Foreign Hospital Trip BTW We moved to Abu Dhabi

So I've been a little bad about blogging, but now that we have moved into our new place and settled in a little I should be a little better. We've moved to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates for my husband's job. More on that in another post.

We've been living in the UAE for almost a month now. About a week ago Leah started coming down with a congested cough. I'm not a person to freak out about a little cough, but it got progressively worse. I had been putting off going go the doctor because our residency visas are still in process and insurance can be tricky without them.

She woke up twice last night crying (not a normal thing at all) and then this morning started clutching her chest saying, "Hurt!" each time that she coughed. She was feverish, lethargic, and wouldn't even eat her breakfast, so I made the decision to leave right then. I called a new local friend from church that gave me directions to the nearest clinic (only about 5-7 minutes of walking) and we headed off with Leah in the jogging stroller.

There's the medical center in the distance.. just a few minutes away from our villa. Sooo sandy here!

I arrived at the clinic quickly and easily after navigating the sandy terrain here, but had no clue what to do upon arrival. As I came up to the building, I noticed that there were separate labeled entrances for women and men. I went in the correct entrance and then just stood in the lobby in complete confusion for a few moments. I was approached by a very kind woman in traditional clothing (a niqab in this instance) and given directions on how to take a number from a little computer on my left. I sat in the chair waiting and worrying about our lack of visas and lack of passports (because they are being used to process of our residency visas)... and of course worrying about Leah who was clutching her chest and coughing.

After a short wait, we were seen by the receptionist who asked to see passports (of course) and then Leah's insurance card which I actually had! It turns out that our private insurance was not taken at that particular clinic and we were told to go elsewhere. I almost panicked and started crying (but was able to stay calm) and told them I didn't know any other places to go. They told me to call taxi and they would help tell the driver where to take us. I explained that if was my first time calling a taxi and they were very helpful. 

A new friend out here had given me the number of a taxi company which I had programmed into my phone. She also had explained the weird system where you will get a call afterwards from the driver but sometimes they will just hang up without talking and then you should call the number back. The reason they do that is because cell phone minutes here are only charged to the originator of the call. 

So I called the taxi company and they got me a driver who then immediately called me and hung up. I called back and was able to tell him where to come get us.

While we waited in the lobby for the taxi, Leah started a huge coughing fit and was crying. They had a nurse there take her temperature which was told to me in Celsius...and I was like, "Is that high? I only know Fahrenheit." It was high so they wiped her down with a cold washcloth to try to bring down her fever.

The taxi arrived moments later and they helped explain our destination to the driver and helped me get the stroller into the trunk. As we drove off, all three women that had helped me stood there on the sidewalk and wished us well. As soon as we pulled away, the driver asked me if that was the hospital I really wanted to go to. I figured it was because the hospital was in Mussafah which is basically the ghetto here... completely safe, but ghetto. I just told him to take me where the nurses and receptionist told him to take us. I was nervous about the cost because I only had 55 dirhams on me which I'd the equivalent of about $15 USD. I was also nervous because there was no car seat in the taxi. (They don't really use them here.)

Leah in the taxi on the way to the hospital. She's ticked and a little wet after our visit to the first clinic.

We arrived safely at the Al Noor Hospital in Mussafah and the ride was only 10.75 dirhams. The taxi driver was nice and actually gave me change. When we arrived, someone at the hospital took the stroller out for us. The hospital was about 5 stories high and there was a dirt road in front of it. I was assisted into the door and up the ramp by three guys. I didn't even have to push the elevator button. We arrived in pediatrics and we're seen within five minutes of coming through the door. Leah was seen by a nurse and had her temperature, weight, and height taken... all in units that I was unfamiliar with. 

We were then seen immediately by a doctor across the hall. Her desk was in the room where she examined Leah. She asked me some simple questions about the symptoms and then ordered a chest x-ray. 

We were seen immediately at x-ray which was outside the building and next door. Leah was terrified, but stayed pretty still for her x-rays. It only took a few moments and then we were back in the doctor's office next door. The x-rays confirmed that Leah has bronchitis. She needs to get nebulizer treatments at the hospital twice a day for at least the next three days. 

We started the first treatment right there. Leah let the nurse put on the mask, but panicked as soon as the nurse left. I got her to sit still and soon she was sleeping in her stroller through the whole treatment.  We were also given four prescriptions to pick up at the pharmacy which was outside and next door to xray. We only waited about 2 minutes for the pharmacist to get all the medicines together and then he explained very clearly in good English about doses and frequency by marking the boxes.

Poor baby fell asleep during he nebulizer treatment; she was so tired after sleeping so poorly last night.

After getting Leah's prescriptions, we called a taxi and waited for the driver to arrive. There were a few taxis that came at the same, but the one that I talked to matched the name od the driver I was supposed to take. (The taxi company sends you a text with the phone and id of the taxi driver that will be picking you up.) He was there within 5 minutes or so. I explained where we lived and he looked confused, but just started driving. I explained that we lived near a certain mosque and he seemed more sure. I pulled up Google Maps on my phone to see where we were driving. We neared our villa compound, but then he stopped (MID ROUNDABOUT!) and asked where he should go. I tried to show him the map on my phone and it didn't help at all so I just ended up giving him directions. We made it home and the taxi ride was 14.75 dirhams. I gave the driver 15 and he actually gave me change back.

Leah actually ate a little bit of scrambled eggs and cereal and then took all four of her medicines. She didn't want to swallow, but did do when I bribed her with M&Ms. She tried to sleep in her crib for a while, but woke up coughing and crying. I took her out of her crib and gave her a bath to try to cool her down. She just laid in the tub and fell asleep as I poured water over her for about 30 minutes. She wanted to get back into bed with me so we're here now and she's laying on my chest trying to get some sleep.

Poor kid! I love her! I hope all these meds help her lungs heal quickly.

Second Birthday Party

I was having difficulty coming up with what we would do as a theme for Leah's second birthday party. It was about a month before her birthday and our next door neighbor had given us this mega blocks table. I was making breakfast the next morning before we had even gotten a chance to play with it when I witnessed this from the kitchen. Leah had been picking up blocks one by one and sorting them out by color into their matching places. (I was beaming!) She picked up the purple piece and hesitated for a while. Finally, she threw the block down and went over and grabbed a book instead. Where does the purple one go?

It was at this moment that I decided that we needed to do a colors themed party. My daughter has somehow inherited my love of color coding. It was perfect! She was also into coloring, so I figured we would do a rainbow/coloring themed birthday party. It wasn't exactly original, but it seemed easy and doable. Pinterest to the rescue! Here's my board of yummy appetizer ideas, birthday invite layouts, activities, party favors, and of course THE CAKE!

I was mostly excited about the cake... I mean... look at that thing. It's amazing! The two invitation seemed easy enough. I googled how to make an easy chevron print background in Photoshop and the rest was just deciding on a color scheme and fun fonts. I even came up with an original little rhyme that wasn't on Pinterest.. all of that reading of Dr. Seuss is finally paying off!

As you may recall, last year I went a little overboard for the party favors. This year, I was trying to tone it down. I wanted to make something useful that the kids would possibly use in the future. Pinterest came in handy once again and I decided to make a crayon wallet. I was able to get all the materials I needed for under $10 - two yards of fabric, some elastic, and a box of assorted crayons. It's really easy to embroider things with my mom's machine, so I went ahead and did that too. The hardest part was finding two coordinating fabrics that I liked.

We had lots of yummy food - all recipes from Pinterest. The pizza puffs went quickly, the meatballs were a cinch, and the bacon-wrapped little sausages were so tasty. On top of these little appetizers we had a ton of colorful fruit. I think everyone left with their bellies full.

We started at 11 am and I just had a bunch of toys set up to play with inside. It warmed up a bit, so we decided to head out in front of the house and do sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and play with ride on toys. Around noon, we headed back in to eat. After the kids were finished eating, they wanted to go outside and play again, so we headed back out for present opening and play... and an attempt at getting a group picture.

Playing inside while moms catch up and we wait for the weather to warm up a little.

This little blocked road in front of my house is perfect for sidewalk chalk and outside play. 

The birthday girl with her birthday presents!

Group picture?

This year she actually opened them and said, "Oooh! Wow!" :-)

After opening presents we went inside to sing Happy Birthday and eat CAKE!!! This was the moment I was looking forward to... cutting the cake... Oh and watching Leah blow out the candles OF COURSE. ;) I had stayed up all night long working on the cake. The layered colors part was a cinch. The only problem I ran into was while I was icing it. I ran out of icing midway through and so I ended up having to make another batch. I put the icing in the sleeve and started tying to decorate the cake again, but the consistency was too thick and I could barely get it out of the tip, so I put it back in the mixer and added some milk and loaded the icing back into the sleeve AGAIN. I started decorating the cake again... but then the frosting was too runny. Eek! (This was around 2 am.) The third time was luckily the charm and I was able to finish icing the cake. I then decided to throw some sprinkles on the cake. Evenly distributing them and getting them to stick was interesting. I ended up with sprinkles all over my kitchen because I was literally having to launch them at the cake. :)

Cake Process Pictures! It was very easy to do! I followed this tutorial.

These are the after pictures of my kitchen. :)

Leah has been practicing blowing out candles with scented candles around the house, so she was ready when cake time came.

The cake was too tall and she couldn't blow out the candles.

Luckily a friend of mine stepped in to help so I could take pictures. :)

The colorful inside... and oh it was SOO tasty. It's making me really hungry just looking at these pictures!

Leah took a nice long nap after everyone went home.  When she woke up, she wanted cake, so I went ahead and did a cake smash photo shoot with her. She enjoyed it.

"How about you get me some more of the cake over there?"

"All Done!!"

A comparison picture of last year versus this year. My little girl LOVES her cake!

Happy 2nd Birthday my dear sweet Leah!

Leah 21 Months Old

Leah is 21 months old and more fun than ever! Right now, she weighs 26 pounds and is 35 inches tall. Śhe is wearing 18-24 month clothing, size 6 shoes, and size 3 diapers.

Prior to leaving for Utah, we went to the local Santa breakfast in the firehouse to get pictures taken with Santa. This year Leah was just not interested. Everyone has one of these pictures in their scrapbooks, right?

Most of this month was spent in Utah where we visited Leah's great grandparents and grandparents. She is becoming quite the traveler with more air miles and destinations than I had in my first 20-some-odd years. She does best when she has her own seat like she miraculously ended up with on an overbooked Southwest flight to Denver on our way to Utah. Fortunately now, she will play with the iPad on the plane to keep her busy.

This month communication-wise she picked up a few new words that she uses regularly - ready, done, tada, night, potty, and clean (keen).The biggest change is that she's constantly trying new words. She hasn't necessarily added them to her regular vocabulary, but you can ask her, "Leah, say ____." and she will usually take a stab at whatever it is.

While we were out in Utah, Leah warmed up rather quickly to her surroundings. She adjusted to Mountain Standard Time within two days of arriving including nap times. We started our time in Utah in Provo with Leah's great grandparents. Leah enjoyed playing with all of the toys that Grandma R keeps around the house. She also figured out how to work Mommy's phone and iPad, so there is now a huge pink "kid-friendly" cover on the iPad. 

Leah's first text message

She also enjoyed giving kisses to Grandma and Grandpa R each night before bedtime. Grandma R was particularly impressed with Leah's ability to remember where things were in the house and how good she was at using a spoon for her age.

After almost a week in Provo, we headed north to Grandma and Grandpa S's house. The first night there we had a power outage for a few hours, so Leah spent that time lighting and blowing out candles in the dark with her aunts. She loves candles and her aunts, so it made the time go by quickly.

The next day was Sunday and Leah really enjoyed watching her Grandma play the organ in church. She had some difficulty with the 11-2 church schedule and had to go home to nap midway through church 2/3 weeks that we were there.

We had a ton of fun decorating (and eating) sugar cookies and making graham cracker gingerbread houses. Leah really enjoyed getting her fill of sugary treats at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

One activity that Leah really enjoyed was being swung in a blanket. Unfortunately for her Aunt and Grandparents, we found that arms became tired more quickly then Leah. Luckily, there were lots of blanket swingers in the house to provide back up.

Leah's personality really continued to blossom while we were out in Utah. We've found that she loves to have an audience and will be a real ham if she notices that it gets the attention (and laughs) of those around her. In this video, Doug's family had shown Leah what it looked like when you cross you eyes and she thought it was the most interesting thing. She ran around the room and would grab your face with both hands, put her forehead up to your forehead and stare directly into your eyes expectantly waiting for you to cross your eyes.

The presents were starting to pile under the tree prior to Christmas and Leah, not understanding that there were fun toys inside, had fun stacking and organizing the presents under the tree.

Christmas morning was great. After not having any snow for quite some time in Utah, they received a major dumping of the white stuff on Christmas morning!

Leah this year got a bunch of toys and books. She's really into drawing and books with flaps that she can interact with. She will sit down and listen to several books at a time as long as she can interact with them.

One of Daddy's presents this year was an HO scale train to go around the Christmas tree. This is just like the kind that he liked to play with his dad when he was a little boy. Leah loved playing with the trains as well. Daddy was able to teach her to pump her first and say, "Choo! Choo!"

After opening all of the presents and eating a yummy breakfast that Aunt Morgan made, we went outside to play in the snow. Leah had a great time and even took a snow ball or two to the face. She loved swinging on the swing in the backyard and riding on the sled. She even got to go down the driveway with mommy a few times.

Leah 20 Months Old

Leah is 20 months old! She currently weighs 25 1/2 pounds and is 34 1/2 inches tall. She is wearing 18-24 month clothes, size 6 shoes, and size 3 diapers. (She was being a little silly for pictures this month.)

Leah's ability to communicate continues to grow. She babbles a lot, but new words are coming out every day. Each night as I'm bringing Leah to her room for bedtime, Daddy says, "Goodnight, Leah!" and Leah will wave to him and say, "Bye! Bye!" The other night she gave an obvious attempt at "Goodnight!" back to him. Her favorite word continues to be "kittycat" and she frequently uses the sign language for "please" accompanied by the word and some desperate eyes. Besides that, she regularly uses the words mama, dada, bye, light, bubble, fishie, shoes, done, yeah, no, mine, doggy, pee pee, poo poo, uh oh, tree, baby, nose, eye, book, ball, hot, and probably a couple more that I'm missing. 

Leah continues to be very observant and helpful. I'm pretty sure she knows where all of my dishes go at this point. One day I was emptying the dishwasher and she picked up the noodle strainer and then pointed to the top of the refridgerator where it goes. I was pretty shocked. She likes to clean up trash and will run and put anything you ask into the trash can. She really likes being helpful and will run and grab things like your shoes or phone if you ask her. She got a 4 wheeler Powerwheels for her Grandma and Grandpa S as an early Christmas present this year and she absolutely insisted that she help.

Leah still loves getting in the fridge, but her new favorite place to cause trouble is in my top pull-out drawers in the kitchen. She slides the dinette chairs up to the counter and spends several minutes pulling everything out of my silverware drawer or junk drawer. Her favorite time to do this is while I'm preparing dinner. Nothing in those drawers or on the counter is safe now. One night daddy left the manicotti pan out on the stove and Leah had a second saucy dinner. 

During the winter, I usually like to light candles in the house to make it feel more cozy. Leah really enjoys watching you light the match to light the candle. She blows out the match each time and shoos the smoke away with her hand afterwards. We had to move the location of the candle and the matches because she is so obsessed with them!

At nursery in church, Leah has picked up even more songs, but her absolute favorite one is, "The Wheels on the Bus." She will start rolling her hands immediately upon hearing the first part of the tune. She also like to do the part where the mommy says, "Shh!" She will also do all of the motions for "If you're happy and you know it!" She has developed a little bit of separation anxiety when I bring her to nursery. I used to just be able to drop her off, but now she usually wants me to put together puzzles with her and then I wait for her to be distracted to sneak out. Just last week, I gave her hand to one of the nursery leaders that was walking in and she didn't even realize I was gone. We'll see if I can be that successfully sneaky again or if she'll catch on.

We are lucky enough to have lots of little friends for Leah to play during a weekly playgroup we are a part of in our small town. Leah loves playing with other kids even though she has an initial warm up period of about 10-15 minutes when she arrives at some place new. All the other kids in the group are older except for the recent addition of a newborn and Leah has learned some new play skills from her older friends. She has started doing some make-believe play with her toys. She was "microwaving" food at a play kitchen for a little boy at playgroup. She likes to fill up cups with the faucet on her play kitchen as well. She also has a little doll baby that she sits on a play potty to go to the bathroom. She can play independently longer now, but she still prefers to have a buddy to play with. She doesn't like to play alone and I'm pretty sure that's why she always keeps me company while I cook dinner. She also like to pretend that she's mommy by walking around in my shoes. (The red pair is her favorite!)

Drawing continues to be one of Leah's favorite things to do. She likes to have you trace her hand or draw an animal. (A kittycat is her usual request.) Surprisingly, she actually holds her pencil correctly. Her drawing is only scribbling, but she makes likes and circles and likes to color in my drawings. She doesn't like drawing with thicker writing utensils and prefers a pen or pencil to a thick crayon. She draws pretty often with chalk on her easel in the front room as well.

Leah loves to read books before bedtime... But NOT with mommy! I can only get her to sit on my lap for a few minutes while I read her favorite book, "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear." Each night during her "independent reading time," she pulls out the books one at a time, opens up each one, points to the words saying, "eeh, wah, tee" or some other three syllable nonsense words, and then closes the book - starting immediately on the next one. Some nights she forms a pile of perfectly lined up books and other nights they are scattered everywhere.

Leah has started to watch a little television and likes to play with my iPad and smartphone. She has a little game Talking Tom that she loves to play with and another one where she takes care of a virtual kitten. She also likes to watch animated cartoons on an app called PBS Kids. She only likes the music in the beginning of the shows and barely gets past the opening credits before switching to another show. She can turn on both devices and navigate to her games. She loves to take pictures of herself and will say, "Cheeeee" whenever she opens the camera on my phone or iPad.

After Thanksgiving, we set up our tree and a small HO scale train that some friends gave us. Leah was initially afraid of the train, but she warned up to it rather quickly. Daddy has taught her how to pump her arm and say, "woo woooo!" She can turn on and off the train on her own, but usually likes to get mommy or daddy to play with her.

We've had an unseasonably warm start to winter and on Veterans days we were able to go for a jog along a canal path nearby. Leah really loves being outside and is rather content even if I'm pushing her in the jogging stroller. The temperature dropped for a few days and we got a couple inches of snow which Leah really enjoyed.

I love this little girl!