March, So Far

They say when March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb. I'm hoping that's true because ours certainly came in like a lion in more than one way!

If you've been anywhere near Ohio, then you know that since March 1, we've had a series of cloudy, cool, rainy days. Add the melted snow from February to the inches of rain we've gotten lately and we've got some serious mud. I think Bryson may be one of the few folks who enjoys that. On the rare afternoon where the temps have climbed above 40 and there has been a lull in the rain, he puts on his mud boots, I roll his pants up a little, and off he goes into our swampy back yard. He plays in the fill dirt Phillip put at the side of our house for spring landscaping and the mud hole where there once was a rotting deck on the back of our house. Then when he knocks on the front door, I pull off his boots and strip off his pants on the porch before allowing him to enter. There he is with little mud splatters all over his red cheeks, as happy as a four-year-old boy can possibly be. I guess that's one of the wonderful things about childhood. Kids can find pleasure in the things in life that grown-ups sometimes find annoying.

March 2, Avery was scheduled for his bone marrow aspiration and biopsy. That morning, Avery woke up with a low grade fever. At the hospital, the hematologist and anesthesiologist debated on continuing with the procedure, but decided to go ahead with it. They took aspirates from both sides of his hips and then a solid bone sample to send to pathology as well. We brought him home, and he was pretty grouchy and tired the rest of the evening and all of Thursday. On Friday morning, I had my 20 week ultrasound scheduled, so Phillip and I dropped the boys off at Sarah's house. Shortly after arriving at the doctor's office, Sarah called and said Avery was running a fever and had a seizure. On our way home, she phoned again to say he had another seizure. I called our pediatrician who said to take him to the ER, so I dropped Phillip and Bryson off at home and took him to the hospital. A chest x-ray showed pneumonia, so he was admitted. His blood counts were also pretty low, so on Saturday he got a blood transfusion. The iv antibiotics and fluids seemed to help a lot. We came home last night, but he's still coughing pretty hard and really fussy. We're going tomorrow to meet with the hematologist and go over some of the results of his bone marrow aspiration and biopsy. We did get some preliminary ones, but I think I'll wait until we have more details before I share.


Oh, just in case you haven't heard yet, we found out at our ultrasound that we're having a baby girl, Emerson Rose! I'm still in shock. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to buy anything pink yet. I'm going to try to do that sometime this week. I don't know what in the world we're going to do with a little girl, but I'm SO excited!

So, that's how my March has been so far.

Hoping that the rest of the month resembles a lamb...
Bethany