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.