Another week has gone by...

and I haven't blogged since last Sunday!

Lots of news this week...

We took Aili to see Dr. Lyttle, the pediatric respirologist from London. Luckily (?), Aili has started coughing the day before so he was able to get the symptoms firsthand! The good news is that he ruled out allergies and cystic fibrosis (Lord, I didn't even THINK of that!). The bad news is that he's confirmed that she has viral asthma. Which means that every time she has a cold, she will probably end up hospitalized if we continue as we are doing.

However, he has educated us in the management of it and has recommended that we keep her on her Flovent puffer from September through to June (cold/school-when-they-catch-everything season) for maintenance. We also learned that it's okay to give her Ventolin more that we had been. We were afraid of overusing it, as the instructions were "2 puffs every four hours as needed". Dr. Lyttle said that we can give her two puffs every 15 minutes! He did also give us a prescription for Predisolone, which is a stronger steroid. At first, we declined, as I was leary of administering that without a doctor's evaluation. He, however, told us that he wished we would take the Rx as in the next two days, it would probably warrant a hospital visit. We acquiesed and sure enough, her breathing turned worse that evening!

As we were late coming out the appointment (it was at 2:45pm and we didn't see the doctor until 4:15pm!), we rushed to get Connor from daycare before they closed and planned to get the Rx in the morning. After a hard night with little sleep for anyone, I had Shoppers Drug Mart rush it over ASAP (their driver didn't start until 1pm!) and it was amazing the difference just ONE dose made!

She's doing much better now, despite the runny nose and chesty cough. {sigh} I guess it's going to be a long four or five years until she outgrows it...

In other news... :)

We have begun preparations for our big yard sale at the end of April. What precipitated this, you ask? Well, I received my first shipment on Friday realized that I do not have a work/storage space for all of my Just Cre8 stuff! So we hauled everything out of the storage area and started sorting. The basement looks like a bomb went off!! We had over ten Rubbermaid totes filled with clothes that the kids have outgrown! Actually, mostly Aili's clothes as I had given most of Connor's clothes to a friend who had a little boy, after having two girls! She, in turn, gave me all of the girls' clothes!

As luck would have it, my cousin, Margaret, recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Shannon. So I packed up most of Aili's baby clothes, save a few keepsakes, into three garbage bags and will drop them off to her today. Ah, I feel about.... 50 lbs lighter!! I managed to empty six totes in the process!

And through the wonder of modern technology, we have compressed the keepsakes for each child into a small bag!! We bought these spacesaver bags (yes, as seen on TV!) from Costco - work like a charm!! I fit two pairs of shoes and about 15 outfits in a medium size bag and it's roughly 12x15x3 high! I can't wait to scrunch everything into those things!!

So now I have an empty storage area, just waiting for some IKEA shelves to hold everything! I'm very excited!! (And JUST wait until you see the first kit!!)

Whew! That was long-windedIf you're still reading - thank you!!