Texas Critters

We knew that south/central Texas had a lot of uninviting critters, including poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, fire ants and scorpions, but last week we learned that we also have venomous caterpillars – yes, those fuzzy, cute caterpillars. Grant learned the hard way that under that soft fur are spines that contain a venom that causes a lot of pain (what some adults have described as unbearable) and the venom/pain moves toward your closest lymph nodes, and can cause stomach cramps.

Grant and Danielle were at our favorite park and one of these caterpillars dropped onto Grant’s shorts and from what we can tell, he tried to brush it off of his shorts and the spines went into his finger, causing immediate immense pain. He was screaming when he went to Danielle with the caterpillar still on his shorts and the caterpillar rubbed up against Danielle’s legs a few times and then she also began feeling the extreme pain that these little suckers cause. As the pain started moving up to their lymph nodes, they headed for the doctor’s office, who told them to go to the ER. Unfortunately, the only thing that can be done is to remove the spines that have been left in the skin and then give pain killers to help through the pain. Everyone reacts differently, but the pain lasts for a very long time, for some 1-5 days. Luckily, Danielle put the caterpillar in a bag and brought it with us to the ER. We believe it was just a baby, so we feel that it could have been worse. Fortunately, we were also blessed that I was home with Porter that day and could go and pick up Grant and Danielle and take them to the ER. Once Grant was given his Tylenol with codeine (which he calls Tylen Cody), he was quite looped and very funny. [Like a true addict, Grant constantly wants his pink medicine when anything is hurting him – and even if its not]. At the hospital, we couldn’t help but laugh when he told us there was a party going on in his tummy and when he told the nurse in a very relaxed voice that he was doing just fine. Wish we could have recorded that part of the day. Those are definitely not caterpillars that you would want to bring to school for show and tell. Danielle still has the marks of the caterpillar on her leg where the spines went in and hopefully those will heal soon.

Now doesn’t that just make you want to move to Texas – along with the 100 degree heat (I guess this is the 3rd hottest summer on record – although I guess I am completely acclimated because we are outside all of the time and it doesn’t really bother me too much).

Porter is doing well and we thought we would just give you all an update on him. At his two month appointment 2 weeks ago, he weighed in at 14 pounds, 2 ounces (95% percentile) and was 24.5 inches long (95% percentile and head size only 50-75th percentile. We think Porter is likely about 15 pounds now – wearing clothes for a 1 year old and some of Grant’s smaller socks to cover those gigantic feet that he has. Porter’s eyes are still deep blue and we wonder if they will stay that color. Porter loves to laugh (although he always gets the hiccups) and is very vocal. Porter still cries a lot and we call him our howler monkey as he actually seems to howl, which causes us to laugh a bit – you have to laugh when there is constant cryingJ. But Porter can be very smiley.

We are horrible at taking pictures, but I thought we had better upload the few we have so you can see what Porter looks like before he is walking. We think he looks a lot like his cousin Ava. It may be another day or so before the latest pictures are uploaded, but just check back with our blog to see.

Hope you all are well.

Love,
Sherri