Tuesday

I actually have a bunch of new photos, but somewhere between the hospital and home, I misplaced my hookup cord to my camera. Dang it.

Anyway, Felix threw up through Saturday, but he has been feeling tons better since about Friday. It took him a couple of days to get past the throwing up and the diarrhea because he got a touch of rota virus on top of everything else. It seems to be mostly gone, although it (and the affects of the strong antibiotic) have left him with an extremely painful diaper rash. He handles it well most of the time, but we actually have to hold him down while he screams and tries his hardest to get away from us just so we can put all sorts of good creams on him.

I had a pharmacist recommend this stuff that's a pH balancer and skin restorer and it has seemed to help. But so far, he's still in serious pain. Poor kid. Thankfully, he's back to his very cheerful and playful self whenever we're not changing his diaper.

Life seems to be evening out some. That's a really good thing because it's been a really tough couple of weeks and a generally tough winter. Thankfully, the weather has been great lately and the trees are finally starting to bud. It's getting pretty. I kinda need that right now.

I don't know if it's been this hard on everyone, but I know that everyone has their crosses to bear, so to speak. My heart aches for your pain and I feel your disappointment. And when things go well, my heart cheers.

I know I don't always say it, but I actually do feel for my friends and family. I love all of you and I appreciate how you've influenced my life.

the Mother of all t-shirts

Ethan (my 13-year-old nephew) helped me finish it (Brent helped too, of course).

If you like it and you have ever purchased anything from woot, please go to: http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=13887 and vote for it. If I win and you helped by voting for me, I'll get you one for free. :) Seriously, I would get paid a lot of money for it to print and that would make me very happy.

Here's Brent's. You should probably vote for that too (awesome, isn't it?)...

Mother Teresa

She's actually the theme of my design for this week's derby at shirt.woot.com. I've been doing some research on her and I've been seriously impressed. I'll add the design once it's done (hopefully some time tonight).

In the meantime, here are some of my other favorite quotes from Mother Teresa:

"Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired."

"In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love."

"Intense love does not measure, it just gives."

"Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them."

"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier."

"The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done."

"We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

"We, the unwilling,led by the unknowing,are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much,for so long,with so little,we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."

This very adequately describes how I've been feeling...

"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."
- Mother Teresa

More stuff

Official diagnosis after two days of throwing up everything, extreme irritability, fever, etc: stomach flu ("probably picked it up in the hospital") and another ear infection.

Not over yet

I got a call from someone at the finance office of the hospital and apparently there's a way to get some medicaid even when you don't quite qualify for it normally. It's called a "pay down" option and based on what you make you can still get some assistance. I still need to check out CHIP to see if Felix can be covered under that, and I'll just hope that it can be applied retroactively.

Felix has been doing great lung-wise, but today he's been throwing up all day. Sigh.

Is it sad that I feel like I'm getting used to it all?

We're home

Felix responded so well to all the treatments that they sent him home a little after 4 pm. He's much happier at home being able to crawl around and get into everything. We have to give him breathing treatments twice a day as well as an oral steroid, but otherwise we're good. Well, we will be taking him in to the doctor for a checkup in a few days.

Thanks again to all for your concern.

Update on Felix

First - thanks to all for your concern. This has been tough and it's nice to know that people care. :)

Felix has been responding well to his treatments, and even though he hates being hooked up to wires and tubes and such, he is pretty cheerful. I guess that means the asthma attack is past its worst. Essentially, being on the bike ride on Thursday morning (probably the cold and being strapped in and crying so hard against it) triggered an asthma attack that lasted till sometime last night after he'd been given a whole bunch of steroids for his lungs.
Brent stayed with Felix last night so I could go home and sleep (the cot in the hospital combined with all the beeping of various alarms wasn't going to give me nearly enough rest) and I feel much better today. And since Felix has responded well to the drugs, he's feeling much better too. He also got a bath today that he really enjoyed.
I missed the doctor's visit this morning, but Brent said that if Felix is still responding so well to everything he might be able to go home tomorrow morning. I'm not going to cross my fingers yet, but I'm guessing it'll be either tomorrow afternoon or the next morning. There is a light at the end of this tunnel...

The least of his worries

Man, this has been a tough winter.

I figured we were done for a little while when I saw the new tooth, but we're far from it. Dang it.

Yesterday morning Felix and I went up the canyon to have a bike ride with a bunch of his cousins and a couple aunts. We started at Vivien Park and went all the way to Utah Lake. Well, Felix didn't quite make it that far. He screamed most of the way (he despises being strapped in, even in his nifty new bike seat) and after about an hour and a half I called Brent to come pick him up. The rest of the ride was enjoyable, but my bum is seriously sore (15 or so miles after not riding for a year) and I got so sunburned on my face that I look like some kind of strange alien. I still had fun, and I have pictures, but they're still on my camera at home.

I figured the screaming would stop because he was no longer strapped in, but with few exceptions he did not until this evening when he finally fell into a comfortable sleep. Brent and I have been miserable, mostly because we feel so helpless.

This afternoon I took Felix to the doctor, who became very concerned by his symptoms - most especially with the level of oxygen in his blood. After an albuterol treatment and oxygen, the number still wasn't going up, so the doctor decided Felix needed to be in the hospital. In fact, the doctor said I should go straight there. I cried the whole way.

It's bad enough that I already feel financially ruined (owing $3500 in taxes will do that to a person, especially on top of $9500 in medical bills from previous hospital stays), and it's not enough that I feel completely helpless to comfort my baby. Now I have to hold him down while he screams, tears streaming down his face, while they shove things in his face, poke him and tape him (i.e. strapping down), shove more things in his face, hook him up to 8 different wires/tubes.

I honestly believe that if the young women of the world knew what being a mother was really all about - all the heartache, all the exhaustion, all the disappointment, frustration, feelings of insanely huge inadequacies - there would be virtually no teen pregnancy left.

Teething

I was right. I saw a new tooth on the bottom. It actually looks pretty painful. He keeps biting and man, those teeth are sharp! Plus, he keeps finding very tender skin. I can't even discuss some of the places I've been bitten recently!


Again - thank goodness for modern medicine and things like baby advil and benedryl. I really need a good night's sleep tonight...

Another nearly sleepless night

I used to think I was bad for needing to sleep in every morning, but after a night like last night, I might go back to bed and sleep happily till noon. Felix had a horrible night and this wasn't the first. I'm thinking he may be teething again. If he had woken up enough that he could take medicine I would have given him something for the pain, but as it was he was trying very hard to be asleep but he would wake up every little bit to scream and writhe around. I feel so helpless!

Brent made up another design - at my insistence and it's doing well. He's still getting great comments from people who are interested in buying them as t-shirts, but not quite enough to storm the contest and win a printing. It has been a good exercise for him.

Yesterday we watched some friends' kids and thankfully it was really nice out so they ended up playing outside most of the day. They're here again today (spring break and their babysitter quit without notice), and I'm happy that they're pretty self-entertaining because I really do need more sleep.

Brent was all sorts of productive yesterday. He finally got all the cabinet doors primed and he's going to try to paint soon. That means that we might just have a kitchen this summer. I'm so happy!!!!!!

And, we finally got around to finishing the taxes. Brent had worked them up and came up with us owing over $4500 federal. I was honestly freaked out. So yesterday I went to Jackson Hewitt (where I took a tax class in late 2006 with my mom) and had them go over everything. The girl that helped me was wonderful. She got it down to us owing just over $3000 (self-employment stinks!) federal and then another $470 for state. Thank goodness for the tax thinghy coming in May because it'll help cut that owing part to half. So we'll try for a payment plan or something because Brent also has to pay quarterly sales tax (or self-employment tax, I can't keep them separate) now and the first chunk is due the end of this month. Gah! I hate money problems!

Stuff

So, our internet went down again. Weird though because there's nothing wrong with the network, only that the wireless part won't allow us to get reception at all. That means I'm falling behind with my own blog posts, and I'm really behind with reading other people's blogs. I apologize!

This week has been a tough one. Felix has been pretty fussy all week and as a result I haven't gotten the sleep I've needed. He does seem to be doing much better but he's still not sleeping well enough for his parents to get real rest.

On Friday Brent and I submitted our new designs to woot. Mine is doing really well, but I think Brent's is too year-specific to get a real following. People are impressed anyway, of course. I call it my design, but Brent did all the work. I'm not nearly familiar enough with photoshop to do that kind of work...


Yesterday Felix and I went up to SLC for the baptism of my cousin's kid. Afterward we went out to eat with the whole family. I really like all of them and I'm glad some of them are close enough geographically that we can hang out often.

In the late afternoon I took Felix over to my brother's house so I could watch the kids while he and my sis-in-law got out for a few hours. My poor brother came home so sick he had to lay down immediately. He thinks it might be food poisoning. Blech!

Interesting phone call

I was in Wal-Mart for a few minutes today and I got a phone call from Felix's doctor's office, and according to the nurse, "the strep test from yesterday grew into a positive."

So apparently, he has an ear infection AND strep. No wonder he's been so miserable!

Conference and visits

Jacob and Sarah came to visit. This would be my sister and brother-in-law. They thought the 60-degree weather was kind of cold. Of course, they're dealing with 85 degrees in Arizona already. Poor things.

Conference was amazing as usual. I watched all 4 sessions and thoroughly enjoyed all of them. It's hard to summarize, but in a few words... This was Pres. Monson's first conference as president of the LDS church. I thought it was pretty apparent that he has changed/grown even in the past couple of months. He was still very simple, but even while he was fun and funny, he was also very serious. There were good talks about abuse and forgiveness and coming back to activity in the church. There are a few of my friends that I wish had listened, but I know they did not.

Felix really enjoyed having so many people around (it distracted him from the pain). I'm adding a little video at the bottom of this blog that was from the last session of conference.

On Sunday Felix started acting more and more fussy and by the afternoon it was obvious that his right ear was very sore, as was the cheek and neck near that ear. Sunday evening we had a big family get-together that was very pleasant. That night, we said goodbye to Jacob and Sarah and Nathaniel and Lina (who came down from Logan for the weekend). Felix continued to be super fussy so I watched him while Brent slept. I think in total I got about 3 hours of sleep.

I took Felix to the doctor at 11 and he confirmed the ear infection. He thought the source of his pain might be from something else because his ear didn't look infected at all even though there was infected fluid. So he ran a strep test and it came back negative. He prescribed antibiotics and Felix does seem to be responding well.

Last night Brent took Felix and I slept and apparently Felix was very fussy all night again.

I'm still sure that the pain is from the ear infection, but I'm wondering if we didn't just catch it early enough that the infection hadn't spread. Okay by me!

Oh, Brent submitted his first design for a woot derby. Basically, there's a website (woot.com) that has a side site (shirt.woot.com) that sells t-shirts. On the t-shirt site they have weekly contests and they pay a lot of money ($1000 each) for the winning designs (anyone who has ever purchased from any of the woot sites can vote), and the top 3 designs get printed and the artists get royalties. There are themes to the contests and this week's contest is greed. Brent first did the white version and then a day later he submitted the gray one. I would rather wear a gray t-shirt, but the white does pop better. We've decided that Brent needs to get his designs in as soon as the contest opens (the theme is announced a day before it opens) and he needs to be more clever with the theme. Check out http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Default.aspx?sort=votes to see all the designs for this contest (some of which are very fun and some are very stupid - the blue one in the top 4 is our favorite).

Quote and stuff

Mark Twain - "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."


We splurged this week on a new car seat for Felix. It's facing forward (but can also face backward) and he seems much happier in it. I think it's the fact that he can see what's going on more than anything.

Nothing really interesting is going on. It's a good enough day. Now I need to go back to work. I honestly like my work and I love the people I work with, but I don't especially enjoy going in at night. Good thing it doesn't happen very often. Maybe I'll take Felix with me. Hopefully it won't take too long...

April Fool!

I'm going to take the widget down in about 15 minutes, but it's been fun to pretend.

No, I'm not pregnant, although both Brent and I would be thrilled if I was. We're working on it and would really love to give Felix a sibling.

My boss at work is on a business trip this week so everyone else on our team programmed an auto reply only to him. It said, "I no longer work for the company." We even got him to do a big team email so he got a bunch of auto replies... Said he had a hard time not chuckling out loud during his conference.

It's been a good day. Thank goodness it's spring. I need some good spring-like weather!