April is 5

Planning a Birthday during COVID gets a little tricky. It was really nice for me to have lots of helping hands with the balloons and decorations. I had my own party planning committee and that was really enjoyable.

  

Poor April woke up on her birthday not feeling so great. Initially I figured she was just tired and hungry. The day before she was practically bouncing off walls announcing "this was going to be the best birthday ever!" I got her all dress in the planned birthday outfit and then not even 2 mins later she started retching and vomiting all. down. the. front. of her clothes... sigh. I had made arrangements with neighborhood friends for a drive by. They were arriving in 10mins and I started to panic!!! I decided not to cancel the drive by and just bear through it. I quickly changed April to a new outfit and we stepped outside to wait. Then she puked again. This time in the bushes. Poor thing. I felt so bad for her. She was such a good sport but you could tell she felt miserable.

Later in the day she asked me "Mom. Can I have another birthday? This one is not much fun. I don't like being sick on my birthday" That just broke my heart. Poor girl.

She spent pretty much the whole day like this. Snuggled with the puke bucket. She didn't eat very much practically nothing all day long. I don't think she was sick sick. I think she must have gotten glutened. It's the only thing that make sense. She did not have a fever all day long and no other symptoms just threw up a handful of times and lethargic. No one else in our family got sick.

The next day we held her "party" as planned. Complete with Gluten Free cake, pin the horn on the unicorn, and dress-up photo booth (which sadly the boys did not participate in. haha). Thankfully her cousin Kendayln and Grandma came a day later too for their own birthday drive-by when April was alert and excited for that attention. This whole Pandemic has been really hard to explain to April. Way back in March when we first started social distancing was a really hard time for April. She knew her birthday was not going to be the same and she had a hard time understanding why her friends could not come on her birthday. She constantly asks me "Mom. When is the 'birus' going away?" All in all she has handled this whole situation very well and I love that her and Callie have grown closer and play so much together. I love listening to their conversations and play time.

Mason's Elbow Accident

Our family bike ride took a disastrous turn tonight. We rode bikes to Grandma Faler's home to swim. Mason of course insisted on bringing his water polo ball. On the ride home he had a large mesh bag holding the ball and carried it in his right hand balancing on the bike. We weren't very far from my mom's home, I was in my usual position at the end of our bike train and witnessed the mesh bag quickly getting caught in Mason's front tire jerking him to the ground. His right arm slammed into the asphalt and his helmet bounced on the ground. This made my stomach lurch, as I caught up to him my heart sank when I saw the blood trickling down his arm. I've said this before and I'll say it again Mason has an incredibly high pain tolerance. He had blood trickling down his arm from a quarter size gash in his right elbow, all while smiling for my picture moment. Thankfully the urgent care room was empty and as always Mason handled everything with a smile on his face. I'm so grateful for modern medicine and for the care Mason received.