26 months 10 days

Day 802. Last night I went to bed at 1 am. Emmy had been quietly sleeping all evening, which is rare. But the following hours were worse than ever. He came before I could fall asleep, and he would not stay in his bed. I tried, Randy tried, and he kept coming back, standing next to me crying. I kept telling him to go back to bed, but he wouldn't. I finally let him join us in bed, just to get some sleep, but for the first time that did not work either. First he wanted to drink, then he wanted something else, he just simply would not fall asleep but kept fussing and keeping us awake. I finally had enough and took him back to his bed, which he didn't want either. In the end Randy held him sitting by his bed and then put him into his bed once he was asleep. And then he actually stayed in his bed until some time after 6 am.

I was exhausted, as it was about 2:30 before I finally got a chance to fall asleep. The girl joined us at some point, and she was the first one up, and then they had to fight over who got to lie on my chest of course, after Sammy had taken up that space. Just after 7 am I finally got up to end all this.

I made breakfast and tried to get them to eat something. After dressing them I took them all downstairs, where I got their Bibles out and we sat down to read stories. When Randy came with his breakfast, I went back upstairs. The first thing I did was to call the x-ray lab to find out when Emmy could come for his lung x-ray. They gave me an appointment for 9:20, just over an hour later. And so I went back downstairs to get Emmy, dressed him, and at 8:45 we left together. The lab was right by the hospital two subway stops away from us. We got there early, registered, and sat down in the waiting room to wait for Emmy's turn. It wasn't too long before we were called in. Emmy had to take his clothes off on top and then stand on the floor with his arms up. I was holding his two hands to keep them up. He had to look straight ahead, and he never moved but did what he was told, even though in the very beginning he seemed a little fearful. Then I dressed him again, and we went back outside to wait for the results. Emmy was most fascinated by the central heating, touching the warm heater under the window. Then I picked up a paper for us to look at. Finally a lady came to give us the results in an envelope, and we were free to leave. By 10 am we were back home, and Emmy went downstairs to join his siblings.

I opened the results and read through the findings. It was all medical language but I understood enough to find out that they had seen some spots of beginning pneumonia. I scanned the paper and emailed it to the pediatrician, and then started waiting to hear back from them, while starting doing office work.

Today I had planned a quick meal. I started cooking at 11:30, and by 11:45 they were upstairs to eat. If only they were eating. They saw the new package coming up the stairs and had to open it. It was a second kids carry-on for Tammy. Tammy enjoyed it so much that she did not want to sit down to eat. When I put her into the high chair and strapped her in, she was very upset and threw a fit. She never ate anything. Emmy ate a few pieces of meat and potatoes with vegetables, but so little you couldn't even tell by looking at the plate. So no puddings, and no water games today. Instead I dressed them and tried to put Emmy to bed, which did not work. I had to wait for Sammy to go to bed. Randy was just about to go downstairs with Tammy, when Emmy kept calling for Daddy. And so Randy sat down by the boys to help them sleep, while I went downstairs with Tammy.

Of course she wanted to watch stuff on the phone, today monkeys, and I let her watch funny monkey videos. The video had just ended, when Randy arrived. He had succeeded to get them to sleep by 12:15. Randy took my place with Tammy, and I went upstairs. Just before 1 pm he brought up Tammy and put her to bed and got her to sleep as well, without waking any of her brothers up. And so all three were asleep at the same time for a while.

Emmy was the first one back up, after over an hour. It was only about 1:30. I held him a little, but he did not go back to sleep. Randy took him downstairs, and suddenly the other two were up as well. It was pretty early for them. They all went downstairs.

As I had still not heard from the pediatrician, Randy encouraged me to call them, which I did. They said they had not received my email, so I resent it. I had decided to be the one to take Sammy to physiotherapy today, and we needed to leave after 3 pm, so I had to get ready. I went downstairs to get Sammy, dressed him, and we left on time. We had a longer walk to the tram stop, and I decided to call the pediatrician again to find out whether they had received the x-ray result this time. They said they did, but had just filed it. I told them that I had been told earlier that the doctors would look at it and decide as to what to do. And so they took it to the doctors, and had me wait on line the whole time. It was a good thing I had such a long wait time for the tram, as we had arrived at the tram stop by then. They finally got back to me and confirmed what I had understood and said they would put a prescription on his insurance card for me to pick up later. By the time we got to Sammy's physiotherapist, I discovered two missed calls from the pediatrician, returned the call and was told that they wanted to see Emmy some time next week.

When we arrived at the physiotherapy center, the receptionist told us that from now on we'd need to have a negative Corona test to be allowed in. I told her I only had an expired one today, as I had not known, and she told me to check with the therapist. They had not told us after all. The therapist made an exception today.

And we went straight to work. I hadn't been there in a while, as Randy had been taking Sammy, but I was glad I was there today. My main reason had been to spend more time with Sammy, but I benefitted a lot from everything she told me and showed me. I also heard for the first time that Sammy has a form of cerebral palsy. When I hear those words I think of something a lot more severe than what his condition is.

Time just flew by. A session is only 45 minutes, and so we already had to put our clothes on and say good-bye until next week. As we had just missed a tram that I watched drive off, I turned around and went the direction we needed to go, deciding to walk the 2 stops to where the pharmacy was. It was already getting dark, even though we left at 4:30 pm. After a stop at the bank, we went into the pharmacy to pick up Emmy's antibiotics. I decided to also stock our travel med kit and bought different medicines for us to take to Mali with us. Last year we ran out of them all. I sure don't hope we'll need them all again this year.

Before getting on the subway I had one more stop to make in the grocery store, where I got everything but one item on my short list. Sammy was interested in the stuff I put right in his lap. After paying I threw it all under the stroller, where all the other stuff was, and we headed to the subway. By 5:15 we were finally back home. And Sammy had really surprised me by how much he had eaten on the road - lots of crunchies, and a whole big bar. I didn't expect him to eat much for dinner.

Given how late it was, I put Sammy on the floor and went straight to work making dinner. I heard Emmy crying downstairs, and finally went downstairs to give him the pacifier he was asking for. Sometimes Randy doesn't understand what they want because they speak German. Of course Emmy then wanted to stay with me, and so I took him upstairs with me. And that mean the girl wanted to come as well, of course. And so I put two chairs in the kitchen for them to stand on, while I was making their food that I put on their plates in front of them. That way they ate a little. By 5:45 it was all done, and we sat down at the table, after I had added their soup. They weren't very interested in eating at that point. I combined their fruit on a plate and took it to the bathtub. They didn't eat much more in the water. I got Sammy to eat his bread, but he didn't eat all his fruit.

Then it was time to get out and get ready for bed. Emmy wanted me to hold him, and so did Tammy, and for a while they were both lying on my chest, but they didn't stay there. Randy finally took my place, while I walked away to get myself something to eat. After having eaten I continued with office work. Emmy was having his typical restless night again, and I had to hold him several times before putting him back to bed, and so did Randy. While writing this, I fell asleep several times. Now I still have to do the cleanup, but I'm hoping to do it quickly tonight.