What we've been up to since we came back

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Good ole' Bavarian baking

and Swiss hot chocolate

We also celebrated a couple birthdays with family and friends, sushi (thanks, Ulli!) and cake

(Lily loves sushi but it MUST be eaten with chopsticks, which calls for intense focussing, and often those California rolls just fall apart anyways.)

Missed you so! :)

Spring is here and the bikers are back!

So are the biking injuries. (Finn, of course.)

And count on our son to catch the stomach bug that went around preschool weeks ago, while we were safely away. This child catches EVERYTHING. He threw up for the first time at 10:30pm the night before Neil's birthday and then every 15 to 30 minutes UNTIL 8 IN THE MORNING. We're still catching up on sleep. On the upside, Neil was up for about 22 out of 24 hours of his birthday. That counts for something!

Happy to say, no one else got this and it only lasted a couple days. But Finn was very miserable and after talking to his doctor in the morning Neil took Finn to the children's hospital. We were able to rehydrate him without an IV (THANK GOODNESS for no needles!), so he didn't have to stay there over night. Now he is all better, but lost some more weight. He also lost a pound at the rehab center, so now Lily is officially heavier than him. But don't tell Finn!

More pictures! Lots of them...

As promised, here are some more pictures from our rehab. We stayed in Wustrow, a village on a peninsula a good half hour drive east of Rostock, where Oma and Opa live. Here is an aerial shot. The rehab center is the complex of dark roofed buildings on the bottom left, a couple rows back from the beach.

Our apartment was on the first floor of this building.

The beach

The indoor playground

Finn in the front, and Lily in the very back. And behind Lily the treasure chest on which Finn managed to split his head open.

Making stuffed animals - Finn made a moose (good Canadian! :) and Lily made a seal.

"Look, Mama, bats in your bed!"

"Fasching" - German carnival. Beauty and the Beast are back!

With their kiddie group.

Breathing therapy

Kinder fest

Sports therapy (Finn coughing, as usual). And Lily's ring finger needed to be held just so for most of the day after it sustained a paper cut.

Room service. We ate in our rooms for a couple days after Finn threw up. It was only from coughing too much, but a tummy bug was going around so the doctors were being extra careful.

We walked around town quite a bit and looked at the nice old cottages, the windmill and we even climbed the church tower. Afterwards we went for hot chocolate/coffee and a treat at the bakery. I really enjoyed hanging out with my little buddies.

A selection of Playmobil needed to come too, of course.

Watching cartoons in my bed at night. Obviously this was after Finn's fall. :)

Play hard, rest easy.

And a real highlight for the kids was being able to spend the weekends at Oma's and Opa's house. Lily even stayed over night some days all by herself. We did a lot of fun things like going for a boat ride, visiting the zoo, or just hanging out at home having a good time. Omi Lotti was often with us, too.

A story in pictures

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Starring: Finn and Lily at the beach, a bunch of hungry seagulls, one particularly feisty bird

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"Yum, waffles on a stick!"

"Let's go up to the beach."

Note: not a single bird to be seen.

Five seconds later - tons of them!

See that bird on the left?

Ready for touchdown.

And ... GONE!

Run, Finn, run!

All is well that ends well. :)

It scared Lily a lot when that seagull just swooshed down and stole her waffle right out of her hand. When I realized what was about to happen I ran towards Lily, but it was too late (thus no pictures of the actual taking). She got hit with the wings and was afraid that "the birds would come and peck her!". The next waffle we ate right by the booth. It's always amazing how a gazillion seagulls can appear right out of nowhere as soon as some food appears.

Good as new, the boy!

The stitches were supposed to come out before we left the health clinic, but they didn't because it hadn't quite healed enough. So we took them home to Bavaria and they came out today. Again, medical staff was impressed by the handiwork of that dental surgeon in Rostock. I guess I should write him a thank-you card! Once the scabs fall off there will hardly be a scar. I am so happy to see my son so - together. If you had seen what he looked like with that gaping hole you would be too, believe me.

Finn wasn't too happy about his looks at first. I told him the scabs will fall off soon. He probably thought once the stitches were out every trace of the accident would be gone.

That moment of temporary distress didn't last long though ...

Speaking of distress. My poor little guy. The pedi listened to his lungs today and didn't like what she heard so she ordered a finger prick to check for bacteria in Finn's blood. It's pretty much standard procedure with him - being a child with a history of pneumonia. It doesn't hurt much and all they need are two drops of blood. Finn isn't a fan, but give him a gummy bear and he's game.

So the nurse decided to do the finger prick first, presumably the easier of the two procedures. I had Finn on my lap and when he realized what was going to happen he completely, utterly freaked out. He didn't listen to reason and fought us (3 adults) tooth and nail while screaming at the top of his lungs. It was heart breaking. I felt like a traitor for holding him but we finally got his hand uncurled enough for the prick. When the nurse was done Finn's little hands were shaking so badly it made me cry. I rocked him until he had recovered and he did say that the prick didn't hurt that much. So hopefully he will remember that the next time.

For the removal of the stitches he was a complete angel, not flinching once and laying as still as a rock so the nurse could cut them with the pointy scissors and then pull them out.

I think it is maybe the thought of blood that is freaking him out now. The accident was unbelievably bloody (and Finn did say to me at one point he was glad not ALL of his blood had come out), and it was all over his face and hands, in his eyes etc. So hopefully he will get over this soon, and the next finger prick will be far away! (By the way, his white cell count was normal, thankfully.)

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On a different note, we got home safely and quickly, even though the DVD player in the car didn't work. The kids did so well on the long drive! We are slowly getting settled back in here. I will post pictures from the rehab soon.

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P.S. We are cleared to get his head wet tomorrow or Sunday at the latest, when the stitch holes have closed up. I have never looked forward to washing somebody's hair so much. After almost 2 weeks, and with only having been able to sponge the dried blood out, with several oil baths at the clinic after the accident (where despite my best efforts he did get the back of his head wet and thus oily), he needs it. Badly.

Doing better

Thank you for your e-mails and for thinking of and praying for Finn! I'm happy to report he is doing much better. Yesterday he was back to playing and being goofy, and didn't need pain killers. In the first picture you can see his prize for being brave. He picked Playmobil, of course...

Thankfully, it seems like it really was "just" a hole in his forehead, and nothing else. I was told to watch for signs of trauma to the brain for 48 hours, so I think we are in the clear.

Lily is fine, too. She was really scared when she saw him so hurt, but after the doctor and nurse here cleaned Finn up a bit and bandaged his head I went to get her so she could see for herself that he was okay. And thanks to a good dose of pain killers both kids thought the ride in the ambulance was awesome. When Lily heard the siren she said, "Finn - there's a fire truck coming!". I told her that in fact WE were the ones making all the noise, and she thought that was great. Finn only regretted being strapped down on the stretcher and riding backwards, because he couldn't see anything.

I was happy Lily was picked up by Oma and Opa because our first night here wasn't very restful, with the night nurse checking on Finn all the time. And of course I could take care of him much better without Lily here. I had to cut the bloody shirt off him because I couldn't get it off without it touching his forehead, and I gave him a sponge bath to get the dried blood off. His hair was tricky! No showers until the stitches are out (next Tuesday).

Finn sure gave me a big scare. As Neil can attest to, I do not handle emergencies like this well, especially if there is a lot of blood involved. I am so glad we had a doctor only a flight of stairs away. The accident was witnessed by quite a few other mothers and one of them told me yesterday she had trouble falling asleep because she kept hearing that terrible "thud" when he hit his head. So at least I wasn't the only one haunted by this. I hardly slept that first night, but now that I know he is okay I have somewhat recovered. :) Still, it will be great to be home next week.

It's a blessing to have Oma and Opa only a 40 min drive away. In fact, we are headed there now. Weekends here are "off", no treatments and the daycare is closed. It's a nice, sunny day so I'm sure we will do something fun outside. As long as it doesn't involve running ...

"I'm okay, Daddy, really

but Mama wants to throw away my shirt!"

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So I did manage to get a picture up! Mainly for our Daddy to see that Finn indeed is alive and okay. Count on the kid to keep us on our toes. He did his usual running around in the "pirate ship playroom" here, stumbled and fell headfirst onto on a wooden treasure chest. I was right there to pick him up, and for a moment just stood there staring at the skull I could clearly see through the gap on his forehead. The good thing about being at a rehab center is that there are doctors and nurses here, so I had him on a bed in the doctor's office literally within seconds. There was so.much.blood. We left a trail from the playroom, and it just kept flowing. The doctor here thought we should best go to the university hospital in Rostock (although there is a hospital in a town closer to here) because his skull might be fractured. So Finn was bandaged up, given some pain killers and the ambulance was called.

Meanwhile I collected a Lily beside herself with worry (she thought her brother was dead and I wouldn't let her see Finn covered in blood), packed a couple overnight bags and grabbed Lily's car seat from my car. Off we went in the ambulance - lights flashing and sirens on, which of course the kids loved.

At the hospital Finn told the doctor he could only give him a needle AFTER they put him to sleep, not before. (Like they did when Finn needed surgery on his broken arm.) Finn had told the same to the doctor at the rehab center, and to the paramedics - getting a needle was his biggest fear. So he had to be very brave when the doctor indeed had to give him needles in his forehead before stitching him up. And he was!

Since they could examine the bone from the outside, so to speak, there was no need for an x-ray of Finn's head and thankfully, there was no sign of a fracture. So all they did was to stitch him up, with dissolvable stitches on the inside and regular ones on the surface, which will come out in a week. While they were working on him Oma and Opa came to the hospital, Lily and I (and Finn, after he was back) were very happy to see them! Lily went home with Oma and Opa to spend the night there. Finn and I were driven back to the rehab center; after some observation it was decided Finn didn't need to stay the night at the hospital, especially since we have a night nurse here.

We were back here just before 10pm, I cleaned the little guy up as well as I could (the hair is tricky as showers are out for now) and put him to bed. We (the nurse and I) checked on him at 1am and 4am, and he was sleeping soundly and had moved a little in his sleep which was good. I woke up at 6:30 and here I am an hour later and he is still sleeping. We will go see the doctor as soon as Finn wakes up. He will probably need some pain killers today and we'll take it easy. Hopefully it will all heal nicely and quickly. And NO MORE RUNNING in the pirate ship playroom for my kids!

Update with no pictures

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So. The kids are asleep and instead of somehow trying to get the sand out of the clothes piling up in the shower I am vegging on my bed "surfing" the net. "Surfing" these days means I have that little USB stick modem thingy plugged into my laptop hoping it will manage to get a connection with a mobile phone network. When it's working it works great and only takes about as long to load a page as it takes me to flip through all the TV stations to find that there is still nothing on that is worth watching.
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Other than the absolutely unforgivable lack of wireless internet the rehab center ("Kurklinik") is actually quite nice. It is like a little village with everyone and everything you need right here: doctors, nurses, cooks, teachers, therapists, a daycare, a small pool, gym and even room service. We found out about that great feature when we were quarantined after Finn threw up in the doctor's presence once. Apparently there was a tummy bug going around and even though I told them that Finn threw up from coughing so much we were asked to keep to ourselves for a bit. No problemo. I had wisely raided the toystore before we came and bought some awesome Toy Story lego sets on sale. Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!
Anyway. After his initial check-up Finn got a treatment plan that includes things like asthma education classes, swimming, sports, breathing exercises, oil baths (for his dry skin), relaxation exercises and some medical appointments like testing of his lung function/capacity etc. He and Lily were assigned a daycare room (the "Lighthouse Group") and the kids are taken outside from 10-11:30am every day. The daycare opens at 8am, and I could theoretically drop them off there for most of the day. Usually I take them there shortly before 10am though so they can go outside with the other kids. The daycare teachers make sure the kids get taken to their treatments and are picked up again afterwards. Most of the other mothers are here on mother/child retreats, so they have a treatment plan to follow as well and need the daycare to watch their children. Since I am just Finn's "caregiver" and he is the patient I am free to do what I want. Last week mostly all I wanted was to lay in bed and get over this silly cold that turned into a nasty sinus infection. I am hoping to be back to normal soon. Finn of course got sick too, as did Lily and A LOT of the other kids. We were warned this would happen. Finn is still coughing but at least fever free now.
Before I got sick I braved the cold and ran almost daily while Finn and Lily were outside with their kiddie group. I had to put on three layers to stay reasonably warm, but if I kept out of the wind it was actually really nice! Now that it has warmed up a bit (just above freezing) and the sun is shining I am itching to put my running shoes back on. Soon!
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Both Finn and I have learned quite a bit about his asthma and how his meds work. And now that he is getting healthier again I am hoping his immune system will be strengthened by breathing in lots of the nice fresh sea air. We will stay until the 16th, so another week. Today we spent hours at the beach, and it was SO nice. Hoping for more sunny days!
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I have more to say but have probably bored you enough and will try and get this posted before blogger crashes on me (again). We are loving our weekends here because we get to see Oma and Opa who live only a good half hour drive away. Very convenient!
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And I DID actually try to upload a picture. Ha ha. You will definitely have to wait for those.