Repeating Everything, Climbing Onto Couch (Via Leg Rest), 1st ER Visit, Wishing For a Sister, & Ty Giving Spankings

Wes:  1 Year, 2 Months & 2 Weeks Old

Ty:  3 Years, 3 Months & 2 Weeks Old 

These are the only 2 pictures I took all week!  But I have some videos!  This is the 1st week of my new blog format!  No more narrative, just key points with some stories.  It is kind of fitting since I just noticed that it is my 200th blog posting since I have started the blog!  Well, we’ll see how it goes!

FRIDAY
-  Wes is talking a ton now.  He is repeating almost everything we say now.  “Go, go”, “Bubba,”  “Da-da,” are big favorites.

-  Wes is also getting very mobile.  If we leave the leg rest of our recliners up, he will climb on top of them and get onto the chair or the couches and that is dangerous!  Heath says that he will hold onto the bannister and step up the stairs like a big boy, but I still haven’t seen that yet!

SABBATH
-  I worked and the boys stayed home.  I do not remember hearing any specific stories.

SUNDAY
-  I worked 3p-3a and the boys went over to the Edwards’ house since it had been Keith’s birthday on Friday.

MONDAY
-  Laundry day at our house.  Huge mess to pick up from the boy’s weekend times, as usual.  I think Ty was trying to butter me up to pick up all the toys, since he pretended that he was going to take a nap.  He said, “Mama, Westy & Ty will go nap.  You pick up the toys.”  Nice try, Ty.

TUESDAY
-  Well, this day deserves a narrative.  So here we go.  I was getting Westin up out of bed when he woke up, changing his diaper, and I thought Ty was playing in his room.  I ran into the bathroom (because I heard noises) and there was Ty, sitting on the counter, with an open bottle of Children’s Tylenol to his lips, a puddle on the counter, and it all over his hands and face.  He said, “Ty’s throat hurts.  Ty need medicine.”  I freaked out and in my hysteria, I asked Ty, “How much did you drink?” (I know, I know, I asked this question to a 3 year old)  He held up 2 fingers in response!!!  2 swigs?  2 capfuls?!!!  Obviously none of this mattered, and as a nurse I know that Tylenol is toxic.  You think that Tylenol is so harmless because it is over the counter, but it is deadly if you overdose on it.  I couldn’t believe it.  I admittedly put too much faith in the childproof caps and their medicine needed to be locked up.  The reason that he was able to get into it was because there was a bunch of the liquid medicine caked up at the top of the bottle, so the childproof cap was not on exactly right…therefore not making it childproof at all!!!!  I was so upset at myself, but I was so frustrated that he hadn’t gotten into the Ibuprofen instead, because you can’t overdose on it.  It won’t kill you, even if you take a whole bottle.  But it just HAD to be the Tylenol.  So I called Poison Control, who said that he would have had to take 3/4th of the whole bottle to be at a toxic level, but I just had no idea how much was in it.   It was an old, expired bottle…and I was sure that he probably did not get a lot, but there was no way that I was willing to bet his life on it.  So their recommendation was to get a Tylenol blood level drawn, 4 hours after he took it.  If it was OK, there is nothing else to do, but if it was elevated, he would need an IV medication to remove the Tylenol from his blood and he would have to be admitted.  I tried to see if our pediatrician would order an outpatient lab draw and then if it was elevated, I would take him to an ER, but they couldn’t do it.  They said that they had a protocol in place that with any ingestion/overdose…the patient has to go through the ER.  So I went to Franklin ER for the blood draw.  You would think that just for a blood draw, it would only take about 1 hour…but I knew that it would probably be 2-3 hours and it was.  We arrived at 1:30 and we were discharged at 4:00!  Yes, Tyson is fine!  The Tylenol level wasn’t even measurable… none detected!  Praise the Lord – God is SO good!  Of course I know what an ER visit entails, so I was stocked and ready.  We had a picnic lunch on the stretcher, played with matchbox cars, blocks, and watched “Finding Nemo” on our iPad.  It went better than I thought it would and we had a fantastic nurse, Shannon, that played with the kids a lot.  Oh!  One thing that was so funny was when I explained to Tyson that he had to go to the hospital and get blood drawn, he ran upstairs to get his doctor’s kit and insisted on bringing it to the hospital.  It was cutest thing ever.  When the triage nurse went to check his blood pressure, Ty would open his bag to show that he had a blood pressure cuff too!  It went just like that, getting his stethoscope and thermometer out etc… but then Ty told me that he needed to buy “one of those” – the pulse oximeter!  So cute.  I was a little apprehensive about Ty getting blood drawn.  He has been perfect with any shots he has gotten (he never cries), but a blood draw is definitely different.  He got blood work drawn when he was 1 years old and he had just watched the needle go in his arm, and he never cried then either.  But now that he is 3 and there is drama all the time, I was braced for the worst.  I need to have more faith in him!  He was perfect!  He held his arm perfectly still, he watched the needle again, and only did 2 little whines…but no crying at all!!  I was so proud of him!  But I was never so relieved in my life when they told me the level was OK.  I cried.  The guilt you feel is tremendous.  I totally knew better, I should have never had it where he could get to it.  Everyone take this as a lesson!  I went home and completely looked at my house differently.  I took all of our vitamins, adult Ibuprofen tablets etc…out of our top shelf in our kitchen cabinet and put them all into a bag and locked it in one of our childproof cabinets.  I took all of our knives out of our utensil drawer and locked them away.  I have moved all the scissors and then I moved all our laundry detergent to the basement.  My regular cleaning supplies have always been locked up underneath our sink, but I realized if he wanted to drink laundry detergent- he could just walk into our laundry room and guzzle it.  So I truly feel like we are in better shape, safety-wise now.  Major, major lesson learned.  One of the worst days of my life.  At least everyone at the hospital and our pediatrician’s office told me like 50 times that it could have happened to anyone, trying to make me feel better…but I know better.  At the end of the day, I figured out that this was Tyson’s 1st ER visit.  He has had plenty of things happen to him (pneumonia twice, broken collar bone twice) but we have only had to go to his pediatrician for these things.  Hopefully this ER thing will not be a trend.

-  After all the drama on Tuesday, I told Heath that I thought we needed to go out to eat that night.  We went to Fratello’s in Laconia with Adam & my parents.  We had fun, despite my mom nearly accusing some of the wait staff of stealing her scarf when it was really bunched up in the back of her coat.  I saw it sticking out of the bottom of her coat and pulled it out like I was a magician!

After his near-death experience, Ty looked back and noticed what was missing in his life!  If only we could change Daddy's mind, Ty!

WEDNESDAY
-  Errands and Grocery Day for us, since I had to work on Thursday.  I went to go start the car (we were back to single digit weather) and I told Ty when I ran outside, “You are in charge of Westy.  Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or get into anything bad.”  Ty loves this – he thinks he is such hot stuff.  But I think he took it a tad too far.  When I got back inside, (probably took less than 1 minute) Ty reported to me, “Ty had to give Westy 2 spankings!”  Inside I was laughing so hard, but of course I had to tell him seriously that only Mommy & Daddy can spank Westin.  But that really cracked me up!

-  Got Ty’s haircut at Supercuts after supper.  I had tried to get it done after the grocery store, but they had a 45 minute wait.  No thank you.  I think the hair looks pretty cute, as long as you spike the bangs…otherwise it is a Lloyd Christmas (Dumb & Dumber) look.

THURSDAY
-  I worked 1p-1a and Mom babysat.  Nothing I can remember specifically to report.

That’s about it!  I know this was still a bit long because of my traumatic day on Tuesday!  Have a great week!  To close...here is one of my favorite videos of Westin ever.