Craftiness and trying to stay sane...

So, yeah, I'm still pregnant. So considering the fact that I don't have any adorable new baby pictures to show you yet, I thought you might like to see what else we've been up to in the past month. (After we caught up on very much needed sleep and recovered from Ethan's illness of course!)

First up, there was sewing for the baby. Since she is due to arrive (any minute now baby please!!) during the coldest season of the year I made her a car seat canopy. My little ones spend almost no time at all in their car seats, much preferring to be held in a baby carrier or sling of some sort. However I like to put them in the car seat while we are still inside the house and cover everything up so they stay toasty warm on the way out to the car! We don't have a garage to park our car inside in this house, so walking through the weather has to happen when we leave to go anywhere! I called up my friend who I made the car seat cover for, over a year ago, and asked her if I could borrow it, to try and remember how I made hers...

 Close up of the fabric I chose for her canopy. Isn't it adorable? I love the floating bunnies and little girls!

And now for the part I'm really proud of. I actually ended up recovering her car seat. 

I very loosely followed the tutorial found here, for recovering the car seat. The picture below shows "why" I had to recover the car seat. I honestly had no intention of ever taking on such a big project this late in my pregnancy, but when I pulled the infant car seat out of our storage room and took the cover off of it to wash it, this is how it came out of the washing machine! It was frayed and falling to pieces! I had followed the manufacturer's recommended washing instructions exactly, and this was the first time in the life of the car seat it had ever been machine washed. I called the manufacturer and they said that since the seat was just over a year old, I would have to purchase a new cover for it... So I thought what the heck, I might as well give recovering the thing a try since, if that didn't work I'd still have a few weeks to buy a new seat cover and get it shipped to me. Well, not only did it work, it turned out super cute! I am so happy with how it looks! Much prettier than that weird plastic-y orange! 

Logan also has been rather crafty lately! He got invited to a friend's birthday party recently and had no idea what he should get for the girl. I suggested that he make her a T-shirt with her favorite video game character on it. He liked that idea, so he looked online for an outline to print out to use as a stencil. He found the design below, printed it out and very carefully cut it out of freezer paper. He then ironed the freezer paper onto a blank shirt he got from the craft store. He used fabric paint to carefully fill in the stencil and once it was dry he peeled the freezer paper back to reveal his shirt. It turned out great! He friend was thrilled with such a one of a kind gift and he was really thrilled with the fact that he had made it completely by himself!

At the end of October our three big boys when to a costume dance party hosted by our local homeschool group. Ethan went as a Plastic Army Man also known as a Little Green Army Man. I made his costume out of a large green tarp, and just used a simple pajama pattern for the shirt and pants. My sewing machine hated sewing that tough plastic! I broke 7 needles in the construction of that thing. One of the needle points even flew off and hit me in the corner of the eye! I was ok, but it hurt! I ended up wearing safety goggles to finish it! I spray painted his rubber boots and a Nerf gun bright green and we painted all exposed skin green using a water soluble face and body paint.. (The face paint stained his skin and for the following three days he looked a bit like Frankenstein's monster! ) 

Matthew wanted to dress up as Frodo Baggins the Hobbit. So I made his cape, vest and the pants were part of a costume that I made for Logan last year. The ring and the clasp for his cloak I got off of Amazon. 

Logan wanted to go as a Gentlemanly Steampunk Scientist. So, thankfully, he already had a Velvet coat with lace trim I had sewn him last year for his costume, which still fit nicely. He was entirely in charge of creating the rest of his costume, which consisted of a very interesting hat with a "steam" engine, copper piping, and various other gears and contraptions. He also had a copper coated gas mask, that he made, in case it was needed while escaping dastardly villains armed with noxious gases. I really didn't help him at all with his costume this year, except for offering a bit of advice when asked. He took charge of putting the whole thing together himself!

I am currently in the middle of making Claire a "baby" doll for her birthday, which is coming up in the middle of December. I'll try to get pictures of it soon. I also have several Christmas presents in the works that I plan on showing as I get them completed or nearly so. But first, honestly I'd really like to have this baby! I've been having super strong braxton-hicks contractions for over two weeks now. They'll get almost regular, and fool me into thinking that this must be it this time. You'd think that with this being my 6th baby I'd know for sure if I was in labor or not, but no it doesn't appear that way! I keep getting my hopes up only to have things peter out, with no baby to show for hours of contractions, and no sleep either! So I am trying to find little things to occupy my mind and hands because while I do feel perfectly fine, I just really don't have much energy at all at this point and everything tires me out so easily! 

I'm feeling like a bit of an emotional mess, because of a continual lack of sleep and not knowing when this little one is finally going to arrive! The end of pregnancy hormones aren't doing much to help that situation either! I was in the kitchen this morning making myself a cup of red raspberry leaf tea, when Logan came in to say good morning to me. I started crying for no reason and when he asked my what was wrong I had no good answer. The sweet boy just hugged me and said "You're just very pregnant aren't you." Yes, son that is all it is, I am just very pregnant!

*Updated on 11-26-13 to add that I am linking up with Nicole here and be sure to check out this beautiful project of ours that was a very long time in the making! She is practically perfect in every way! 

Rat Bite Fever

*Disclaimer* this is a really long post with mostly unrelated pictures of a strangely obscure disease...*

By early October Ethan still had not recovered from the illness he had since the beginning of September. He kept getting worse and I would take him back to the doctor. I took him to his pediatrician and she would send us back to the emergency room. And they in turn would send us home with instructions to give him acetaminophen or ibuprofen for his fevers and joint aches. His joints were so red, hot, and inflamed. He couldn't move his fingers, wrists, shoulders,  ankles or knees without a lot of pain. He was still breaking out in more of that awful rash.  Everything they did test for came back negative, and the doctors kept insisting it was a "classic case" of Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, which they never actually tested for...

{Unrelated photo* Feeding ducks at a friend's house in September}

But that diagnosis just did not sit well with me. The more I researched about it, and the more sick he got the less peace I felt about the whole situation. My child was much much sicker than that virus should have made him, and it was lasting for much longer than it should have. Plus the symptoms, while similar, just didn't match up. I felt like they were just giving him a label without being sure of what it really was to shut me up. 

{Unrelated Photos* Emmett fell asleep on the side table after standing and inspecting the little green snake Rodrigo found and brought home to show me}

In October, one full month after he became sick, his pediatrician sent us back to the emergency room and they finally decided to have Ethan see a few specialists. So they admitted him (us! I stayed with him at the hospital and Rodrigo stayed home with the other children) to Children's Hospital on a Monday evening and he was scheduled to see an infectious disease doctor, a rheumatologist, and a dermatologist the next day. The three of them after their initial exams all agreed that it was most assuredly NOT hand, foot, and mouth disease, nor had it ever been. Initially the infectious disease. Dr  and the Rheum. Dr thought it might possibly be Juvenile Idiopathic Rheumatoid Arthritis, while the Derm. Dr  thought it might be chronic bacterial meningitis. The I.D. doctor said that since it did not appear to be in his realm of expertise he would not be seeing us again. He wished us luck and said goodbye. The testing was begun on Tuesday morning for J.I.R.A. and bacterial meningitis. 

{Unrelated Photos* Box Turtle found while hiking in the woods with Daddy} 

On Wednesday morning at 8:00am someone knocked on the hospital room door and it was the infectious disease Dr  again... He came in and said that after doing more reading and researching he could not possibly agree with the possible meningitis diagnosis, and that he was seriously questioning the Rheumatoid arthritis answer now. Which kind of made me happy, because I really didn't feel that it was either of those either after spending the night in the hospital reading everything I could find on the internet about both of those. However, I still needed to know what in the world was wrong with Ethan! I kept praying that if God didn't just simply heal him outright, to please give the doctors enough wisdom to figure this out and help him!  So the doctor sat in the room with us and asked a million questions about Ethan and the whole family, and even about people Rodrigo worked with, our shopping habits, our travels, our schooling and friends, our pets and farm animals, I mean that man asked us about everything! Finally he said that he had a few ideas and left and promised to come back in a few hours. A couple of hours later he showed back up and asked if we had a pet rat. We did. And then he directed me to a medical journal article about Rat Bite Fever. The more I read and the more we talked about it the more confident I became that this was it. Samples for testing were taken and we were finally able to go home with a PICC line inserted in Ethan's arm and a huge amount of I.V. penicillin to give him 4 times a day around the clock. I felt at peace for the very first time since this whole sickness began back in the first week of September! 

{*Source* Picture of a PICC line catheter- a very scary looking thing that leads straight into my baby's heart! }

Rat bite fever is apparently extremely rare. There have only been about 200 known cases in the United States since the early 1900's. However doctors believe that it is much more common than that. It is just that is very hard to diagnose and is often misdiagnosed as hand, foot, and mouth, rheumatoid arthritis, bacterial meningitis, even syphilis! It can have a really high mortality rate of 10% (Some research claims as high as a 25% mortality rate)  if left untreated, but apparently with massive doses of I.V. penicillin it is almost always completely curable. 

{Unrelated Photo* Emmett was riding on his Daddy's shoulders while hiking when he decided to grab a tree in passing and not let go. Rodrigo took another step before realizing what had happened and that Emmett has dangling in mid-air behind him. Thankfully he had a firm hold of the baby's feet!} 

Ethan is feeling so much better now! He has finished his second week of antibiotics. The PICC catheter in his arm was removed last Wednesday. The fever was gone and hasn't returned since within 12 hours of his first dose of antibiotics. The horrid pustules covering his hands and feet are gone now, and he has an appetite and some energy for the first time in over a month and a half! The arthritic swelling and pain has disappeared from all of his joints. He has been going outside to play for a little while everyday, and now is feeling frustrated because he doesn't have the stamina and strength he did to keep up with his brothers like he did before he got sick. 

{Unrelated Photo* Claire walking Zombie, one of our English bulldogs. The boys named him...of course!} 

And no his pet rat didn't bite him, but it can be passed via saliva or urine, both of which he had been exposed to many times while holding the rat, and then cleaning the cage. The rat is no longer here, and I am sure we will never have another pet rat in our home. That makes us all quite sad since she was actually a really sweet pet, but I just can't have a carrier of such a scary (potentially fatal) disease living and playing with my children. I would have never allowed it if there had been any indication that it could harm my children in some way. And she was a very pleasant little pet, who never soiled outside of her cage, never bit, never hurt anyone... Everything you ever see or hear about domesticated rats is that they are super clean, intelligent, sweet pets, and that only wild rats can carry disease.These rats have been in captivity for so long that they pose no threat whatsoever... or so the story goes! 

{Unrelated photos* A trebuchet that Matthew built last week. Acorns and pebbles have been flying around non-stop since then!}

So that is what I've been dealing with for the past month and a half. Ethan is now almost completely back to normal. I really don't like to give my kids antibiotics, preferring to let them fight sickness off themselves if possible with the help of good food, rest and herbal medicines. Several of my children have never even had antibiotics in their entire lives. Ethan had only had them one other time, before he was a year old. But in this case I was so happy to have that medicine available for him! I, on the other hand, am still trying to recover from the stress and constant running and being away from home that having such a sick child involved. I have had to say no to invitations from several dear friends lately, and am trying to cut every single thing that isn't absolutely needful from our schedule so I can just stay home and rest and wait for this little one to come. Today there are only about 2 and a half weeks until her due date! 

Sick

These three pictures pretty much sum up the past 3 weeks for us. My kids all got some mystery virus, 4 of them were miserable and felt like crud for about 24 to 48 hours, with high fevers and headaches, and then they got better.

Then Ethan got sick. And he stayed sick... for a very long time. He developed some awful rash, then it disappeared, only to be replaced by some different awful rash, and his fevers where scary high. Like the kind of high where we didn't let him out of our sight for almost three days because I was so worried about febrile seizures.

Then his ankle and wrist joints started swelling up and they hurt him to move. We had to pick him up and carry him to the bathroom, and to bed, or to the couch to watch a bit of TV. He hurt too much to walk, or even hold a book or a glass of water. He was loosing weight. He didn't eat anything at all for almost a week.

We called his pediatrician multiple times, then we took him to see his pediatrician, and she sent us to the emergency room, twice! We had to talk to infectious disease doctors, and specialists. I was really scared. He just wasn't getting any better. We were getting worn so thin, with the worry and constant care that a house full of sick kids needs. (And of course when they all got sick, it was not on the same days but like dominoes...one after another.)

The kids who got over it quickly were being left to their own devices a lot, because I had to spend so much time taking Ethan to various doctor's offices and emergency room. They ate pretty much whatever they could scavenge from the recesses of the refrigerator and pantry for a week, because I hadn't time to go to the store and pick up milk, or cereal, or fruits and veggies. Logan was making sure that everyone was fed while I was with Ethan and his Dad was at work.

I didn't think that what the rest of the children had come down with was the same thing Ethan now had and the doctors were worried that whatever it was was most likely very contagious. (Plus I am 7 months pregnant...not a good time to be exposing myself to some mystery virus!) I became an obsessive handwasher overnight! I was so exhausted and so worried for my poor baby!

The doctors finally decided that what he has is a fairly common virus which usually effects very small children (babies and toddlers mostly) and that since he had apparently never had it as a little one, he was having a much worse case of it that normal. His body was just having a really hard time fighting it off. He had all kinds of test run on him, they checked for everything under the sun. And it turns out it was probably some virus he picked up at the supermarket from the grocery cart. He is still pretty sick, today was day 15. Normally this virus only lasts a few days in toddlers, often with relatively few symptoms. But the doctors said it might take him as long as 2 to 3 weeks for him to start really feeling better.

Thankfully I feel fine, and so does Rodrigo. We figure that we must have been exposed to this thing as small children at some point and now we are immune to it, since we've already passed the incubation period. The rest of the kids are doing fine now too, Only my sweet little Ethan is still fighting this thing off. He is up and eating some now, and he managed to walk a little bit by himself today. But for now he spends his entire day laying on the couch listening to audio-books, watching TV, or sleeping. He hasn't been up to play one single time in weeks. It's awful seeing your child this sick.

That's why things have been so quiet here, I just haven't really done anything at all blog worthy in over 2 weeks. (Other than have the giveaway of the dolls I made. Thankfully I got those finished up just before everyone started getting so sick!) My plans for handmade Christmas gifts are still very much in the plan stage, since other than knitting while at the hospital and doctors' offices I haven't found a moment to do anything at all lately!