Well, we had another meeting with the ol’ friend The Croup with Zack again last night.  It’s been quite a while since he’s had an attack.  Just to refresh anyone’s memory that isn’t aware of the troubles we’ve had with it, Zack’s been in the hospital at least 3-4 times in the past few years to be treated in the ER for severe crouping cough.  He hasn’t been bad enough that they’ve had to intubate him yet…but we’ve spent the night in the hospital at least 3 times with nebulized steroid/oxygen breathing treatments, shots, and constant monitoring.  One time, I ended up having to be transported to a pediatric intensive care unit at the main hospital by ambulance with him where they kept him at the hospital for 3 days.

Well, last night’s attack wasn’t quite that bad, but I think I caught it early.  About 5am I could hear him breathing very badly, coughing, and crying.  He gets bad enough that he actually has stomach convulsions, and if I don’t calm him down he could (and has in the past) vomit.  We got him bundled up and brought him outside in the sunporch (it’s cold here in Michigan, so it helps a bit to breath in the cold air).  I went with him and we brought the Archos (portable media player) which has a copy of Wall-E on it.  I sat out there for quite a while with him, and between the cold air, sitting upright, and calming down with the movie…I think we avoided any further disasters.

Hopefully he’s better tonight.  Usually he has one bad night, and then maybe a second minor night with the cough/breathing.  He should be coming out of the stage where it affects him, though…I’m still shocked that it’s occurring.  I’ve read that after 36 months, kids should grow enough so that their not as affected by swelling of the airway.  He’s going to be 4 years old in March, so we should’ve already have seen the worst with this problem for him.

Well, our garage is almost ready for cars for this winter.  I’ve pretty much finished up the shelves that I wanted to build in there.  I could put more up, but for now I think it’s a huge help to have more storage on the sides and back of the garage.  Good thing too because it’s been lightly snowing up here the past few weeks.  Just need to get rid of this Dodge Charger so we can have more room in the driveway to move cars around, and everything will be much better.

She’s starting to get really goofy lately.  When I went to pick her up from daycare, she was jumping all around and dancing.  Looked like she hadn’t lost any energy at all throughout the day.  She was doing that when I dropped her off in the morning too.  And then in the car she was bouncing around in her seat waving her hands all over.  I couldn’t figure it out.  I wasn’t even listening to any music…I had a boring Heroes podcast on (well, boring for them probably.)

Not much went on this weekend.  Friday night was pretty much a stay at home night.  Saturday I stayed home to watch the kids while Laura was out and about.  Later on in the evening I had to work for Quicken Loans.  And then Sunday we went to church, I visited Kevin to do some work and play some games, and we each spent the night working on the computer.  I think I’m going to touch up the Team-Miller blog with a new theme and some sidebar stuff.  Then I probably should post in my other two blogs and of course keep one eye on Facebook since it’s been quite active out there lately.

Zack did something interesting tonight that he’s never done before.  We’re starting to get a lot of catalogs in the mail for toys for holiday shopping.  Zack picked one up off the table this evening and started thumbing through it.  He noticed there’s a lot of toys pictured in the catalog and became interested in seeing what they were.

Well, you all know Zack can read and understand dollar amounts now (amazing to me still, he’s only 3)…so he went and got his clear plastic bank with all his money in it.  The top of his bank has a counter that shows him how much money he’s put in it.  So he started to go through the catalog finding out which toys he could afford based on the amount of money his bank said he had.

We were amazed.  He needed some help on some of them, but he was able to figure out the prices and knew which toys he could buy.  I really think we should have another excursion out…more of a serious one this time.

I take him to the dollar store about once a month and we buy cheap toys for a dollar each.  Mainly just to get him to understand how it works to do something…earn some money for doing it…save your money…and then go out and buy something with cash.

So this catalog shopping thing was somthing new.  Can’t wait to see what else he learns based on the things we’re teaching him about money, saving, and spending.