Made in Reykjavik: October 2011

We are getting into the swing of fall. I love this time of year, especially here in Iceland. The days are starting to get a bit darker, the weather a bit crisper, and the leaves are almost gone from the trees. Makes me feel like making soup and reading books. It always seems like fall flies by. I am feeling very excited to go to the Northwest to visit friends and family...only a month and a bit to go until we fly away! I´ve been trying to talk with Elsa about flying away on an airplane and going to Grandma and Grandpa´s house and we´ve been looking at a lot of pictures and practicing saying family members´names. I´m not sure how much of it she understands...we´ll see.

Kids grow like crazy. Elsa is a full-fledged toddler, and Finn has started to roll (making him even more ball-like than his round self already was!). Elsa is learning so fast...how to entertain herself in the car, drive a tractor, and keep her little brother busy. For his part, Finnur Atli has started to eat solid-ish food before he goes to bed, and we hope that will help him learn to sleep better at night.

We took our first whole-family trip to the summerhouse last weekend, and had a wonderful time. We went in the hot tub, and took lots of naps, and played outside, and we (Elsa) rearranged the whole house.

I´ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking for me this time...we have lots of errands to cross off our to-do list today!

Skyping with the grands...We will see you (for real and not in the computer) so soon!

Happy Finnur on his tummy

Elsa María trying on her new winter boots

Elsa the farmer

Eating all by herself

LOVE you little bro!

Riding in the car

Saying hi to Pabbi from the porch of the summerhouse

Finnurface

Go Huskies!

Aaaaaand....more cute kid pictures...

I´m a pretty positive lady when all is said and done. I am happy, content, lucky, and so thankful for all I have. Generally, I take a bad situation have no problem turning it into a good thing. Still, sometimes when life gives you lemons, you have to say, ´Fuck making lemonade, I´m gonna suck on these babies until my face turns inside out and tears stream down my face!´ That was this week. So now, just this once, I will indulge my sour side and talk about the bad stuff.

By far the worst part of being a parent is when your kids are sick. Sure, it is hard not having the freedom to go out for a run whenever you feel like it, or missing so much sleep you fear you might just fall over. It is hard to not be able to stay up late or go out and meet friends for a drink, or be spontaneous. All that stuff is stuff I miss, but I know I will have the freedom to do it all again someday. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the pain, worry, stress, anxiety, and heartbreak you feel when your child is really sick and there is nothing you can do to make your baby feel better.

Last Sunday, Elsa María had a fever. Par for the course; she probably gets sick a couple of times a month with all the germs that surround her at playschool, so no big deal. My general strategy when she gets a fever is to let her feel awful so she will rest a lot and heal. I give her medicine to bring the fever down at night, and encourage her to take it slow during the day with plenty of time relaxing in her crib, reading books and drinking juice. The philosophy behind this is that when you get a fever, it is the body´s way of forcing you to slow down while it fights away what is making you sick. So, with a little bit of a fever on Sunday, I put Elsa in her bed to relax with her pacifiers while Finn and I chilled in the living room and Tumi ran out to do some errands. After about five minutes, I heard a gasping choking noise coming from Elsa´s room, and figured she was trying to throw up, so I ran in to help her out...And that was when I saw her having what was very clearly a seizure.

Suffice it to say, I have never been more terrified in my life. My baby girl was convulsing, slobber coming from her mouth, and her eyes were rolled back in her head. As I desperately called Tumi and the ambulance, I tried to comfort her, but there was nothing I could do to make her better. This hell went on for an eternity (a minute and half, regular earth time) before her body stopped pulsing, and she looked up at me with a confused, scared look in her eyes. I need to redefine how I identify myself, because I´m afraid the word atheist will no longer cut it...I was praying out loud to God (capital G) that Elsa get better and be healthy and safe.

Apparently, seizures associated with a fever are surprisingly common in young children. No one is sure why they happen, but when a fever goes up very quickly, some kids will react this way. She is fine. We gave her medicine to bring down the fever, and we left the hospital after about an hour. She had a fever for another three days, but didn´t seize again and today she is back at playschool for the first time in a week. While baby fever seizures are not damaging to the little ones who have them, they are traumatic for the grown-ups who watch them. We have an appointment in a week to talk to a nurse at the hospital who has seen her own child go through this, and has some expert knowledge to share with us about coping with seeing your baby seize. I still feel scared.

A few nights ago, Finn started coughing. Not a regular cough, but a loud, rough, barking cough. He would wake up at night and sound like he was struggling to catch his breath, so we decided to make him at appointment to see the doctor, just to check and see that he was fine. I took him in yesterday morning, and she diagnosed croup, which is what I suspected. When we were packing up to leave, he started to have another coughing fit, and she noticed that he started to turn a bit blue around the mouth. She left the room to consult with another doctor, and then come rushing back in and told us that they need to check this out down at the hospital, and I should take him there straight away. That´s how we ended up at the children´s hospital for the second time in three days.

Once Finn and I were at the hospital, they took his vitals and hooked him up to a machine to watch his oxygen levels and pulse. We moved rooms a couple of times, and no fewer than five doctors and three nurses came in to look at him and listen to his breathing. His mouth turned blue again, so it was determined that they should give him some medicine to help him breath, despite his young age. They gave him the meds though an inhaler, and then some liquid medicine, too and monitored him for a few more hours while he slept. He woke up sounding much better, and they lets us go home. He still has a barking cough and raspy breathing, but that should get better as he recovers. We have explicit instructions to come back if we notice he has more difficulty catching his breath, or he gets a fever, or we feel worried. Yes, right. Like I´m ever going to stop worrying.

So that´s where we are this week, and it is only Thursday. It sucked. But, if we´re back to making lemonade...I know it wasn´t as bad as it could have been. Elsa doesn´t seem to have epilepsy, and Finn doesn´t have a serious, long-term breathing problem. They will both recover and be back to their normal happy healthy selves soon. So there´s that.

Brochures from the hospital that explain your child´s maladies...Collect em all!