Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Happy Birthday Halfway Around the World

Happy birthday to Danica’s friend Hazel, who is currently living in Indonesia with her parents, Martha and Greg, and her three brothers, Gavin, Paul, and gestating baby (due later this year). We’ll see them all when they return Stateside at the end of February, which will be the first time we’ve seen them since October 2007.

You can read more about them in my blog from back then.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Ego Trip

So, as most of you know, my shot of the kids watching Obama’s inauguration got a decent amount of fun pub via the Flickrblog. It was the second photo featured in their “We watched” entry about the inauguration. Quite frankly, I really liked a few of the other photos in there:

Obama Inauguration by calculat0r.

Inauguration Party - Obama takes the Oath of Office by bluheron.

Day 20 / 365 by odeamon.

Regardless, our photo was so popular that day that it made the front page of Flickr’s Explore, a page dedicated to what Flickr calls the “most interesting” photos of the day. Here’s a shot, if you haven’t seen it:

It’s the first time any of my photos has hit the front page, since your photo has to be pretty popular that day to be shown there. The formula for a winning photo is a mystery of photo quality, subject, views, comments, favorites, and dumb luck. I was just happy because I got the shot I wanted for the kids, and people who saw the picture understood what I wanted them to get out of the shot.

Anyway, the photo also made the front page of Yahoo! Italia as part of their Barack Obama coverage:

Some of you have been wondering how it got there. Well, turns out that one of the people who saw my photo was Flickr member Angela:-), who happens to work for Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo! in case you didn’t know). She e-mailed me and asked if she could use the photo of the kids on Yahoo! Italia, so of course I said yes.

Now before you all tell me that we need some kind of compensation, my photos are posted under a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial use as long as I’m given credit for the photo. All in all, the photo was up there for about a day. I’ve gotta say, it’s fun seeing our photos out there in the public.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

For Them

So they'll have a memory of one of the biggest days in American history.

***UPDATE: 11:55 am, January 20, 2009***

The kids made the Flickr blog! This is the second time Danica's been on it. The first was way back with this photo (which, by the way, has been unseated as my most interesting photo by the second photo above).

Friday, January 16, 2009

Contingency Plan (via xkcd.com)

Why didn't I think of this before?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

A Little Dizzy

Girl: "Mommy go in my room and see if it's moving."

Mom: "Why is it moving?"

Girl: "Because I was twirling."

Friday, January 9, 2009

Inevitability

Okay, so you all were right - I spoke too soon regarding Danica's illness. Mom developed it last night around 11:00. I'm dreading Colin developing the symptoms while I await the inevitable.

Curse you all for not agreeing with me that it was food poisoning. I've mailed a letter from all of us to your homes. Open it. Smell it. Join us.

Resistance is futile.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Danica Update

The Girl heaved a total of five times last night, in case you were keeping count. She slept pretty fitfully, which would mean that Kindra slept pretty fitfully. I stayed home with Danica today – even though we were fairly sure she was fine, Kindra wanted to play it safe. Besides, we wouldn’t want someone to take their kid to daycare if there was a remote possibility he or she was sick.

Danica was pretty grumpy this morning. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I wouldn’t give her much beyond some homemade Pedialyte (water, a little salt, some sugar, and Jell-O powder for flavoring). I’d gone out last night to purchase a few supplies – ginger ale, 7Up, saltines, and actual Pedialyte (oddly enough, I couldn’t find children’s Pepto Bismol chewables). It didn’t really matter, since she didn’t want any of it. She eventually held enough liquid down that I gave her a small amount of Chex cereal. You know she wasn’t feeling well when she wouldn’t eat the second small bowl I gave her.

She spent the morning on the couch, but she couldn’t decide on any of her DVDs to watch. Just exhausted, I suppose. She just wanted to curl up and sit with me. Her mild fever persisted, but we think it’s okay.

She ended up passing out at 11:30 on the couch which was amazing in and of itself, since she never falls asleep anywhere but in the car seat or in her bed. She woke up when Kindra came home around noon, but fell back asleep as I held her on the couch. All in all, I think she took about a three hour nap today.

She seems fine now, and she’ll be at home with me tomorrow so we’ll be able to see how she’s doing.

* * *

On a side note, Kindra planned on taking Colin to our daycare provider today just in case Danica was actually sick and not dealing with some kind of food poisoning. I heard her phone’s extensive ring indicating a text message on her way out, but really thought nothing of it. She gets halfway there, reads the text, and calls me (on her speakerphone, so as not to break the California law restricting phone calls while driving).

It turns out that our daycare provider and her family all have the stomach flu, so they were closed for the day. It was too late to turn back and come home, and I couldn’t drive out to pick up Colin because she had Danica’s car seat (Parenting Lesson #1,357: Don’t let your wife drive off with the car seat – you might need it). Everything worked out because Kindra was able to call our old daycare provider, and she watched Colin until Kindra could leave work.

*Sigh* Rain… pours… hurricane… whatever. And since you’re wondering if Danica has the stomach flu… I doubt it. That would mean that Colin and Kindra would probably be sick right now, too, and they’re not (*knock wood*).

* * *

One last funny vomiting story (that doesn’t begin with, “This one time, when I was hammered…”):

Kindra had just changed into some more comfortable clothes and sat down with Colin to feed him lunch. We’d given him some Cheerios as a dessert when he starts to choke on one. Kindra tilts his head forward to try and scoop the thing out when… Yup, you guessed it. Lunch redux. All over the tray, a little on the chair, some on the floor, and of course, some on Kindra. Heh.

Honestly, I think we both found it a bit amusing. Colin was fine, and we sent him off to his nap with a bottle. It was just the second time he’d done that, but his timing couldn’t have been better.

Quickies

I pretty much never get the good stories, so here are a couple relayed by Kindra:

Kindra lowered Colin’s crib earlier today since we plan on putting him back in it and reclaiming our room. Long story short, he’s been sleeping in the pack-and-play in our room while Danica sleeps (or doesn’t sleep, as it were) in her room. Mom usually has to sleep in Danica’s room while Dad sleeps out on the couch (which is almost a preference sometimes – but that’s another story).

Anyway, Danica’s had a habit of climbing into the crib since it’s right next to the couch in her room. She just hops up on the couch arm and scampers into the crib. She hadn’t had trouble getting in and out because the mattress was set for a newborn and she’s become fairly adept at it. In fact, she’s put her own dolls to sleep in it:


So after Kindra lowered the mattress, Danica climbed into it to play. A couple of minutes later, Kindra heard: “Mommy! This crib too big! I stuck!”

Typical. The reason we’re in this whole sleeping nightmare is because she figured out how to climb out a year ago…

* * *

Danica was helping Mom out this afternoon while Dad went to work for a bit and was actually being helpful, so Mom told her she was Mommy’s favorite girl. Danica stared at Kindra hard, went into her room and slammed the door shut.

“No I not! I Daddy’s favorite girl!”

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Firsts

As you all know, there are good firsts and there are bad firsts. Today is one of those days where we’ve had one of each, so I guess we’ll go with the bad first first and the good first second.

Bad First

Here’s my tweet on the subject:

The Girl just hurled. Fortunately, she was in Mom’s lap and most of it went in her blankie.

Kindra was holding Danica on her lap getting ready for bed when I came over to the couch to kiss Danica goodnight. The Girl had been saying that her tummy felt bad, which we really didn’t think too much of since she’s said the same thing before. Kindra figured she’d just picked it up from one of the girls at daycare, and even though I knew she hadn’t had any sugar or candy, I just thought that she’d maybe eaten too much of her dinner.

Unfortunately, neither of those were the case. As we were in the process of explaining to Danica that going to bed would help her feel better, she decided that regurgitating everything she’d had since lunch would probably expedite the process. It was quite a bit of blueberries, mango, noodles, and meatballs which Kindra and I both had the good fortune to watch come up. Several times.

She’s done it thrice more since then. The first time, I’d gone to put her clothes and blankie in the wash, and when I came back, I found Mom and Girl on the floor in the bathroom. Apparently, she said that her tummy didn’t feel good, and Mom had the good sense to take her to the toilet. Mom lifted the lid, held her hair, and she just leaned over and cleaned whatever was left out.

The second time, they were lying in Danica’s bed to go to sleep while I was out getting set to write this blog. I hear Kindra calling for me, so I go into Danica’s room and find the two of them hovering over the trash can. I grabbed the can and got what hair Kindra didn’t get out of Danica’s face and got the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen The Girl give me as she heaved up a couple of more ounces of liquid. She just curled up with Mom on the couch in her room and tried to keep her eyes open (sheesh, even exhausted, she doesn’t want to sleep).

About half-an-hour later, I went to go swap the laundry, and when I got back… Mom caught most of it this time, since it was just the small amount of liquid she’d tried to drink. You know The Girl’s sick when she actually asks to lie down in her bed. Poor girl.

We’re hoping it’s just some bad food and not something that the rest of us can catch. One of the mango slices she’d eaten at lunch wasn’t the best, so we’re looking to that as the culprit. In the interest of full disclosure, she seems to have developed a very mild fever, but don’t panic because it’s really low. She’s been sleeping on-and-off, so it’s gonna be a long night.

Good First

On the bright side (or not so bright side, depending on how you look at it), Colin did this today for the first time:

Sorry I don’t have a better picture of it. He just happened to do it while Kindra was out of the room, and he looked a little wobbly, so I didn’t want to run, have him turn his head and fall down.

I’d seen him playing with the DVD tray cover on the DVD player there earlier in the day (which, btw, Danica did incessantly when she was his age), but I never in my wildest thoughts he’d pull himself up. He’d also been pushing himself up onto all fours, but it seemed like this would be a little further off because I’d actually tried getting him to pull himself up on me.

Guess this means his days of doing the worm (or butterfly stroke, if you prefer) to get around are nearly over. Danica walked just after her first birthday, but it looks like we’ll be hearing the pitter-patter of this guy’s little feet in a month or so. Dang it.