Chicago cousins come to visit!

My brother and his three kids came to visit from Chicago! Alex loves girl cousins too!

Christmas time!

Alex's cough is gone...the change in meds did the trick! It's so nice to not hear him cough cough cough at night. This past weekend we went on a train ride with two of Alex's favorite girlfriends. Grown ups could cram themselves into the train cars too, so that is what Alex insisted that I do! He has been in much better spirits and finally started sleeping really well for me again. That's all I wanted for Christmas!

cough, cough, cough

Alex's chronic cough is driving me crazy! He has been on 4 rounds of steroids, 3 rounds of antibiotics and numerous trips to the doctor since September. Since the end of august he hasn't had a cough for 3 weeks. I can live with the chronic cough....it's when he starts having a bad cough at night I start to worry. This past Tuesday night he coughed every 2-3 minutes for 4 hours. Yes, 4 hours. I did breathing treatments and pulse ox check at 3 am which did nothing more than wake him up for party time for the next two hours! We saw his lung doctor on Friday who changed not only his inhaled steroid but the method we were giving it in. We were doing blow-by pulmacort and now we're doing 2 puffs (with a spacer) of Flowvent. This medthod is much quicker but MUCH more horrific for Alex as we need to press the spacer against his nose and mouth until he takes 10 breaths...usually 10 screaming breaths.

The pictures are of Alex working hard on Playdoh at his new kids table and with his new haircut...no one told me boys need their haircut once a month!

Who told Alex he was 2 !?!??!

Alex has developed another cough :( So he went on another steroid burst for 5 days. During these steroid treatments Alex gets crabby and clingy! He's so wound up he's hard to put to bed or nap. He won't let anyone but me hold him. I actually had to leave a physical therapy session because he wouldn't let out PT come near him. We did go to Christmas at the Zoo. He loved all the lights but was still very clingy. The pic is where he realized I wasn't holding him...He also constantly has suckers stuck to him so his "boy cousin" was picking one off! Alex has also started throwing little fits if he does not get what he wants...hope he didn't pick this one up from me!

Center. of. Attention.

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I don't think I've ever blogged about how Alex loves to be the center of attention! We've been to 2 outdoor concerts where Alex was the only one out of at least 100 people who is on the dance floor dancing! In retrospect, I should have gotten video or at least a pic but I thought the whole thing was so hysterical that by the time that I thought of it the moment had passed. He loves the attention of adults and other children. This past weekend we went to a festival where Alex got two balloons. One, he released to his sister. The other, he insisted on holding that actual balloon in his hands!

Guess who loves suckers??!?!?!

Alex has finally realized suckers taste good! After 4 Halloween events and tons of candy he won't eat, at least this year he has discovered the sucker! Alex still refused to put on his monster costume( it was adorable, "boo" from Monsters, INC) So we used the backup pumpkin costume. Boo! Alex went trick-or-treating with his BFF!

Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week!

Alex didn't poop for 2 whole days...and when this happens the vomiting begins! He vomited up most feeds since Tuesday night. Despite my best efforts to clean him out, we ended up at the peds office on Friday afternoon with a X-ray to show us just how much poop he was full of! He FINALLY started pooping on Saturday and never stopped. Thank goodness. He now hasn't vomited in the past 24 hours but we are still not back up to his full feed volume...he was doing SO well before this! SO this week has been full of vomiting, waking up at night and finally diarrhea. Of course there was laundry, laundry and more laundry. I think we've seen the worst of it!