A swim meet and pneumonia

We had another "home" meet on Thursday night. 

I mentioned that I sang the national anthem with the kids last week, since they weren't comfortable doing so on their own. But this week Zoë practiced until she felt comfortable and then sang the national anthem solo...and a cappella. The national anthem in the United States has a rather tricky melody and uses quite a large vocal range; it's not easy to sing. Zoë would have preferred to have accompaniment, but she did alright singing a cappella.

The kids were excited that Grandpa and Darla showed up to cheer them on. Darla is well-versed in swim meets and knows exactly how to encourage little swimmers—she gave the kids Starbursts to eat before their races and went to the end of the pool to cheer for them while they swam.

Zoë and Benjamin had a great meet! They dropped time in most (perhaps all?) of their strokes. 

We spent some time watching some of the Olympic tryouts for swimming and Zoë was mesmerized. She must have been channeling her inner Katie Ledecky because she dropped seven seconds off her breaststroke time! And her form looked the best I've ever seen it!

I worked the first half of the meet as a stroke and turn judge and was pretty nervous when Benjamin was in one of my lanes for backstroke because he has been DQ'd every single time he's competed backstroke. We worked on flip turns a bit last week, but ultimately I told him to not attempt a backstroke flip turn and instead to make sure that he touched the wall with his hand before taking off on his second lap (because it was those flip turns that were doing him in; they can be quite tricky). 

Fortunately, he remembered to do an open turn rather than a flip turn and I didn't have to DQ him (thank goodness). It was his first time getting a time for that event!

Alexander, on the other hand, had an abysmal meet. Whereas he swam backstroke at 51.70 seconds the week before...he swam it a 1:18.26. Freestyle was similarly poor (40.84 the week before, 58.30 this past week). 

Andrew took him home after his events (which are scheduled earlier in the evening so the tiniest of kids can go home when they're finished) and Alexander had spiked a pretty big fever, so he gave him some medicine and sent him to bed. He woke up with a wet, and horrible cough.

He had to miss "Fun Friday," which he was distraught about.

But look who was selected as swimmer of the week!

Alexander coughed and fevered all weekend and Andrew began to recognize signs of pneumonia in him (Andrew had pneumonia several times as a child into his teens and young adulthood) so Andrew took him to the doctor this morning and...yup! He's got pneumonia in his upper left lung.

COVID test was negative, strep test was negative.

His SpO2 was low, so they gave him a breathing treatment and sent him home with a prescription for albuterol and antibiotics. Albuterol is miraculous—for reference, his SpO2 level was 92% before his first home breathing treatment...and jumped to 97% soon after.

Here he is showing off his little gappy grin:

He has hardly complained at all this whole time he's been sick (of course, he's also mostly been sitting around playing Minecraft). He mentioned one time about feeling dizzy. Other than that he's just been quietly suffering. Every single time we've asked him how he's feeling he's said, "Better."

And I'm pretty sure that every single time he's answered that it's been a little bit of...denial.

Hopefully he'll actually be feeling better soon.