Still Coughing...

Brady has now had a cough for approximately 10 of the 14 weeks of his life.  He was last at the pediatrician three weeks ago when he got the bronchiolitis diagnosis.  Since we haven't seen any improvement since then, I took him back in yesterday for another assessment.  We saw a different doctor this time but she stuck with the same tune as the other doctor - - it's bronchiolitis and he just can't seem to fight it off.  During her exam, she checked his ears but couldn't see anything...literally.  My kids may not look like me but one of them has at least gotten one gene from me and not a good one at that.  His poor little ears were filled with wax!  She had to clean that all out and then she was able to look in there and discover that he had an ear infection.  She said she wasn't surprised since he's had the bronciolitis for so long.  He's now on Amoxicillin for that.

The doc listened to his chest for quite awhile and noted that he's still very wheezy.  She decided to give him some Albuterol through a nebulizer.  For those not familiar with that term, it's a little machine that gives the Albuterol in mist form to someone via a mask that they put over their nose and mouth.  I was very happy to actually be doing something, anything for Brady's situation.  The girls were with me and we had been in this little room for a good 30 minutes.  I put the mask on Brady's face and I'm thinking, oh, it's going to be a minute or two of this.  Imagine my surprise/dread when the nurse says, "Okay, we'll let that thing run for about 10 or 15 minutes."  Yowzers!  That tiny room with two rambunctious girls becomes like a prison cell.  And I couldn't do much about it because I was trying to hold a thrashing Brady on my lap.  Thankfully they didn't end up in a big fight or something.  In the end, Brady even fell asleep with the mask on because they said it was okay to give him binky (I guess it's fine that he just breathes it in through his nose).  The doc came and checked on him after that and said it sounded like things had loosened up a bit in his chest so that was good.  The end result is that we are now giving him the Albuterol three times a day.  They gave us a loaner machine that we'll bring back on Friday at a follow up appointment.  She also prescribed him a steroid that apparently helps with the inflammation in his chest.  I hope it all works but poor little guy that he's only three months old and is going through all this.  He definitely has not followed in his sisters' footsteps as far as the lack of illnesses early on.

The other thing that caught my eye that I pointed out to the doc was that he only gained 6 ounces in three weeks.  According to things I've read, babies from 0 - 4 months should be gaining anywhere from 4 to 7 ounces in a week.  Clearly, he's fallen well short of that.  He's at 12 lbs, 6 oz which is still average for his age but obviously the recent trend isn't that great.  I know it's not a lack of milk on my part since I'm still leaking. The doc said it was most likely related to his coughing problem.  He probably gets worn out from all the coughing or just isn't feeling that great so he's not eating as much.  We'll obviously weigh him on Friday to see what he gains in these few days.

So far, things have gone fine with doing the nebulizer at home.  We've found that it takes 12 minutes.  He gets a little antsy after a few minutes and I find myself singing to get him calmed down.  Duncan's assessment is that it's helped his cough be much more productive.  Here's hoping it helps.

In other Brady news, we brought out the Bumbo seat for the first time yesterday.  It looks like he likes it.

The camera on my phone really stinks.

Let's see...what else is going on?  We had a pretty uneventful weekend compared to the one before.  The Isidro's were down in Avon Park visiting Allen's parents and his brother who was in town so we didn't see them at all.

Okay, so I guess I'll just get into my latest DirecTV chapter.  In my last post, I mentioned how disgusted we were with their customer service or as Clark Howard would say, customer no-service.  They finally came on Friday and did all that work.  Meanwhile, over the last few weeks, we've had various friends tell us about how they signed up for DirecTV and have gotten the free NFL package ($340 to us faithful subscribers) and a $180 Costco gift card.  We were pretty ticked off to hear that since we've been customers since 2002 and what do we get for that???  You guessed it.  Nothing.  So over the weekend we were at the mall and happen to walk by a DirectTV booth and I told the guy that I was pretty frustrated in how well the new customers were being treated compared to us old ones.  And he responded by telling me we should just switch the service to the other ones name and then we'll be new customers.  In fact, we should just be doing that every two years (the length of the contract) and then we'll keep getting the good deals.  Obviously I had no idea you could do such a thing.  I figured it went by the address or something.  So Sunday afternoon we were off to Costco where they were still having the $180 gift card deal.  It turns out that there were a bunch of other fees we don't have to pay anymore and that bottom line is that if you include that $180 gift card, we're probably going to be saving like $800 for the year.  Crazy, huh?

Now, obviously we already have all the equipment (and a new dish just installed on Friday) but they still had to come today to bring us our new and improved receivers.  The man, who yes, actually arrived on the day and in the time frame he was supposed to, immediately took note of the fact that we already had DirecTV.  He tells me that he doesn't know if he'll even be able to activate a new account because we already were subscribers and that the account goes by both the name and the address (as I had been thinking all along up until Sunday).  Just great.  But he tried it and it worked so happy times.  Of course, now I don't know if we did something against the rules or not.  Funny thing happened while he was here though.  Calleigh wasn't napping, as usual, and she was getting a little chit chatty with the guy.  He told her he had a girl about her age so Calleigh asks him what her name was.  Now, this guy was Indian (the dot, not the arrow) and he had an accent (thankfully a very understandable one) so I was wondering if it would be an interesting name. He tells Calleigh,  "Ja-mem-a."  She laughs and says "No" like it was a joke and was waiting for him to give the real name.  When he didn't say anything she tells him "That's funny!!"   Just slightly embarrassing.

With everything set up with Duncan's new account, that left me with the unenviable task of having to call to cancel my account.  As I expected, they wanted to ask a million questions.  Not wanting to admit what we had done just in case we weren't supposed to, I tried to be evasive as possible without actually lying.  I told them I really didn't want to talk about it and that I just wanted to cancel my service.  When he mentioned that he saw I had the football package and wouldn't have it anymore, I could help but give him a hard time that new subscribers got it for free.  He says, "How about I give you $5 off a month?"  Gee, thanks.  When I said, "No" he then starts in with "How about $10?" and then he keeps going, "20?"  "$50?" "Free?"  Obviously I declined it all but it bugs me that I didn't try and pretend to cancel my service in a previous year or at least call and ask for some kind of discount.  Lesson learned.

This afternoon we took Ron & Elaine to the airport who are going up to PA for business and some pleasure to see the family.  I told the girls this morning that we would be taking Grandma and Grandpa to the airport. Aubree gets excited and quickly tells me "I'm going to bring my blanket and sleep on your lap."  I was so confused.  And then I realized that she thought we were going on the airplane.  On the way to the airport I could hear her talking about JetBlue and Southwest.  Even when we pulled up to the airport I think she still thought she was getting on the plane.  I don't think she actually wanted to go to a particular place, she just wanted to be on the plane.

Calleigh gave us another scare this evening.  The girls love to get on the futon and pretend it's their stage.  Well, you could say that Calleigh fell off the stage.  I was in the kitchen but I saw, out of the corner of my eye, her fall forward off the side off the couch into our end table and then onto the wood floor. Thankfully she only suffered a mark on the side of her face which didn't even bleed.  It was definitely red though and we think it will be purple in the morning.  It looks like her face may have hit into the lock on the part of the table that Dewey's crate was built into.  We wanted to put ice on it which she refused but then she finally came around and was very concerned as to whether it would be purple.  She then told me very seriously before going to bed, "I'm going to tell Blake and Zachary all about what happened."  She'll see them at Swim & Gym in the morning.

Time to wake up Brady Brother to feed him before we turn in for the evening.  Have a great rest of the week.

We had lunch at Aunt Wanda's on Sabbath.

Try to get past the red eye which I can't eliminate...Brady being tortured with stickers by Aubree.

We love the way she crosses her legs!

This picture cracks me up!  Calleigh loves taking pictures with my phone and here she is photographing her feet (Pats pregame on in the background).