Surgery Successful
Evie is now the proud recipient of two brand new ear tubes, at the expense of her adenoids.
Originally, the surgery was scheduled for 2:00. So the plan was for her to go to school in the morning, and for me to arrive at the hospital at about 2:30 or so before she woke up. However, on the morning of the surgery, they called and insisted we move the surgery up to 9:30 a.m.
So I missed the entire thing, but from what Sara said, I’m glad I wasn’t there. Evie woke up in a bad mood. This was expected, but quite a bit different than her reaction the last time. She was so angry with Sara, that she was actually damaging her already sore throat with her screaming. She was mouthy, and surly, and the only thing keeping her from swearing was that she didn’t know any swear words. She was also coughing like a chain smoker, further irritating her throat, and eventually needed a breathing treatment.
Ollie was such a good little brother, sitting quietly with her surgery doll in his lap and waiting patiently. He was also very concerned about the baby that came into recovery while they were there, wanting to check and be sure he was alright every few minutes. He was at the very height of 2 1/2 year old behavior, and impressed the nurses. For his efforts, he was rewarded with apple juice, a popsicle and 8 cookies. The funny thing was, several people asked if he and Evie were twins (I’m guessing probably based more on his size than his proper behavior).
By the time I saw her, she was pretty much back to normal. Her voice was a little scratchy, but that was about it. We snuggled under a blanket on the couch and read Christmas books until my voice was the one that was in danger. She was eating like normal, acting like normal, and didn’t complain one iota about pain.
Most importantly, her hearing was already *significantly* improved. I made sure to keep my voice pitched well below what she could hear only yesterday, and she had no problem hearing me. We even tried some whispering. She isn’t back to 100%, but it is night and day better. This is such a huge relief, you have no idea. Unfortunately, it means I’m going to have to get used to little pitchers having big ears again.
Certainly, seeing her hearing so much better with practically no recovery time really makes me feel like this was the right decision. Now we just wait and see if this helps her stay healthy.
The Breathing Treatment
The hits just keep on coming for poor Evie.
We were taking Oliver for a follow up appointment for his ear infection, but you would have sworn the appointment was for Evie. She was hacking and coughing every few seconds the entire time we were there, while Oliver joked and played around. “Do you mind if I look at her?” asked the doctor. “No, no, she’s fine, just a cold,” we said. After a few minutes, the doctor asked again. “Well, it’s probably not necessary,” we responded. More uncontrollable hacking and coughing from Evie. Finally, the doctor just plain insisted.
She had Evie checked in and did an exam. After listening to her lungs, she decided she wanted to get Evie a nebulizer.
I’m not going to lie, this freaked me out. Growing up, my sister had pretty severe asthma, and she still deals with it to this day. I have strong memories of seeing her in the hospital, looking so small and pale, resting in an oxygen tent, unable to get enough air into her lungs. She was practically connected to her nebulizer, doing a breathing treatment several times a day, every day.
Asthma, allergies, and eczema are all related, and they’re all in my family in spades. There isn’t a one of us that doesn’t have one or more of these afflictions. Obviously I gifted my son with the eczema gene, so in my mind it seemed entirely likely that I gifted my daughter with asthma.
I remember my sister once did a school science fair project on asthma. In order to show what it felt like to have an asthma attack, you were supposed to breath through one of those little coffee-stirring straws for 30 seconds. This is something that has really suck with me for my entire life. 30 seconds is such a short amount of time, and yet the feeling of suffocation was absolutely terrifying. Ten seconds in and I felt like clawing at my throat. I imagined how many times my sister must have felt that desperate panic, and how she couldn’t just remove the straw and draw in a breath when she couldn’t take it anymore.
Not something I wished for my daughter.
Evie was a little worried about the breathing treatment, but that was partially our fault. I was caught up in my own thing, so it never occurred to me to actually explain what was going on until Evie, almost in tears, leaned over and asked in a small, quiet voice, “Is that going to turn my lungs black?” She thought we were making her smoke!
The doctor doesn’t think she has asthma, but she couldn’t rule it out either. However, her theory was that Evie’s airways were reacting to the fact that she has had 6 colds in 12 weeks, and her lungs just haven’t had time to recover in between. Certainly something was going on, because within 30 seconds of doing the nebulizer, Evie’s cough magically disappeared. They gave us an inhaler to take home, and we’ve used it pretty regularly. Again, this brought a lot of flash-backs to my sister, and in fact, Rachael used her inhaler in front of Evie to inspire her.
It seems like Evie’s lungs have now recovered, and she’s gone 30 seconds in between colds, which is a record for her. Hopefully this was a transitory thing, and not something she’ll have to deal with her entire life.
That poor girl just can’t catch a break!
Huh? What?
Unfortunately, my daughter’s hearing is deteriorating rapidly.
If you’ve spoken to her in the last two weeks, you’ve probably noticed this. It would be really, really hard not to notice. If you are talking to her at a normal tone of voice, she usually can’t hear you well enough to even know you are speaking to her, much less does she actually understand what you are saying. This is absolutely not her fault, but it is very hard not to get frustrated with her. Then something happens to remind you that she is the victim in all of this, like when you say, “Evie! I told you three times to pick this up!” and she says, “Huh?” in such a way that you realize that she never heard you the three times you told her, and then you just feel bad all over again.
It’s not all bad, though, it has led to some funny misunderstandings.
Kid: “I went to a birthday party, and we jumped into a pit of foam.”
Evie, horrified: “A pit of bones??”
I got so used to speaking loudly around her, that I find myself talking loudly to everybody. Several times I found myself shouting to Sara when it was just the two of us alone in the kitchen.
I never really realized how isolating it is to not be able to hear, and how much you miss out on. Oftentimes when she doesn’t hear something, she just lets it go. I don’t know if it’s being a kid, being embarrassed about not hearing, something about her personality, or just the fact that you get tired of asking everybody to repeat everything all the time. I’m very thankful that she’s only in preschool, and thus is not really having instruction per say at school. I can clearly see how quickly one would fall behind academically.
Anyway, we could clearly see that she was experiencing some hearing loss, but we had her tested anyway. Her hearing showed normal to mild loss in one year, and mild to moderate loss in the other. It seems to have gotten a lot worse since then.
The doctors believe that it is temporary, and due to a large build up of fluid in her ears that doesn’t seem to drain, so they’ve recommended a third round of ear tubes (you can read about round 1 and round 2). The idea is that the fluid would be able to drain through the tubes, and her hearing would go back to normal. Long term, the hope is always that she will grow enough that her ears will begin to drain normally on their own, without requiring help. It hasn’t worked so far, but then again, third time was a charm with me and ear tubes when I was little.
So hopefully everything goes well and she will be able to re-join the conversation (side note, not being able to hear apparently doesn’t impede your ability to talk).
At least Ollie’s ears are okay, right? Wrong.
We always assumed that Ollie had no problems with his ears, because he had never had any ear infections. However, you only know your child has ear infections if he says he has ear infections, and if he happens to have the pain tolerance of a UFC fighter on PCP, then he probably just doesn’t mention it. Imagine our surprise, then, when he did finally complain about an ear ache, and the doctor found evidence of “chronic ear infections”.
Perhaps he inherited daddy’s ears after all, but just forgot to mention it.
The Neti Pot
I have very small sinuses. Because of this, any cold or illness always, always, always ends up being a sinus issue. Combined with my terrible allergies, I probably spend 25% of my life with some combination of a sinus headache, a stuffed nose, and irritated, watery eyes.
“You should get a neti pot!”, said everybody everywhere all the time. “It’s great! When your sinuses feel bad, you just shoot boiling hot salt water directly into your brain cavity, and then you’ll feel better, because when you’re done you’ll be thinking ‘I might have a sinus headache, but at least I don’t have boiling hot salt water in my brain cavity anymore!’”
Everybody swears by these things, and they sound like a classic case of the cure is worse than the disease to me. Sara has been trying to get me to do this since forever, in fact, just this weekend I had multiple people urging me to try it out next time my allergies were acting up. Just the thought of warm water wooshing around my sinuses makes me want to kill myself. “I would rather die then try a neti pot,” I swore.
The next day I bought a neti pot.
It was only about $12, so Sara talked me into it. IF I was ever going to try one of these torture devices (and that’s a big IF), it would only happen if I happened to have one on hand at the exact minute that I needed it. Otherwise, my sinus-induced moment of weakness would pass, and there’d be no second chance. It turns out, that sinus-induced moment of weakness came sooner than I expected.
The VERY NEXT DAY I came down with some sort of sinus-superflu that got worse and worse throughout the day until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was actually looking forward to using the neti pot when I got home. (that’s how bad it was!)
In short, in the span of two days I went from, “I’d rather die than use a neti pot!” to “lets put a picture of me using the neti pot on the Internet!”
Me: “I can’t believe I’m putting this picture on the Internet.”
Sara: “I know, look at how little hair you have.”
Okay, so the neti pot wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. It certainly cleaned out a ton of gunk from up there (something you really should be prepared for, like with a kleenex or something, the way I wasn’t). However, it was very salty, went in my mouth and down my shirt, and only lasted for about 5 minutes before my sinuses filled back up again. Was it worth it? I really don’t know. I guess some days I go the entire day without my sinuses clearing a single time, so I guess having them clear for 5 minutes would be a plus. On the other hand, it seemed like a lot of effort and general unpleasantness for only 5 minutes in the clear.
So it might be worth it, however, I’m not sure it would be worth it just to clear out the allergens if my sinuses weren’t completely blocked. I guess it was okay enough that I’ll give it another shot if the situation called for it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my sinuses are about to explode.
Plague House
DO NOT ENTER!
I know it is that time of year, but at the moment we seem to be over our limit as far as infection goes.
We have all been snotty and coughing for quite awhile. Sort of run of the mill stuff, just colds. Starting yesterday, it really took a turn for the worst. Poor Ollie just got hit like a ton of bricks. Double ear infections and conjunctivitis (a.k.a. “pink eye”) in both eyes, on top of the cold he already had. It’s like his whole head just dissolved into a goo. He leaves face prints on everything he touches. It’s less like a sickness and more like being cursed by a gypsy.
I really thought there was nothing sadder than seeing a a little kid with a bad cold, but then I saw Ollie with conjunctivitis. Hoo boy! This morning his eyes had literally swelled shut. At dinner last night, Evie couldn’t stop sobbing just looking at him. “He doesn’t look like Ollie!” she cried. He really did look that bad. We had to keep her from touching his eyes, because she was determined to help him see by manually opening his eyes with her fingers.
If that wasn’t enough, when I went to pick up Evie from school yesterday, it turns out she has an ear infection as well! Keep in mind that I have been feeling terrible on top of all of this. So when I woke up this morning and my left eye was too gummed over to open, I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” At least my conjunctivitis is so far contained to my left eye. I can function on some human level, so I need only look over at Oliver to realize that I really have no right to complain.
Only Sara seems to be untouched. I can only assume she made some kind of deal with the devil for her good fortune. For the rest of us, we’re just trying to keep Evie from catching pink eye.
Tubes Round 2
On Tuesday, Evie went in for another round of ear tubes. For Sara and I, this wasn’t nearly the proposition it was last time. Aside from the fact that we have been through it once, she was so young the first time that it was very traumatic to think of her going off with these doctors to be put put under the knife (can you believe she was barely older than Oliver is now?). She just seemed so vulnerable. She doesn’t seem that way anymore! This time she took the hospital by storm.
Of course, nothing can go smoothly. In this case, they forgot to put us on the surgery schedule. So we had to show up at 11:30 and wait for an opening, which didn’t come until quarter till 4. For an adult this wouldn’t have been a big deal, but for a kid it’s a little hard to not have anything to eat since 6 p.m. the night before, and nothing to drink since 9:30.
Evie was such a trooper though. There was no complaining, no whining, no bad behavior. She was just so excited and so patient. Evie got a “She looks like Reese Witherspoon” from the doctor this time, not the Shiloh Pitt that she usually gets…I guess she’s maturing? She was cracking everybody up at the hospital: telling jokes, singing, shaking her booty in her surgery outfit singing, “Look at me! Look at me!”, and finally, skipping down the hall to the operating room. I’m guessing that is not the typical response to being stuck in a hospital all day with no food, leading up to knives in your ears. Nobody could believe that she was so excited, so they kept saying things like, “It’s not going to hurt at all…” Why would you say that?? She’s obviously not thinking it’s going to, but now you’re planting the idea in her head. A girl like her is going to pick up on the fact that everybody keeps telling her it’s not going to hurt and start to wonder why they keep reassuring her.
I will give them this, the child-life specialist gave her a really nice blonde haired, blue eyed “buddy” doll, dressed in a gown/hairnet/face mask that was ‘just like her’. It’s a really nice, high quality doll (way better than all the junk they piled on us later, like the plush Donald Duck). Evie took to it right away, and took it to school the next day to show it off. She really cares for this doll, putting her to bed, reassuring her she’s not going to have any more surgery, etc. which is a lot more than I’ve ever seen her care for any of her other “friends”. It’s like they went through a shared experience together or something. I’m sure by next week it will just be one of the endless parade of stuffed animals.
I had a doctor’s appointment at 4, which seemed like it would be no problem when we expected the surgery to be in the morning, and even after, when we were told to come in at 11:30. As it was, I left immediately after she went down, and didn’t get back until she was already awake in recovery. I had to take Oliver with me, because we weren’t sure he was going to be allowed in the recovery room, and if Sara had him we wouldn’t have had any choice (ultimately, he was allowed in).
By the time I got back there, Evie already had them eating out of the palm of her hand. The nurse said when she woke up she just said, “Hello!” I imagine this was a bit unusual based on some other examples I saw in other recovery rooms of people waking up from anesthesia. Of course, at some point she ended up singing the “State Song” for a packed room of nurses (and by the way, go click that video and watch her singing it when she was only 2 1/2…ADORABLE!). Her performance garnered her $5 (which was $3 more than she got singing it at karaoke the other night). The nurses wanted to know what her youtube page was, so there’s the link.
One of the best parts of surgery is that you get a lot of popsicles. Evie was munching away on them in the recovery room, and poor Oliver couldn’t take it anymore! He just started crying until he got a popsicle too. We had brought some food for Evie to eat when she was done. Her special “after-surgery lunch” that she picked out was pretzels and a peanut butter and jelly bagel. However, when she tried to eat it, she got a little sick from the anesthesia. So she had to wait until she got home to eat anything.
So that was it, she slept a lot at home and was back to her old self in the morning, no worse for the wear. Hopefully we’ll get rid of those ear infections this time!
Misc.
I just have a lot of random miscellany to update on, so here you go, in no particular order:
Some Norwegians came to visit. Meg, I really appreciate the effort you put into keeping in touch with me. I can’t count the number of friends that I’ve regrettably lost contact with since college. And giving me bacon / cheese popcorn doesn’t hurt either (although it wasn’t all that bacony, mostly just tasted like cheese popcorn).
Evie finally learned how to jump on Friday. She’s a little behind schedule on that one, so I was working on it with her. I’d like to think that my excellent advice to “put your feet together, bend your knees, and push with your toes” are what put her over the top. She’s going through a bit of a trying phase at the moment, so, after our initial giggling and hugging fit, the fact that we wanted her to jump again pretty much guaranteed she wouldn’t. She did jump some more on Sunday though.
Everyone was sick, back to back. It took each of us about 4 days to shake it, so we had a rough patch for about 12 days.
American History X, good movie! Really good! Has anyone seen it? Oh yeah, Sara and I were the last people on earth who hadn’t.
We finally checked out the Harry Potter exhibit at the MSI. It was pretty cool, and well done, but not exactly what I expected. It’s pretty much a tour through a bunch of movie props. Since it was in the museum of SCIENCE and INDUSTRY, I kind of thought it would be like explaining about the special effects, or like “real life invisibility” exhibits or something. Not just, “Here’s the clothes Ron wore in this scene…” Also, our scheduled time was before the museum opened, which was pretty confusing to begin with, but they had a lot of trouble getting people lined up for the right times and stuff. You’d think for the money they’re pulling down, they could have invested in a couple of signs or something. Still, it was fun. I can’t say if it was worth the price of admission or not, since it was free for us.
Football is officially underway, and what better way to start the season than to beat the Bears? And the best part? I get the double win in the morning when I get to ride to work and listen to Chicago sports talk radio rehash the game!
We had fun at the 57th Street Children’s Book Festival over the weekend. Every year that we go, Evie enjoys it a little bit more as she gets old enough to appreciate the events. We listened to a story teller, made a crown, dug for pirate treasure, attended a music class, watched a dance troupe, painted and glued a paper box, and danced to some music (including jumping on some bubble wrap). Side note, Sara said, “Jeeze, there sure are a lot of pirate themed things here.” When will people realize, it is not me who is obsessed with pirates, but rather all rational human beings who are obsessed with pirates when confronted with their awesomeness.
Finally, the other day I opened the back door to discover an enormous spider web over the opening, trapping us inside. Right in the middle of the web, directly at eye level, sat Lillith the spider queen, bigger’n a quarter. I quickly slammed the door shut before she could spray venom in my eyes. Now I ask you, what could that mean with the web directly across the door opening like that, other than this enormous spider was trying to catch humans? Finally I took it out with a broom, shrieking and cursing the whole time. The spider sat for a while on the porch, memorizing my face before slowly sauntering under a potted plant. I could have squished her with the broom (at least so I told myself…that was a big spider) but do I really need the wrath of all the spiders in the world for killing their queen? No sir, I do not. So I let her go and the next day she had spun her human trap over Evie’s chair on the porch. That’s right, I put a little fear into her and she decided to try for smaller prey. Me 1, spider queen 0.
Hand, Foot and Mouth
Some friends came to visit over the weekend and, unfortunately, Evie wasn’t feeling very well. On Sunday, Evie woke up at 4:15 (Happy Father’s day!) and proceeded to have an absolute fit until maybe 6. It was a doozy and I was very embarrassed to have her behaving as such with company over. It’s one thing for us to wake up at 4:15, but quite another for the entire building to wake up then.
We soon realized she was sick with a cough, a runny nose and a slight fever. She’s pretty much always sick though, so we decided to proceed with our plans anyway. We hit up the Pirate Exhibit at the Field Museum…so maybe it was a successful Father’s Day after all! She had a good time at the museum, but on the way home she was clearly exhausted.
Sara had noticed that she had a rash on her hands and was a little suspicious, but later when Evie fell asleep and Sara took off her socks and shoes to get her into bed easier without waking her up, she confirmed her suspicions when she saw a rash on Evie’s feet. It was not surprising, therefore, when we noticed some sores on Evie’s tongue: she had hand, foot and mouth disease. I will save you from seeing some of the awful results that show up in an image search, but if you’re a glutton for punishment it is quite disgusting.
We confirmed with the doctor that there is really nothing we can do except ride out the virus. Our friends wisely ducked out once it became obvious that “irritability” and “tiredness” (which are more or less the same thing) were actual side effects, not just the idle threats.
So we had a couple of rough days, although she seems like she is on the mend now. She can’t bring her plague to daycare this week, so her grandparents are staying with her.
I feel really bad for her because she was probably as miserable as she has ever been in her short life. One of the things we did to help her feel better was allow her to watch a movie. Now keep in mind this is only the second time we’ve ever let her watch T.V. The first was an Elmo potty video. And you can tell she doesn’t see much T.V. because when the movie started and Tinkerbell came out and painted the Disney logo, Evie said, “That was great!” and jumped down from her seat and made to leave.
The height of movie technology
She enjoyed the movie, especially the songs, but she got bored before the end. One of the best parts for me is when she went over to our cat and said, ”Nala, I’m watching a movie about you. You’re big now.”
(Note to grandparents, this does not mean she’s allowed to watch T.V. whenever!:) )
Another funny thing that happened this weekend, obviously we were taking her temperature a lot due to her illness and, as usual, she replicates what she sees. Therefore there was a very awkward moment for both Sara and I independently when she pretended to take our temperature…let’s just say we don’t take her temperature orally.
In completely other news, the other night I had a dream that I was in Wisconsin and I got a fine for not having a moustache.
Surgeried
We’re back from the hospital, ears freshly tubed. Evie is fine, you would never know anything happened at all. At first they said that we wouldn’t be able to be with her when she went to sleep, but they ended up letting Sara go back with her.
Here’s to no more ear infections!
And, as usual, a nurse said she looked like Shiloh Pitt.
Baby’s First Surgery or A Series of Tubes
First, let me just say 
So, in addition to just being generally sick every week for the last year or so, Evie has been dealing with a rash of ear infections. As you recall from my other posts, this originally started back on Halloween. So it has been over 2 months, several antibiotics and many, many doctors appointments, and after all of that time she still has fluid in her ears.
The surgery to put tubes in her ears is scheduled for the 13th. It is a pretty simple procedure, it supposedly only takes 5 minutes, but you always have risks with anesthesia and stuff. Still, it really isn’t much to worry about; I myself had tubes put in 3 times when I was little. They should fall out by themselves in about a year, so the hope is we make it through this winter and next with them.
As I’ve said, I had many, many problems with my ears when I was little, so I should have seen this coming. But it stinks and I don’t have to like it!
In regards to the title of this post, I have always been enamored with the way the titles of Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes always had “blah blah” or “blah blah”, usually involving a pun or two of some sort. Something hilarious like “Axe Me Another or Heads You Lose!” I would title all of my blog posts in such a fashion except I am not nearly that clever. And as for the series of tubes thing, perhaps you don’t live on this planet (planet nerd I mean) and you missed the whole series of tubes meme. Why in god’s name am I spending so much time explaining the title of this post? Who knows. But just so you know it is this sort of agonizing that causes me to spend hours and hours to bring you high quality posts such as this.
::sigh:: Okay, I’ll stop now.
Thanksgiving update is in there somewhere
So, I haven’t really given a life update in a while, so I’m going to throw a bunch of stuff in here.
The Saturday a week before Thanksgiving, we participated in a parenting first: taking our child to the emergency room. It wasn’t really an emergency per say, but Evie was showing a lot of signs of an ear infection which she had just gotten over (so we thought) and we were supposed to leave that day for a week of vacation. I thought this was a rite of passage because when I was little we had to go to the emergency room like a million times (mostly due to ear infections), but Sara said they didn’t go very often when she was little. Anyway, it took a while but everybody was nice and it wasn’t the horror story I was envisioning. The doctor said the ears were a little pink but she couldn’t say for certain that she had an ear infection. Luckily they gave us the antibiotic anyway since her eardrum ruptured less than 24 hours later! They also gave us a handy sheet with information on it such as how to say some of the tougher medical words (in FECT shun in case you were wondering). The second antibiotic gave her bad diarrhea for a week (“thanks dad!” – future Evie) but seemed to clear things up. However, at her follow up it looks like there still may be a problem, we were referred to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor. The result of that appointment was yet another round of antibiotics and the possibility of tubes in her ears come January. Everyone in my family has ear trouble. Apparently we have small ear canals which makes fluid sit longer which is a breeding ground for bacteria. So it looks like she has a legacy to live up to, unfortunately!
So we went to MI where I deposited Sara and Evie for the week before coming back to work (hence the temporary bachelor-hood). I thought I would have lots of time to relax, but I had quite a list of things to do, so it went pretty fast. I did catch up on a lot of sleep though. While she was gone, Sara got her haircut really short and donated it to Beautiful Lengths. She’s super cute. 
I caught back up to them at my mom’s house where everybody (including Sara’s family) came for Thanksgiving. Good times, good eats, and Evie learned a new religion:
We also managed to hit up my dad’s, where Sara collected many sticks and pine cones which can be hard to come by in Chicago, and Science Central. Science Central suffered an unfair comparison since we had just recently been to the Please Touch Museum, but it was actually a pretty good time. We spent longer there than we expected to.
Evie tried her first taste of bacon, which was a momentous occasion! She liked it of course. She also tried something else:
You probably can’t tell from this picture, but she really liked that as well.
Although she is still sleeping through the night, she has had some setbacks after vacation. She has woken up once a couple of nights and also seems to have decided that 4 a.m. is a pretty good time to get up. Although we don’t let her get out of her crib until 5:30, sometimes she just stays awake and plays or cries. Which means I am back to sleeping on the floor sometimes. Hopefully we are done with that and back on track though after just a few nights. Last night she slept until 5:30 (whoever thought I would be happy to “sleep in” until 5:30?!)
She knows well over 200 words now and she’s making 3 word sentences. She is especially into Christmas words at the moment like pistmas tree, santa, snowman, angel, reindeer, snowflake, sled, etc. She can recognize about 6 colors; blue, green, pink, orange, purple and brown but she doesn’t always get those right. She can “read” (i.e. recognize) about 6 written words; stop, zoo, Evie, mommy, daddy and taxi. That part is the most amazing to me. I know that she’s not really reading per say, but it still seems like you aught not to be able to recognize words by 16 months. The doctor said she is speaking somewhere between a 2 year old and a 3 year old level.
I try not to brag about my daughter or get too excited about things, especially since I don’t have any frame of reference about how much a kid is supposed to be doing, but I suppose writting all of that on my blog is bragging a *little* bit.
Happy Halloween
This year for Halloween, we got something kind of scary…last night, Evie’s eardrum ruptured.
Now apparently it is not as bad as it sounds, and it is actually quite common. In fact, it is apparently the best thing that could have happened to her because before it happened she was in a lot of pain and supposedly when it ruptures it releases the pressure causing her to feel better. The doctor said it should re-seal in a day or two.
Anyway, she has severe infections in both ears. I feel really bad for her since I had chronic ear infections when I was little. I had tubes in my ears 3 times and probably had hundreds of ear infections through childhood. As a result I really really hate them and know what she is going through. I’m really hoping that this is just an isolated incident and she didn’t inherit my tiny ear canals.
Saying she has her daddy’s ears isn’t necessarily a compliment.
Apples, Sickness and Baby Talk
I haven’t had a chance to update lately because I have been wicked sick. Sicker than I have been in a long time, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, Evie had been sick before me and all I could think about was, “I sure hope this isn’t how she felt!” Also unfortunately, we were in Fort Wayne for the Johnny Appleseed Festival, and it always sucks to be sick anywhere besides home. To say nothing of a brutal 3 hour ride home. (Although, someone did point out that I have probably spent more time being sick in that house than anywhere else on earth) I would also like to state for the record that Ron’s apple pie tastes exactly the same coming out as going in!
Johnny Appleseed was pretty cool. I didn’t get an apple dumpling like I wanted, or any food for that matter due to sickness, but we did manage to eat apple baked french toast for breakfast and apple pie for dinner, so I think I made up for it. I was kind of concerned that it wouldn’t be as big as I remembered since I haven’t been there since I was quite small, but it was pretty huge. We didn’t buy anything (it was indeed as expensive as I remembered), but we had a good look around and also saw Casey, Margaret and Isaiah who is only 1 month older than Evie.
Speaking of Evie, we had a discussion about how many words she can say. We had been saying 25 words as a rough estimate, but when we sat down and actually counted them, we came up with I think 63. She certainly understands a lot more, but those are the ones she will spontaneously and reliably say, and not counting things she just repeats after you say them. She loves books more and more every day (a child after my own heart) and practically doesn’t play with any other toys. She knows all of her books and you can ask for them by name and she can go over to the shelf and find them and bring them to you. This is including her set of alphabet books that she got for her birthday, but only certain letters that she likes. For example, she can always find ‘O’ (octopus, orange and owl to which she likes to say “hoo hoo”) but other letters give her trouble.
She is eating a little better especially if it is finger foods. She’s not very good with a spoon. However, soon after a meal starts she starts yelling, “Chee! Chee!” because all she wants to eat at every meal is cheese (as I said, a child after my own heart). You have to be careful what you say because you might accidentally remind her of cheese and once she gets going, she wants nothing else. It is the same for water.
She still loves shoes and clothes and spends a lot of time ineffectually trying to dress herself with anything that resembles clothes. She doesn’t even come close. My mom gave her a purse and she likes to carry that around now too. She’s going to be something when she gets old enough to really know about clothes!
I almost hate to say it because I don’t want to jinx it, but the last two nights rather than rocking and singing her to sleep, I have put her in her bed and read her a story until she fell asleep! Granted, she was very tired both nights, but if that sticks that would be a huge deal! But of course, now that I have told all of you it can’t possibly happen.
That is all.
Oh, P.S. just because I forgot to mention Talk Like a Pirate Day, doesn’t mean I didn’t celebrate! And even if my reoccurring calendar appointment didn’t remind me, I always have people who do.
2 – 11, 3 – 4, 4 – 232
I haven’t had a chance to update lately. Of course a lot has happened, we celebrated another month with Evie, our anniversary, and of course, the birth of our nation.
For our part, we went camping for a 4 day weekend. The camping went about as well as could be expected. We were a little nervous since we have 2 more camping trips coming up this summer. It rained once when we first got there and our tent leaked, but there was some time before we went to bed and it dried a little bit. The rest of the time, the weather was great. The bugs weren’t too bad and the campsite was decent. We mostly avoided the sun, although I did have two funny red knees from where I sat in the sun talking for too long and got burned between where my shorts ended and my legs bent down at the knee. Evie slept surprisingly well, including sleeping right through an impromptu fireworks display right outside our tent that kept Sara and I awake.
In general, Evie loved camping. She enjoyed being outside, she enjoyed the swimming and she enjoyed all of the people, but most of all she enjoyed the walking. She is not walking on her own yet, but she moves quite well when she has something to hold on to. When we were camping there was an endless loop of lawn chairs, picnic tables, outstretched hands, etc. for her to walk and walk and walk around, from sun up to sun down. She probably improved her walking skills more in 3 days than in the previous 2 weeks.
The only bad thing that happened was that Evie got sick. She had an elevated temperature (the doctor insists it wasn’t high enough to call it a fever) and she would periodically throw up. But when she wasn’t doing that, she was in a pretty good mood so it was hard to know what to do about it exactly. Actually, the one who got the worst of it was Anna who took a stream of vomit full in the mouth! Yes, you read that right.
After we got home, the first night was pretty rough as Evie tried to re-adjust to things around here. That was just the warm up though for the next day. Sara caught whatever Evie had and got as sick as I’ve ever seen anybody. She literally could not keep down a sip of water. In addition Evie was still throwing up, so it was somewhat disastrous around here. So far I have not gotten sick. My stomach felt a little uneasy here and there, but I’m hoping it was just paranoia from being around sick people. We seem to be through the worst of it (assuming I don’t get sick) so perhaps they will not have to paint a big skull and crossbones on the front of our house and quarantine us as a plague house.
Although, it wasn’t all doom and gloom, there were a few silver linings. For example, Sara lost 7 pounds in about 10 hours! She doesn’t recommend it as a weight loss program.
Evie Update
So I haven’t really had any posts on Evie lately and I thought I should give an update because big things are a foot!
So two days ago we started Evie on her first solid food (rice cereal). She seems to like it (she was already trying to reach for my oatmeal this morning) but she has no intention of swallowing any of it. Everything goes out the way it came in! Oh well, I know that’s the way it is supposed to go at first.
Today she rolled over for the first time (back to tummy). She has seemed like she has been on the verge of it for *so long* but she never quite did it. She certainly is capable of it, but she just hasn’t seemed to want to. So today we put all of these toys just out of reach on her left side so that she would reach for them and then Sara and I were talking and all of a sudden, Evie just rolls over to her right! There wasn’t a single toy over there or anything. So much for our motivation.
She sits up very well now and will stay that way for ~20 minutes before getting tired of it. She will stand if she’s holding on to something (like your hands or the side of the crib) but she doesn’t try to pull herself up or anything. You have to set her like that. She crawls decently well, except only backwards! It is kind of funny because she wants to crawl forward to get a toy but she can only crawl backwards, getting farther and farther away from the toy. This makes her very frustrated.
Finally, she is only really interested in one thing…the jump-a-roo! 
She jumps in that thing forever and just loves it. If you ever try to hold her all she tries to do is to get you to hold her up under her arms so she can jump. Jump, jump, jump she never gets tired of it. And when she goes up in the air in the jump-a-roo she does these funny plies (sp?) with her feet in the air like a ballerina.
So we are currently experiencing a wave of the black plague sweeping through our condo. Evie was first, culminating on Friday mostly with a really snotty nose and a fever. Then I got sick Saturday and especially Saturday night. What a miserable night that was. Sore throat all day then including a stuffy nose and horrible sinus headache. I didn’t get much sleep. Then this morning I felt a little bit better but Sara started to get a little sniffly with a scratchy throat. So it is pretty snotty around here lately!
Marie Digby
So last Sunday morning Evie woke up with her first cold. I felt sooo bad for her! Imagine that you’ve never been sick before in your entire life, you just wouldn’t know what to think. Why did my nose stop working? What’s all this crap leaking out of my face? She was pretty miserable. In retrospect we were probably pushing it a little too much to hit up Wisconsin, Michigan and then Indiana 3 weekends in a row. This also means that Evie wasn’t in a very good mood for our big magazine photo shoot Monday night. More details on that in the future I’m sure. So now I don’t know if I caught what Evie had or if I got it at the same time as she did but it took longer to get its hooks in me since I’m so much bigger than her. But I’m pretty much a wreck at this point.
Okay, now for the title of this post. So I’ve been hearing on the radio this version of Umbrella that was not by Rihanna, but instead was by someone named Marie (pronounced mar-ee-ay) Digby, whoever that was. I kind of liked the version better than the original but I was kind of annoyed by it because I was like, “Isn’t there more than one song in the world? Why would multiple people record exactly the same song?” Well I happened across it today on YouTube. Apparently this is a YouTube sensation, so if you spend more time on YouTube than I do, you’ve probably already heard of her. It turns out she just has a bunch of videos uploaded that are just her singing and/or playing guitar/piano. She has an awesome voice (and it doesn’t hurt that she is drop dead gorgeous) and there is a good mix of original songs and covers. Anyway, it appears that her popularity on YouTube turned into radio air time, a guest shot on Last Call with Carson Daly and I think even resulted in her cover of Umbrella being played on The Hills. There is something very appealing about how simple the videos are and it is an awesome story of just filming yourself in your living room and through the power of the Internet you get discovered.
She really is amazing and I recommend you check her out. Here’s the original video:
Rough Week
So I’ve been meaning to post a lot more in here, but this week was a little rough!
I was up for about 5 (early) hours throwing up Tuesday morning. Obviously I didn’t go to work. I felt miserable but I managed to sleep on and off from about 8:30 a.m. until about 2:45. I had to get up then because we had our house inspection!
The house inspection went really well, in terms of the property. In terms of my health personally, the house inspection went pretty bad. I felt so bad I couldn’t even stand up. Sara had to go around with the inspector while I spent most of the time sitting on the floor in a different room sipping water and feeling sorry for myself. I apologized to everybody but I think they understood because I think I was looking a little green. But, the good news is that there were absolutely no major problems with the condo.
So we got back to our place and I went directly to bed. I slept fitfully from about 6:30 p.m. until 6:00 a.m.! The next morning I got up on time to go to work, fully intending to go. But standing up was not good to me. So after I shaved and stuff I was like “forget it” and I called work and then went back to bed. Wednesday was a little better, but still not great. Actually, every day since Tuesday has been better but I’m still not completely 100%. I did go to work Thursday and Friday though.
So things are going good with the condo and everything though. It was appraised already, but we don’t know the results of that yet. I’m really curious to see what the result is! The deadline to know about financing is Thursday, but it sounds like that won’t be a problem. After that I think it’s mostly just waiting for May 1st! Also today we looked at some fabric shops for ideas on curtains. Hopefully Sara’s mom is going to come and help us make some curtains or roman shades which would save us a bunch of money!
I keep meaning to make a post about more baby stuff, and I promise I will some day.
Good game
Here’s a great game. Hit up to jump and down to roll and then there are different weapons for different bad guys. For example, at the begining hit the “a” key to shoot walls and soldier.
It’s a simple game and yet challenging. You don’t even mind playing the same levels multiple times!
In other news, I think I caught the plague.
Dear FutureMe
Write your future self a note from your present self.
But even more fun is reading notes other people have written to themselves in the past.
I got crazy sick over the weekend but I think I’m going to be better by Christmas. 3 more days of work this week. 14 hours of Axis and Allies over the weekend. I beat Tony but Sara beat me. I couldn’t belive she actually played and I think she even kind of liked it. First Monday with no school! No celebration for finishing grad school. I should have walked in the ceremony, then people would have had to come visit from home and buy me presents! That was dumb. The Packers suck. Yesterday Sara let me go through her closet and actually got rid of like 4 bags of clothes!! I don’t know what came over her. I’m so proud! 
That is all.
Okay, how to do this as quick as possible
Okay, here we go
Okay, first I played guitar with Tony Vegas for like 2 hours and I had a blast. I’m really getting back into the whole guitar thing and I love to play with Tony. He’s definitely better than me, but not so much better that I feel like a dumb ass. We also like the same kind of music. It’s more fun to play with someone else than to play by myself. All in all, a great time.
After that we went and got Dairy Queen. Another fantastic idea! I had a mocha chip blizzard.
After that we met Renee and her friends and saw Hellboy. Good movie (despite what Sara might think). I know it’s not Citizen Kane or anything, but what are you really expecting here? A comic book action movie? Alright then. It was actually better than I thought it would be.
As far as the circumstances, doing something with Renee might have been a very bad idea. I have no intentions of hanging out with her, as I can’t stand her, but now she thinks we’re best buds. Today (Monday) she mentioned about 5 different times she ‘wished she had my number’ so she could have called me and invited me to things between when I saw her Friday night and when I saw her Monday morning. Seriously. That’s almost psycho.
Her husband and friends were all very goth. Now normally I get along pretty well with the goth crowd. We have a lot in common. Also, in my experience, they are mostly pretty nice normal people. They’d hate me for saying that. Anyway, in this case though, I felt a little out of place. The sad thing is, the whole time I felt like I was the parent. They all acted like they were about 18 and they just got done hanging out at the mall all day (for the sake of argument, let’s say at Hot Topic) and now they were going to raise some hell across the street at the movie theater. Actually, come to think of it, they’re all unemployed so maybe that is what they did. Did I mention that they’re all about 5 years older than me?
One other thing of note, Renee’s husband and another guy were pretending they were gay for a while, just to get a few laughs. It was kind of funny, I didn’t really think twice about it. Since that time, Tony has brought it up a bunch of times. I think he’s a bit of a homophobe. That’s a shame.
Come to think of it, after spending all night playing guitar with me, Tony paid for my ice cream at Dairy Queen before we went to a movie together. For a homophobe he sure participated in a near gay date there!
I didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m. on Friday which is probably the latest I’ve stayed up in at least 2 years.
On Saturday morning, every freaking person in the world called. I finally got up at 10:30 and checked my messages. Well it turns out my friend John had called Friday night begging me to help them move on Saturday because some people had backed out, and I had offered to help last week. Well, I felt super awful that I had just gotten the message, but they said they would be moving between 9 and 12 and it was only 10:30 so I called them really fast. Turns out they were almost done. I felt pretty bad that I didn’t help, but on the other hand, if they were almost done by 10:30 I guess they didn’t need any help.
Next I fell back asleep for 2 more hours until the phone rang yet AGAIN. This time I answered and it was Dawna. We were supposed to go look at apartments but we had never set a time. Well they were on their way to KOP so they were going to go to the mall and then come over in about an hour. I was all, “Yeah no problem.” cool as ice, as if to say “I’ve been up for hours.” Then I had to jump up, shower, clean up the apartment, eat and do dishes. Luckily they weren’t on time (what’s new) so I got all that done and Tony came over too.
We went to the apartment that looked really good on the north side of the city and the location was AWFUL. It was on all these back, twisty roads and it was probably 30 minutes from the highway (with no traffic), which would then take another 30 minutes to get to KOP from there. The apartments were really nasty on the outside too, so I didn’t even bother to look inside.
Next we were going to try to find this furniture outlet called “The Dump”. Sounds classy, I know. It took us a really long time to find it, but meanwhile we found some little Italian bakery that we stopped at. Truthfully, it wasn’t really all that great. We also found a chi-chi’s which we ended up eating at. THANK GOD FOR MEXICAN FOOD!! Chi-chi’s might not be the hight of cuisine, but it was still great. This place is devoid of mexican food, which is a crime against humanity.
So we finally went back to KOP with no apartment or funiture to show for it. We had been talking about guitar though, so Tony was like, “hey you want to come over and play?” So I did, and it was a blast again. Between Friday and Saturday we played like every song I’ve ever learned how to play. After another marathon session my fingers were ragged. In fact, I tried to play on Sunday and I couldn’t because my fingers hurt too bad.
I ended up getting to bed late Saturday night because when I got home I spent a couple hours trying to find the Michael Jackson Thriller video online, because I want to memorize the zombie dance sequence. Finally, I broke down and re-installed kazaa and found it in like 5 seconds. The exhaustive online search was not for naught though, because I found Michael Jackson’s Thriller done stop action photography style with legos. Enter the site then go to filme and then Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It is literally a frame by frame duplicate of the original.
Still haven’t learned the dance though.
Sunday was paper day. I was so unmotivated…god damn I hate this class. Only 5 more class periods! It took me all day to do maybe 2 hours worth of work because it was so awful. I did watch some pretty strange things on tv though. Couple episodes of trading spaces, monster house, a monster garage where they made a cop car that could make doughnuts, a show on discovery about how you would build a bridge from Alaska to Siberia, a biography of Andre the Giant (FANTASTIC might I add) and god knows what else.
Oh, also on Sunday we had daylight savings time!!!!!!! SUPER exciting. Hey peeps in Indiana, you just jumped out of my time zone! I’m now in the future by 1 hour!! Bow to my power.
Okay, so I’ve been sick with a cold for awhile now. Because of this I didn’t take my allergy medicine Saturday or Sunday. Because of this and because of staring at a computer screen all day Sunday, it all came down on me with a vengence, most notably the worst sinus headache I’ve ever had in my life. By about 11 on Sunday night I felt possibly the worst I ever have in my life. Ugh! Awful!
First thing I thought when I woke up Monday morning was “Wow! I feel like a million god damn bucks!” I’m actually still sick and allergy ridden, but compared to last night, I’m fantastic.
Worked part time downstairs on my new job for the first time today. Exciting! I can’t wait to get away from all the nut jobs upstairs! Probably a whole new crowd downstairs.
Worked 10 hours today since I’m planning on going to NC to see my baby this weekend! Hoo ray! It’s been like 5 or 6 weeks!
Sara and I have both been really stressed out about her getting a job. We can’t live on my salary alone (which is pathetic because I make a shit load of money…but not compared to the cost of living out here) and she just can’t find a job by me. We had some back up ideas, such as some research jobs and some retail jobs she really didn’t want, but today Sara came up with a great idea. Temporarily she could teach at a community college or something since she’ll have a masters and all. Not perfect, but better than the previous ideas!
Here’s the big event of today:
I need to get a refill on my allergy meds, but I’ve switched insurance since I got the perscription. I called the pharmacy to see if this would be a problem and they said “No.” I didn’t believe them. I went in to pick up my prescription. They said, “Problem!” What a surprise. Aparently, I need to be “pre-approved” for my Zyrtec now, so my doctor needs to call the insurance company and then its going to take them 6 days to approve me, after which I can get my medicine. The big problem is that my pills aren’t going to last that long! I’m going to call my doc tomorrow, hopefully he can give me some samples or something.
Alright, I think that’s it.
My brother just called…it sounds like his computer is royally screwed. Sounds like his hard drive went kaput. I guess there are worse things that could happen to a person. Luckily this was a few days after he turned in two big papers!
Night
uuuuuungh
Lots to update about over the weekend, but I’m sicker than shit and I have an awful AWFUL sinus headache, so I’m going to go lay in the dark now and close my eyes.
This is as miserable as I’ve felt, possibly ever.
:(
My throat hurts lots tonight.
But, I did go to class and get my taxes ready to mail tomorrow and narrow it down to 6 apartments to go look at. I’m going to print off the directions tomorrow at work in case I have time on Saturday to look.
I was upset at work today when everybody was railing on me for not eating meat on Friday. I tried to explain to them that it has nothing to do with going to hell, but they didn’t want to listen, just to make fun. Ignorant.
Through no fault of my own, I was lucky enough to be born in the best nation in the world. Through no work on my part I was brought up with a roof over my head and food on the table. Though we were poor by U.S. standards, we lived like kings compared to most 3rd world countries. Where most of the people in the U.S. are deciding whether to have Micky D’s or Wendy’s on a Friday night, most of the people in the rest of the world are deciding if they should eat a frog or dirt. Is it so wrong to show them respect, and to show some thanks to God that I lucked out like I did to be born here? So I fast and I don’t eat meat, despite the fact that I’m not what you would call a “Good Catholic.” In fact, I’m a downright bad Catholic, but at least I think for myself. Anyway, if I was a better person, I would take the money I didn’t spend on food and save it in a rice bowl and donate it to the poor at the end of Lent, like we did back home. Could I do it some other day besides Friday? Of course I could, however, Friday is a really hard day to not eat meat because it is the 1 day of the week I am most likely to go out to eat. If I decided just to do it a different day because Friday was tough, that would kind of defeat the purpose of self sacrifice. The first thing people say (in their condescending way of course) is, “If not eating meat is so great then why don’t you do it all the time?” The answer? If I was a better person, I would. I would eat rice every day and take all of my money and give it to the poor. It’s a shame that I’m not a better person, however, why would you mock my effort, pitiful though it is?
Night.
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