the downward plunge

shortly after i posted last night, abby woke up kind of whimpering and saying she didn't feel well.  she felt nice and toasty so i took her temp -- 102.  she wasn't complaining of anything in particular so i just prayed quietly in her ear, stroked her hair, and rubbed her back until around 1:00 or 1:30 this morning (i had been up working until around 12:30 so i wasn't in there that long).  when my eyelids began begging for mercy, i kissed her forehead, tucked her in tight, and crawled into my own bed for a good night's sleep.

or not.

at 2:00, i awoke from my few minutes of sleep to the sound of jack crying in his bed.  it wasn't a whimpery kind of cry like abby had done.  no, it was more like a screaming kind of wail.  i ran in there and saw him grabbing his ear, and as soon as he saw me, he said with his adorable unable-to-say-his-r's kind of language, "it hults so bad.  i got an infection!!"  i usually try to avoid doing much in the pill-popping realm, but we've done this kind of infection before -- the bacterial kind that comes out of nowhere, causes a high fever, and usually ends up causing the eardrum to rupture (poor little guy has had a hard go of it in the ear department).  so without a second thought, i dosed him up with motrin and put some numbing drops in his ears.

unfortunately, none of our efforts did much to help with the pain so josh and i took turns with him for the rest of the night and we hit the doc-in-the-box first thing this morning.  she took one look at his ear and said, "oh my word.  his ear is fiery red and the eardrum is bulging out into the canal."  (or at least i think that's what she said.  it was kind of hard to hear her over jack's screaming.)

all of this is to say that i had grand intentions of writing all about abby's big weekend tonight, but instead, i'm going to leave you with a few pics that tell a little about it.  coherent thoughts to come later.  :-)