Oh, the difference a day makes!

Hey everyone! I'm sorry that this post has been so delayed, but I promise I have a really good reason! Well, it's bad, but it at least justifies things. You see, Caroline came down with an absolutely horrible bug. Like, really bad.

It mostly started the evening after we got home from our trip, although both Caroline and I felt reasonably lousy the last few days of our trip due to a cold bug that had both of us coughing and losing sleep. Caroline fell asleep on the couch around 8pm and I chalked it up to jet lag and let her sleep. Around 10:30pm, I woke her up because she hadn't eaten since lunch and I really wanted her to have something in her belly before she went to sleep for the night. As soon as I woke her up, she started choking! I had no idea what was causing her to choke -- she didn't have anything in her mouth. And then I realized what she was choking on... as I got puked on. Multiple times.

I got her cleaned up in the bathtub, in fresh jammies and then brought her to bed with me. I was smart enough to cover the bed with a blanket but dumb enough to not keep Caroline from burrowing in it. So an hour later, when she sat up and vomited all over, the blanket was no longer protecting anything. Off we went for bath number two and I spent the next couple of days washing everything from that night, spot treating things and scrubbing carpet. Oh, the carpet. Just in case Caroline vomiting on herself, me and everything in close proximity to us wasn't enough, Bentley was vomiting too. To the tune of 8 spots worth. Definitely cleaning the carpet later this week although at least his vomit was only foamy dog spit.

Caroline never ran a fever, but she was obviously miserable. She would only sleep in my arms. Then she developed a weird rash on her legs. I called the ER and they wanted me to give her Benadryl to see if that would help. Luckily, it did.

Now she's developed a horrible cough that causes her to lose her breath and gag. This terrifies her (and sometimes me) so we've been sleeping together at night I prop her up on a pillow so that she's on an incline and put my arm behind her head. This is the only way she or I can sleep, and even then, it's intermittent.

I took her in to see the doctor and they confirmed what I'd suspected. She has a bad little virus in her system, but it looks like the worst of it is behind her. We're still dealing with mucus galore and gagging coughs, but Caroline's in much better spirits. Well, not first thing in the morning -- she's miserable then and at night. But once the daytime rolls around, she loves getting out in the sunshine and playing.

Caroline being so sick has been really hard to watch as a parent. I want nothing more than for her to be back to her normal, healthy self. I hate watching her suffer and unfortunately, the doctor said there is nothing they can give her to make her feel better. She just needs time and she'll kick it on her own. Luckily her lungs sound good and her ears and throat are fine, so they don't suspect pneumonia will develop at this point. So now... we wait it out! But that, dear friends and family, is why I haven't had time to update yet. When I wasn't either covered in or cleaning up vomit, I was tending to a very ill, sad little baby. It's been a hard few days for not only Caroline and I, but for my best friend Kristina, who essentially had to handle Valentine's day without my help. (We own a flower business together and you can only imagine how busy things were for Kristina!) I'm lucky enough that Kristina was very understanding and never complained, which is the mark of an exceptional friend, but I will be taking her to lunch very soon to try to make up for it a bit.

We had an absolutely wonderful trip back home. I'll have to dedicate a post to that sometime later, but we truly had a great time. We visited with the entire family and I was lucky enough to meet up with some of my favorite friends including Kirsty, Mandy and Nicole! As much as I feared traveling with a very mobile toddler, Caroline was absolutely fantastic. And thinking back on how sick she got, I'm really glad that the worst of it came after we got home and not while we were traveling!

Here's Caroline not feeling so great....

And here she is playing a day later! The difference a day makes! Although nights are still rough, as of monday, she was at least enjoying day time!

She thought Bentley drinking water was a pretty good idea apparently...

Don't worry, I made her stop!