A Very Different Christmas Morning

I simply do not know how to take just a few pictures.  It's so hard for me to narrow down which ones I include here, knowing that someday it will be printed out in a book.  So here comes a whole lot of pictures.
But back to the title of this post....I'm getting to that.  This year was the first time ever that we saved up for Christmas.  We started an envelope labeled "Christmas," that we would deposit cash into as much as we could.  It felt great to have that and I was even able to start my shopping as early as Black Friday. Read my Black Friday story here.  I was able to finish my shopping, for the most part, early, so I had weeks to dream about how Christmas morning would turn out, and what their sweet little faces would look like when they saw their gifts.  Well, fast forward to 5:30 am Christmas morning (after a very exhausting night of a 7 year who would not sleep, and a 2 year old peeing out of his clothes and ended up in our bed); Julien runs in, "Jonah is on the bathroom floor and he threw up all over his bed."  We ran in to find him naked on the toilet, bopping his head, falling asleep.  Poor baby.  It just broke our hearts to think he was sick on Christmas morning.  I still had hopes that he would be able to enjoy it out of adrenaline, but I was way wrong.  After cleaning him up and getting him dressed, we went out to see the gifts, and Jonah was immediately asleep in Rich's lap.  He did not have the energy to care.  At first I wasn't sure what to do.  I wanted to wait for him, but Julien and Cooper were ready to start.  I knew we would have to clean everything up or Cooper would rip open every one's gifts.  So Rich and I decided to let them open their gifts, hoping Jonah would soon join in.  It felt so weird though.  I felt bad the whole time, watching Jonah sleep, knowing the other kids were opening gifts without him.  We tried a few times to wake him and Rich helped him open a couple but he was emotionless.  It was sad.  I took pictures that day, of course, and I took pictures of Jonah sick on the couch so we would later remember why he wasn't in any of the gift opening pictures.  I tried to let the other kids enjoy their morning and tried to capture everything the best I could with my camera so Jonah could later see too.  So let me move on with pictures, and I'll get back to the story shortly...

(These pictures of Jonah break my heart).  Rich with his Donald Trump book that he wanted.  Yes, that is a used book off of Amazon...just a couple of bucks, score:).

Cooper was very organized with opening up his stocking and placing the gifts in a pile.  It was so cute.  

Above: This was one thing on Julien's list this year that he got.  His list had some expensive things and he didn't get much off of it, so when he opened this Cars 2  DVD from his Aunt Lorisa, he shed some REAL tears.  Yes, he really did cry happy tears!  It was super sweet!!  Love that kid!

Grandma Good (Rich's mom) found out that Cooper loves Pooh Bear, so she whipped up this pillow and blanket to give him for Christmas!  He let out his loud "BO BEAR!" when he opened it and fell right in love.  Can ya tell??  He now loves to plop the pillow down to watch movies on and snuggle up with the blankie.  She also made him a smaller travel size one that he likes to sleep with.  The tent was his gift from Santa.

Oh Julien, our little boxer.  When I saw this boxing set at a great price, randomly at the mall (at GNC), I knew this would make our little guy very happy.  It came with everything you see here, plus a jump rope, which he also loves.  He absolutely loves this thing and has since gotten so good and has improved his technique:).  Seriously, I wouldn't want to mess with this kid!  It's also been great to have around for the rest of us as well.  Like, after that last emotional night at the hospital with Jonah; I had some serious emotion built up.  You better believe I came home and gave this thing a few+ punches.  *Remember, Julien's love for boxing has been with him since he was very young, read here.  The kid has a written workout schedule on our fridge now that he made and follows for the most part. 

Above left: we managed to wake Jonah up a couple of times, but this was as much emotion as we could get out of him.  Later, once he was home from the hospital, he rediscovered many of the gifts his brothers had opened that day.

That sit and spin was from Grandma and Grandpa Harrington.  He looks pretty cute on it!

Jonah woke up for a bit to watch Cars 2.  Looking at these pictures just make me want to wake him up and kiss his cheeks off.  Poor lovey. 

Julien got this table top pool table.  It later served as a wonderful game to keep us busy with Jonah at the hospital.  Julien was sweet enough to lend it to his sick brother. 

Papa Pawki came by and brought some more gifts with him.  Julien got the movie "The Smurfs," Jonah got the Charlie Brown Holiday collection DVD set (that he opened in the hospital), and Cooper got a Barney movie-which is his all time favorite thing to watch.

 It was just shortly after my dad got there that Jonah started to look worse and was feeling hotter.  I took his temperature and it was 104.4 degrees (I've never had a child with a temp that high before), so we began hustling to get him to the hospital.  There were moments during this that my dad and Rich witnessed him appearing to go into convulsions (he didn't but it looked like he was about to).  It was very scary.  I took off with Jonah; and Julien held the puke bowl the whole way there for him.  Rich stayed back to gather things for the diaper bag for Cooper and was not far behind us.  My dad followed us there.  It didn't feel like Christmas anymore, and all I could think about were the fears of Jonah being as sick as he was.  We thought he had the flu, but we weren't sure.  We got him to the hospital and once they saw him, they knew he was very sick.  Much of this was a blur to me.  I was in and out of the room, trying to contain Cooper who was hating the hospital and not sitting still.  I know they took a urine sample and some blood and started an IV.  It was hard to see our little guy go through all of that, and especially on Christmas day.

Story to be continued in the next post.