March goodness!

March is over so that means baby month is upon us!!!

Here's what we did this month:

Spring cleanup

I already posted about this, but my siblings all came over to help us with some yard work at the beginning of the month. After we worked, we went out to lunch and then spent a few hours at the park on a beautiful afternoon!

Helena hard at work

Helena loves to do projects. Here she is writing a story....

...and making a burp cloth for baby sister!

Bike riding

We've really dropped the ball when it comes to bikes at our house. Tempe is 7 1/2 and Helena is 6 and they just learned how to ride a bike! But on the plus side, since we waited until they were so old, they picked it up on the first try and now they love zooming around on the bike.

Oh, and here's a cute little face!

Sisters playing together

Helena got a cute ice cream parlor set for her birthday, and they all had fun playing together one afternoon!

Helena's birthday

It was fun celebrating Helena's birthday with her detective party and birthday chocolate chip pancakes for dinner!

Juno wanted to pose by the tree like Helena did. She's wearing the plastic hat from our giant Mr. Potato Head :)

Cat bite fever

This one takes some explaining... Last Tuesday night, Tempe was in our yard when she saw a strange cat and Autumn hissing at each other. She was shooing the cat away (not trying to pick it up or anything), when it leaped up and bit her on the forearm--hard. She had three big deep puncture wounds and some scratches, as well. We ran it under water, poured hydrogen peroxide all over it, dabbed on some Neosporin, and put band-aids on it and in the morning I sent her off to school and called the doctor. The doctor said that cat bites get infected so easily that they always put kids on antibiotics, even if it seems to be doing ok. So I picked her up around lunchtime and took her to the doctor and it was already clearly infected--red, swollen, and warm to the touch.

The doctor was most concerned because Tempe was already on an antibiotic for something else and had been for about a week--in fact, it was the antibiotic that she would have prescribed for this infection. Since it was already in Tempe's system but not fighting the infection, she took her off that first one and put her on two different antibiotics. Then she drew a dotted line around the infection and told me that if it continued to spread outside the line, to take Tempe to the ER at Primary Children's.

This is what it looked like on Wednesday afternoon:

Thursday morning she seemed fine so I sent her off to school again, but when I picked her up that afternoon, I checked her arm and the redness had spread outside the line. It wasn't as intense of a red or as swollen, but it was spreading, so after calling her pediatrician again to double check, we headed up to Primary Children's. The ER doctor agreed that the infection was still spreading and told me all the many kinds of scary bacteria it could be, then admitted us for the night.

Yes, she spent the night at the hospital because of a cat bite.

She got three doses of a fourth antibiotic through an IV and in the morning, the infection was under control again and they sent us home. So far, so good, and I think we're past the danger stage of infection spreading more.

Just so you all know, cat bites are very nasty and almost always get infected. Tempe's official diagnosis was cellulitis (cat bites are a leading cause) but cat bites can also cause tendonitis. So take it seriously if you get bit by a cat! And also, even though we haven't been able to find the cat that bit her, we have been assured by animal control, her pediatrician, and the ER doctor that rabies really isn't a concern in domestic animals like cats and dogs, so we're just not going to worry about that :)

Helena loves boys

enough said.