Is This Hotel on Earth?

This past week I attended a seminar in Valparaiso and my mom and Ethan went along with me. They figured they could hang out and swim while I was at the meeting...so they did just that!

Ethan was quite comical. It didn't dawn on me until after we arrived at the hotel and he was asking all kinds of weird questions (more questions than usual), that he hasn't stayed in a hotel before. Well, he did a few times but all under the age of 15 months old, so he doesn't remember.

Here are some random questions & observations he came up with:
* Is this hotel on the planet Earth?

* (After seeing no food in the mini-refrigerator) There is no food. What are we going to eat?

* Look! The bedroom and living room are all in one room.

* You mean I can eat in here in front of the TV?

* I wish I had an elevator to go up and down from our basement.

AND MY FAVORITE.....

* So this is what vacation is like.

I've got a lot of pictures, but for the moment here is a video clip of him swimming and showing his skills.

Easter Sunday

(This post is a little late...but last weekend we spent Saturday evening in the E.R. Here is what happened according to my mom. If you're looking for his Easter video, it's below.)

THE NIGHT TIME STOOD STILL

We spent Saturday afternoon cleaning out the leaves from our landscaping. Pollen had accumulated sprinkling a light green dusting on everything and along with that of course comes allergies. Or so we thought.
Over several days time Ethan had a runny nose and itchy red eyes, but after spending some time outdoors Saturday his left eye suddenly looked as though someone had beaten him with a baseball bat. Extremely red, puffy and swollen to the point he couldn't see out of it. We took him inside and had him shower, while pumping some more Benadryl in him. It didn't work and his eye seemed worse.

Off to our second home, the emergency room. We must have had a premonition that we'd be spending a lot of time there when we purchased our house 6 years ago. It's only 2 blocks away. Wonder if we can use that as a selling point later on? Isn't that what realtor's sell houses on - the 3 L's? Location. Location. Location.

The doctor believed it was some sort of infection and said they should get a ct scan to be sure it isn't orbital cellulitis (which can be dangerous apparently). Not a big deal. Ethan has had a couple ct scans before and he did fine. An hour later the tech comes to get us from our 5X5 cell and thirty minutes later we return to the cell, but not because we'd completed the scan. Apparently they needed to start an IV for contrast. Houston we have a problem!

Ethan has a tremendous fear of being held down. Some of which stems from the car accident and being strapped to a board for 5 hours while they ran numerous tests. Those 5 hours pretty much consisted of - scream, cry, pass out...scream, cry, pass out.

In the past we've had to hold Ethan down every-so-often to trim his toenails. He doesn't mind us doing his fingernails, but for some reason the toes freak him out. Although we hate to have to hold him, there comes a point when your nail is growing past the tip of your toe and curling back inward that you must trim them.

Within the past month he has gotten to the point of sitting still and letting me actually trim them! Major progress that I'm sure after this ER experience will be gone. (Thank you to the 5 male nurses, 2 tech students, the skinny woman with a bucket of needles and a goober who promised Ethan he could climb in the helicopter and didn't deliver.)

I can't stand it when you try to explain to someone the past experiences your child has gone through and they ignore you as if they know better. It's not like you're their parent or anything. While some ego's got battered, Ethan did too.

How many sticks does it take to get an IV in a 4 year olds arm? 4!
(And the last one had to be pushed on to get it to flush.)

Finally, settled and not trusting anyone, Ethan appeared calm for a moment. When it was time to do the ct scan, he laid down like a champ, even allowing them to place his head in a special holder. But then our next opponent came into play. Only this wasn't so much an ego, as it was an "I-hate-my-job-and-little-kids" personality. Lovely.

She didn't understand why Ethan was so freaked out about hooking the contrast up to his very sore IV arm. Even when I explained he'd just spent the past 2 hours being stuck numerous times and he thinks she is sticking him again because he's 4 and doesn't trust anyone now....she still didn't get it. Instead she stormed off and got one of our lovely nurses to come help. Thankfully, he was able to get it in and going and after the test things went much smoother.

The doctor brought Ethan a popsicle and all was right with the world, except now I have no idea what time it is. The clock in our cell started buzzing and at 8:58 p.m. it quit working. The diagnosis later reveals he had an abscess/cyst in his bottom eye lid and a very bad infection (coupled with pink eye). So home we finally went with antibiotics, drops, and Tylenol with codeine.

But things never end that pleasantly at the ER. On the way out we were caught up in some chaos near the exit. I'm not trying to stereotype, but a group of young men dressed alike and all wearing the same hats, had pulled up to the entrance and literally dropped off their quite possibly dead friend. Their so-called-friend was slumped over a wheelchair with his grill falling off his front teeth and medical staff were trying to get him to a room quickly.

There was a lot of yelling - both from staff and these friends. When staff told the friends to stay in the waiting area, three took off out the door and two followed staff beyond the "medical personnel only" line. Security arrived and quickly locked the ER down as they sorted out what was happening.

Doesn't it just figure! Only feet from the door and now we're stuck. It felt like one of those surreal moments you see on TV where a gun gets pulled, everything is in slow motion and time seems to stand still for a moment.

Within 10 minutes we were allowed to exit. Of all the trauma we'd exposed Ethan too that evening by poking him endlessly with needles, he was now more interested in why that guy was dead, what happened to him and why his friends left him when he was hurt.

The Story of Jesus (Part 1)

Ethan made this really neat scripture-based Easter story at school Thursday. I'll let him tell you in his own words.

This clip is eggs 1 - 6.

The Story of Jesus (Part 2)

Eggs 6 - 12.