January = the month of SICKNESS

For about six weeks, our house was filled with GERMS! Yuck...lots of coughing, runny noses, soar throats, lost voices, ear infections...you name it, we had it! Ugh! It just wouldn't leave. And, it attacked ALL of us non-stop. We would start to feel a little bit better and I would think, "Finally! It's going away." And then, the next day the symptoms would get worse again. Three weeks before we left for Hawaii, I said to my mom, " At least we are sick now, before we go to Hawaii. We will be better for SURE by the time we leave..." WRONG!

Austin hangs his head in shame at my optimistic thoughts....

Austin and Alex continued to get worse and worse. The week before we were to leave to Hawaii, I took Austin to the doctor three times because his cough was so deep.

Alex pretending he's a cow

They issued us a nebulizer and a prescription for Albuturol which we treated Austin with every four hours. He had to have a chest x-ray, which consisted of stripping him down and strapping him into this Medieval torture device.

example of Medieval torture device x-ray

I pulled the above picture off of the Internet so those of you have never had the pleasure of stuffing your screaming four month old in one can see what it looks like. There is only one thing wrong with this picture...this child is way to calm. Austin was so angry, and when I say angry I mean ANGRY! My normally happy, always calm child was screaming and shaking. Which of course made it worse, because the technician had to redo one of the x-rays because it came out blurry.

Alex and Austin, wearing their "monkey suits" as Alex calls them.

The weekend before we left, Alex surprised us all and stopped coughing and seemed to be cured...then on Tuesday he woke up with a high fever, which continued to rise until on Wednesday it peaked out at 103! Ack! He has never had a fever so high before. Plus, the cough returned, and he just laid on the couch all day. So, I took both kids to the doctor on Thursday, one last time before our trip. Austin still wasn't improving so he was prescribed an antibiotic, poor Alex ended up with 2 ear infections (his second set this winter!) and pneumonia! He was of course put on an antibiotic and also received his own prescription for Albuterol.Alex hooked up to the nebulizer...

I honestly didn't even know what one of these things was until this sickness attacked us. As you can see from the pictures, despite the sickness, my boys were still happy and full of giggles through it all.