Norah's trip to the ER

We had to take Norah to the ER yesterday. I got home from visiting my family and she had been acting strange all morning. I took her temperature and it was 101.2. I called the pediatrician and they said to take her straight to the ER because she was so young.

Norah was a little frantic as soon as they started checking her out. We had to take her sleeper off and she was also hungry, so she started crying really hard. We fed her and they started to examine her. They took her temperature via her bum, which did not make her happy. We calmed her down and then they came in and said they were going to need to insert a catheter to get a urine sample. They said we could step out if we would like to because she would probably scream. We said we would stay. When they left to get what they needed I said to Josh, "Watch, she will probably like a catheter like I did when I was in labor!" Well, it turned out she did!! :) She was smiling and playing with the nurse as they did it.

Next we had to take her to get an x-ray. Again she was calm and then as soon as we unwrapped her and handed her over she started screaming. She luckily was not strapped down, a nurse was with her the whole time holding her.

After 2 1/2 hours they determined that she had a virus, constipation and gas bubbles in her stomach. The doctor said it just all occurred at once and made her unhappy. She also said that she thinks Norah is colicky, which we nodded knowing that was completely wrong because Norah is the easiest going baby and she was only freaking out because she was in the ER and people were all up in her grill!

She has been very tired and weepy (not screaming) and needing extra snuggling and sleeping. She is taking Tylenol and Motrin. I ran out to get a few things and when I came home Daddy was caring for his little girl!


All in all it was a little crazy, but she is fine in the end. It's no fun taking a little baby to the ER, but you do get through the ER system much faster!

Moving to Chicago!

Well, it's official, we are moving to Chicago! Josh got accepted to The University of Chicago's Divinity School, to study the history of world religions. He was so excited and so am I! It's nice to know where we will be going. We will move sometime this summer, not sure when yet. I knew he would get accepted, but he really was not sure. Congrats honey!

Busy Times

The last few weeks have been very busy and exciting! I posted a lot of pictures and they go backwards from most recent to least recent (whatever the correct verbiage should be just switch in your mind because it's too late for me to figure it out!)

This past Friday Joshua received the St. Francis Xavier Award that I had posted about awhile ago. His speech was really good. He was nervous, but when he talked you could not tell at all. The school took pictures and had a press release about it, which I linked to. Our friend Erin was also awarded Administrator of the Year which was fun!

Joshua's parents drove in for the award and stayed for the weekend. Uncle Jeremy drove down on Saturday and is staying until Monday morning. This is him and Norah napping!

I thought Norah looked cute snuggled in our bed so I took a picture. You should know that this morning Joshua was handling a "situation" that took 6 hours to deal with. I can't go into detail because it's no over with, but it was quite a morning here in the Elek apartment.

Norah clasps her hands together all the time now and we think it looks like she if fervently praying, so we make up "prayers" all the time depending on what she is doing. This prayer goes something like, "Dear Lord, please make this a bottomless bottle of milk. Amen."

Norah has also been shoving her fist in her mouth until she gags. It's a fun game that scares me often!
It keeps me on my toes though.

Norah and I went to play with my friend Angela and her 9 month old son Grant! We had a lot of fun.
Norah took a nap in Grant's crib while we were there.
When I went to get her she was half out of her clothes!

So Norah is quite the eater lately. We started putting some rice cereal in her bottles. Our pediatrician wants us to fed it to her with a spoon twice a day, but that did not go so good. As you can see she swallowed none of it. We will try again this week.

Our friends Sean and Julie are having a little girl names Lucy any day or week now. We had a baby shower for them in Columbus with other friends from Malone that Josh went to school with. This is Julie, Norah and Lucy!

This is Norah's buddy Babs! He takes real good care of her every time he sees her.

We all made this decoration together for the shower!

Sean and Julie are doing cloth diapers so that whole group went in and bought them everything from their registry that had to do with diapering! They registered for laundry detergent so we made them into little people with cloth diapers on and Josh made them look like people. We thought Norah should have a picture with them!

Norah and I drove halfway to meet up with our friend Allie for dinner! We got to catch up on our lives and hang out which was long overdue. We also got to celebrate that Allie and her husband Phil bought a house!!! Yeah! I thought this was a cute picture!

Time on stomach

I know it's been awhile since I've posted. No good reason for not posting. I just thought I would throw up a picture of Norah. She is so sweet and I love her so much! This is her having some time on her stomach, better known in the new world that I've entered as, "Tummy time." I've never been a fan of that phrase so I try not to say it! :)

Here is another picture that I liked alot too!

Eliana

This is Norah's friend Eliana. They both attended a fondue party on saturday at their friend Katie's house. Eliana is from Guatemala, she is 19 months old and just about the sweetest thing ever. She was adopted by friends of ours here in Wheeling, Jenny and Matt. They are wonderful parents and are about to adopt two more girls from Ethiopia.

At the party on saturday night Eliana was in touch with Norah the whole evening. Anytime she made a peep whether laughing, letting out a little cry or anything else Eliana was there to check on the situation to make sure everything was ok. She also played very well with Norah by tickling her tummy every once in awhile.

At one point Norah was tired and just having a hard time getting to sleep and started crying. Well she ended up getting really worked up about it and was crying very loudly. Josh was holding her in the other room and the next thing I knew Eliana starting crying really hard too. I went in the other room to see what was happening that would have made her start to cry too and Jenny was holding her. She said that Eliana was so upset that Norah was so upset and Jenny was trying to comfort her. It was really sweet, but then I started thinking about what Eliana might be assoiciating with a baby crying that hard and my heart broke. Not knowing Eliana's situation before she became Jenny and Matt's daughter made me sad. It made me so grateful for Jenny and Matt and the love they show to her everyday and that they will show to the other two girls that will be here soon.

It was really touching to see such a small child have compassion and empathy for a baby in the only way she knows how.

Snow Day!

Classes were canceled today at WJU! It did not really affect Norah and I as far as our schedule goes, but the whole family got to bum around and hang out together which was fun! We took Norah for a little walk on campus so we bundled her all up! We do not have any gloves for her so we put some socks on her hands! Not sure if she enjoyed the snow or not because she pretty much slept the whole time in the Baby Bjorn!

Caleb Stuart Rupke!

My sister had her baby boy last monday! Here are some pictures! Everyone is doing great! He weighed 8lbs and came on his due date! We will fly out to Utah to meet him for Easter and we can't wait!