Valentine's Day - never a dull moment

Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day. Before I go into how we spent Valentine's day, I'll show you the darling valentine gifts Hudson and I made for his class and his teachers. We had so much fun doing these together. We made his class heart shaped crayons. I've seen several versions that I liked so I just combined those versions and came up with this:

First, Hudson and I sat down on the floor and separated all the crayons into color families.

 Next, we broke the crayons and put them in the silicone baking trays. I found mine at Hobby Lobby.

Trying to explain to an almost 3 year old that it's actually okay to break the crayons was pretty interesting. :)

We baked them in the oven at 300 degrees for about 15 minutes. Until they were completely liquified.

 And came up with this. Super cute! I love how they turned out.

Then I cut out squares, taped the crayon to the paper and tied some twine around it.

 Easy and great to do with kids! 

For his teachers, I took a recipe I found on Pinterest (love!). It was super easy and Hudson loved helping me add the sprinkles and M&M's. 

Valentine Chex Mix - soooo good!

I filled mason jars with it, tied some twine and added a little Valentine sign. 

He wouldn't take a good picture for me - love his Heart Breaker shirt. 

So....that was that. Unfortunately, in between doing these fun Valentine activities, we've had a rough two weeks! In case you're wondering what happened to Hud's eye....here's that story:  Hudson started coughing and had a snotty nose so I made him an appointment with Dr. M for last Thursday. He came to the office with me that morning so that we could go straight to the doctor. While at my office, he tripped and caught the edge of a wooden chair in the kitchen. It wasn't pretty at all. Luckily, we already had that drs appointment. Dr. M took one look at Hudson and sent us to the Emergency Room. Nice. A one hour appointment turned into a 5 hour ordeal. He ended up with 5 stitches and when I tell you that it was a traumatic experience, I'm not exaggerating. Poor kid. I felt so bad for him.

 Here he is in the ER waiting room. Not pretty. It would NOT stop bleeding. 

I'm thankful it wasn't any closer to his eye. Shew.

And after the stitches. I've never seen him look so sad and exhausted. It took 3 people to hold him down and they had to put him in a straight jacket. I'm not gonna lie - I was crying too. :(

He took a loooooong nap that afternoon and woke up happy. Thank goodness. We also found out at the doctor's appointment that he had double ear infections. Lovely. Got him some antibiotics and all is good now. 

Fast forward to Friday afternoon - John Robert starts in with the coughing again. I'm thinking to myself - you've GOT to be shitting me. This isn't happening again. It was. It is. I called Dr. M's office and he immediately prescribed an antibiotic and a steroid for JR to try and prevent the RSV from making a comeback. All weekend long he got worse and worse. By Monday evening, his breathing was terrible and I knew he was miserable. The breathing treatments weren't working and neither was the medicine. I loaded him up and headed back to our local children's hospital. We didn't even have to sit down in the ER. They immediately took us back and started another breathing treatment. It lasted 35 minutes and he barely improved. At that point, the doctor decided that we needed to be admitted so they could observe him and continue to give him treatments throughout the night. 

Poor baby in his hospital crib. 

This picture was actually on Valentine's morning.

Needless to say, it wasn't quite the Valentine's Day I had pictured in my mind. 

Basically - JR has another virus. His chest x-ray looked fine though and he tested negative for RSV. Thank goodness. Doctor says it could last 3-6 weeks and we just need to closely watch him. He's better tonight for the first time. Probably because the weather has turned warmer. 

Maybe we need to move to Arizona????? Hmmmm......

So - that's been our life lately. Doesn't that sound like fun??? Not exactly the way I was hoping 2012 would start for us. It's never good when you've already made your health care deductible in the first 2 months of the year. Please pray for our family that we can all stay healthy from here on out.

Signed,

The exhausted Mama.