A Little More Like Home

Tonight it is quiet in the house. I guess I should say this morning it is quiet in the house. I have this horrible habit of staying up way too late but I can't resist the time alone with my husband and the time when the house is so quiet and it seems like our own little world. We do not have much that is our own anymore and so the few moments that we can pretend are wonderful moments indeed. This last week was a very trying one in our household and our family. Naomi got sick last Friday with Croup and it spread like wildfire through our family. By the time all was said and done all of the kids and a few of us adults have had it. We had quite the scare with Nae and Nora. Both of the girls ended up in Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake. We had taken Nae to the bedtime kids care at our pediatrician where they diagnosed her. They gave her 2 different breathing treatments and a shot of steroids but she did not improve like they had hoped and so they sent us to the hospital here in Tooele. The hospital here is a small one and they were not comfortable handling her situation. The doctor said that we should see improvement but if it went the other way we would have less than 2 minutes before they would have to intubate. I guess with Croup the vocal cords and the throat can become so enlarged that they close off altogether. So off they shipped us to Primary's in an ambulance. She started doing much better on the way there due to the steroids and spent a large amount of time drawing on her hand with the pen that the EMT gave her. Really, a pen? lol. We spent a few hours in observation with her and then they gave us the choice of staying for the remainder of the night or going home. We chose home which at that point was my sister's house. She had come to the hospital because Matt was too tired to make the drive and I didn't want to risk another accident, I don't think he would survive it. We spent the night on a futon in her house and bless her heart in the morning she took Nae who had not slept well most of the night and bathed and played with her while I slept. She drove us home to Tooele and next it was Nora's turn. She started the next night. She was really bad. She was barking and wheezing and when we finally went to bed she shot straight out of a dead sleep twice gasping for breath. She was panicking and so was I but I made sure it did not show on my face. I made her look straight at my face and breathe along with me, trying desperately to slow down her breathing the best way I could think of. Then I put her in the car and sped to Primary's. I wasn't going to mess with two different hospitals this time, we were going straight for the big guns. Once we were there they treated her much the same way that they did Nae and then put her on oxygen to get her stats up. Thank goodness she didn't have to bring the oxygen home with her, we are always tripping and tying ourselves in Matt's tube, I cannot imagine trying to deal with more feet of plastic tubing. It has been nearly a week since this all happened. Claire and Ivan got it but we were fast enough catching it that we got them taken to the doctor before it ever really turned nasty. Needless to say I am one exhausted momma. Today I stripped my room of any and all things that could be washed, disinfected or thrown away so that we would not recycle this nasty virus. My room is so clean, I love it! It is nearly impossible to keep our little room clean in this house because the kids are slowly trying to move into it. I will have to post pictures of our room so that you can see the hilarity of it all. I did get our computer set up though so that I can actually have some daytime hours online and feel somewhat connected to the world. There are 10 people in this house and 1 computer which makes it very hard to stay connected. It felt so good to get the room somewhat organized and my computer set up but what felt the best was to pull out my Scentsy warmer. I have been 6 months without my Scentsy warmer and those of you that really know me or have ever been to my house (when I had one anyway) know that I am in love with my warmers. I have 7 total, one for every room of our last house. Had I known it was going to probably be the last house we ever owned I would have taken pictures. It was such a beautiful house and it was all ours. I took that for granted. I really did. So pulling out my Grape Vine Scentsy warmer made it feel a little more like home.