"Up-a-daisy"

"Up-a-daisy"

That is not what you want to hear from the mouth of a 3-year old who is sitting next to your 5 month old. Charlotte apparently decided that Trystan wanted to sit up, and pulled him up to a sitting position. And then backed away. He looked around, gave me a goofy grin as I raced towards them, and promptly toppled over. And darn the child if he didn't laugh about it. I guess if he'd hit his head that hard, he would have cried, but by laughing he's re-inforced Charlotte's "helpful" attempt.

I think up and down definitely describes the last couple of weeks. Right before Labor Day weekend, I got a nice polite letter from my company's HR department saying that they were dropping Trystan from my health insurance because of "lack of documentation". I had sent his birth certificate, as they requested, several months earlier. At the time, they were doing some sort of company-wide sweep of requesting birth certificates and tax forms to prove that our medical dependents were legitimate, and I made the mistake of (silly me), sending both children's birth certificates in together. Apparently, one group (in one state) was handling dependents that were on the account as of last December. Another group (in another state) was handling dependents that were new this year. Pardon me for not realizing that all of the envelopes with my company logo and "Depended Verification" printed on the top, and PO Boxes for addresses, were actually going different places to people who were not speaking to one another.

Yikes. I called them immediately that night, and faxed them a copy of Trystan's birth certificate on that Saturday. By Tuesday, the representative said that the had not received it, or that it had not been "sorted" and "applied to my account". I then, over the next week, faxed it at least 5 more times (with and without cover letters, with my employee ID, with my social security #, and other various permutations), plus I mailed it in, calling nearly every day. I didn't get confirmation until this past Wednesday that they had received it, and could figure out what to do with it! I explained (again) that the BABY was having SURGERY on MONDAY, and that they needed to get him re-activated on the health insurance immediately if not sooner. I was told again this afternoon that they have the "work order" marked as Urgent, and that someone who deals with the insurance company is supposed to "push it through" today. In the mean time, someone from the hospital has also noticed that he's "inactive" and is trying to help get things straightened out so that we don't get a bill the size of our mortgage in the mail in a couple of weeks. Actually, its more that she's encouraging me to get thing straightened out. Same difference to her (if not to my stress level).

In between stressful phone calls, things have been relatively good around here. Charlotte is enjoying her dance classes. Trystan is getting closer and closer to crawling--he's pushing up on all 4's and trying to rock. Occaisionally he gets his butt in the air like he's doing a downward facing dog pose in Yoga. Then again, occaisionally Charlotte does too--she's seen a couple of my workout videos. Today we went to the lab at the hospital to have blood drawn, and both kids were quite good. Trystan got mad at being stuck by the needle, but really calmed down in a hurry. Charlotte was more interested in watching the needle and the blood than she was in distracting Trystan. She walked away with 6 Disney Princess stickers and a sucker for his trouble. Afterwards, I decided that the day was too nice for us to drive past the zoo and not stop. We had a rather pleasant afternoon, with only one minor meltdown on the way to the car (Charlotte was very tired and suddenly remembered that we didn't get to see the elephants). Both kids napped in the car on the way home.

Next week one of my sisters is coming out to help while Trystan's in the hospital. I'm looking forward to her visit. I don't get to see enough of any of them, and having an extra pair of hands around the house will be a life saver. We're still expecting about a 3-day stay, and I'm expecting to pretty much stay with him the whole time, and stay home from work most or all of the week. I did read a description of his surgery on another hospital's website last week, and it said that patients go home with a catheter in place, that stays until a 2-week checkup (!). No one mentioned such a thing to us that I can recall, and I'm slightly panicked. We were expecting and planning that he'd be in ok shape to go back to daycare after a week, but certainly can't with a catheter (heck, I don't know how to entertain a rolling, exploring 6-month old at home for 2 weeks with a catheter in place). We have a deadline at work, and no real backup plan at the moment for after my sister has to go home. Should make for an exciting week.

I should try to take my inspiration from Trystan--to enjoy life when I get to sit up and look around, and try laugh it off when I fall back down again. I just hope I don't bump my head to hard on the way down next time!

Happenings

The last couple of weekends have been pretty busy for us, unlike today. My husband and both kids are all asleep, so I actually have a couple of minutes on the computer :) Here's the highlights:

I got Charlotte and Trystan's pictures taken several weeks ago, and both kids were happy and smiling and cute. Here's one of my favorites:





Charlotte turned 3 on the 24th. We had a little party for a couple of her playmates. By "little" I mean that there were only 4 other kids in attendance. My husband and I might have gone a little overboard on the cake:




Also, we don't appear to have a good photo of it, but Princess Charlotte hosted her guests in a "bounce castle". We're talking a 10x10 inflated bouncer like they have at fairs. We bought the thing--larger ones can be rented but there are apparently some restrictive laws about them around here (rental places need to provide an "attendant" as if it's a carnival ride). The purchased one is huge and fairly heavy-duty, and just about fits in our basement (we have 9ft ceilings and the top is a little squashed, but it still works....it could go outside if the weather weren't 100degrees or raining). Yes, we spoil her. But we got her a lot of good exercise in the process. Here's a closer photo of her inside:



Over Labor Day weekend, my mom and baby sister came to stay. We went to the St. Louis County Fair and Air Show and got to see the Blue Angels (very cool). Charlotte got to climb in several of the planes and helicopters on exhibit, and loved it. She also got to ride several carnival rides, though she was upset that she couldn't ride the big viking ship--she's too short. I think she's still got part of a bag of cotton candy to finish too. Unfortunately we had loaned our camera to friends, so we have no photos.

We're gearing up for Trystan's next surgery on the 17th of September. He will have at least one more after that to finish out his GI tract. Another of my sister's (#4 of 5) is coming to stay with us for that week to give us moral support and some extra attention for Charlotte. After my experience with Trystan's last hospital stay, I'm expecting to stay likely all of the nights with him this time--he should be eating a little quicker, and could use more attention when he's not eating (assuming he's feeling up to cuddle time...I think the company will help him relax even if he's hurting some). Last time I came home and slept in my bed a couple of times as the entire weekend before I'd basically not slept because he was so sick. It won't be fun for Charlotte (any of us really), but we will all make it through.

Illness followup

Trystan's illness from last week was just a virus. My husband did take him to the pediatrician, who tested him for a kidney infection. Poor kiddo had to wait around and be manipulated as they attempted to collect a urine sample by catheter—after two failures (I believe he peed before they could get the catheter in), they ended up with a lucky "catch" and collected a sample in a cup. They waited so long that the ped had a speaker of some sort for a talk within her office, and ended up offering my husband some of the pizza they had ordered from the group. They also had to provide him with a couple of extra diapers, as the repeated failures to catch the pee wiped out the diaper bag's stash. By Wednesday, he was feeling quite a bit better, and I stayed home with both kids, and even ventured to the library with Charlotte for story hour. Initial tests showed that it was unlikely that he had an infection, and indeed the culture failed to grow anything of interest.

It's a little scary how reactive we have to be to everything happening to Trystan. He's not allowed to be a typical baby who gets the occasional virus from daycare. With every fever, we're going to worry about kidney infections, and every large spitup could be the first sign of another bowel obstruction. Any unexplained symptoms like lethargy could be signs of heart problems. It is easy to forget from day to day that we have a baby with some rather severe health problems. He is such a happy, active, bright baby that I forget that I should be worried about so many things.