I love the weekend. It is a wonderful time to be with all three of my boys.
Another perk is lounging around on cold winter days inside the warmer house in our pajamas. Ah, that is the life.
Now excuse me while I go curl up under nice and cozy flannel sheets for a little while.
Friday night JSL gave us quite the scare. His temperature climbed to 102.7. This may not alarm most people, but JSL had a febrile seizure in February and his temperature was 102. His normal temperature on our thermometer is also just around 97, so this was almost 5 degrees warmer.
Urgent Care opened at 10:00 Saturday morning and we were there first in line. The doctor there said his lung to his ear, and throat looked fine. When he got to his ears he could not see anything. JSL had so much wax he could not see the ear drum. He wanted to try to clean them out some to get a better look. With the tool he was able to get enough wax out of the right ear to see it was fine. The left ear would not budge. The doctor was about to send us home at that point.
I opened my mouth and questioned using a peroxide water mix to try to blast out the wax. He said that does not work for little kids. I again reminded him that this was a VERY high fever for my son and he did not see the other ear properly. He agreed to get the nurse in to try to clean it. After 4-5 syringes of the mixture a huge plug came out of JSL’s ear. The doctor came back in and admitted I was right to insist. JSL had a raging ear infection. So bad that they told us we must head back to our doctor in 10 days for a follow up.
This is JSL 24 hours after starting the antibiotic and fever free since before bed on Saturday.
NHL has potentially tried to one up his brother. It looks like his antibiotic for the pinkeye may not be working. It had started to look a little better during the day yesterday. Then last night it looked swollen, pink and off again. This morning when he woke up it was slightly stuck shut again (had not done that the two previous nights). So, it looks like he will be going to the doctor today and is missing another day of kindergarten, poor kid. I also called NHL’s school nurse. She had told me the other day that at least two children had to be sent home again 2-3 days after the initial medicaiton was given because the infection came back. Looks like we may have something like that. Hopefully we can get this kicked enough so he can at least go to the Thanksgiving feast tomorrow before no school the rest of the week.
Have you done a mitzvah today? If you are not sure what this means, do not worry many people are probably curious as well. The term mitzvah, a hebrew word, has come to mean any act of human kindness. For further information about the historical meaning of mitzvah I will point you here.
People strive to do mitzvot in their everyday lives without making it obvious that they are doing so. Each year our synagogue has a Mitzvah Day in the fall where congragants go out into the community to do good for others. Some of the opportunities were to help out at the Ronald McDonald House, serve food at the local mission, and dance to entertain residents at a senior center.
The children from the hebrew school in grades K-3 were asked to participate in the dancing. NHL was very excited about this and wanted to go with his friends. We decided to participate. Everyone was supposed to arrive at our synagogue at 12:30 for lunch. When we arrived we were greeted by my grandmother working at the registration table.
After lunch we drove to the senior center for the dancing. NHL was quite excited and had a hard time waiting to get on the "stage" to dance.
Here is a shot of him dancing and having a fabulous time. He really is starting to understand the broad picture of what doing a mitzvah is now thanks to hebrew school.
Meanwhile JSL was a little antsy. At the end he decided to untie JL’s laces and have some fun.
This was a great experience and we look forward to future Mitzvah Days to participate in within the community.
So will you do a mitzvah today?
As a former teacher, I know it is never good when the school nurse has to send home a letter to parents. Thursday afternoon we received our first one home this year with the kindergarten kid. The note that NHL had in his backpack was telling parents that the room had a large number of cases of pinkeye. I called the nurse to ask about it. I was concerned since NHL had pinkeye less than a month ago and it was what started the illness that ended up with JSL in the hospital for four days in February. According to the nurse, several kids had come to school only to be sent home with it, and others were coming in with antibiotics on their own.
Care to guess what happened to me when I woke up Friday morning?
Sure enough when I tried to open my right eye is was all crusted over and did not want to open. Ugh! I wanted to wait and see what was going to happen. Since the weekend was coming and I did not want to get stuck going to Urgent Care, I called our doctors office. I left a message that I had been helping in my son’s kindergarten class where an outbreak of pinkeye was going on and I had it.
I stayed in waiting for the call all Friday morning and early afternoon. Sure enough they called 10 minutes after I left to get NHL from school. They called in a tube of ointment for me (not thrilled about it, but it is better than nothing). I opted not to pick it up yesterday just in case I was rushing into this. Here is my eye as it looked earlier this morning.
After a nap this morning with JSL I got dressed and went to the pharmacy for my ointment, clearly it was time. For some reason I am quite susceptable to pinkeye, no matter how careful I am washing my hands. Hopefully I can keep this to myself like NHL did a few weeks back.
Remember, you can not catch pinkeye from just looking at this photo!
