just another cold

I am pleased to report that the move to the Sacramento area seems to have done wonders for the health of Jujubee’s lungs.  Yay!

She had a cold about a month ago that kept her home from school for a few days.  I didn’t know what course the cold would take – would it go straight to her lungs or would it stay a cold?  Thankfully, it stayed a cold!  Yay!

Last Friday, Jujubee was feeling a little sick again, and she asked to stay home from school.  I have no problem letting her stay home if she requests it.  She knows her own body quite well.  She felt better Saturday, which was good, because we had to go up to Redding so Lyd could be in the Quiz Bowl, and the girls all had fun playing outside with other kids there.  Unfortunately, that night around 2:30 a.m., I woke up to the sound of seal-barking cough from the girls’ bedroom.  Oh, no!  Jujubee’s got croup!

However, Jujubee is four years old, not four months old, and there’s a world of difference in those two airway sizes.  All I had to do for Jujubee was to help her stop crying and calm down, and then she asked for “echinacea applesauce,” which is a applesauce mixed with a broken-open echinacea capsule.  After that, she was able to go back to sleep snuggled next to me in the guest room bed.  I did not have to do breathing treatments or steroids or anything else.  Yippee!

She seemed to be feeling a little better the next day, but that night she had a fairly high fever.  I never actually took her temperature to see how high it was, because, again, it was the middle of the night, but after giving her a dose of Tylenol and another echinacea-applesauce, she was able to fall asleep.  Since then, her cold seems to be staying in her throat and out of lungs, and it seems to be getting better!

I am delighted!  This now makes two colds that have stayed colds.  I am SO very grateful to be living here, where the climate is so much better for my little girl.

Funny side note: Jujubee remembers every time she’s been sick this entire calendar year.  She had the stomach flu right at New Year’s, then she had pneumonia in March, April, May, and June, and now she’s had two colds this fall.  She numbers them all, and she very much enjoys counting them off for me.  It’s really cute.  I’ll have to videotape her doing this sometime.  And I’m impressed that she remembers everything so well!