Zach is still sick! So far in the past month he has had pneumonia, and ear infection, and now strep throat. He's finishing off his latest round of antibiotics, but he's still very ill. He had a fever of 38.9 yesterday. He says nothing else hurts except his head. The last doctor we saw said that he might be a strep carrier, and these antibiotics won't do a thing for him, and that it's just a virus causing all of this. I would be fine with that explanation, except if it's a virus, shouldn't it be contagious? Zach has been ill for a week and a half with this fever, and there hasn't been a single day when he hasn't hit the 38+ mark on the thermometer, and yet no one else in the house is showing any symptoms of being sick. At least we got his blood work done and it seems that all of his white blood cells are as they should be. Oh, and for all you mothers out there who may be concerned about your child symptoms, don't, under any circumstances, Google all the symptoms. It just isn't worth the stress. Zach's symptoms popped up with leukemia as a cause for all the pain in his little body, and it caused a whole lot more pain for me! I'll keep you all updated on any changes in his condition.

Jessica, on the other hand, is eating really well these days, sleeping well, and growing like a weed. She is starting to really enjoy playing pretend, and making her barbies talk to each other, so cute to watch. Yes barbies, talk to my sister about that one. I hate the things, even as a kid all I ever did was play with their hair. I didn't want Jess to have them, but the cousins have some, and Jess loved them, so Auntie got her some for her last birthday. Anyway, she's happy playing. It's fun to see her doing some of the things I used to do as a child. She will sing songs to her toys in the story format..."now we're going to go for a walk to get your doggy, and then we'll go to the park, swings are fun. What do you want for lunch...." All in this impossible to recreate tune. I used to do the same thing! As much as Zach is like me in the loving to be out there in the public eye domain, Jessica has inherited my gift of song. She can hear things once and mimic it's exact sound. Zach loves to sing, but his pitch is far from perfect. Jessica has no desire at this point to be in the spotlight, preferring instead to hide behind my knees if anyone speaks directly to her. So one has the desire and little talent, the other has talent and crippling shyness. Fun. I wouldn't care if either of them went into the entertainment industry, but I would support whatever road they would want to travel. I firmly believe that University isn't the only, or even necessarily the best, way to get an education.

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted. To say things have been busy would be an understatement. Zach finished his antibiotics 2 weeks ago, he seemed to be fine, no coughing, the pneumonia looked gone. Then last Saturday I was brushing his teeth and I tipped his head back and he flinched really bad, he said his neck hurt. He was running a bit of a fever and he said his head hurt, I thought it was just the beginnings of another cold. Sunday found him feverish and headachy, he didn't eat all day, and the Children’s Motrin was only working to keep his fever down for an hour or so, even then it wasn't down to normal. I knew things were really bad when he asked to bring a pillow to the supper table for his sore head. Then he told me he didn't want any supper. I had made his favorite, chocolate chip pancakes! I sent him to bed and called the nurses health line. They asked me to wake him up and find out on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad his head hurt, he said 100. They wanted me to call an ambulance, but I decided it was just as easy for me to drive him in to the hospital. They isolated us right away, and told me that he might have meningitis. The doctor came in to see us, and thankfully ruled that out fairly quickly, but he didn't diagnose a massive ear infection and the pneumonia was still present. Off we went for more chest x-rays. Things looked the same to me as the last round of films, but I'm not a doctor. He's back on meds, and seems to be doing alright, he is a bit bored though since I've kept him home all week. I really want him to rest up, and heal.

On top of this, Jessica has been a misery too. She just seems to be in a really defiant phase, and her favorite thing to do is stick her tongue out at me on a regular basis. Time outs don't seem to curb the tongue nonsense, so I've taken to telling her that she's being rude, and walking away from her. She stuck her tongue out at my contractor the other day, and really offended him. So I told her she was being rude, and she got really upset, said that the contractor hurt her feelings. How do you explain to someone not yet three, that she was the one that hurt someone’s feelings first. It's frustrating. I know the house is taking up a lot of my time, and she's feeling the loss of my undivided attention, but she does still have me with her all day every day.