Happy Birthday, Connor!

Post date: Jun 8, 2010 12:15:14 AM

On Friday, June 4th, Connor turned TWO!

To mark his 2nd year, Mom, Dad and Big Brother got him a small icecream cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to him while he smugly looked on. Connor blew out the candle on his cake and was quite pleased. I believe his actual words were, "Wow!"

See for yourself...

It turned out to be a very busy weekend.

Early Saturday we headed out bright and early on a 4 1/2 hour drive to visit my niece and her new baby boy. My very first great-nephew was being baptized on Sunday and most of our clan was getting together to celebrate the event. Since there was going to be so much family in one place, we were also going to have a small celebration for Connor's 2nd birthday.

It almost didn't happen.

Not after I had to take Connor to the ER/Urgent Care center on Friday afternoon - yes, on his birthday.

About a week prior, Connor had gotten some sort of viral illness that resulted in red spots all over his face and more scattered around his torso, arms and legs. At first we were very worried it was chicken pox and I frantically called neighbors and friends asking if anyone had been exposed to chicken pox recently. When his pediatrician got a look at him, he suspected some sort of viral infection but not chicken pox. Fortunately whatever virus it was didn't seem too bad. It certainly didn't slow Connor down. He was as chipper as ever and not in the least itchy. Days passed. His spots mostly faded although a couple new ones would crop up here and there, but not many.

Then on Friday we were heading to get his pictures taken when we noticed that there was a particularly ugly spot on his chest - right on top of his central line scar. It was larger than the previous spots he'd had and it had a large whitehead of pus. Gross. Since it was right where his central line used to be, we were worried that it might have gotten infected. After a call to the doctor, he suggested we head to the satellite pediatric ER/Urgent Care center nearby. The ER doctor confirmed it was some sort of abscess. He took a culture of the questionable spot, gave me a prescription for antibiotics and recommended that we not travel - just in case what with Connor's history and all. We were very disappointed. We called various family and said we couldn't come after all. Even though Connor seemed fine. And he had fewer spots now than he had a few days ago. And he had no fever. Hmm.

Saturday morning came and his spots were a little better and definitely no worse. We didn't see any new spots. More calls with various family members. The dilemma - should we travel and go against doctor's recommendation or not and miss out on the family event? We decided to go for it and figured we could always head back if he got worse or check into the perfectly good and respectable children's hospital down there if we really needed to.

Thankfully we never had to put the backup plans into action. Connor has had no new spots and seems to be healing up ok. We did get the culture results back from the hospital today and he's now on a different antibiotic that is more effective for the bacteria that they found.

Connor got to blow out a 2nd candle on his 2nd cake that his cousins got for him. My great-nephew is a super-cutie and was wonderfully behaved during the baptism. Connor and big brother had a blast with their cousins playing in the pool, watching movies and playing games. It was a noisy and fun affair all around. So glad we got to see and spend time with everyone!