New Years Eve
It’s the end of an old year and almost the start of the new. I had a lot of free time this week because Hailey is at day care and I’m still on mandatory vacation. I have cleaned house, assembled bookshelves, done dishes, rebuilt computers, and scanned an old bag of photographs from my mom.
The bag included many good pictures, like this 3rd grade, I think, portrait of me in my KISS t-shirt, and the making of an engineer: me with my Tinker Toys.
Happy Birthday
It’s Mom’s 50th Birthday
Hailey Claus
Hailey had an awesome Christmas and Birthday. She has more toys than any one child could ever play with. Her favorites, at the moment, are a giant 16 inch ball and a Leap Frog learning table. She likes to open the little compartment on the learning table and hear a jazzy woman’s voice [1] [2]. She will do this repeatedly.
Hailey’s birthday party was held on Christmas day at 5:00 pm. Some family members stopped by for the cake and presents.
Here are some pictures of Hailey in her Christmas outfit from her great-grandma. It has matching mittens and a hat but Hailey didn’t like wearing those.
Last year Seton gave us a Christmas stocking to take our baby home in. Here she is last year and this year.
Christmas 2003
On your first visit to the NICU, the nurses take a picture of your baby with a Polaroid camera. They pretend to set up the photo and care about its composition. In reality there is just so much you can do when your baby is more tubes than baby. There isn’t even much they can do when the one picture that you will have to show everyone your baby is out of focus. The camera is old and well used, unfortunately. I took the photo, I was happy to have it, and went downstairs to show Brianna and the world who Hailey was. She was 3 pounds 3 ounces. She couldn’t breath, eat, or survive without extreme medical assistance but she was here and doing OK, considering.
A full year later, Hailey has a personality all her own. She can feed herself chunks of pasta, fruit, vegetables, and bread. She has learned what fun it is to share her food with the dog. Hailey gives hugs and kisses, and she likes to babble to anything. It sounds like she says cat when we see the kitty. She can definately say dad, and she knows who her parents are. Hailey can crawl up and down the stairs.
Hailey has come a long way. At times it’s hard to believe that a year has gone by already. Other times it feels like we have lived through two or three years.
Happy Birthday Hailey and Merry Christmas!
A Gift From Thanksgiving
Over Thanksgiving weekend we went to Paris, Texas. I took Brianna and Hailey to meet my grandparents that I call Nanny Ruth and Papa Gene. Nanny Ruth gave me a photo album of pictures from my youth. This was great gift. I scanned all the photographs so I could share them. Enjoy!
Two Shopping Days Left
Finished Christmas shopping with a whole day to spare. It was so easy, I mean, all girls like 5hp go-karts. Right? They do don’ they?
Three Shopping Days Left
Three shopping days left until Christmas and I haven’t bought anything for Brianna yet. To make matters worse, I have no idea what to get her. She is being tight lipped with any suggestions.
Out of Stock
Surprisingly this town is out of computer parts. On Monday I went to Laboratory Computers to buy a motherboard and Athlon XP to replace the damaged components in Brianna’s mom’s computer. The guy at the counter said they were out of almost everything but a new shipment would arrive on Tuesday.
Having learned my lesson I called on Tuesday so I wouldn’t drive down there needlessly. They did have a shipment and everything I wanted was there. When I got there the same guy as yesterday said they were out of what I wanted. D’oh! Oh no, I say, I just called. Fortunately for me, the guy I talked to on the phone put aside a motherboard and processor for me since I said I would be right there. A new processor isn’t much good without a cooling fan so I asked for one of those. They were out of those so I went to CompUSA and couldn’t find anything I liked. Fry’s didn’t fair much better. It seems that all the stock fans are gone and only the super gimmicky gamer/over-clocker fans remain, and at Fry’s they are all customer returns. I didn’t feel good about buying one but I needed a fan so I picked the best looking box and now have a super gimmicky over-clocker variable speed two ball bearing fan. It is a decent fan but is a little loud at full blast for my taste.
The rebuild went smoothly except for a problem with installing the fan, but that was sorted quickly. Since my fan was an open box/customer return, it had no instructions. I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right the first time just by guessing but I guessed wrong.
Photoprinter Bargain
We went to HEB to print out some digital photographs but the kiosk was unbearably slow. It took about 30 seconds to display each picture from the Canon’s memory card. We decided it would be better to just go buy a photo printer. I had investigated the HP Photosmart line and knew it was supported in Linux better than the Canon line. So we bought a HP Photosmart 7660 for $148.72. As we were being served, the manager stopped by to make sure we had received our free goodies that were included with every photo printer purchase. The free goodies were part of a promotion that wasn’s promoted very well. It was the first day and the signs were still in the back office. We got a $50 Office Depot gift card, and a package of photo paper for free. Awesome.
Getting this printer installed in Linux was no problem at all. . My only regret is that I didn’t get the next model up with the built in LCD screen. I didn’t think I would ever use the LCD screen, but it turns out to be very handy when printing directly from the memory card.
Hailey the Blast Furnace
Hailey has had pneumonia and bronchiolitis from the 3rd until around the 18th. She is just getting back to her normal self after many doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen, numerous days of fevers above 102°F, three trips to the Brakenridge Children’s Hospital Emergency Room, and more trips to the pediatrician than we can count. We plan on returning the nebulizer, its brand name is Mister Neb, the 22nd. This should signal the official recovery.
A time-line of events on those more worrisome days…
Wednesday December 3, 2003
- 102°F Fever
- Sleeplessness through night
- Coughing congestion
Thursday December 4, 2003
- Regular doctor around 8:00 am
- 103°F fever some dehydration
- Not flu
- Not urinary tract infection
- ER 4:00 pm 104°F fever
- Just a virus
- Other Doctor thought a chest X-ray would be good but didn’t do one
- White blood cell count good
- Blood culture shows nothing
- 101-102°F fever rest of the day
Friday December 6, 2003
- Regular doctor
- Chest X-ray looked clean
Monday December 8, 2003
- ER 4:00 am
- Blood draining from nose in mucus (turns out this is normal and common when there is a virus and the nose passageway is dried up)
- Regular doctor the rest of the morning
- Two IVs
- New chest X-ray
- High fever 103°F through night
Tuesday December 9, 2003
- Call from doctor consult of 2nd chest X-ray reveled pneumonia in left lung
- Regular doctor 2 shots for anti-pneumonia treatment
- Augmentin (antibiotic) for 10 days
- 7:30 pm Regular doctor calls house
- Everything seems well fever a treatable 99°F
- 8:30 pm go to ER for 102°F+ fever
- Albuterol respiratory treatment blood oxygen level was down (92% range should be 95+)
- 1:00 am go to 24 hour Walgreen’s for inhaler (need a nebulizer but the company is closed for evening)
- 2:00 am get to bed
Wednesday December 10, 2003
- So far no fever, will get nebulizer at 9:00 when the place opens (social worker at ER called to set everything up should be ready and paid for by insurance)
We ended up with three pink ER admission identification bands, one toddler sized hospital gown with pink animals on it, and one temporal artery scanning thermometer that takes temperature by scanning across the forehead. The thermometer was given to us by the drug rep at Sanna’s office.
