Turkey? Eaten. Saturday, November 29, 2008

And man was it juicy.  I really don’t want to brag, and I don’t remember if it was quite like this last year, but I can say for certain that this was one juicy bird.  My first cut into the breast meat had liquid flowing like a fountain.  I extended the brine time by an hour, but I don’t know if that made any difference.  Like I said, too, this may have been the situation last year, I’m just not certain.

We had a great time, but missed having Susan’s parents and Aunt along for the celebration.  My dad supported me in the kitchen all day long, so that made the process much easier to handle.  We managed to get everything cooked, some for the first time, and delivered to the table on time.  Dad tried his hand at cornbread stuffing and giblet gravy, each for his first time at the helm.  The stuffing left a few minor things to be desired, but overall went extremely well.

In addition to Thanksgiving dinner, we had a little bit of early Christmas.  Basically there was a severe shortage of vehicle space, so things needed to be delivered when the opportunity arose.  Olivia got a “magic fountain cottage” from my parents and it was brought up by Susan’s parents on Thursday.  This stayed in the box, rendering it basically invisible to Olivia, until today when my mother could assemble it.  You’ll notice the photos on flickr.

For Susan and I we got a new chest of drawers and bed from IKEA.  This was a complete surprise to me, and we haven’t tackled the process of putting them together just yet.  We decided instead of furniture construction, we’d spent some family time together.  Amy, Garrett and Geni took a quick trip to Target and bought Apples To Apples, a game Matt and Richell had introduced us to a while back.  We spent several hours playing, laughing and taunting one another.

Miss Olivia had a delightful time today, playing and visiting with all of the family.  She and Harvey got to spend time together, as well with everyone else – she’s even starting to warm up to my dad finally.  It may have been helpful that he was on her terrority this time, but she certainly was a lot less shy about being around him.

By about 5 or 6p, though, she was exhausted.  Someone swept her off to bed and she hasn’t really woken up since then.  Apparently being charming for so many people, and taking ownership of a new home, is quite tiring for a young girl.  I’m sure she’s just resting up to tackle the cottage anew, tomorrow morning.

Even with all the changes of plans (which everyone knows frustrated me greatly), it all turned out very nicely.  I hate that we couldn’t have quite everyone at the same time, but we did get to see everyone around the same time.  I’m thankful for a home that can fit so many people and for families that will travel to be together.

Turkey? Dunked. Saturday, November 29, 2008

The turkey, like last year, is going to be brined.  I rose at 3:30a, removed the bits stored in the turkey, and dunked him in a bucket of ice water and flavor agents.  In about 3 hours, I’ll wake again to turn it over for full effect.  By 10a or so, we’ll be ready to cook… but I suppose I’d better wait a little longer so I can time it better based on arrivals…

I’m ready to go back to sleep now.

No longer sick, but quite tired… Friday, November 28, 2008

Everyone seems to be basically back into shape.  Olivia isn’t completely transitioned back to regular food, but she’s moving that direction.  As such, her diapers reflect her intake… mostly liquid.   Susan is starting to finally shake off the phenagren shot she got at the doctor’s office.  She already doesn’t deal well with that particular medicine and then they had to give her a double dose, due simply to inventory restrictions.  She’s beginning to return to the world of solid foods, too.

I… I am tired.  Ed and Sheila were up Thursday and Friday, so they gave me a chance to get the house more toward prepared while they held onto the baby.  They took her to the Opry Hotel on Thursday, which they all enjoyed quite a bit.  I took the opportunity to join some friend’s for a Thanksgiving dinner, much like we had last year.  They were all quite disappointed Olivia wasn’t able to join us, but understood the situation.  It was an amazing dinner, with a wide variety of dishes and wines.

After dinner we played a very amusing game called “Celebrity” and I ended up on the winning team both times.  Those of you that know my friends… you’ll understand that it was a very interesting experience.  The game has three rounds, one with few restrictions on the verbal clues, the second where you’re limited to two words, and the third is completely non-verbal.  Wildly amusing.

I haven’t slept an awful lot lately, or I’ve slept poorly and its all starting to catch up with me.  I’ll hopefully have Sunday to recover somewhat and then it’s just a week of work until we’re off to Disney World.  I sure hope getting down there will give me some rest!

Almost everyone will be in the house tomorrow for our postponed Thanksgiving dinner.  We’ll lose Ed and Sheila due to work schedules, but we had an opportunity to visit them in a quiet setting and they had tons of time with Miss Olivia.  I’m excited to have everyone over tomorrow, and to have many of them as overnight guests.  I think I long for the holidays at my grandmother’s house, where we often gathered as a group until late in the night…

Matt & Richell… Wednesday, November 26, 2008

… now have a blog!  Apparently they felt the pressure from our highly successful blogging and joined up, what with the baby on the way and whatnot.

Now Susan has it! Wednesday, November 26, 2008

I simply have not had a chance to post today, but Susan woke up this morning with the same thing that has stricken Miss Olivia.  She spent most of the day running up and down the stairs to empty the contents of her body, while Olivia and I hung out.

Olivia was pretty sluggish today, waking only for an hour or so, then returning to a long nap.  After she woke, she ate her first “solid” meal for a couple of days – applesauce!  Soon thereafter, she was down for a nap again.  I woke her before she was done, but it was for a good reason – we needed to get Susan to a doctor to make sure there was nothing we needed to be concerned about.

I dropped Susan off, then Olivia and I killed time in the area.  An hour or so later, Susan was out with a shot of anti-naseau in her system and a couple of scripts.  We dropped the scripts off, then I brought them both home.  I fed Olivia a little more applesuace then introduced some bread – and the bread was a huge success.  After a while, she was raising a huge stink and she had finally produced a semi-solid poop.  I take this to be a very good sign of her recovery.

Olivia and I drove up to the pharamacy, grabbed the medicine, and then I laid her down for a nap.  Once she was asleep, I headed out for food.  I intended to go to the new restaurant at the end of the street, but they’d just closed for the evening.  Instead I drove down to Rosepepper and grabbed a bit of food to go.

Olivia is still asleep despite having gone to bed quite early… it’ll be interesting to see how this goes.  I’ve been walking around spraying everything with Lysol in an attempt to keep myself healthy.

Sick baby update… Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Olivia has consumed several ounces of pedialyte and managed to keep it all in her system.  She had a good sleep, as did Susan, and is active at a near normal level.

Poor, sick Olivia Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Warning – puke and poop ahead.

Last night was a long night.  We put Olivia down to sleep around 8:30p, and she woke a couple of times between then and 10p when we moved toward bed ourselves.  Since it was abnormal for her to wake so often, so early, Susan checked in on her.  What she found was a shivering baby girl, covered in her own vomit.  Apparently, the times she woke up were to rid herself of the contents of her stomach.

We quickly warmed up the bathroom and drew a bath.  We plopped her in, warmed her body and gave her a decent scrubbing.  It had gotten into her hair pretty thoroughly, but she wasn’t wildly interested in a shampoo job.  We left her in the tub for a while, mostly because she was still working through dry heaves.

Eventually, though, we pulled her out and stayed close to her all night.  The yellowish vomit eventually transitioned to a brown color.  We began to worry about the little bit of a foam toy she’d bitten off on Saturday night.  The three of us “slept” in the bed together, waking every 15 – 25 minutes for Olivia to heave a little bit.

Around 3:30a, she let out a stinky poo – and a huge one.  It was basically mucus, and it blew out the diaper, getting into her sleeper.  We weren’t about to give a very, very sleepy baby a bath, so it was just a change of clothes and a wipe down.  From here, though, she slept quietly until 8:30a when she woke, ready to go like a normal day.

We had spoken to the on-call nurse around 4a, and they had suggested going to the ER, what with the brown vomit and the possible blockage.  We decided against that, though, because she had completely settled down.  Then, when she woke up in such a good mood, we figured we could even skip a doctor’s visit.  However, about 30 minutes after her formula bottle, we knew we had to go.

The visit was fairly uneventful – anti-naseau medicine (the same stuff Susan took for her morning sickness) and a recommendation toward Pedialyte.  Monitor, hydrate, and try to sleep.  The doc was more concerned with us than the baby, probably because the baby was personable and we weren’t!

She’s had a fair amount of pedialyte, after the anti-naseau meds, and now she’s napping.  At least this bug is ahead of Thanksgiving and our Disney Trip… right?

Home again Sunday, November 23, 2008

We’re all back at home – me returning from Seattle and Susan from Chattanooga. It seems they had a great time visiting everyone in Chattanooga, and I know I had fun in Seattle. I went out for a software conference and I’ve learned a lot, especially about how inactive I’ve been in the online community. I’m going to try and rectify that over the next year, pushing my self a little harder.

Beyond traveling, we’ve been getting ready for Thanksgiving at our house. We’ve set the menu for Thanksgiving – 13 people this year, not including the little mouth.

Turkey, ham, green bean casserole, stuffing, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, and sweet potato casserole. Also a couple of cheeses and a salmon mousse to start…

The house isn’t looking too sharp, so I think we’ll be pretty busy over the next few days trying to get things cleaner. It’s tough, what with Olivia’s toys being scattered about within 10 minutes of her arrival in a room.

I’ve got my last hockey game of the season today and its early enough that the girls will be in attendance!  The team has been doing very well and I’m excited Susan will get to see us play today.  The team has been together for almost two year and we’ve still got a big portion of the original crew.  Maybe we’ll get a few pictures from the game today…

Long time no see Sunday, November 16, 2008

Sooo… it’s been… a long time since I last posted.  It’s a been a fair while since either of us have posted.

Olivia is good – she walks very, very well, even in her footed PJs on the hardwood floors.  She’s backing off the formula feedings and moving more toward solid food feedings.  Carrots, peas, cheese, yogurt, yogurt/wheat bites, fruit (honeydew, strawberry, pineapple, cantaloupe), refried beans, etc, etc, etc.  We’ve not introduced a tremendous amount of meat – the occasional bit of shredded chicken or gerber ravioli.

She took a little break from saying real words, but she seems to have brought dada back from the depths of her mind and exercises it a fair amount.  To say she prefers her daddy would be a significant understandment.  It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy time with her mom, but she will strain to get a glimpse at daddy if mommy is in the way.

In addition to her walking, she’s climbing.  She mastered climbing onto the toy chest behind the couch a week or so ago.  We knew it was mastered when she fell off of it and busted her lip… and then within an hour she was back on top, parading around.  Within the past few days, she’s figured out how to get onto the couch and ottoman.  This, of course, was the last bastion for grown-up items like magazines, books or remotes.

She’s a book worm.  She’ll sit in the floor and flip through books.  She’ll carry the same book back and forth between Susan and I for us to read it to her over and over again.  Susan now has “Big and Small Adventures with Elmo and Friends” completely memorized.  So much so that I can turn the pages on the opposite side of the room and Susan can recite the words… which seems to please Olivia.

We’ve been cleaning the house the past few days, preparing for family to visit for Thanksgiving.  At the same time, it’s been a process of baby proofing and / or fall cleaning.  We have re-confirmed that the giant stack of boxes full of books really shouldn’t be in our house any longer.  We’ve been carrying these things around for a few years now, knowing we didn’t want them, but just not getting around to donating / selling them.  We’ve also created a pile of donation “stuff” that will gain us a bit of room.

Amusingly, I got a ton of cleaning done yesterday morning and early afternoon – after being up working since 2am.  I’ve had a difficult week, starting early Wednesday morning.  I’ve not had a full night’s sleep since Tuesday, what with critical events and their cleanup.  It’s been a learning experience, and its given me an opportunity to write a bunch of training material.

Next week I’ll be in Seattle and Susan will be visiting Chattanooga.  I’m headed out for a conference and will hopefully return with a tremendous amount of information about the next version of the software I support.  When I get back, we’ll only have a few days until Thanksgiving is upon us.  From there, it’s just a little more than a week until we’re headed out to Disney World.

This will Olivia’s first trip to Disney World – she got to go to Disneyland when Susan and I went for the first time.  Of course neither of these trips will register in her memory, but we’re hoping that this trip at her first birthday will at least be something she will enjoy in the moment.  She’ll be getting her first haircut, so she’ll get a special pair of Mickey ears – her 3rd set!  (The first is from the trip when Susan was pregenant and the second is from Disneyland)  I know all of us, Amy, Garrett, Susan, and mom are all tremendously excited about this trip.  I know I’ll certainly be glad to turn off my work cell phone for a week.

I suppose that’s a reasonable wrap up of the recent events.  Oh – Tiffany visited from San Diego a few weeks back and there are photos at Flickr.  It was great to see her, as I was only recently lamenting the idea that she might not get to see Olivia for ages and she’d be a completely different kid!

Hale and Hearty. Thursday, November 6, 2008

We are all well.  Finally. <Applause, applause>

We had a wonderful Halloween.  Sandy came up to visit and see Olivia dressed up as a black cat (thank you, Richell, for the great costume).  The trick-or-treaters swamped us and I nearly ran out of candy.  There wasn’t much I could do in such a short period of time for decorating, but I put a light up pumpkin that belonged to Ian’s late grandmother, Dot, in the front window.  It was enough to bring in the sugar-seeking masses.

Olive is a climber.  She regularly scales the ottoman and Ian’s old toy chest.  Once on top, she paces in circles, laughing and pointing.  It’s hilarious… unless she falls.  She’s only taken two big tumbles and there weren’t any residual bruises or tears.  Really, they just served to make her more fearless, more determined.  More inclined to give Momma a coronary.

We have also started giving her whole milk.  There has been much trepidition on our parts in taking this step.  She had such trouble with breastmilk, along with Ian being lactose intolerant, AND the fact that neither my brother nor I were able to handle milk until well into our toddler years.  But she’s fine.  In fact, she rather loves it.  We don’t give her much, not even half a sippy cup over the course of the day.  We’ll be upping the ante very soon.

In other (happier) news, my sister-in-law, Richell, is pregnant!   Whooo-hooo!  Congratulations!  And my good friend, Shannon, is now expecting her second child.  Life is good.