Aviation Museum

We took our second field trip with Lucy's playschool group.  This one was slightly less planned and more random.  We were going to go strawberry picking, but there was a 50% chance of thunderstorms, and for a half hour drive, we didn't really like those odds.  It was my week to plan so I was just going to come up with a different book and craft, but then Charlie spent a night/day in the hospital (more on that later), and I was left with no time to come up with something.  Someone suggested the aviation museum and away we went.

It was a pretty cool place-- small enough to not be overwhelming.  The kids could run around without you fearing they would just keep running until you lost track of them.  But they had plenty of neat things to do and see.  Here is Lucy and her friend L driving an airplane.  The steering wheel made the rudder and the flaps move.

They had a bunch of cute airplane toys to play on outside.  L and B are looking less than thrilled though.

 Charlie hanging out in his usual fashion.

 Lucy and B liked hanging out back here, but were reluctant to pop their heads out for me.

 And then, wouldn't you know it, Amelia Earhart came up, dressed in her finest.

 (They had a whole section of dress up pilot clothes with varying sizes.  They also had flight simulators, stamping centers, plane puzzles, and a ton of books on airplanes.)

So, Charlie in the hospital.  On Thursday, he had his one year check up.  I noticed he had a tiny little cold.  It  got worse throughout the weekend, but not horrible.  On Saturday, he kept having more and more trouble breathing.  He wouldn't eat until he was absolutely starving and then only for a few seconds.  Same thing with sleeping.  Then he started grunting with every breath and we noticed he was the skin sucking in at his ribs-- all not good signs.  I called the exchange line at our pediatrician and with no hesitation she said get to the ER.  Charlie and I headed off.  I was expecting a long wait on a Saturday night, but we were brought back almost immediately when they saw him.  They gave him a steroid and lots of breathing treatments, took a chest X-ray, put in an IV which took 3 tries (poor guy!).  They decided to admit him to the hospital so they could keep an eye on his breathing.  When things finally started to calm down, a pediatrician came in and told me his blood sugar had gone up dramatically and now they were equally concerned about that and his breathing.  If his blood sugar kept going up, he said, he might go into a coma so we had to watch and make sure he wasn't getting lethargic.  At this point, it was 4am and we had been up all night.  We were already lethargic!  We were finally shown to our room at 4:30am.  Charlie magically fell asleep in a strange place, and while his machine bing-bonged continuously, I someone managed so sleep on the chair-that-I-couldn't-figure-out-how-to-turn-into-a-bed for exactly one hour.  They kept us there the whole next day to make sure everything was okay.  His breathing got better, his blood sugar went down (they think it was the steroid and the stress that made it go up), and he lit up when James and Lucy came in.  I knew he was feeling better when he started a one-man mission to chew the IV off his hand.  They released us at 9pm and we promptly went home and slept and slept and slept.

We had a little chat with the kids about how 3 ER visits in 2 years is quite enough, thank you.  The staff in the pediatric ER recognizes us now.  The same doctor has seen all three emergencies.  Coincidentally, this doctor studied under Dr. Magenis (who co-discovered Smith-Magenis Syndrome). Small world!  She said she is a sweet little old lady who makes all of her students taste the infant formulas that babies have to take when they have genetic issues like PKU, so that they will have compassion on the parents and kids they are treating.  Sounds like someone I could get along with!

Anyway, Charlie's breathing is much better now.  No more wheezing.  In fact, I caught him eating his "Asthma Action Plan," which had somehow fallen off the table and fallen prey to Charlie's love of paper.