enjoy the extra company and the fun stuff. Uncle Chris and Aunt Robin even agreed to come over and do Easter celebrations with Adam on his second Easter.

You know how sometimes in life, events build upon each other in a downhill spiral that you don't see until after life crashes in a big pile on the floor? Well, that was our situation leading up to Easter weekend.

It began in mid-February when Adam acquired a cold. Not a flu or anything bad, mind you, but a simple cold. But a simple cold to Adam always turns into a sinus infection. This time, we tried to help him fight it. We sucked out extra mucus, we gave 1 or 2 breathing treatments a day when it sounded like he needed it, and we stayed on top of it. But instead of it turning south into a sinus infection or bronchitis, it went north, east, and west, and wound up a tear duct infection coupled with double ear infections. We admitted defeat and I took him to the pediatrician by myself for the last time, where they gave us (surprise, surprise) some antibiotics (a 10 day round).

He finished that round and the tear duct infection cleared up... but I wasn't convinced that the antibiotics had cleared up everything they should have. So a week later we went back to the pediatrician (this time armed with my mom). The ear infections were still there, and just as bad as they had been - so they were resistant to the antibiotics we had given him. They gave us more, a stronger kind, this time a 14 day round. (And trust me, he had made it VERY clear that he was done taking medicine at this point, so antibiotics 2 times a day for 2 weeks basically meant that we needed to pin him down and force it down his gagging throat every time. Fun stuff).

10 days into those antibiotics, he stopped eating. He had a terrible rash in his diaper area and acted like it hurt to swallow. So Shannon took him back to the pediatrician, where they told us that the antibiotics gave him a yeast infection (yikes) and thrush in his mouth. They told us the ear infections were gone, so he could stop the antibiotics that day... but gave us a prescription for the thrush and the diaper area... 4 times a day for 2 weeks.

The next day, he face planted into a table and we were in the emergency room (see First ER Visit). More antibiotics. 3 times a day for 7 days. We told them he had just come off a round of antibiotics because of the thrush, and they said it would be okay, because he needed this to avoid an infection in his lip or worse. 4 days in, we quit giving them to him. He was just done, and the pain and hardship it took to give him the nasty stuff that smelled, as Shannon put it, "like cat urine," was just not worth it.

A few days after his busted lip.

Two days after our ER visit was Good Friday, which meant that school closed at noon and Adam needed to come home early. He had an Easter Egg hunt that day, which he thought was a ton of fun. That morning he told (signed to) his teacher that it was Friday when she asked the class what day it was. When I picked him up, I almost forgot his Easter basket of goodies, but he made sure to remind me. Then I almost forgot to take home his nap mat, and he politely reminded me that we needed that too (it was Friday, after all). His head is on straight more often than mine is lately, it seems.

We got home and my mom came over since it was her day off and I am very limited in how much "taking care of him" I can really do. She took him out shopping for a while... and when she pulled back up in front of our house, he screamed, "Nooooo!" (What a terrible thing to have to be at home), so she came in and got me and we went to Sonic for a drink, where, when we pulled into the Sonic parking lot, Adam yelled, "YAY!" and clapped to show his approval. (Ummm, no, we don't come here often, I swear.) She then took him back to their house, where I would meet them later to stay the night and give Shannon a well deserved "night off" and morning to finally sleep in.

At Mamie and Grandpa's house, Adam wore himself out playing in their backyard with the hose and in the cat run... He played hard and tried to rename Grandpa "Pop Pop Pop," and then crashed easily Friday night upstairs in Robin/Chris' old room (the true previous owner of the room is different depending on who you ask), and I "slept" there with him that night... or rather, I was kicked in the throat and head-butted most of the night because he insists that you must sleep sideways in bed.

At any rate, we made it through the night and the next morning he ran Mamie and Uncle Chris ragged. Even after going to the park and making everyone else in the house want to collapse, he refused to nap there and couldn't wind down.

Hoping that Adam would eventually run out of steam, Shannon and I kept our movie date Saturday afternoon and went to see The Hunger Games. We put on Bolt, wished my mom good luck, and gave him a place to lie on the couch... hoping that would trick him into falling asleep.

But when the movie was over and we came back, all Hell had broken loose. Still refusing to sleep or rest, Robin had come over and taken Adam for a drive to calm him down. We walked back into the house and found her trying to appease an extremely over-tired, over-stimulated, and flat out MAD little boy who just couldn't calm down. He was so worked up that he cried, literally, for 2 hours uncontrollably, and wanted desperately to go home to his bed. As it turns out, he also wasn't feeling well... he had managed, somewhere along the way, to pick up the flu while on antibiotics. (Which, not to ruin the suspense, means that we all caught it... and I probably got the worst of it).

We didn't realize that at that point, and tried to put him down at about 7 pm that night. We immediately abandoned original plans to die Easter eggs that night, but decided we'd still stay there and continue our plans for Easter Egg hunting and egg dying in the morning after he'd gotten some rest. We had to strip him of his clothes, remove him from all noise, all light (we blacked out the windows), and all distractions, and even still, he cried for another hour. When he finally calmed down, I expected him to fall asleep, but he then just wanted to roll around in bed and talk to me for another 30 minutes after that. At one point, he stuck his butt in my face, slapped it, and declared, "Butt!!" I told him, "Thank you for that, Adam." He seemed pleased with himself.

Even without a nap and all of that fussing, he still didn't fall asleep until 15 minutes past his bedtime. And I maintain that he only did that because I gave up and left the room so he wouldn't have anyone to talk to.

After almost 2 months of downhill spiraling, you'd think we wouldn't have been surprised by the Easter FAIL that met us the next day... but that story is to be continued in the next post.