What Happened with the Grandbabies in June

Daughter E, Grandbaby #1, and Grandbaby #2 came for Sunday dinner on June 5th.

Grandbaby #2 was born near the end of April so she is still a tiny one:

But she already has a sweet smile:

A week after this, on Monday June 13, I had planned to stop by E's house after work and help her take care of the babies for a few hours since her husband C was on a fishing trip in Alaska. I sent E a text message to ask whether I should pick up some sandwiches or something like that for dinner on my way to her house that evening. 

I'll use a few text messages as I explain what happened next. (Yes, I type up and save my text messages if they have important information in them or are really funny. I consider them to be part of our family story, and have some really hilarious ones I will share with you another time. But these are not some of the hilarious ones.) 

Text from E in reply to my text about dinner: June 13, 3:10 pm

"I’m at the dr now. [Grandbaby #2] has a really bad eye infection. The dr just told me she has to be hospitalized!"

We had a phone call about 20 minutes later. The baby's eye was so bad that E was told to take her straight to Primary Children's Medical Center--don't even go home first. The Dr told E the medical term for the eye condition (my brother who is an eye Dr knew immediately what it was when I told him about it--but I can't remember it now). Essentially, an abscess was filling with infected fluid and pus next to the eye. It is a condition that could cause blindness or worse if not treated. Extremely scary. I said I would pick up Grandbaby #1 from the neighbor who had been taking care of her during the Dr visit, and stay with her overnight. E's Mom came by the house later that evening and picked up some items and took them to E at the hospital.

The next text later that night:  Jun 13, 9:17 pm

"In bed in the room, going on IV antibiotics for now, they will reassess the abscess (how to drain) after the infection calms down a bit." [Photo attached to text.]

The next morning: Jun 14, 9:59 am

"Eye is doing better this morning." [Photo attached to text.]

I hadn't seen the baby since the Sunday dinner at our house the week before. It was extremely sobering for me when I saw this photo and realized that his was the "better" version.

Meanwhile at E's house, Grandbaby #1 ate some breakfast. Before I could fix her some scrambled eggs or a dish of yogurt, she pulled a toy up next to the cupboards, climbed up on the toy so she could see the counter top, and found some sweet bread for her breakfast:

It is almost as if she knew exactly where to find it. :) The sweet bread was full of cinnamon chips. Her parents limit the sugary foods that that she is allowed to eat, so this cinnamon chip bread was quite a treat for her. At least I got her to drink some milk with it. :)

Here's the next text from E later on Tuesday morning: June 14, 11:33 am

"Looks like [Grandbaby #2] will have surgery to drain abscess tomorrow morning, plan is to probe, not incise, so that is good"

A medical scan image of the abscess shows that it was huge for her little head--nearly as large as her eyeball. See the round object where the arrow is pointing? That's the abscess to the left of her eye. So scary!

I took the day off of work and stayed with Grandbaby #1 the rest of the day. The other grandmas took care of her the following days, until C could get home from Alaska.

Wednesday morning: June 15, 9:09 am

Surgery all done, went great!!! She is just waking up.

The next time Randy and I saw Daughter E and her family was on Father's Day, June 19, when they invited us to enjoy some of C's Alaskan Salmon catch. The sweet baby looked perfect. Those surgeons at Primary Children's really know how to care for the tiniest of people.

Here are a few photos of Randalf enjoying Father's Day with the newest grandbaby:

He is wearing a tie that he received from Son J as a Father's Day gift.

The tie was sort of a joke, because Randalf is not very fond of wearing ties. In fact, he has been known to cut the collars off of shirts because they are often deemed offensive. He's definitely a Henley collar kind of guy. But I think he dresses up mighty fine:

I got my own turn with the baby. She put up with me pretty well, and did much better when she was swaddled up all tight in her blanket:

(Side note: This child does have dark eyes, but not as dark as they appear here. I had to edit the photos to get the "red-eye" out and the result was a bit more dark than reality. Just for the record, you know, since I tend to care about the record.)

We enjoyed a fabulous salmon dinner (which I described in a previous blog post). During dinner, Grandbaby #1 disappeared from the table for a while, and then we heard her yelling excitedly from the bathroom: "I did a big one! Dad come see!" She is still at the age where such an occurrence is to be celebrated and rewarded. Her reward treat was ice cream.  

After dinner, she had a fun time playing with Play-Doh.

She asked her Dad to help her recreate her big moment in Play-Doh. Here we have a little person with ice cream after making a deposit in the toilet:

Someday she may be embarrassed that I blogged about this story--but then a few years after that she'll be really glad that I did. :) Such cute little girl--no longer a baby, but she will forever be Grandbaby #1 on this blog, no matter how old she gets.

At the end of the night, we got a couple of generational photos with Randalf, his daughter, and her daughters (Sorry, no photo of Son-in-Law C. I'll get one of him next time.)

I asked the adults to get down a bit so we could fit Grandbaby #1 in the photo, so she squatted down too:

 

She is at such a fun age.

I'm really lucky to get to be a Grandma.