Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Christian was "The King of Rock 'n Roll ~ Elvis" this Halloween and the costume was a hit. Thanks to our friend Diego for letting us borrow his costume from last year. It fit great. Christian loved running around tonight.

We started off the evening by going around to a few neighbors houses. The funniest part of trick or treating was going to visit the neighbor 2 houses down. Their house layout is almost identical to ours. Christian must has really taken to it, because he walked right into their house without a second thought...like he was making himself at home. Their dog Mike was the only one bothered by this. He barked at Christian several times, but that didn't stop him from walking around their living room.




Our neighbors Hooper and Milam were dressed up like Batman and Spiderman.



















After making our way to a few houses, we headed off to the Carnival at the Church where Christian attends daycare. On our way there we stopped at the Assisted Living Center near the house to do some trick or treating. Everyone there was so nice and we had lots of fun.

Then it was off to the Carnival. Chris and Christian threw darts for prizes, Christian dug for buried treasure for candy and prizes and he had a great time on the bouncy castle.



All in all it was a very busy and fun Halloween. If in the pictures it looks like Christian was in constant motion, running to and from everywhere...it is because he was. He was a ball of energy. Aunt Sassy met us at the Carnival so she could see Elvis in all his glory. By the time she saw him he had green lollipop juice all down his chest and was running around. The three of us could barely keep up with him. It was a great Halloween Night for Elvis and his devoted fans.

Viva Las Vegas

We arrived home from our brief trip to Vegas just in time for Halloween. Vegas was a blast. I viewed the fountains of the Bellagio from about every angle you can think of. I loved them. We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel (it is half the size of the original). We went to see Spamalot at the Wynn Hotel. It was hilarious. We walked all over the strip and left our money at several casinos. Chris did well at craps and slots, I didn't do as well at video poker and slots....but we had fun no matter what. We toured the Bellagio and the goregous Atrium they have there. It was decorated for fall and was beautiful. We missed our little guy a lot, but he was in good hands with Aunt Sheri, Gran and Pa and Aunt Sassy. We hear they watched lots of "Lightin' "

Telephone

Christian is learning what the telephone is all about. He has started to pick up play phones and use them just like Mommy and Daddy does. He talks to Aunt Sassy quite a lot about her big truck. Today Christian's Daddy called him from the couch. Here is what followed.

Grown-up fun

Chris and I attended an adult themed Halloween party (it was a Sexy Halloween party) hosted by the Goerlitz in Kingwood. Since this is a G rated blog I will only post this picture.

Most of the other pictures fall into the PG-13 and above ratings category. I am a pink bunny (ears and tail) and Chris is Hugh Hefner. We did win a couple of "awards" at the party. I won for Female with the most clothes on and We both one for Male and Female that were the 1st to leave (really no surprise there). We had a blast! Christian had fun playing with Gran and Paw (or as he says it Gan and Paw-paw) while we were out and about in Kingwood.

Pumpkin Patch

Christian wasn't too interested in sitting down and getting his picture taken with us. He was ready to pick out a pumpkin or two though.













Oh! This one looks like a keeper









He and Paw looked over lots of pumpkins.


Oopps! I think we broke this one.

Here is a slideshow of all the pictures.

Fire truck

The Austin Fire Department came to Christian's school today and brought their "BIG TRUCK".

Today's Christian note from daycare said "Christian was so excited he could hardly wait to get in the fire truck".



I don't have any pictures since I found out about the visit after school, but his teachers told me about it. They said Christian LOVED the fire truck (big surprise there huh?!?). He and another little girl were the only ones that wanted to get up on the truck and explore.

He apparently had the firemen cracking up laughing by telling them "BIG TRUCK! VROOM, VROOM, VROOM!" over and over again.

He also received a "Detector Inspector" Badge too. What an exciting day!

Daycare

Christian's friends and teachers at daycare made him a cute get well card.


It is a cute Truck (imagine that) with all the kids finger prints on it by their names and all the teachers names.



Here Christian is "driving" his card around the living room floor.

Car wash

Just one day out of the hospital and Chris is making Christian do chores...can you believe it?!?!?!

just kidding.

It would have been hard to tear Christian away from helping Daddy, especially since there was water and bubbles involved.

Discharge

(In this picture he looks like a prisoner with his legs sticking out of the bars...if you are wondering about the pictures, no I didn't bring my camera with me. These pictures were taken with my camera phone.)

We were finally discharged on Saturday at 11:10 am. We checked into the ER at 8pm on Thursday so this was our 1st 2night visit to the hospital and our first stay at Dell Children's Medical Center. All totaled about 39 hours in the hospital .

The final diagnosis was bronchiolitis.

What is bronchiolitis? Bronchiolitis is an infection of the bronchioles, the small air passages in the lungs. It is common in children and is the leading cause of serious lower respiratory illness in infants.

What causes bronchiolitis? Bronchiolitis is usually caused by a virus, especially respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and frequently occurs in the late fall to early spring.

What are the symptoms? Symptoms of bronchiolitis include runny nose, cough, and fever. After a few days, your child may experience shortness of breath and/or breathing that is rapid and labored with wheezing. A severe infection in infants may cause a noticeably increased breathing rate. Seek immediate medical attention if your infant develops difficulty breathing.

Call a doctor if:
Your child is vomiting and can't keep liquids down.
Your child is breathing rapidly. (this was Christian)
You can see your child's skin pull in between the ribs (retractions) when breathing. This is a sign that your child is having difficulty breathing. (this was also Christian)
In severe cases, your doctor may suggest hospitalization and supplemental oxygen. (this was his treatment while in the hospital)

We are now home and all of us are resting up. After having some lunch at home we all took naps. Mine was for about 3 hours, Chris' was for about 2.5 hours and Christian's was for 4 hours. We were all so happy to be home in our own beds. As of right now (8pm on Saturday night) Christian is in his bed asleep...Thank God for being home and back on routine.

We have learned a few things about going to the ER.
# 1 - Always pack like you will be admitted. This came in handy for us this time. We had toys, our video player and movies (of course CARS, but we also watched Toy Story, Madagascar and Ice Age) a change of clothes, toothbrushes...etc. We didn't realize our stay would be 2 days, so we called Aunt Sassy to help us out by bring up another change of clothes and some essentials.
#2 - Always call someone and let them know what is going on. The last thing family wants to hear is that you have been in the hospital for several days and they didn't know about it.
#3 - ER's take breathing problems very seriously and you will general get moved back to a room very quickly.
#4 - Don't second guess yourself when your child is having problems breathing.

We have an appointment to discuss all of this in depth with our pediatrician next week. Hopefully we can be proactive about not getting to this point again, but when it comes to viruses there isn't much you can do.

Three strikes and it is asthma??? well maybe

Well this is our 3rd visit to the ER in 11 months. Our 2nd admission to the hospital and they still can't officially say Christian has asthma. Seems that way, but they are the doctors.
(this picture is him in the ER on an oxygen mask, not a fun thing to try and keep on a toddler)

To catch everyone else up here is the story. Daycare called me around 10:40 am on thursday to tell me Christian was coughing and coughing and coughing and having problems breathing. Chris went home at lunch and gave him a breathing treatment. He seemed to be doing better. He ate lunch, took a nap and played. Then at 4pm when I got home he got another treatkment. He can only have treatments at home every 4 hours. Well in 2 hours he was coughing again and couldn't breath well. I called he Pedi's office and on their suggested we headed to the ER. They gave him more treatments and oxygen. His breathing was still labor and his heart rate too fast to send him home.

So here we are at the hospital. By now you are asking, how are you blogging from the Hospital (and why)? Well Chris and Christian are playing ball in the hospital room and since Chris works at Seton (Dell Children's is a Seton Hosp.) and he brought his lap top...I can connect to the world wide web.

Just a few things about Dell Children's hospital. Great new hospital and wonderful ER and staff. They have always been wonderful when we have been here, but now we are in a nice new hospital. I think it is only in Austin that you can get live music in your hospital room. About 30 mins ago 2 nice men stopped by and played Christian a song. He loved it and it calmed him down a little. He is full of energy now and doesn't like that he is being limited by being attached to the heart rate and pulse ox. monitor.

The picture below was taken in the ER when he received his 1st breathing treatment. It lasted an hour and luckily he slept through most of it.
We will hopefully get out later today (friday). He is off oxygen and his levels are holding steady, but he is still coughing from time to time.

On a side note. He has watched CARS about 6 times since last night so if anyone is thinking about Christmas present....a bigger variety of Disney DVD's would be great and Christian would love anything Lightin' (
aka CARS related).

Chores

My chore everyday is to go feed the puppies outside. I can think of a couple of days when Christian had helped me with this chore, but those days haven't been recently. Now it looks like Christian wants to do my chores and I would be more than happy to turn this one over to him. I think the dogs would enjoy it more too.

Footloose

Christian gave me the best material, so I made little music video. Enjoy!

Safety First

Jenn at Mayhem Mania had a wonderful post about carseat safety awhile back.

I just had to rave for a minute about Christian's new carseat. As many of you know we just got a "new car". It is a 2001 LeSabre. Our other car is a 2006 Pacifica. The Pacifica has the LATCH system. The LATCH system makes car seat installation a breeze in my honest opinion. The carseat we use in the Pacifica is a Britax Marathon. It will hold Christian until he is 65lbs. This car seat will not budge when it is installed using the LATCH systems.

We bought another Britax Marathon for the LeSabre. I love our new car, but the 2001 LeSabre doesn't have the LATCH system. This became standard on most cars in 2002. So we have to use the shoulder seat belt to install the car seat. When we installed our Graco seat (the seat we used before ordering the new Marathon) with the shoulder belt, it would move every so slightly. We were used to the Pacifica and the car seat not moving at all. We thought well this must just be the way of the world without the LATCH system. Much to our surprise it doesn't have to be this way.

Once we installed the Marathon in the Le Sabre last night it didn't move just like when we use the LATCH system in the Pacifica. We were so happy about this!!! The Marathon has something called a Built in Lock-Offs, "both forward facing and rear facing, are designed for easy reach and operation when using traditional belt routing". Britax car seats are expensive ($200+) but they are so worth the investment.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for "Ey Keem"!

On random nights during the week the folks at the Wenck house get a sweet tooth. We try not to keep much sweet stuff around the house. So on nights like this, a road trip is required. The sweet treat of choice is of course "Ey Keem" as pronounced by Christian.

Our favorite place to visit is Austin Scoops.

On this particular night it was Sweet Cream for Christian, Milk Chocolate for Chris and Coffee for Me.






Check out our "new car". Memaw and DoDaddy bought brand new car so we took the LeSabre in to give it a new home.

Checking in

Hi there...sorry for the lack of posts recently. Christian had a hard weekend and hasn't been feeling well. I guess it is that time of year again when the cold season combines with the ragweed season and our house is full of sneezes (Chris), running nose (Christian)and itchy eyes (Teri).

I thought I would post a few pictures from this time last year. We are hoping to visit a pumpkin patch this weekend if everyone is feeling well. There is a place in Marble Falls called Sweet Berry Farms.

These pictures were taken last year by our friend Starlyn Aurit . Christian has 2 full blown ear infections in these pictures. He is such a trooper.

Halloween is right around the corner. If you don't know about the plans for Christian's Halloween Costume this year, I won't spoil the surprise this early. But check back Nov. 1st for pictures, I promise you won't want to miss them.

Here is his costume from last year.