december festivities

Gordy had been very patiently awaiting December and all that it brought.  And, now that it's over he's decided that it was the best December ever.  Here's some of the reasons why he loved it so much:

Tutu Ginger came to visit and while she was here we decorated Nana's Christmas tree and made Granny Goodwitch's Christmas cookies.

After many revisions, Gordy completed and mailed his list to Santa.

Gordy's elf came to life and went to the North Pole each night returning in the morning to a new hiding place.

We sipped hot cocoa with marshmallows while watching the Christmas parade from the side of the street in Haleiwa.

We spent a day on Maui with Nana and twins Hayden and Sebastian.

Gordy was pretty sure that he'd started to grow whiskers.

Salvation army gave us a free Christmas tree (still not sure how that happened).

Gordy found a pet toad, who quickly hopped away.

More cookie making with Gordy's friend Alia and her family.

On Christmas Eve, Gordy and I heard reindeer footsteps on the roof and Santa say "ho, ho, ho".

We left out cookies and wine for Santa and carrots for the reindeer, and hung our stockings with care.

And, most importantly... Santa came and filled our stockings!

End of year swim

As is tradition for the last 8 years, we rallied the troops and completed our 78 hundreds (I did 75s) for 2022.  And, for the first time, Gordy joined (he did 50s with fins)!

Gordy only stayed for 5 so he's not in our after photo, but that's more than nothing!

Now we are all ready for 2023 to begin :)

happy holidays 2022

Tutu Ginger's visit

Tutu Ginger came to visit for Thanksgiving and our birthday!

We all had a great time and Gordy is already ready for a repeat trip.  We hope to see you again soon Tutu!

Piedmont 2022.2

We are now home from another wonderful trip to the Bay area!  The cousins had lots of time to play together (which is cool because they are all old enough to enjoy the play).

We did our best to polish off a fresh jar of Tutu's homemade apricot jam using english muffins as vessels.

We saw some incredible sunsets from the breakfast nook in Tutu's and Pop-pop's kitchen.

We played with Gracie.

We visited the Piedmont firefighters.

Played basketball and tennis with Pop-pop.

Thawed our chilled bodies in the hot tub.

Shared a yummy apple fritter from a bakery by Lake Merritt.

And, experienced 5-star treatment at the Warriors-Kings game at Chase Center with great seats (thanks Pop-pop), VIP parking, access to the Chase Club, and courtside seats to watch the Warriors warm up (thanks Bruce)!

We are exhausted from our big adventure, but are over the moon about all that we were able to do in such a short period of time.  'Til next time Piedmont family, and thank you for everything!

halloween 2.0

Since last year was such a success, Gordy and I drafted up, cut, and assembled notes with ribbons for our neighbors letting them know that we would be haunting our street again on Halloween night.

We put our notes in everyone's mailboxes and crossed our fingers for participation.  Sure enough, half the street was out waiting for our crew at 6:30pm sharp.  And this year, our mob grew from 2 kids to 5!

We had two witches, a unicorn, a cat, and an astronaut complete with a jetpack made of juice bottles covered in aluminum foil and duct tape.  The kids all had a blast running a muck on the street and the neighbors were happy to have trick-or-treaters again.

Seems like we've started a Kaiea Place tradition that we hope lasts for years to come.

kitties

About 6 weeks ago, Nana took in 3 VERY tiny baby kitties who needed care.  Gordy named them Spooky, Sky, and Nugget.  Nugget was the runt, he had a hard time walking, and... he was Gordy's favorite.  We kitty-sat them at our house while Nana was on a trip and it was perfect timing because we got sick day 2 of having them and they were great cuddle and sleeping partners.

6 weeks later, we've all fallen in love with these little guys.  They ended up having parvo, but Nana was able to nurse them through it and they are happy and healthy.  And, since they've been with people (and a kid) since they were so young, they are very tolerating of being picked up, rolled over, petted, played with, and loved on. 

We will be visiting them tomorrow to get our kitten fix!

proud parents

While we were all out sick, Gordy's teacher let us know that he had won an award for leadership.  There were 6 total kids in his grade who got award this quarter and they were all celebrated during an assembly with leis and goody bags.  Sadly, Gordy missed the whole thing because he was out with sick bugs.  So, this week his teacher honored him in her class and had everyone clap for him.  He was absolutely thrilled about it and we couldn't be prouder of our little guy.

final update

Today was the final day of our antibiotics and Gordy and I have significantly improved.  Gordy's is blowing out less snot, what he is blowing out is no longer green, he can breathe out of both nostrils, and his headaches are a thing of the past.  My throat doesn't hurt anymore, I have no sinus congestion, and my eyes are no longer infected.  Best of all, we both have our energy back and are feeling normal again!

We still don't have the results of the culture sensitivity, but it seems that the z-pack did it's job.

The bad news is that Todd came down with flu-like symptoms on Monday night.  He went down pretty hard, but after four days, he seems to be slightly improving.  We are hoping that all he has is the virus and that he's avoided the bacterial infection.

We are all treating these last 5 weeks as though they are just a bad blip in our past that we can say "good-bye" to.  No more sickness for us please!

update #6 (hopefully one of the last)

Since the last post, Gordy's fever continued to go up and then go down with drugs.  So, we took him back into Kaiser on Monday.  The doctor spent an hour running through scenarios and treatment options before finally landing on the following:

1. Swabbing Gordy's nose on one side (deeply) for a respiratory panel which tests for a ton of different viruses.

2. Swabbing the other side of Gordy's nose (even deeper) to hopefully grab some mucus and send it to the lab for a culture to see if any bacteria grows.  When the swab of his brain was unsuccessful, Gordy simply blew his nose into a tissue and the doctor swabbed that... so... maybe no need to swab his brain if he can blow his nose?!?!? (F@$*)

3. Start him on a z-pack because of the near certainty that he has a sinus infection (still or again).

The next day, I went to my doctor for my symptoms and she prescribed me a z-pack as well.  While at the doctor, Gordy's respiratory panel came back positive for the metapneumovirus.  Apparently, it's not typically a bad virus, but with our weakened immune systems, it hit us hard.  

Today, Gordy's culture results came back positive for the haemophilus influenza bacteria.  This bacteria is what's causing his sinus infection.  So, the culture is now being tested for sensitivity to antibiotics so that we can make sure that we are on the proper medication to kill this beast.

Long story short - we contracted a virus at the beginning of September.  We then developed bacterial sinus infections that were likely not killed by the previous antibiotics.  Then, we caught another virus which took us down.  Then, once we completed the previous antibiotics, the bacteria grew again.  Gordy and I have made it past the second virus and are just working on getting rid of our bacterial infections.

Why the doctors didn't want to do a culture (EVEN WHEN I ASKED THEM TO) weeks ago is a mystery and is very frustrating.

Culture sensitivity results are expected in 2 days... we wait and take our z-packs.

update #5

 After Gordy's trembling stopped last night, his temp went up quickly to 104 and he developed a splitting headache.  So we took all the blankets off of him, gave him an ice pack for his head, and fed him another dose of motrin.  An hour later his temp had dropped to 102.2 and he was a sweaty mess.  I gave him more motrin throughout the night just to ensure sleep (for all of us) and he woke up a happy camper with no memory of what had gone on in the night.  He went all day without any fever above 99.6 and his only symptom was a headache around 3pm.  

I'm a bit shell-shocked from the past few days, so I dosed him up with motrin again before he went to bed even though he didn't have a fever.  I feel a little bad about it, but I also just can't risk us all going through the 104 temp again.  

We'll see what tomorrow brings. 

update #4

After a week of improvement and seemingly normal life, Gordy came down with a temperature of 103.6 on Tuesday night.  So, we started back in on the Motrin every 6-8 hours until 12:30pm the next day when (while on Motrin) his fever increased to 105 in a matter of 30 minutes.  The doctors were not available to take a phone call, so we gave him Tylenol and took some much appreciated advice from Kera to put him in a lukewarm shower to get his temp down.  The shower seemed to help because he said that he was hungry after and he wanted apples and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  

After his lunch, we packed up and headed into the Kapolei urgent care which managed to fit him in between other appointments.  They did lots of blood tests, chest x-rays, a urinalysis, and a triple swab for covid, the flu, and another virus.

All of his test results were normal except for one which was high due to inflammation in his body.  So, they sent us home with lots of apologies about not knowing what was going on with him, directions to continue giving him motrin and tylenol, and a promise to call us the next day.

Gordy's pediatrician called today and has settled on the idea that this is a brand new viral infection that he caught once he went back to school last week or this week.  We were instructed to wait this out and to schedule a next day apt for Monday if his fever has not disappeared by Sunday.

Most of today was pretty good for Gordy.  We gave him Motrin (due to fever increases) pretty much every 6-7 hours and he seemed relatively normal / happy... until about 40 minutes ago.  As I sat here writing this update at 11pm, I heard his bedroom door open and some fumbling going on near his toilet.  When I went in to check on him, he was shaking uncontrollably and was complaining about being cold.  So, after he finished on the potty, I took him into his room and tried cuddling him.  My body heat was not enough, so Todd came in and used his bare chest as a heater.  We convinced him to take Tylenol, put a long sleeve shirt on him, and ended up covering him in three blankets.  He proceeded to shake and complain of leg pain for the next 20 minutes until he finally fell asleep.

Our thermometer couldn't pick up his temperature because Gordy couldn't keep his mouth closed, but an attempted measurement of his armpit produced a 103 degree reading.  I just hope it's not actually higher.  Hopefully he's sweating this thing out and he'll wake up tomorrow feeling much better and will be on his way to a final recovery.

I don't think any of us can take much more sickness...