Whew, what a week

Well, after Grace's strep throat diagnosis last week, things have just gone downhill. She had a couple days of 102 degree fever, and Alex started having a fever on Thursday night (much lower than Grace's). When his continued all the next day I decided to take him to the doctor Saturday morning to try to nip what I figured was strep in the bud. His strep test came back negative, so we assume it was a virus that Grace also seemed to catch since she started taking on his symptoms even though she was on an antibiotic.

Sunday grants us 24 hrs fever-free for Grace, but not Alex, so she goes back to school on Monday. I have to pick her up early Monday due to the fever returning, but Alex is now fever-free. Both kids are clear on Tuesday and running around like they feel totally fine, so they both go back to school on Wednesday.

Wednesday night Grace breaks out in HORRIBLE hives. They are covering her entire body. We don't realize it until about 5am the next morning, so she gets Benedryl then. Alex also has a 101+ fever on Thursday, so a visit to the doctors office yesterday afternoon gets us the following news: Grace is apparently allergic to Amoxicillan and needs to start new antibiotics for her strep, Alex tests positive to both strep and flu. Grace was negative for the flu, but they want to treat her with Tamiflu to try to keep it from hitting her (I am told to have my doctor call in prescriptions for Jim and myself too for preventative measure).

Jim picks up $350 worth of prescriptions on the way home. After dinner Alex takes his two doses and then promptly spits up all of it plus his dinner on the kitchen floor. Grace takes her three doses, fighting it all the way, then goes to sleep in our bed for an hour until waking up and barfing there. Today Grace has a 101 fever and is on day two of hives hurting her so much she can't hardly move. Alex acts as if nothing is wrong with him at all and has no fever. Mommy has loads of spit up laundry to do and just wants to run away for a couple hours to escape it all.

Jealous anyone?

Here's a few pictures to share.

Grace on Valentine's Day. I was praising her outfit (telling her how much she looks like cousin Emma when dressing this way). She is such a "dress" girl that I have to do whatever I can during this 30-something degree weather to get her to dress warmer. This was her "cute" pose she kept wanting to do. Don't know where she learned the head-cocked-to-the-side thing.


This is after I made her open-up to show off the outfit. For those of your former dancers out there, don't you just love the pointed toe she has in this stance.


Here is a couple of attempts to show her hives. Of course, it doesn't do justice to the extent of the coverage. She has huge swaths of red on her back and belly, and tons of spots on her arms and legs. The circle on her forearm in the first picture is actually the bruise left over from the bite(!) her brother gave her last week.


Alex today. He's been very reticent lately to having his picture taken, but once I had him show me the Playdoh alien (hair squishes out the top of his head), Alex was all for the photos.


He'll also proudly show off his dinosaur. Is the love of dinosaurs ingrained in boy DNA? Because I sure don't know where it came from.