Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week did not go how we expected it to go this year.

On Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving), Jason and I were planning to drive to Louisiana to stay for the night with Melanie and Randy. Jason's mom was going to watch Abby and we would join them again on Thanksgiving and stay with them for the weekend.

What actually happened was that Sunday night before Thanksgiving week, Abby started acting a little different. She would yell at me every time she tried to eat a different food. Usually she is a very good eater and even if she doesn't like something, she would never throw a tantrum. This continued through Tuesday during the day and she began to drool exceedingly. She also woke up Sunday and Monday nights yelling "No! No!". All signs at that point led to us thinking that she was just teething.

Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, we left after work to head to Jason's parents house. We were to spend the night there and leave for Louisiana in the morning. Abby would not sleep this night. She was 5 times more difficult with dinner then she had been previously. She wouldn't eat a thing. We finally got her to sleep at 10pm but she was up again screaming at 11pm. So, I made an executive decision that we would be skipping the trip and driving home that night.

We saw the doctor the next day and he said that she had hand, foot, and mouth virus. This is common in young children and the symptoms are usually sores on the child's hands, feet, and in their throat. Abby didn't have any sores on her feet or hands, but she had them in her throat. This is why she wouldn't swallow food or saliva (looked like drool)... and it is why she would wake up at night screaming. The doctor gave us a medicine concoction to help with her pain and minutes after taking it for the first time she was feeling so much better.

The doctor said she was highly contagious, so we knew that we couldn't do Thanksgiving at Jason's parents house. Abby has four cousins (10 and under) that she could contaminate. And, after more research on the web, we learned that although adults could get this sickness, children had a much higher risk. So, we decided to go to my parent's house for the holiday. We did this for two reasons: one we needed help since neither Jason or I had slept in a long while and two, we didn't want to spend the holiday without our family.

My parents did help us a lot with Abby. They let us sleep in and take a few naps. And Abby slowly started to get better. By Saturday she appeared to be all better.

It was a small Thanksgiving, but we were thankful to spend it with my parents and my grandma, Gigi. Here are some of our holiday pictures. The rest are posted on our Shutterfly account.