March Madness

Back to our regularly scheduled programming, here are some tidbits of our March madness.  Nothing represents the chaos of our lives better than Annika's bedroom.  (Okay, the room is shared with Eli, but the mess is most always hers.)

Occasionally there are sweeter moments as well.  Annika rarely comes to the piano to sing, but I'm glad when she does--same thing for any of our kiddos.

Guess who became a licensed driver in March?  Congrats, Reddi-Wip!  

We enjoyed playtime with cousins as the weather grew warmer in March.  Who knew a tortoise could carry three kids and a tiger?

Annie and Eila began rehearsing for a kids theater production at the Main Library as well.  More on that soon!  Also, libraries are amazing.

The highlight of our March was having Gregory come visit from Long Island.  Obviously his legs are looking healthy and strong since he can carry our not-so-little girl.  (Last year, Greg broke his femur in a Colorado ski accident the day after visiting us.  Big bummer, but his spiral fracture has healed really well!)

Swapping fish stories with Eila and Anders.

Greg came to see Brooklyn and Talia perform in their A'capella concert at West High.

Annika wore her cowboy hat for the occasion.

Afterward we took Greg upstairs to see the Spirit Bowl decorations.  This year's theme was Pirates of the Caribbean.

West High Panther Pirate.

I love walking up to the fourth floor to see what the kids have created.  Spirit Bowl is the best!  (I suspect the fire marshall might disagree, but oh well.)  Do you like the hull of the ship?

Must be the Black Pearl.

A Kraken and a cannonball rally.

Thanks for sharing this crazy tradition with us, Greg!

More news: Jason had a birthday in March. ❤  We all went skiing, but I already posted the pictures in our Heckuvalottasnow post.  Truthfully, it was a bit discouraging for him because he'd damaged his knee in a relay race at a church Primary activity earlier, so his knee felt unstable and hurt.  While Jason's biking fine, he still can't run so he is scheduled for surgery on August 31st to see if they can fix anything--possibly meniscus, possibly ACL.

At least ASSIST did a pretty stellar job celebrating Jason's big day.  Plenty to unwrap!  

If only I'd gotten him another Sonos speaker.

I love how diverse the office is right now.  They wrote their well-wishes in Farsi, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English.  Bon anniversaire, mi amor.

Other fun memories.  Our friends, the Harmons, invited us all over for a meal of raclette.  We haven't enjoyed this cheesy deliciousness since France.  It was SO fun!

Mmmm, cheese bubbling on bottom with mushrooms and bacon on top.  Gregory agrees that it was fantastic!

Gregory bunked with Eli while he was at our house.  Annika was more than happy to sleep on a pile of blankets stuffies in our room instead.  While she's an adorable roommate, she was also a noisy one. Living in such close quarters, we could hear how Annika's breathing was sounding labored and getting worse each night.  By the end she reminded me a bit of Darth Vadar.

A visit to the ENT revealed some constriction in her airway, likely residual damage from when was intubated.  I blogged a little bit about it before here.

Her surgical procedure kept getting pushed back because they didn't have a bed available for her in the ICU.  Normally this wouldn't be necessary for what is often an outpatient procedure, but everyone is very careful with that heart!  Here she is getting an EKG.  It looks crazy, but is nothing more than stickers and takes just a moment.

The upside of all those appointments is that I usually take her to the hospital cafeteria to get something to eat after.  

We finally got in for our flexible laryngoscopy/bronchoscopy on March 30th.  I wrote a bit about the procedure here.  Long story short, they were able to go in and open up her airway by slicing some scar tissue, removing some granulation tissue, and performing a balloon dilation twice.  Skip the next photographs if you don't like blood, but I think they're cool because they really show the process.  The first three are "before" pics where you can see how little room there is for air to pass through, explaining the noisy breathing.  The rest are of the balloon dilations and the expanded airway.

We could hear a huge improvement in Annika's breathing from the moment we met her in recovery.  She was pretty out of it at first.  Apparently she'd peed during surgery so they'd gotten her out of her clothes but she didn't want to put a gown back on.  When the nurse came back, she warned us how she was "nakey under that blankey."  Sounds about right.

The only way I was able to convince her to put something back on was by letting her wear her gown as a superhero cape.  That, and bribery with Minecraft.  Since we don't have an x-box at home, video games are Annika's favorite part of a hospital stay.

Here's Talia stopping by after her volunteer shift playing violin in the main lobby.  (Yes, she dyed her hair red while Annie was in the hospital, with permission. While I'm quite certain I would have consented to the semi-permanent color change no matter what, I definitely had other things to worry about at that point.)

Back to Annika, they don't typically feed kids regular food in the ICU since most of the patients are really sick.  But Annie was basically healthy and hadn't eaten anything since the day before.  Hanger is real!  While the nurses wouldn't give her anything, one of the doctors came by and gave her a giant sea salt caramel.  If she could manage that, she should be good to go!

They still didn't bring her a menu after that, so Jason and I went downstairs and brought up sushi.  The nurses looked the other way, and our little girl was delighted to finally be able to eat.

The rest of the hospital stay is frankly best forgotten.  The combination of too much screen time, too little food (they didn't offer breakfast either), and terrible sleep left Annika a cranky wild mess.  By the time she finally got discharged at 11:00, it was accompanied by a major meltdown.  But hey, at least she was breathing well.  Mission accomplished.

One last note:  I took this picture on April 1st, not only because of the remarkable snow, but because it looks IDENTICAL to the following picture, taken January 2nd. 

Are all of these hospital visits starting to feel like deja vu?  Yeah, me too.  Hoping not to make this a revolving door...