Day 123 / 73 To Go: "Even When I'm Bad...You Still Love Me."

Posted by: Cris

Sad Face: Happy Face (or at least trying...it's still early):

Sad Face:

Happy Face (okay, that's a little better):

Sad Face:

Happy Face:

Nova was a bit better today but has gotten into the habit of laying around and crying at the slightest imposition and with all her coughing, I'm sure she still doesn't feel great (I know I don't). So, we're hoping to get her more back into her normal groove tomorrow.

But, she's recovered enough to play a good mommy to her baby doll.

Because it is almost impossible to take Juneau and Nova AND all 3 dogs out for a stroll, I decided to take advantage of the girls getting in bed a little early tonight and took the dogs out for a walk...

By the time we got back they were all beat...If they could talk they would clearly be saying "There aren't all these steep hills in Ohio!!"

Sherpa slopped down some water then laid down in that spot and is still there, refusing to even come downstairs and go outside. She can be trusted to sleep upstairs by herself tonight. Denali on the other hand I made come down to my room...he definitely CANNOT be trusted!

I am happy that one message has gotten through to Juneau during the last 2 years: Lately, anytime we are cuddling or giving hugs at bedtime or whatever, whenever I say "I love you Juneau" she looks me in the eyes and says, "Daddy, even when I'm bad, you still love me"...That's right Junebug, no matter what!!

Day 122 / 74 To Go: Parenting assistance...

Posted by: Cris

I wanted to post be sure to post what has probably been the single moment of Nova not being totally wiped out and grouchy this weekend:

About 5 minutes after these pictures, she was out cold. After the planetarium outing on Friday, the girls got up at 7:00 on Saturday and by 9:00 (for Nova) and 9:30 (for Juneau) were out cold on the couch and slept until 12:30. Apparently this flu thing isn't going to be so easy to kick! After getting up at 12:30 and eating lunch, they still went back to sleep from 2:30-4:30 for their normal nap. Despite all that sleep during the day, they were both still out for the night at 7:30 on the drive home from the NEX.

Today, Juneau seemed recovered but Nova has just been beyond fatigued and periodically seeming to have a little temperature. After being out to Costco and Nova not being able to walk 2 minutes without breaking down and crying from fatigue and still being too exhausted to not be miserable after a 3.5 hour nap this afternoon, I decided to get some parenting assistance from my sister since Nova had pneumonia last year at this time following a bout with the flu and was pretty much acting just like this...Long story short, in a move that would make Grandma Saccenti very proud, Nova is started on a course of Amoxicillin tonight.

I'm hopeful that by Tuesday my smiling little princess will be back...broke my heart every time that she'd be at her limit and come walking toward me crying with arms up just begging to be picked up because her little legs couldn't go anymore.

Finally, I have had on my to do list to get a picture of the dogs that really looks like Hawaii to send in a "thank you" (along with some chocolate macademia nuts) to the small town vet back in Ohio who went out of their way to help get the dogs ready for the trip here. I was envisioning loading everyone up in the truck one day and hitting the beach for a photo-op. I realized after this week that just wasn't going to happen anytime soon so I resorted for convincing the dogs to let me lift them up onto the table on the lanai to get a good background shot:

Now, all I have to do is get the picture printed and get the whole thing in the mail...add it to the "to do" list.

Day 121 / 75 To Go: Attention 45 to 55 year old woman who is obviously not with a child of any sort and clearly not disabled...

Posted by: Cris

...you are not the "Family Restroom's" target audience.

Spending 2 hours preparing your hair, make-up and outfit for a simple trip to the grocery store, as you've clearly done, does not necessitate a private bathroom to do your business and reapply your blush. As you nudge ahead of me into the Family Restroom, leaving me standing outside trying to convince a 2-year-old that she can "hold it" for a couple more minutes because you have an eyeliner emergency, I can promise you that the prospect of you having to enter the women's bathroom with the rest of your gender is not nearly as horrifying as me having to resort to taking two toddlers into the infinitely nastier men's bathroom, finding a stall where the toilet has actually been flushed since the last time the Cubs won the World Series and kneeling on the floor in what must clearly be mostly urine while simultaneously trying to help one child balance on 2 clean square inches of toilet seat and prevent the other one, in what she perceives as an attempt to be nice, from picking the scraps of toilet paper up off the floor to throw in the garbage can! The women's bathroom is the Garden of Eden compared to the post-apocolyptic wasteland waiting for me behind the door of every men's restroom on earth. And even if there were enough soap in the world to neutralize the Andromeda Strain incubating in the men's restroom, the fact that the soap dispenser and the paper towel holder will invariably be empty means that my ability to get into that restroom before my child can no longer maintain bladder control might be the only chance of avoiding having to nurse a toddler through projectile vomiting the day after tomorrow. I am quite certain that the creators of the Family Restroom did not care that you think you are above using the facilities with the rest of the peasants when they designed their masterpiece.

Now that you've done this to me more than once, I felt like I needed to bring this to your attention.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Day 120 / 76 To Go: Planetarium Redux

Posted by: Cris

Today was the first day things were pretty much back to normal after the bacteria incubator our house had become returned to normal infectious levels. I got up early and headed to work, still beat but without fever and with a TON of work to catch up on from being out of commission for 2 days.

The girls seemed to have their appetite back for the most part and had a normal breakfast...

At this time of year, at low tide the sand bar is an absolute bleach out in the middle of the ocean. This morning this cool 3 mast sail boat was out in the bay as well. For those of you who still are looking at snow out your window this morning, I apologize for this contrasting view of the world from my lanai :)

I did pretty good on my first day back on the job. The only problem was that the first day off of the couch in 2 days happened to be a super busy day all morning and including a lecture and long session in the cadaver lab this afternoon so even at the start of lecture, I was starting to feel my gas tank empty and by the end of lab I was spent. I eventually snuck out of lab a half hour early and headed home to recuperate a little before this evenings activities.

I hadn't told the girls where we were going tonight exactly so when I got home, they were just getting up from nap and as I sat them down to eat an early dinner, I told them not only were we going to see Melody (which they already knew) but that we were going to the planetarium. From that announcement I literally got one of those priceless reactions where Juneau starts into a slow motion smile that keeps getting bigger and bigger until it looks like her face is going to turn inside out. It was awesome.

Of course, at the planetarium it was a joyous reunion as if the girls hadn't seen each other for years. It makes my day every week to see Juneau and Melody get so excited when they first see each other.

While we were waiting in line and headed into the planetarium, I saw the sign that the show was the same one we had seen the last time (I was assuming it was a different one). I told Beth "This is actually better because all they talk about are the Coyote and the T-Rex in the show so they'll be happier seeing the same one again anyway". Beth said "Yeah, I told Tim that is was the same show and he said 'I already saw that one, I want to see a different one' to which I replied 'It's not about what you want :)" - Melody will be 5 this summer....you'd think he would have that figured out by now.

3 girls - 2 seats...ready for the show.

After the show, we were all invited over to the observatory across the street since it was a clear night and all the kids got to look through the big telescope, much to their delight. Both Nova and Juneau were able to look through the eyepiece when I held them up and Juneau will proudly tell you that tonight she saw the Orion Nebula. It was super cool.

Nova was tired and on the verge of tears at several points throughout the night...still recovering from the week. But, we hit Coldstone for ice cream after the show and hopped up on sugar, they were ready to run around outside even though it was 9:30.

Goodnight hugs...

Even though we live literally 5 minutes from this Coldstone, Nova was so tired that by the time I pulled into the driveway, she was already asleep.

Day 119 / 77 To Go: On the mend...

Posted by: Cris

By tonight, the girls are full-on on the mend...as evidenced by the jumping around the room tonight.



I figure I'm about 12 hours behind them with a bit of a fever this evening but starting to feel better. The biggest problem has been the feeling of being totally wiped out of any energy whatsoever. I got the fuel pump for the BMW in the mail today and went out to put it in - an easy 30 minute job just removing the old one and putting the new one it - and when I came in, I felt like I had just run a marathon. But, the good news is that we are back to having 2 working cars.



In other news, we had been waiting for the second package from mommy to complete our matching set of treasure chests from Afghanistan. Today, the package came and now we have this super cool matching set:
Complete with personalized name in-lays:

Hopefully tomorrow everything will be back to normal for everyone since I'm scheduled for an anatomy lecture tomorrow afternoon and then we're scheduled to hit up the planetarium again. I haven't told the girls since I didn't know if they'd be well enough to attend but they are going to have an absolute blast...the planetarium has been all they've talked about since we went last time.

Day 118 / 78 To Go: Denial is NOT stronger than germs.

Posted by: Cris

This morning picked up pretty much where yesterday left off. The girls had a super restless night and I ended up in about 20 different positions on the couch responding to each of their waking cries throughout the night. For another day, the girls took in a full day's worth of shows on the couch (I'm praying they don't figure out the connection between sickness and getting to sit on the couch and watch shows or I will be raising hypochondriacs). The fevers were hanging and they had zero appetite but their attitudes seemed a little happier most of the morning.

I however started the day feeling a bit crappy but figured I'd head out to Home Depot for my last 7 bags of concrete and try to finish the posts. Just ignoring sickness works right?

Though it doesn't look like it in this picture, today Juneau took the brunt of the fever and Nova steadily improved as the day went on. By 7:00 pm her fever was gone even without having had Tylenol for 6 hours and she started getting antsy. However, she was still totally capable of milking it wih a crying "Daddy, I want you to snuggle me"

The dogs are adjusting to my series of new plans for their lives which involve being inside more in the evening "just in case" and Summit may start staying outside at night because if the huskies go after a living creature in the yard, you can bet Summit will be barking up a storm (flashback to the Prairie Dog in the yard in Colorado - scroll to the bottom of that post to relive a great animal kingdom moment - and if I were you I'd watch that sweet goal by Landon Donovan again).

I managed to make it through the final trips down the hill toting concrete bags (final tally: 41 bags - 2480 lbs) and get the last pole put in (only 3.5 cubic feet on that one, Dad - since I know you are keeping track) and work a bit on my new mission of eradicating all of the standing water implements on our property (i'm building 5-gallon bucket toad traps next) but I was starting to lose the germ warfare so it was kind of lucky that a set of very severe thunderstorms went through and chased me back in the house.

Luckily, as the day went on, the girls kept doing a bit better while I was moving in the opposite direction...but I'd prefer that if one of us has to be sick, it's me.

By the time I had Nelson keep an eye on the girls so I could make a quick trip to Safeway for much needed milk tonight, I must have been quite a site walking through the aisles with an "out of it" expression and freezing my butt off even in Hawaii (Fever: 1; Thermoregulation: 0)

But, even the crappiness of the storms today had a great outcome of producing these views over the ocean as the sun began to set (don't miss the rainbow in the first 2):

By tonight, Nova is close to over the sickness and felt good enough to play the princess game on my phone :)

Juneau was still battling the fever with regular Tylenol doses but did eat a little bit of eggs and so far (knock on wood) hasn't puked anymore. I on the other hand am sitting here completely wrapped in a down comforter and when I had to get up a few minutes ago and attempt to answer a phone call from Emilie (which was unsuccessful, unfortunately), the shivers that ensued were LITERALLY physically painful...quick run back to the couch!!

So that we don't go 2 days in a row with downer posts, I'll leave you with this happening from over the weekend that Emilie reminded me of:

We were on Skype Saturday morning talking with Emilie and playing and having some good family time and Nova said: "I have a good idea, let's pretend Mommy is Coool!!" Luckily Nova has one of the best knacks for pretending that I've ever seen in a 2 year old so she might just be able to pull that off though it will clearly require the full use of her skills. :)

Day 117 / 79 To Go: Children's Tylenol for Everyone!

Posted by: Cris

This collection of pathetic looking pictures from today pretty much sums up the extent of the flu bug that appeared in our house today. The girls got up at 7:00 this morning and by 7:30, wanted to go back to bed. Nova then slept pretty much on and off until 2:00 pm.
Lots of laying on the couch and watching shows today.

Nova has been taking the brunt of the fever while Juneau has been the puker (though only once so far)
I thought Nova was out for the night but her tylenol wore off a bit ago, she got hot again and woke up just a few minutes ago...the poor thing is lying there asleep but kind of periodically groaning because she feels so bad...heart breaking :(
But, so that this whole post isn't a downer, one picture of Juneau's funny faces we catch on camera that I forgot to include yesterday:
Here's hoping this is short lived and that daddy doesn't wake up tomorrow morning with this bug!!