Kimber's Navy Family

You know what's hard? Life. Marriage. Being a parent. All of that. I've been feeling like a failure lately in my endeavors. People say things to me like, "I don't know how you do it!" and "You are a supermom" and "4 boys? You are amazing." Most of it is lip service from strangers, the go-to things that people say to moms (and moms for 4 boys). It goes in one ear and out the other most of the time, but lately those comments have been giving me stress. This was a crazy move for us, a big change returning to boat life and living across country from my family. I feel like I'm barely holding on and that I'm frequently dropping the ball with our kids. We wrestled with our decision to send our oldest to public school instead of continuing homeschooling him. We wrestled with the decision to homeschool our 4-year old twins instead of re-configuring the budget to send them to preschool. We've been wrestling with the decision on whethe...

I may be a mom, but I still like to party. And by party, I mean spending my Friday night Googling natural ways to boost your immune system through your diet. I've posted before about our son's reactive airways. Because he is so young, his reactive airways are constantly changing. There is the hope that he will grow out of having such a hard time. However, due to family history, his pediatricians proceed as if he has an asthma diagnosis. Each year, we try to wean him off of his daily regulator, Pulmicort. Last year, he was doing great through the first half of the cold and flu season so we started weaning him off of Pulmicort, from twice a day to once a day. Then--bam!-- he caught a cold and he ended up on Orapred twice in a row. He stayed on Pulmicort until May/June, when we had weaned him down again to one dose before stopping all together. He spent most of June, all of July, and all of August off Pulmicort. Then this past week he caught his first cold of the season an...

We've been juggling a lot over here at our house this past week. One of our twin toddlers, C, has decided that now is the time he wants to potty train (read " Potty training twins: part 1 {No plan} "). We started this past Thursday. By Saturday, our other toddler, O, had a major asthma flare up . We were worried for awhile that we would need to take him to the children's hospital, but we managed to make it through the weekend. He had come down with a cold a couple weeks ago that he just wasn't shaking. I had actually taken him to the pediatrician on Thursday because, while the cold wasn't affecting his breathing, it was alarming because it made his chest sound... wet? I don't know, that's what it sounded like to me. Anyways, we left the pediatrician appointment feeling good about heading into the weekend, a follow-up appointment scheduled for the next week if the cold still hadn't left. As it happens with toddlers, things changed for us quickly. He...

Are you there, blog? It's me, Kimber. It has been awhile since my last blog post and what a summer it has been! The boys wearing matching outfits with their cousin for my husband's commissioning weekend Our asthmatic toddler had a flair up 3 weeks after we weaned him off Pulmicort under our doctor's guidance. He hadn't had any flair ups and we wanted to see if he still needed daily medication in the summer months, as he is two-years old and is still considered to have " reactive airways ." He caught croup which became bronchitis. We landed in the ER, following up with our pediatrician who thankfully followed up with us over the phone as well. Poor little guy was on Orapred in July, back on twice daily Pulmicort doses via nebulizer, and, during the flair up, Albuterol every 3-4 hours. We are keeping him on twice daily doses for 3 weeks before considering to wean him down to once a day, what he was on from May to the beginning of July. We've also c...

  I wanted to post an update on how things are going with O's reactive airways. Our pediatrician is now calling it asthma. They don't officially diagnose asthma until 24-months; O has just reached 23-months and showing every sign of being an asthmatic. For several months now, we've had a routine: Pulmicort via nebulizer in the morning and at night. It takes about 12 minutes to give him his Pulmicort in the nebulizer-- each time, 12 minutes in the morning and 12 minutes at night. He only needed to go on the Orapred once last fall since starting the daily regulator, early in the fall. He was eligible for the Synagis vaccine this year (woo hoo!); he's had 4 of the 5 vaccines. Thankfully he avoided catching many colds. We had a string of runny noses starting around Thanksgiving, nothing much more than that. Knock on wood, we haven't caught stomach flu yet this year either. But then O came down with a cough at the end of February. The cough wasn't too bad; his twin...