Summer Summary

I know I've been MIA recently. With good reason. Here are the highlights. Or lowlights, as most of them are.
Following the UTIs and head injuries, we went to GA for 10 days (injury free!) and then Myrtle Beach for 5 days. While the beach trip was "injury" free, Xander did have a yeast infection/diaper rash the entire time. There's something odd about slathering your little boy down with Monistat.

A few days after our return home, Xander was all better and I was looking forward to a healthy August. But before that, it was Aaric's birthday. I'm the mother of a seven year old. I feel old.

On Aaric's birthday, the kids and I went to the beach with some friends. Camping. I got some mosquito bites, but otherwise, the trip was injury/illness free. We got home Sunday afternoon. Had spaghetti for dinner.

Sunday evening, I noticed redness around Xander's neck. Monday, I notice redness on his chin. My logical conclusion was that he'd gotten a little burned on his neck, and his constant drooling was irritating his chin. Until it spread and he had pink puffy eyes and a little not so cute pink goatee shaped rash on his face. Then I knew something was up, but was still not panicked. The next day it looked like I'd just taken the kid outside around noon and positioned his high chair so that he was facing directly into the sun and left him there for a couple hours. Bright red, all over his whole head. That was Tuesday afternoon. We went to the ER.

ER doc declared it "dermatitis, cause unknown." He got a dose of steroids and we were sent on our way. Friday, he was not only bright red, but also all his skin on his head was cracking, and in his neck it was just plain gross (I'll spare you the gory details). So we went in to see our doctor. The resident thought it looked bacterial, and went to get her attending doc, brought back 2 of my favorite doctors at the clinic, and they all looked him over for a good long while. The final conclusion is that he had Scalded Skin Syndrome, which is one of the ways Staphalococcus aureus presents itself in infants. As my doctor described to me, "It basically looks like you dipped his face into a vat of boiling water." Nice mental image, right?! So, off the steroids and onto the penicillin.

Within a couple days, he'd improved greatly. I, on the other hand, was increasingly itchy. The mosquito bites were not getting under control. They were getting worse. At his 1 week follow up, I showed them to the resident, who asked and was told I should just use neosporin and see if that helps. It didn't. I went back in a few days later and she said it was bacterial, put me on some meds.

Meanwhile, thanks to the 546908 rounds of antibiotics Xander has had so far, his poor little body again gave in to the yeast, and we both had thrush symptoms. The next day, I found a sore on Mikayla much like the ones I had (did I mention it spread? I started with 10 bites, wound up with around 80 sores. fun stuff.) so we headed to Urgent Care. There, they actually did a culture on my nasty germs, and put us both on new antibiotics. He said it was MRSA. Which is methasomething resistant staph aureus. In other words, "a whole bunch of drugs won't touch this bacteria in the least." Well, it turns out it was not MRSA, but it is the SA part. And it's not really getting better.

So, that's what our summer has been like. I've alerted the staff at our doctor's office that I may just start camping out in the waiting room in order to simplify matters and save my gas money.

Open House for the kids is tomorrow, so today was our last real day of summer. And we spent it cooped up in the house, with our staphy germs. No really, I'm told we're not contagious, but I look icky, so I'm staying in. Tomorrow though, we have to go out.
Open House, and then tomorrow night is a school night! Aaric's first day is Thursday and Mikayla has orientation then, and then her first day is Friday.

Oh, I almost forgot some of the Xander-related highlights. While trying his hardest to fight his battle with SSSS, a tooth popped through. No wonder he was cranky. Itchy, painful skin, a tooth pushing on his gums, and steroids that turn kids into maniacs. I'm actually surprised it didn't go any worse!

A week after that one came in, another followed. And then not quite a week later, the third made it's way in. The days of gummy grins are gone. Luckily, the toothy grins are just as cute.

Over this past weekend, he was standing, falling forward, and a foot would move forward, so he'd sorta take a step, but it was more of a failed attempt to achieve balance than anything else. Yesterday, that evolved into him taking 2 intentional steps forward, a few times during the day. Today, he was taking 4-5 steps in a row. He's walking.

I find that to be pretty absurd, because he's so tiny. (comparatively. Remember, my other two were whoppers) Twenty-one pounders shouldn't be upright and mobile. But he does it anyway.

So that really is it. I wanted to get all that out of the way so that I could do back to school posts later this week. Or, in my recent fashion, a "here's how our fall went" post in November.