Heat Stroke

Monday the 26th daddy was home sick. I was getting Ted fed and taken care of before turning my attention to Andrew when he said, "You forgot about me! Take care of me!"  lol 

He still struggles with wanting to call avocados "applecados" but he knows it's incorrect when he tries and ends up asking how to say it. I sliced up several avocados and drizzled them with balsamic vinegar. His first bite he said, "This avocado is too vinegar-y" 

I surprised him by picking him up from school on Tuesday. He was very happy to have me there with him during snack, storytime, and playground fun. On the way home, Annelise helped him send a "thank you for taking me to school" message to Joy. Afterward he started getting super silly. He made a freeze face and a strange sound and then said, "I was just freakin' out."  Then he did it again, "I just freaked out again."  After the third time I told him although he was being silly and it was funny the first time, he'll have to do something else silly to be funny again.  So he put his hands up and froze again and said, "uh! I'm a tree!"  Then he transformed into all the different signs and some restaurants he saw along the way.  I love that he wants to make people laugh most of the time.

He went swimming in the evening with Aunt Eese. She said that he started falling backwards in the water and said he was practicing getting baptized like the people in the 'Jehovah video' he saw on Sunday at the Kingdom Hall (the circuit overseer showed a video about the translation process and there was a clip of someone getting baptized at a convention.)

Wednesday, Ted picked him up from school but called to tell me: Andrew was speaking to the teacher and Ted thought he was talking slower than usual but didn't think twice about it until they were leaving and Andrew was fumbling around and complaining of a headache. We both called the school and the teacher said that he had water on the playground, they're not aware of any falling or hitting or anything - and that after they came in from the playground, the kids cooled down and worked at their activity centers just fine; nothing unusual.  The director, however, told Ted that it sounded like heat stroke or heat exhaustion and he needed medical attention right away.  When he got home is when he told me what she said, and sure enough, he had the symptoms of it. He was headed into the heat stroke category for sure. We immediately gave him some coconut water and juice and got him to recline on the couch. His temperature was 102.1 an hour after being picked up from school (5:20) - which is still high, but we have no idea how high it was coming down from!  His skin was hot to the touch all over but he complained of being cold and did not like the idea of a cold compress on his neck and head, or anywhere. He asked me to read The Stinky Cheese Man book while he relaxed.  He did eat a yogurt and a few bites of tomato soup, but then it seemed like he went downhill again. He took a little nap in his bed, but woke up wet and still very feverish. We finally convinced him to take a warm bath with clove oil and peppermint oil in it. I gave him a tiny amount of baby tylenol and some homeopathics. After his bath I cuddled on the couch with the towel loosely around him and fed him some raw milk mint chocolate chip ice cream (to get peppermint oil in him), and a cool damp rag behind his neck and over his head to his forehead. When he started drifting off asleep I took the towel off his shoulders completely. FINALLY his fever started going down. By 10pm it was 99.7.  I woke up at 3am worried about him and wondering if I should check on him. A few minutes later, I thought I heard him whimper so I bolted in there. He was stirring (wet again from all the fluids) but this time his temperature was 97.9 which was a huge relief. I asked him how he was feeling and he said, "Terrible. Just Terrible." 

Thursday daddy was able to work from home so he could keep Andrew indoors and calm, and he called the school to tell them what happened. They are now going to review their outdoor play policy to make sure it won't happen again. The boys watched a couple of movies and went out to lunch together and had a nice day. He was definitely acting like he felt better, but now he was complaining of a sore throat.

Friday it was going to be 94+ degrees outside. I called the school at 2:30 to make sure that Andrew would not be going outside. She told me no one was going out.  They apparently didn't make it clear to the kids though, because when Ted picked Andrew up from school, he thought daddy was early and he was missing getting to play outside and it was daddy's fault! He was NOT happy about that.

Saturday evening I really needed to get out of the house, so we tried a restaurant we'd not been to before in Columbia. It really isn't worth mentioning. But.. it turned out to be attached to the Mall which we wandered around in briefly. I went into one store hoping to find cheap pjs for him, but instead found some castle building blocks for super cheap (that I'd also just purchased online!) He asked instead if he could have a truck that when you pull the lever, it pushes out a bar from the front. It was a very cheaply made looking toy, but cost $20!  So we told him no. We told him that we would get him the castle blocks. He liked that idea, but said, "but can we also get this truck so I can knock the blocks down?"  Ted and I liked his quick thought process, but still said no.

Andrew has seen the grocery store named Piggly Wiggly several times on our ventures to Columbia and for the past two years has been asking to go in one. On our way out of the mall we told him we'd take him on the way home. He started doing a wiggly dance and was singing the words 'Piggly Wiggly' all the way to the store! He wasn't as intrigued with the store as he thought he'd be.