Regarding Coops burn Sep 29, 2010

I just read some of the comments regarding my post of Coops burn. Thanks all for your loving words.
To clarify I just wanted to say that yes cold water is good but not RUNNING cold water. The running water actually did some damage as it took the top layer of skin off. You generally don't want to break the skin if you can help it.
He is doing great. I am apprehensive for tomorrow to see what his burns are like when we go back to ER. The nurse said it will get worse before it gets better. It is probably a good thing that it has been covered and I can't see it.

Holy Crap! What have I done!

As I laid in bed after waking up from my morning nap (I nap when Cooper naps), the thought came to me. Holy crap I am having another baby, what were we thinking??? I feel like I can barely take care of the child I already have. Mind you I feel that way mostly because of how tired I am from being pregnant.
The weightiness of the situation has hit me and I am kind of freaking out.
What am I going to do? What is Cooper going to do? This maybe to much info for some but my biggest fear is how am I going to have time to pump now that Cooper is around once the second one is here? Just a little background; I breast pumped for 4.5 months with Cooper as my equipment is not optimal. I felt like most of my waking and non-waking time was spent either feeding or obtaining milk to feed Cooper. It was a lot of work. But I would do it again.
I am struggling right now with finding a good balance. Am I the only one, it seams like I am? I wish I could figure out how to fit the important stuff in and also have a little fun. |I guess with all things there is a time and season. Maybe it isn't my season for being able to find time to scrapbook or have a little fun. I shouldn't say I don't have any fun. Being a Mom to me is fun and I love it. This is the best thing I have ever done in my life and I am extremely happy doing it.
I look forward to finally being in my new home and settled. As C.O.O. (chief operating officer) of the Pratt family I am going to be one organized Momma and wife, or at least that is my goal. It will take me a while but I am going to get there. And for those of you reading, yes, I do know that having balance and being organized are not the same thing. But I do think that being organized will help me obtain balance. (eat your heart out English teachers. I just started a sentence with but and there is nothing you can do about it because this is my blog!!!) So for all you super mom's reading my blog, what do you do that enables you to be good at what you do? Suggestions please. 

Monday Sep 27, 2010 Coops burn

As usual Cooper woke us up with his fun natter. I felt like having some hot chocolate so I warmed some water in the microwave and then started making Coopers breakfast.  Cooper came toddling along and decided he wanted to see what was with the mug. I didn't get to him in time but I watched him pull the cup off the counter and dump it down himself.  I was freaked out. I tried my best to get his shirt off and ran into the bathroom to put cold water on it. I knew I needed to stop the burning so I did a dumb thing and put his arm under cold running water which caused the skin to peel off that had immediately blistered. Kent in the mean time was trying to figure out what was going on. 
Cooper was screaming at this time and I knew he had to go to Emerg. We took turns holding Cooper while frantically stocking the diaper bag and getting dressed. He doesn't cry very often when he hurts himself and if he does we cuddle him for as long as he will let us (30 seconds, if that) and then he wants down and will go play. However, he cried and continued to cry until we got in the car. Then once in emerg he started again and didn't stop until the Tylenol with codeine took affect.  The children's emerg was dead so we were taken in right away. By this time you could see the outline of the burn perfectly as it was bright red on his chest and his arm was equally as red but was forming blisters and oozing clear fluid. My poor baby. I was a basket case. Although I knew he would be fine I couldn't help but blame myself for my stupid actions and causing the pain Cooper was going through. First thing they did was put a temporary dressing on his arm and chest and then the Doc came in and looked at the burns and ordered pain management meds and a different more lasting dressing.
I was grateful for the pain meds they gave him. Eventually he settled down and Kent was able to distract him by making the stretcher in the room go up and down and then they watched Corner Gas on Kent's ipod. We were in and out in probably less than 1.5 hours.
So he now has a bulky dressing to his left arm which doesn't allow him to straighten it and a dressing to his chest with burn netting around his trunk down to his belly. The nurses did a great job. I just hope with all his moving and such that it stays on the full 3 days. We go back Thursday morning for reassessment.
Kent was suppose to leave this morning at 9am for Halifax. He didn't end up leaving until 2pm and is now only going for an over nighter instead of for 4 days. 




This should actually be the last picture. This was just before they cleaned the burns and put the long term dressing on.

 



The Tylenol with codeine had kicked in and although upset he was distracted by TV on Daddy's ipod.

 



His burn on his chest.  He had a temporary dressing on both sites but the one on his chest fell off.

 


Although it was a hard time for me I enjoyed seeing the 2 men in my life being together. I was touched by how good Kent was not only with Cooper but with me. I burst into tears a few times from the guilt and feeling bad for Cooper. 



Prego

Just over 24 weeks pregnant.

Moving

I feel very fortunate that as part of relocating with my hubby's company they pack and move you. We don't have to pack a thing. I am particularly glad this time because I was 5 months pregnant.  

Loading our car to be sent to Newfoundland

C-dawg and I watching our car being loaded.

The Atlas truck which would take all or our earthly belongings to NL. Our stuff went will go into storage until we find a home to buy.

Bitter sweet day. Extremely sad to leave those we love. Excited to embark on a new adventure.

So fun, I have followers!

Hey ladies,
thanks for being my first followers. This is so exciting for me. I hope I don't disappoint. I am learning as I go so hopefully it will become more exciting for you to check in on us.
Amber a good percent of me wanting to do this is for you and to follow your example of being so good at keeping the family up to speed on what is happening with you. I hope this will make you happy.

Sunday September 25, 2010

Ok, so for those who are wondering and to clarify Kent was transfered again. This time to St. John's Newfoundland. Let the adventure begin!
So we packed up in Sarnia, ON where we have been since the beginning of 2008 and are now here in St. John's. We finally found a house to buy and possession date is not until Oct 7th so we are living in a hotel until then. Our lodging and meals are covered by the company and being as we do not have the means to prepare our own meals we eat out for lunch and dinner. (We bought breakfast food to have here in the hotel so that we could eliminate some of the eating out.)  I think we will be blimps by the time we move into our place! I hope this explains why we are half way across the world away from our beloved family and friends.

On another note.
Sundays are always a little more stressful for me than the other 6 days of the week. Why? Well it is because of church and C-dawg not quite understanding the whole lets be quiet for 3 hours straight. He will be 18 months in less that 2 months and I look forward to him being able to go to nursery. However, that still leaves Sacrament. The branch we just moved into has no other children under the age of 7. So you can well imagine that he is the noisy one, and everyone can hear him. He makes sure of it. We are trying to teach him how to be quiet and I got some good ideas from my fabulous sister. She also gave me a few quiet activity books to help keep C-dawg quietly playing.  Well to say the least we took him out twice today and this was a good Sunday.
I am having "quiet time" with him during the week in hopes he will learn how to be quiet when we ask him to be, even if he doesn't understand why yet. I have been told from the members in our branch not to worry about the noise he makes and it doesn't bother anyone. In fact they enjoy having the noise of a small child in the congregation. That is great, and I am happy they are not annoyed by the Pratt's but I still want C-dawg to learn reverence/quiet time.  With time it will come and soon I will have an angel during sacrament!!!  Then he will be able to teach his little sister once she comes (I am due December 28th).  

September 24, 2010

Funny thing about C-dawg. I jumped in the shower this morning and C-dawg was whining and wanting to play in the water. Next thing I knew he was in the shower with me clothes and all. Instead of fighting it I just pulled off his PJ's and diaper and let him play. He is at such a fun age. I love being a Mom.

Not too much happened today. Kent went to his first chiro and message appointment. While he did that I solidified our kitchen cabinet quote at Signature. C-dawg was awesome and was really good while I spoke with the cabinet guy. He let C-dawg play with his measuring tape and he pulled it along like he was walking a dog. Once again what a cutie. He makes me smile.
Got my blood work done which took a chunk out of the day. Part of it was a blood sugar test. You have to drink this orange nasty syrup stuff that burns as you swallow it because it has so much sugar. Then you wait an hour to get your blood sapped out of you. 7 tubes people, 7. Why do they have to take so much? They will probably discard the equivalent of 5 tubes.
Kent went in to work to finish a few things despite it being his day off.  It was a good thing he went in because there were somethings that had to be taken care of to secure our house sale.  He is under a lot of stress. Bank not cooperating. Need I say more.
Oh, I almost forgot. Last night Prime Minister Stephen Harper slept 2 doors down from us in the hotel. We didn't actually get to see him, let alone meet him but it was kind of cool to be on the same floor. The hotel wanted to move us but I told them that wasn't really an option being as C-dawg was already asleep and it wasn't very conducive.

Tuesday Sep 21, 2010

Hurricane Igor hit NL today. A few weeks earlier we had another hurricane which hit mostly Nova Scotia and we had hardly anything. So I was expecting the same thing of Hurrican Igor. So I went out right after lunch to do some much needed laundry at some friends. It was raining pretty hard and there was a good wind but nothing that I hadn't been in before. While at my friends the rain stopped and the wind started picking up and I mean picked up. I finished my load of laundry and was just about ready to go when the power went out. My friend quickly went in to survival mode and started collecting the various things her and her husband had for times like these. I suggested filling her bathtub as we could see that things were starting to get pretty serious outside. Trees were swaying aggresivly, a small shed a few doors down had a roof flapping in the wind and in the house you could hear the wind howling with a vengence. I was getting pretty nervous. I tried calling Kent and couldn't reach him. He eventually ended up calling the cell. I wasn't sure if I should brave the weather and come back to the hotel or stay with my friend and her boys.
She was having the missionaries over for dinner and was trying to come up with a back up plan to cook the dinner she had made.  She had a butane stove but in order to cook on it we needed to do it in a vented area. So with no power we opened the emergency pull lever on the garage door but then were almost blown over with the wind coming through the 2 inch crack. We tried closing it but it wouldn't catch. Uh-oh! We spent the next 20 min trying to figure out how to get the door closed again and the wind was shaking the door like crazy. Just outside the garage window you could see that the tree in the neighbors yard had snapped and half the tree had blown against the house.
Kent had called and said he was being sent home from work. They still had power but it was cutting out. He kept track of the news and eventually called and said it wasn't going to get any better and I should probably come home now if I was going to.  It was nerve racking and made me really anxious to not be together as a family. It's times like these that you just want to be with family and nothing else really matters. I loaded up the car with great difficulty. I had a hard time standing up against the wind and the doors on the car were almost ripped off when I opened them. Once all the stuff was in, I brought C-dawg out and I thought for sure he was going to freak out. He already could sense something was wrong with how we were acting and behaving and was upset and crying a little bit.  He was actually really good and didn't freak like I thought.
Once in the car I prayed I would make it safely back to Kent. The car was rocking and it was very freaky. My fear was having a tree fall on the car or right in front of me. I took it slow and was overly cautious. Once we got down closer to down town the wind wasn't nearly as bad and although trees and power lines were down I felt a little better. I was very happy to see Kent and be with him.  We hunkered down in the hotel and for the rest of the night we really didn't feel anything. I thought for sure we would at least hear the howling wind but I think because there are mountains/hills all around us we were really protected.

Just a few doors down from my friends place. Can you tell what is wrong with this pic?

Some of the trees that fell were huge.

More of the damage done from the trees. Not the best pic,sorry.

The road back to the hotel was blocked due to trees and a powerline down.

My friend was such a saint and she sent me home with bags of food just in case this became a disaster and we didn't have any access to food at the hotel. We never ended up needing it but I was grateful to have it and I appreciated her concern. I felt bad for her and her boys as her husband was and had been out of town for a total of 2 weeks. I think she felt vulnerable but she did awesome.  Her power was finally restored on Friday (3 days later). I am glad we are all ok. There are others who could not say the same. NL was hit really hard with lots of flooding, roads, including the TCH being washed out and sewer back ups in homes etc.