Christmas Eve

The night before Christmas Eve was a doozy for us.  We spent the day getting ready for the upcoming fun times with family by wrapping presents and baking.  We laid both girls down for a nap and I heard Charlotte coughing over and over again.  She'd had this cough for awhile, but I actually had her at the doctor on December 12th and they listened to her breathing and said to just wait it out.  When Charlotte got up from her nap she looked miserable.  She was hot, had red cheeks, and just kept on coughing.  After reading her temperature at almost 102 Bryce and I made the decision to take her to an urgent care facility.  The only one open in our area (because of the holiday) was a non pediatric one, but they were still open so Bryce ran up there with her.  They came back home with the diagnosis that she had Pneumonia, and worst of all that she had been given a steroid shot on the way out.  She was traumatized!  She literally was still crying about the shot, even after bath time and in bed.  They gave us four different prescriptions for her, including a nebulizer treatment.  I have heard of "roid rage" before, but man I had no idea how fast it happens!  Charlotte was up thrashing around in her bed every two hours and NOTHING would calm her down.  She was still screaming that she didn't want a shot, and as soon as I would calm her down she would start coughing again and start crying all over again.  We were all miserable.

We got up the next morning (now officially Christmas Eve) to a relatively calm toddler.  Thankfully, Emily slept through the night so we felt like we were coming to the other side of this mess.  The Fulchers really wanted to see us so we went to their house for some presents and dinner.  Charlotte really couldn't even handle that.  She had melt down after melt down.  I literally felt my heart squeezing tight for her, she just didn't feel good so we had to go back home.  We did manage to get some good pictures from the day, though every time I look at the ones of Charlotte I feel sad thinking of how sick she was.  No Mommy wants their baby to be sick, but being sick on Christmas feels even worse!