Splurge or Save Thursday: Origami Tote

Any experience treating Pneumonia in a 4 yr old? My son has had a persistent cough and complains of being fatigued constantly, and we saw a pulmonologist earlier this week. The pulmonologist suspected asthma, but ordered a chest x-ray to make sure there were no abnormalities. I received a call on Monday that the radiologist thinks the Xray shows signs of pneumonia, but the pulmonologist disagrees. Essentially, pulmonologist (and another doctor in his practice) thinks no pneumonia, and radiologist thinks yes. The pulmonologist basically left it up to me whether we (1) treat it like pneumonia with an initial round of heavy duty antibiotics, or (2) jump right into a daily inhaler with some pretty heavy duty asthma medication for a month (which he said at the appointment could have some longterm risk to his growth, which is significant for a lot of reasons and in particular bc he’s in the absolute smallest percentile for growth and always has been).

Interestingly, the pulmonologist recommended we go straight to the daily inhaler b/c the antibiotics are pretty heavy duty (and clearly bc he and another doctor in the practice disagree with the finding of pneumonia by the radiologist) but now I’m second guessing this decision — why wouldn’t we want to start with treating it as though it’s pneumonia and go with the short term antibiotics first (which yes, have a side effect of GI issues, but no growth issues?) Then, if the cough persists after the antibiotics, we can try adding in the asthma medication? WWYD? If your child had pneumonia, did antibiotics clear it up? If you have a diagnosis of asthma, did a daily inhaler help? Ugh.

My cousin is finally (!!) pregnant with her first after a long and hard road trying to get pregnant. I’m over the moon thrilled for her and want to send her something for Mother’s Day. In addition to flowers are there any things you would have appreciated as an expectant mom? No baby items (Jewish and not doing a shower) but things for her are ok.

Sleep deprived rant. We’re 12 weeks into 2024 and my kids’ school has had 48 days of school on the schedule. Today we’re on child’s sick day number 12. We’ve also had 1 snow day and 2 half days. So this year I’ve had both kids in school all day for 33 days total. On average thats about 3 days of school per week this year (if I don’t include the week of vacation where we went away). I’ve also had some health issues that required 3 doctor visits myself. I work part time and I’m barely keeping up. People say the sick thing gets better as they get older, but mine are young elementary and I’m still waiting…

Vent to the universe – my kid’s school has 800 kids in it. We’re oddballs as a family with both parents working FT. I’m trying to coordinate the school uniform exchange during parents’ evenings and cannot for the life of me fill 8 30-minute slots. It’s very chill, you can bring your kids, I just need a warm body to stand in a room and help families browse.

Looking for audio book recommendations for a road trip with two boys , 7 and 10, who are pretty stereotypically “boy” in their interests. I think they probably need something that’s pretty exciting or has really good voice actors — we’ve tried Paddington and Ralph S Mouse in the past and they were bored. They love podcasts (Circle Round, Brains On, Forever Ago) so I think it’s just a matter of finding the right book.

My 3 year old son seems to have mild social anxiety in settings where he interacts with other kids, like birthday parties (with his friends from preschool), play dates (again with friends he knows), and events at preschool outside of the routine school day. Any tips or scripts to encourage him to be brave and feel comfortable? There must be a Daniel Tiger episode for this. I think his behavior is age appropriate, but I know he can enjoy himself more when he isn’t glued to my leg!

Relatedly, we’re considering whether to redshirt him for kindergarten. We have plenty of time to decide, and I’m curious what to be aware of in our decision making process. For context, he was born over a month premature in August, so his due date would have been after the school year Sept 1 cutoff. He’s also small for his age and has had gross motor delays, so he’s been in weekly PT since birth. For example, he isn’t climbing and jumping like classmates. I think he could, but he’s scared (his word) about trying and falling. Also, he’s just not that interested! He’s very verbal, though, and extremely curious. Any thoughts we should consider over the next year or so?

i was the poster yesterday who was trying to figure out how to schedule various therapy appointments for my kids and fit in activities…perhaps this is just where i live, but I’d love to have my kids choose to do dance in the fall or spring, but if you don’t do it all year (at the 3 different places i looked into) you can’t be in the recital. if you skip a year of dance, then you missed Ballet I or whatever, and cannot go on with other kids your age to ballet II. with baseball/softball there is a draft starting in the 1st or 2nd grade (ridiculous, i know, but i dont plan on starting my own league so have to work with what we have). i think it is beyond absurd, but it is so hard for kids to try things later.