Homegrown Texan

Scary

So, Monday night around 11:30 I woke up to hearing Nathan coughing this barky cough. "Oh great" I thought to myself, thinking I was in for a long night of listening to him cough while he miraculously slept through the noise. Then I heard him crying. "Damn, he must have thrown up again", I thought to myself. He woke up Sat morning throwing up (climbed in bed with me afterwards...I *thought* something smelled wrong, then ended up throwing up in the kitchen again and *cleaned it up himself*, bless his heart). I thought he was having a recurrence of that.

So I got up to go check on him. Jim already had him up and I immediately knew something was very wrong. He was gasping for air, wheezing, and saying "I can't do it! I can't do it!". He never would say what he couldn't do, but it was clear that he couldn't breathe very well at all. I was a little comforted that he was at least able to talk, so at least he was taking in *some* air. But it scared the living hell out of me. He got the croup once about a year ago and it got bad enough that I had to take him to urgent care for breathing treatments, but this was so sudden. Obviously he needed a doctor, but I was afraid to take him to the ER myself, as I was afraid he would get worse before I could even get him there.

So I called 911. Funny thing about me in emergencies...my mind feels very clear. I'm pretty sure I'm handling things pretty sanely. My voice must not convey that, though, because the 3 times I've been in emergency situations like this (the other 2 being when I started bleeding when pregnant with Nathan), I've had people tell me that I needed to calm down and tell them whatever information they needed. Which is funny, because I've always been perfectly ready to give that information. Oh, and my hands shake like mad. I guess my adrenals must work well. :) Anyway, after hearing the "calm down" speech from the emergency dispatch, I gave my info and they said a fire truck and ambulance would be on their way.

They were there in the matter of a couple of minutes, I'm sure...we live very close to the fire station. But multiply however many attempted breaths per minute and it felt like an eternity.

Soon my small living room was filled with...5-6 paramedics? I'm not really sure. They started taking oxygen sat readings on Nathan and gave him albuterol with an SVN(?) machine. It seemed to help a little bit, but he was still laboring. What a guy, he was such a trooper. Did everything they asked and didn't freak out.

Within a few minutes they were loading me onto the gurney with Nathan in my lap. Paranoid person that I am, I was a little concerned that they didn't just strap him down and let me ride in the back (always gotta buckle up!), but I let it go. They took us to Scottsdale Memorial (or whatever it's called now), which I thought was weird since we nearly passed Banner Desert on the way. I know Desert has a good NICU; maybe not a good peds department? I don't know, but I have 2 helicopter bills under my belt from being taken to the wrong hospital initially and having to be transferred, so I wasn't going to argue. Those helicopter bills aren't cheap (even with good insurance) and Nathan seemed to be breathing well enough that I wasn't worried about the extra few minutes.

They started another albuterol treatment on the way. He seemed to be responding some, but I knew it wasn't quite doing the trick. I remembered from his other episode that he had some sort of similar breathing treatment. I knew it wasn't albuterol, but couldn't think of what it was.

They got us into a room in the ER right away. The place was dead...I didn't see any other patients there. The ER looked pretty extensive, so there may have been some in other areas, but there were no patients waiting...a new experience for me. The doctor recommended a treatment of epi (*that's* what he had last time!). Sure enough, that stuff worked wonders. I could tell it was helping because Nathan wanted to hold the mask to his face himself. It was like he wanted to make sure it stayed there! Within a few minutes he was feeling much better. Once he was doing better and the epi treatment was done, they gave him an oral steroid which they said would take longer to go into effect, but would last longer (the rest of the night). They kept him for an hour for observation and then let us go home.

He hasn't had any problems since. He thinks the whole thing is cool...spent the whole day Tuesday talking about how he got to ride in an ambulance, and how the ambulance "wasn't boring, it was FUN!". He was such a good kid...did everything they asked him with hardly a whimper (he only whimpered at the *3rd try* at a rectal temp reading, as the thermometer didn't want to kick in and take a reading for whatever reason). Jim and I were very tired as we didn't get to bed until 4 am. I took the day off and kept the kids home from school. They didn't sleep as late as I would think they should have after a night like that. Nathan ended up napping yesterday afternoon, as did I.

I'm so glad he's ok...it was so scary how quickly this came on.

My not-so-little boy

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Michael's 6th birthday is coming up next month, and he is sooo excited about it. He already scheduled a "meeting" with us this week to "talk about stuff like cake, presents, and what park to have it in". This is the first year we're doing a party with his friends, so he's very excited. Even cuter...at his school, usually the birthday kid will bring some kind of small gift for the other kids in the class. Nothing fancy, just some pretty stones, or homemade necklaces...stuff like that. Yesterday, all on his own, Michael sat down and drew/colored 17 different animals, flowers, etc., cut them out, and then asked for a basket to keep them in until the big day.

So, naturally, I've been thinking about him a lot, and as I guess all moms do, wondering where the time has gone. It seems impossible that he could have grown up so fast, yet at the same time, his babyhood seems a distant memory. Sometimes at night I will get him up to go to the bathroom (he's still just a bit shaky on keeping dry all night; this seems to help) and I'll carry him back to bed. As he clasps his sleepy arms around my neck, I think about what it was like, all those dark nights when I would be up walking the hall with him. He always had a tough time settling down to sleep. Oh, how exhausted I was those sleepless nights, but I did make a point of cherishing the quiet time alone. It's strange to think that that cuddly baby has grown into a still-very-cuddly, but big boy who I can hardly carry back to his bedroom anymore.

I remember when he was born, that I found myself not wanting to go home from the hospital. Not because I love hospitals...who does? I hated the whole feeling of someone else being in control of my sweet little baby. But somehow I felt that maybe if I didn't leave, that those precious early hours would just last forever and ever. Of course I knew that that wasn't true, but part of me wanted to believe that it could be. I lived the whole first year of his life acutely aware that every moment was so very fleeting, that I just savored it. I love that I can appreciate these moments as they happen this way, but it's also an incredibly painful way to live, when you're always so conscious of how time is slipping by, how those moments are gone forever. And this one...and this one...and this one......

Them boys, them boys

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Michael: "I'm shutting the bathroom door because I want some privacy"
Nathan: "I want privacy, too!"
Jim: "Well, then, go in your room to get dressed, Nathan"
Nathan: "I want Michael with me when I'm getting dressed!"

ROFL!

Decision, decisions

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A few months back, we found out about a Waldorf school in Eugene that we're particularly interested in. It's a charter school (i.e., free, which is the only way we can afford a Waldorf education), and they have a Waldorf teacher training school nearby (something which, previously unbeknownst to me, Jim is interested in). We are both getting tired of the heat (especially me), and my dream is to live in the forest. How much better does it get?

So our plan is to spend a week, drive up to Eugene, and check out the school and housing. We were waiting to find out from the school when they would be holding parent information meetings. I just got that information today. And now I feel strangely adverse to the idea of going. Partly because, I'm not so sure I want to move away from all of our friends. And we would now be twice as far away from my parents (it would be 2000 miles now), making it more difficult to go see them. I've always had this picture of myself alone in the forest, surrounded by pine trees. And it seemed so peaceful and serene. Now it still does, but I'm also catching a hint of loneliness. I find that I don't make friends that easily...I do meet people, but it's not often that I click with someone to the point of going the next level of actively spending time with them. So I'm very reluctant to give up the good times I do have with my wonderful friends here.

And now things at work are in flux. Our company may get sold. I'm told that I'd still have a job, but I'm not so sure. The job market in Eugene for software engineers, well, sucks. And work-at-home jobs are not so easy to come by...I got really lucky with this one. No point moving if the chances are high I'd have to move again to find work. Moving, especially that distance, isn't cheap.

I'm questioning whether we should go on this trip at all. If we don't have a reasonable chance of moving, then I hate to burn the vacation time and expense. Pat and Mike have been talking about a ski trip. Which I'd love to do, but I'm not so sure about that anyway. Nathan isn't ready to ski at all (chronologically he is, but developmentally he's not), Michael needs 100% supervision and tires easily. It's very expensive to get child care at a ski resort, and what fun is a ski trip if you don't, well, *ski*? Plus, I kind of hate spending vacations putting my kids in child care. It just doesn't feel right to say, "hey, let's stick you with a bunch of strangers and a bunch of filthy, half-broken toys while we go while away the hours on the slopes". It's ok for an evening or even a day, but the whole time? Bleh. I think the reality is, the ski trips should wait until both kids are old enough to either spend at least some time on the slopes with us, or have some friends they could stay with so that they get a vacation, too.

Figures

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The *one* day the kids sleep in, I wake up at *6:30* and can't go back to sleep!

On a good note, I got to spend a good 2 hours knitting. All by myself. With no interruptions. It's amazing how quickly and mistake-free the knitting went!

On another note, I hope they're not sick. Especially Michael...he *never* sleeps in.

I'm such a dork

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Yesterday I decided I wanted to make winter hats for my boys. Well, I've known I wanted to for a while, but I finally finished up my project I was working on for my friend Molly's birthday. Yeah, her birthday was 11/9. Let's just say the scarf I made her took just a *bit* longer than I expected. Oh, well..she sews, so she understands.

Anyway, I can do the hats on circular needles alone (as opposed to starting out on double pointed needles (DPNs), my preferred method), but it requires using the "magic loop" method, which I loathe, particularly on small circles. I'll go ahead and start the first one this way, because I'm a "gotta have it now" kind of girl, but I ordered a full set of DPNs off of eBay so that I won't run into this problem in the future (specifically, on the second hat).

At least, I *thought* I ordered DPNs. Shortly after I made the bid, I checked the auction and DAMN IT if I hadn't ordered the wrong thing. I can't blame the seller...everything was clearly labeled with proper pictures. I just had too many tabs open in Firefox and bid from the wrong one. I don't meet the eBay requirements to retract the bid, and given that there were only a few hours left and I had to leave, I didn't feel it was right to ask the seller to cancel my bid (if this is even possible). I decided to just wait, hope I lost the auction, and go from there.

Naturally I won the auction. I wrote the seller, explained what I had done, and asked if she would mind substituting what I *intended* to buy (she sells loads of these, so I didn't figure inventory would be a problem). I made it clear that I realized this was my mistake and that I was prepared to purchase the needles I ordered if I had to. Realistically, i would probably have used and enjoyed them, but since I have a set of Denise interchangeable needles, I don't really *need* them. Thankfully, she was happy to accomodate me, and didn't even charge me extra (I believe the two sets are of similar value, but since I got them off of a lower bid price rather than a higher "buy it now" price, I wasn't sure what she would do).

Anyway, my set of 10" DPNs size 1-13 are shipping out this morning (they are like these, for my fellow knitting friends). I can't wait! I'm so excited, in a totally knitting-geeky kind of way.

My first largish knitting project!

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I finally finished my first Clapotis (and my largest project to date) last night. I'm so excited...so much so that I had to take pictures before I washed/blocked it.

I did it in Bamboo by Southwest Trading Company. The color is "electric blue" and looks a bit more electric than any of the pictures show. I used the size needles the pattern suggested; I have no idea if it is to gauge or not, and I don't care. It's a reasonable size, and I think that's all that matters.

Unfortunately, this is for my friend's birthday, which was 11/9, so it's late. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

On to the pictures.

Here's (almost) the whole scarf. It's a bit wider at the right end. I don't think it's because my gauge got off, but because the bottom right corner was the final end of the work, and I could tell the weight of it was stretching it out of shape as I neared the end. Since I took the pictures I have it blocking on my bed, and it evened out nicely (whew! I was a bit worried!)