Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ugh!

I hate being sick. I've come down with Ella's cold too, and it seems to be settling in my chest which means it will likely set off my asthma and I'll be coughing for weeks/months. Fun wow! Poor Miss Ella is really not dealing with this well. Her little lungs are so congested, she makes herself sick from coughing nearly every day. She spent the night on the chesterfield, so I could keep her upright. I spent the night, awake, on the floor beside her so I could haul her fully upright and keep her from panicing and making herself sick again. It really seems to scare her, she often starts crying and needs to be held for a while. Luckily, Mom was able to come over for the morning so I could get some sleep. I have yet to get dressed, guess I'll just stay this way for the rest of the day. Colin is starting to get sick too. I feel so bad when he does because he can't take any time off. I'm sure a pig barn with a bad cold is not a pleasant place to be.

I need to call my MIL and see if she has a vapourizer/humidifier. Hopefully that will help Ella breathe at night. That and she's on an antibiotic now. Poor thing has an ear infection too. If I don't feel better soon, I'll have to stop by the doctor's too. I have signs that this might be bacterial rather than viral. I have to keep on top of "little colds" because I can go from fine to needing the ER to breathe really quick. I just hope Ella hasn't inherited the "Johnson lungs". Mom's family has really bad lungs. Two of my cousins spent a lot of their childhood in oxygen tents for croup. The rest of us just get sick a lot. There's even been a couple times that my uncle, who works at the hospital, has been concerned that I had whooping cough -I sound that terrible. For now, knock on wood, I seem to be fighting it off. At least that's how I feel now that I had a good morning nap :)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Our pediatrician once told us that once the children reach age 10 we become immune to them (or at least their every little virus). I do believe that my husband, oldest and I tend to not get their every colds (just occasional now). However, our sweet little Emma, now has the cold back that she started a couple weeks ago :( and it seems worse than before,I'll be watching her as it seems to be more of a throat/lung thing this go round too. It went to the other three, we just dried out the filter on the humidifier, only to refill it and turn it back on! All the children were prone to croup, thank goodness little throats do grow and about age 6 it is much better, at least not an ER thing. We have spent countless nights up steaming and then bundling up a child (or two) and getting them out into to cool night air. (They liked looking at the stars with Daddy, though). You take care, the best thing is to just give in and rest.

Anonymous said...

Hi Pauala,

I hope you are feeling a little better today. My little Emma, woke with not much of a voice, but thankfully I believe her throat is grown enough to avoid the croup. She and I had a nice time last evening, knitting together. She was using a "Knifty Knitter" round loom, it works well for her as she can make a hat pretty quick. Sometimes it is nice to give the children little projects for which they can achieve a sense of accomplishment.

Yesterday I received the catalogue for the Sonlight Curriculum, it isn't that appealling to us. It uses a little too much secular materials for our home, I think it would also break the bank! If I calculated correctly it would be about $3000; for one year for our family (about $900 per grade), We currently spend about $300 total. It doesn't have to be that expensive. The children do check out secular story books from the library, but they know what they can choose from. For our school day stuff, we just prefer to stick with Christian materials. One bit of advice that I recall from our first years of homeschoolling was that we should not go out and buy a full curriculum from any one publisher, that first year homeschoolers tend to over buy. I would say that is/was very true, not so much for the first few months (we started mid school year) but we really over bought for the first full year, and not all the materials fit our style and/or level that our daughter was at. That's just my thoughts on this, I know you will be able to figure out what is best for your Ella.

Paula said...

Thanks for your input on the Sonlight curic. I haven't received my catelogue yet. It's good to get some perspective from an experienced homeschool mom. There is a hs convention coming up that I hope to attend.

Anonymous said...

I've only gone to one convention, it was completely overwhelming! I went with one of my homeschool friends, I just remember lots of booths, with "stuff" all claiming they had the best method, curric. and why/how spending a gazillion $$ on their product was going to better our homeschool experience! The big folks like Abbekka, Bob Jones are usually there, maybe Christian Light and Sonlight. There still is a convention each year, but I figure that it costs to get in, it's a little far from where we live and we are good with what we are doing, so I don't even think about going.

Paula said...

I have a feeling I will find the convention overwhelming too, but that's because I don't like crowds. I'll leave Ella with Grandma and take Colin along. He'll be my protector :) and he'll keep me from spending too much -hahaha I'm lucky, the convention is just down in Ottawa; an hour or so from home. In Renfrew County an hour is considered close :)

Anonymous said...

That's funny! An "hour" in the car here means about 40 miles, with traffic and all! Sounds like it will be a nice date day for you and your hubby :}

I only bought a couple small things at that homeschool conv. that year.

Paula said...

An hour is about 65 miles, depending on the time of day. But that's still considered a short distance. In Renfrew County nearly anywhere important is at least 3 hours away. An hour's drive is nothing :) To Colin's friend in southern Ontario an hour's drive seems to waste a whole day -haha