We took a very short family vacation to Atlanta. John's office was closed for the week, so we decided to take advantage of the time off and do something fun. Even though we were only there for about 24 hours, we treated ourselves to the Varsity, took Whit to his first Braves game, and visited the GA Aquarium.
We timed it so that we got to Atlanta right at lunch time. Since we were staying downtown & our hotel wasn't ready yet, it was a great chance to introduce Whit to the Varsity! He was all about the french fries!
We of course had to get him a Varsity hat! Notice John is holding his hands down. He wouldn't leave the hat on long enough for me to snap a picture.
Next stop was Turner Field for a Braves game. It was Whit's first. He loved the giant baseballs outside!
He did pretty well sitting in his seat. We never made him stay in the stands for more than a couple innings at a time & as long as he had snacks he was pretty content. We bought him a tomahawk souvenir that you see in the picture, but I ended up having to take it away b/c all he wanted to do was eat it (WHEN will he outgrow this??).
We took a break from the game to go play at the Sky Field. Someone was nice enough to snap a family pic in the giant Adirondack chair.
Whit even got to run the baseline at the Sky Field. He loved this!
Here he is at the end of his run, tagging base.
Whit also had fun playing in Tooner Field, a designated children's area. This was taken just before we went down the slide.
After all that playing, he was pretty worn out. We made it through the 7th inning stretch so he could hear "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".
The next morning we headed to the gigantic GA Aquarium.
We knew it was going to be a fun visit when Whit LOVED the Aquarium's mascot, Deepo, instead of being afraid of him. I missed the shot with my camera, but right after this, Whit leaned in & gave Deepo a big ole' kiss.
This scuba diver was cleaning the tank & waved Whit over. He wasn't sure what to think of her.
I was pleasantly surprised at how interested Whit was in the fish. I think it really helped that all of the tanks were at a level he could see without having to be held up.All in all, our quick trip to Atlanta couldn't have gone any better! That's good, because our subsequent weekend at home was not so good.
We arrived home from Atlanta on a Thursday night, and we had friends in town on Friday staying with us for the Clemson/Miami game. We knew something was up when Whit woke up many times crying during the night on Friday. We ended up putting him in the bed with us. Our friends were nice enough to tell us that they never heard him, but there's no way they didn't.
When we woke up early on Saturday, Whit had a fever of 102. Other than the fever, he was happy, and was playing well. His fever never got higher than that during the day & came down a couple of degrees with alternating acetaminophen & ibuprofen. The only clue other than the fever that he was sick was he wouldn't eat much or drink much. He was bit fussy, but not any more than he's been with teething. We put him to bed at his normal time and hoped his fever would be gone the next morning.
Well, that was wishful thinking. After he'd been asleep for about an hour, he abruptly awoke and started screaming. We went to rock him back to sleep, and quickly discovered something was wrong. He was crying and screaming uncontrollably. No amount of loving or holding would calm him down. I'd never seen him like this. Not only was he screaming & crying, but he kept trying to beat his head against things like he was extremely mad. Along with all the screaming & crying, one of the most scary things was than we couldn't get him to look at us. We knew something was hurting him, but we had no idea what. After about 10 minutes of this, we decided to head to the ER.
Once we were in the car, Whit finally calmed down a bit, which made me calm down a bit. He stopped crying, and looked like he was exhausted & in a daze. All the while, John was flying down main street. We'd passed a wreck by our house as we'd left, and I told John to slow down since Whit seemed to be doing better. Of course, just as you would expect, we got stopped by a policeman. Luckily, the guy was very nice, and told John to put his flashers on, and drive the speed limit the rest of the way.
Once we were finally at the ER, Whit pretty much cried the whole time we were there. The triage nurse had to take his temperature, which required Whit to lie down with his head in my lap. It was at this time, while he was screaming, that I could see in his mouth & could tell it was full of sores. I immediately felt better. At least I knew what was hurting him. I assumed he had hand foot mouth, and common virus among children in daycare. We even talked about leaving & going home, but we decided to stay since we were there.
Once we were back in our room, Whit continued to cry. Then out of no where, his daycare teacher, Ms. Kala, appeared in our room. It was very surreal & it took me a few seconds for me to place how I knew her (you know how it is when you seem someone out of the normal context). Ironically, her mom, who is Whit's daycare director, was in the wreck we passed on the way to the ER. Luckily, she was not injured. Ms. Kala recognized Whit's cry from down the hall (yes, he was crying that loud & hard) & came to see if it really was him.
All in all, we were at the ER for about 4 or 5 hours. The Dr. made an incorrect diagnosis (he diagnosed strep throat with no culture), but did give us some pretty strong pain medication for Whit that helped him sleep. I think that alone was worth the trip. I also made an incorrect diagnosis. He did not have hand foot mouth, but had a similar but more painful virus called herpangina.
I'm sure we overreacted by taking him to the ER, but I'd do it all over again in a second if he ever starts to cry like that again! Hopefully we won't ever to!
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