We've been visited by the flu....YUCK!!

Look at the big boy go to town on a banana! I am making my own babyfood and these little contraptions were one of things I crossed when I was buy the equipment. You can stick any kind of food in these mesh bags and the babies can suck and chomp on the mesh bag to get the food out. Cole DOES NOT like to be left out at dinner time so this keeps him quiet and content while the rest of us enjoy our dinner. Wonderful invention even though they are messy!

This weekend was not one that will go down in the history books as a favorite in our household. We're pretty sure Brady had the flu which then led to Croup which then led us to the emergency room Monday night. Poor guy, he is usually so full of energy but last night when Brad was reading him stories he told him "Daddy I'm just too tired to read books." If you know him, you know he is never too tired to do anything! He came home from preschool on Friday with around 101 temperature. We used tylenol and motrin to keep it below 100 until Sunday night when it rose to 103. He had the "barky" cough that comes with Croup so we did the traditional steam showers, head in the freezer, sitting outside at night for snack time, etc. That seem to help until Monday night. Everytime he would cough he sounded like he was gasping for air. Brad and I listened to it a couple of times and then made the decision if he did it again we were going to take him to the emergency room. They gave him an oral steroid prednizone and a double dosage of Motrin to try to break the fever (it was around 102 and that was with motrin and tylenol). His fever finally broke around 12:45. It was obvious that it broke too because he was suddenly covered in sweat and could actually sit up in the bed instead of just laying down. The steroid helped tremendously! He is still coughing a lot, but hasn't had any more episodes where it sounds like he is struggling to breath. I stayed home with him yesterday and today. So far he has been fever free today so we are hopeful he will be able to go to preschool tomorrow. This is definitely the sickest we've ever seen him. Poor guy has to have surgery in 4 weeks too...needless to say this won't be his favorite fall! The upside to this is that I made him orange juice popsicles and told him he could have as many as he wanted. He LOVES popsicles so he thinks this is really cool.

So far Cole has managed to avoid getting sick. We are hopful it will stay that way! Speaking of the flu, I am having a dilemma about the flu shots. I have already talked to a couple of people about what they are doing with their children, but I would love to hear from more. Cole is obviously extremely high risk this flu season being only 6 months old and having been in the NICU for 4 weeks with lung issues. His pediatrician is recommending both flu vaccines which is an additional 4 shots to the regular vaccines. To me that seems like a lot. Plus, no one wants to be a guineau pig on this H1N1 vaccine, but I'm sure I'll beat my self up if I don't do it and he ends up getting it. What are you guys doing with your kiddos and what are your pediatricians saying? Here are some pictures from the week. Enjoy.

The boys playing together. They play REALLY well together right now. We'll see what happens once Cole starts crawling! :-) Speaking of crawling....look who thinks he is a big boy. He can almost get his entire body off of the ground. He loves trying to get up on his hands and knees. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that stage yet!

Daddy and his boys snuggling in the chair.

Daddy loves the baseball shirt so he couldn't resist taking Brady's picture before school one morning.