I'm a little behind on my blogging, but life has been crazy in the last few weeks! First of all, of course since we're moving, we were working like crazy getting our house ready to sell. Our house was officially on the market on August 20th, and we had our first open house on August 29th. Even though our house wasn't in bad shape by any means, we had a lot of de-cluttering to do, some minor repairs, and general cleaning. To make life more interesting, Cora picked up her first stomach virus on Sunday, August 22nd. It didn't show itself until Monday evening. Cora had just finished her dinner, and we were getting ready to go to the grocery store when I looked over and she had vomited a little. Even though it has been a long time since Cora has spit up, I didn't really think much of it - she was acting fine - and figured she might have eaten too many puffs. :) So, we headed on to Meijer to do some shopping. When I went to get Cora out of her car seat, she had vomited again. We were going to try to clean her up and change her outfit, and then it started again...and it was a lot of vomit. At this point, we are starting to get concerned. Because she had never been sick like this, we wanted to take her to the doctor. Unfortunately, our pediatrician's office was closed by the time we got there, so we went to a walk-in clinic. Cora vomited again before we got there, and two more times in the waiting room. In between vomiting sessions, she was just laughing and acting like she was having a great time! For some reason, it didn't occur to her panicked parents to ask for a basin for her to vomit in, so all of this is collecting in her car seat. We finally got in to see the doctor, and they checked her and said that it was a stomach virus. They gave us instructions, and we went on her way. Poor baby vomited once more before we got home. It was probably close to 9:00 by the time we got home. First things first, I put Cora in the bathtub to wash all the vomit off of her. In the meantime, Jeremy went back out to get some Pedialyte. After Cora's bath, I went ahead and nursed her before I put her to bed. Mid-nursing, she vomited again. What a mess! I cleaned up as best I could, and Jeremy got home with the Pedialyte. We read on our pediatrician's website that you should give your baby 1 tsp. of Pedialyte every 3 minutes until she can keep it down. Well, I kept pushing the Pedialyte, and Cora kept vomiting it right back up. At this point, we had wised up and had a bowl to catch it in. :) Oh, and I should mention that while I was catching vomit, Jeremy was out in the garage trying to get all the vomit out of the car seat and car seat base - not a pleasant job. Finally, poor baby was so tired, she just leaned over and laid her head on my arm and went to sleep. A few minutes later, she woke up to vomit. She continued to sleep a little longer between each vomiting session until she was finally able to go to sleep for the night at 12:30. I held her until 1:30, just to make sure she was finished with the vomiting. The next morning, I was optimistic that she might be over it, and she did really well after she nursed. Unfortunately, her cereal did not set as well, and up it came. I called the pediatrician's office and they told me just to nurse her for 8 hours and then to try some solids. So, she nursed all day and did great with it. We even gave her some puffs at dinnertime. Again, I hoped that we were finished with the vomiting. Unfortunately, she vomited again after she nursed the next morning. We had one minor vomiting episode after that, and finally we were finished. I felt like we needed on of those t-shirts that read "I survived the big, bad stomach bug!"
It was such a terrible time for all of us. It also really affected our productivity - particularly mine. Cora really needed her mama while she didn't feel good, and I certainly wasn't going to reject her. Praise God, He knew that we were going to be needing some extra help getting our house ready for the open house that next week, and He sent my dad! Dad had 3 days off during that week, so he came up and worked on the house, and helped some with Cora. It was such a blessing. He left us on that Friday with the house in pretty good shape. Jeremy and I spent all day Saturday cleaning house. We decided that our house was probably the cleanest it had ever been! We were so excited with how good everything looked. I baked some snickerdoodles on Sunday before the open house to create a nice, homey atmosphere. Unfortunately, we did not have a single potential buyer come to our open house. We were SO disappointed when we found that out. Since then, we still haven't had anyone come see it, and it has been on the market now for 3 weeks. We have another open house this Sunday, so here's hoping we'll have better luck.
We did have a fun Labor day weekend last week. My sister, Mandy, came up to visit for the long weekend. It was especially nice to have some company while Jeremy was gone to the Tennessee game on Saturday. Here are some pictures and videos from the last couple of weeks!
Cora's Spongebob Pajamas - They say Spongebob Smileypants. :)
Here are a couple of videos that Aunt Mandy took over the weekend. Cora was obsessed with Aunt Mandy's camera - it's a touch screen. :)
This video Cora shot with Aunt Mandy's camera. The video part of it is lacking a bit, but the audio is priceless! :)
Here is one of Cora playing with her cow book. She loves pressing the button to make it moo!
And last is a video of Cora multi-tasking. I'm not sure how it happened, but either Aunt Mandy taught Cora or just observed her pressing the button on her glow worm to get it to sing. When it would stop, she would wave goodbye to it. Precious!! Here she is also really concentrating on her books, but she is sure not to forget her glow worm. :)
