The Growing Walnuts: What A Ride It Was

Well this might be a record for how long I've gone without posting something - 2 weeks! Unfortunately we're still recovering from our trip to Ithaca, NY over Labor Day weekend to see Allen's sister Ting, Yoshi, and Kai. In the end we learned that it was way too far to go for such a short time and with Esme being sick which started the moment we left. On the flip side, it was great to be able to spend time with family :)

We planned to take a redeye flight on a Friday night so we put Esme to bed that night at her normal time and woke her up prior to leaving for the airport. She didn't fall back asleep until we boarded our plane and they turned the lights off. She was sprawled across both our laps and all of a sudden got really hot. I figured it was just all our body heat combined so I unbuttoned her sleeper and she cooled off a little bit. Then we landed in Chicago very early in the morning and Esme decided she was done sleeping so we spent our 3 hour layover at the awesome kids play area which was almost like a children's museum. On the next flight to Syracuse, NY she slept again and started heating up but I figured that was because she was lying against my chest this time. She cooled off once we landed and then napped again on the drive from Syracuse to Ithaca. She had a hard time adjusting to the heat once we got to Ithaca and was still slightly warm but by the afternoon I realized she was burning up even though she was just wearing her diaper around the house. We started giving her ibuprofen and her fever would spike every 6 hours when it wore off and this went on for about 36 hours. She had no other symptoms though so I figured it could only be teething even though she was super hot. Luckily we didn't have any major plans for the weekend so we spent a lot of time just hanging out and catching up with Ting, Yoshi & Kai. Esme wasn't quite herself the whole time which was a little hard.

On our last night we were able to coordinate a dinner with my sister Hannah and family who were driving from Buffalo, NY down to North Carolina. It was a special treat as it was Aunty B's birthday too. Unfortunately Esme was having a bad afternoon and didn't care much about seeing her cousins Capri and Makena. She wouldn't even let Aunty B hold her :(

The next day, just 3 days after we arrived, we took off for Syracuse Airport again to start this whole adventure over. By this time Esme's fevers were gone but she was still very edgy. She slept on the first flight and then enjoyed the play area at the Chicago airport again. But on the flight from Chicago to Seattle she was up most of the time and was super fussy. She was crawling all over Allen and I and signing and saying "all pau" and "outside." It was miserable. Strangely enough as soon as we got home that evening, she ran into our house and was just screaming with glee. She seemed so excited to be in her own home. That night when Allen was reading to her before bed, she pointed to her crib and said "inside" cause she just wanted to go to bed already. She's always been a great sleeper and so easy to put to bed but she never does that!

Just a day after we got back, we noticed Esme broke out in a small, fine red rash all over her body and turns out she had roseola, a viral rash that's common in kids following a high fever. At least that explained everything but coupled with the travel it just made it that much worse. And on top of that we infected all her cousins, the children's area at the Chicago airport, and the airplane. We learned our lesson after this trip and decided to buy Esme her own seat for our next trip to North Carolina next month to make our lives a little bit easier. We'll just cross our fingers that she doesn't get sick again.