Beamline Day 3

Every Thursday, Addy and I go to a toddler playground that the local library hosts.  It's an hour of songs, some books, toys, and interacting with people our respective ages.  After being locked in the house all day yesterday (save for that little stunt to the pharmacy drive-through), I was looking forward to a chance to get out of the house and let her run around.  I thought that she would be feeling better,  I was wrong.

All day she's has been nothing more than a leaky faucet of snot and drool.  I can't even begin to tell you how many tissues I went through wiping her little nose.  Or how many times she got to it before I did.  It'll be a miracle if I don't catch this as well.

I did not think it safe for Addy to take her out into the cold, now would it be safe to expose other children to her disease, so we stayed home again today.  Now I'm starting to get cabin fever.

I wish there was more to say about dealing with a sick one.  She's danced, she's sneezed, she's learned how to use the squirt bottle to torment me, the cats, the books, and the computers while giggling madly...  We did get to webcam with Amy today, but Addy was preoccupied with my laptop's track pad most of the time.  Still, it was very nice to get to see her.

In other news, more people read my blogs than I thought.  I consistently get 20 hits per post, and wen I mentioned my child vomiting, I had 4 times that!

Perhaps I should mention vomit on a regular basis...

Beamline Day 2

I'm not sure how I expected today to go.  In retrospect, I'm not sure it really could have gone any other way.  I wouldn't say it is the WORST scenario for a stay-at-home parent, but it's certainly an unpleasant one.

For days I've been looking at the weather report and hoping that the meteorologists were wrong.  You know, like they usually are.  For some reason, however, some upstart intern over at weather.com was actually doing his job and got the prediction correct.  Rain.  And not just any rain, but severe thunderstorms.  And not just severe thunderstorms, but tornado-creating severe thunderstorms, scheduled for the entire day and into tomorrow.

So I decide that it is best not to go out into the tempest that is surely going to start any second now...  just looking outside too hard might cause it to drizzle in protest.  It would not be wise taking your child to the park when a tornado could pop in at any time and say "Hey, wazzup?  Mind if I crash here?  kthxbye!"  Adelaide had stayed up late the night before, so I figured that she might sleep in a little.  No such luck.  She was awake and screaming at 6:30, and I was still dead tired.  By lunch, Addy had played with the train set, read books, built with her blocks, played music, poured water through various containers, played with her little kitchen set, colored, chased the cat, rearranged the DVDs, tried to kill herself numerous times (usually involving great heights and precarious footholds), and... yes... watched TV.  I was running out of ideas.  Most of the things I tried with her didn't last very long before she would start to cry again.  I figured that she just missed mommy, and frankly, so did I.

When it was finally time to put her down for a nap at 1, the rain decided to come.  And boy, did it come down.  It was, unfortunately, loud enough to wake Addy up and keep her from going back to sleep.  So now I am stuck dealing with a bored, napless toddler in the middle of a downpour.  I know I'm not the best dad in the world, but I try.  This time, however, I'm running on coffee (of which I rarely partake), and I'm not sure what else to do.  The internet was down, and all she wanted to do was have me hold her... so I put on another movie.  I know the experts say to not let her watch TV until she's 2, but we're just going to have to deal with the consequences now, aren't we?  I do eventually get some chores done, and she decides she would like to wander around the house crying instead of just doing it in my lap.

After a while, I, in my holmesian attention to detail, notice that her head is warm.  Actually, it's quite hot.  Now Adelaide has been teething her molars for quite some time, so I figure that is likely the culprit.  I will be keeping an eye on her.  Of course, we're out of medicine for her.  By this point it is nearing 4:30.  I look outside and the rain has really let up.  We had been in a tornado warning (not just watch, WARNING, as in danger Will Robinson) until 4:30, so I figure it's a good idea to go out to the store and get some children's tylenol.

I dress her warmly and bundle her in my coat, then run through the rain to the car to keep her as dry and warm as possible.  The store is about 2 minutes away, so I'm sure this trip will be nothing special.  And it was, until about 2.7 seconds before I parked.  I pull into the closest parking spot to the grocery store and the sky opens up.  Still, it's not THAT far, and I've got a huge umbrella.  I can keep Addy dry.  Grabbing the umbrella, I step out into the deluge only to have it instantly become something akin to Niagara Falls.  I expect to see an ark floating down the street anytime, if I could see that far.  The worst part wasn't the rain... I was stuck with one leg in the back seat, the other outside, trying to hold onto the umbrella as the wind picked up.  I'd like to say that I've felt strong winds before, but they've never actually been strong enough to threaten tearing an umbrella out of my hand, unbalance me, and make it just a little harder to breathe.  I shut the umbrella, get soaked, and climb into the backseat next to the car seat with the door slammed shut.  And wait.

Addy is having a great time as the car is rocked from the wind and pelted with liquid sky bullets.  I am having a heart attack.  Strange vibrations were passing through the ground and into the car like I was on a bridge and some truck was driving over it a few feet away.  I could hear trucks, or trains, but I really have no idea if I did or not.  I couldn't see anything out of the window.  I wait, praying that it's just my imagination and not an actual tornado.  There was no way I could keep Addy warm and dry in this.  It doesn't seem to be letting up, so I squeeze to the front seat and start up the car to park it under the little drive-up pharmacy.  Oh yeah, I forgot about that.  Never used it.  Well, it works, and not only will they give you prescription medicines, but they'll also help you out and give you children's tylenol!

I wish I could say that was the end of the weather problems for the day, but it wasn't.  Now I've got tornados on the brain.  Every time a train goes by, I swear it's a tornado.  And my heart clings onto my tonsils when the radio is interrupted while I'm cooking dinner with an Emergency Broadcast System message.  "Tornados have been seen in the following counties:" it starts off, then begins listing from North Carolina and heading closer to me.  When they stop at "Greenville County," I give a sigh of relief and realize I was already contemplating how quickly I could throw Addy in the bathtub and if I would have time to wrangle the cats.  If I could only save one, which would it be?

The rest of the day was relatively normal sans mommy.  Which is to say, the next hour.  Hopefully she will be feeling well enough tomorrow that we can head out to Wiggles and Giggles, but we'll see.

Beamline Day 1

My wife has some important work to do at a Beamline (don't know, don't ask) in another state this week, so she is not home.  In fact, she left earlier today, and has been in airports or on planes ever since.  It is now my job to distract Addy from the fact that mommy is MIA.

Today, after she took a nap, I decided we would spend the afternoon at the zoo, using our membership there one last time before it expires.  I have a couple of guest tickets to hand out as well.  This quickly escalated into a major trip to Greenville, but that's alright.  Greenville is not exactly a stone's throw away, so if I'm going to go, I'd rather make it worth the time and effort.

Addy got up at around 3, but we didn't get out of the house until closer to 3:30.  So by the time we got down into Greenville, I realized that I would have to go to the zoo first and run the other errands later.  But when we get there, the gates are shut and there is a note that looks like they printed it in a hurry saying "The Zoo is closed today."  No explanation given.  Determined to make this a good day, I instead take ADdy to the park next door to the zoo.  She had a blast, but seemed drawn to dangerous things like a moth to a flamethrower.  I turn around and... how did she get up there?  No Addy, you can't climb the rope course, please don't try.  That's a big kid bike.  Why haven't you developed a fear of sheer drops twice your height?  Although, I did manage to give away the two guest tickets that our membership provided (we used the others, but they go bad at the end of the month), I also had to run myself ragged trying to do that and keep an eye on her.

Does God think it's funny to leave out the self-preservation instinct until they're too old to really need it?

After that, we went to the local brew supply store.  We've made a few brews, but Amy's favorite was the first one, a Full Sail Amber Ale clone.  I called it Dirty Red B@$t@rd.  It's technically a Red Ale... and it had bits of carbon in the bottom from our water filter, plus it was unfiltered, so it looked dirty...   and I named it before Addy was imitating everything I said so...  maybe I'll think of a new name.
It took a while to get the ingredients.  I dropped by at the same time all of his other customers apparently decided to... all of them middle-aged working white men on their ways home.  But Addy certainly had fun trying to rearrange the magazine rack and touch everything.  EVERYTHING.  It's like she had a bet with the cats that she could mark more territory than they could.

After that.. dinner!  We went to a Mediterranean place I love, Pita House.  May be our last time there before we move, unfortunately.  I wasn't sure what Addy would eat, so I decided to give her a taste of my gyro meat, falafel, pita, tahini salad, etc, and see if she'd eat any of it.  When the food arrived, they made her a grilled cheese sandwich for free!  Awesome! And she ate it!  Double awesome!  Plus it urns out she thinks falafel are alright and gyro is apparently worthy of deception and bargaining to get more of.  On her part, too.

On the way back, we went to Radio Shack.  I like Guitar Hero.  I'm good at it.  And when Rock Band and Guitar Hero started offering drums, I had to get in on that action.  My sister got one for me!  Nearly two years ago, a few months after Addy was born, we hosted a play date for a bunch of really young kids while I wasn't home.  In that play date, one of the children managed to pull a cord that I had taped up specifically to make it invisible to our cord-chewing cats, and yanked the wire out of the little plug violently.  The entire wire came out, fraying it and preventing me from being able to repair it.  The poor thing never even got played more than once.  Well, it had been stashed away in the office and I recently decided that it was time to fix and use the darn thing.  I got what I needed a Radio Shack, a new jack with spliceable cord attached... I spliced the parts together and wrapped them in electrical tape.  I don't know if it worked, though... as I'm too scared to try it out.  Perhaps I will tomorrow?  Anyway, the only thing that allowed me to get this cord was the fact that they have little phones on display, and one of those phones was a smart phone that ACTUALLY WORKED and was within grabbing distance of Addy's little fingers.  That little thing kept her occupied for half an hour without me having to do a darn thing.  Let's just hope the next person to look at that phone doesn't find a trail of incriminating evidence that leads to her arrest.  <.<

After that, Addy decided it was time to cry on the way home.  She refused all attempts to appease her, so I was left with only one option: deal with it.  For some reason, just her crying in the backseat feels like running a marathon.  I'm sweaty, my knuckles are white, when I get out of the car I'm shaking, and I once I get home my body just collapses from fatigue.

So, yes, I survived the first day (I won't count the fact that it was little more than half a day technically).  Let's see how Day 2 fares.

Dinner Improbable

A large part of what I do everyday, other than watching and teaching and playing with Addy, is making dinner.  This particular responsibility is not one I shy away from and I often tackle somewhat complicated meals because I enjoy cooking.

However, today's little venture into cuisine was less than exemplary.  It started out last night when we started to make some chicken stock that was supposed to sit for 6 - 24 hours.  This means that the whole chicken in the pot for a very long time.  This morning it finished, so I tried to use tongs to remove the chicken whole.  It was working, too, until gravity kicked in.  Suddenly, the tongs ripped through the body of the chicken like Rush Limbaugh tearing apart a Big Mac.  Bones the size of mice fingers went scattering into the stock and I was left holding a mass of skin and cartilage.  So I spend the next hour or so fishing out random pieces of meat and bone and placing them into various baggies for various reasons.  The rest of the day involved running errands, doing laundry, and putting Addy down for a nap... until about 3:30, when it was time to start dinner.

We like to have dinner about 5 or 6. so I figure 3:30 is a good time to start.  We're going to have stuffed cabbage, so I follow the recipe and put a head of cabbage into a pot of water to steam it.  For some reason, time starts to move wrong.  After what seems 10 minutes of cooking, it's 4:30, though perhaps this is because during this whole shebang I'm also having to watch Addy.  I'm making the filling as fast as I can, but each time I look at the recipe it gets longer and longer and the pan has less and less room.  I was amazed by how much they think will fit into a single cabbage.  After I finish the filling, the recipe calls for me to stuff each individual leaf with the stuff and put it in a casserole dish.  This was easier said than done.  Both the cabbage and the filling were about 10,000 degrees Kelvin, which is coincidentally the temperature at which the human hand melts.  After trying to stuff them, I then have to roll the cabbage leaves up, but they won't stay that way.  After that, for some reason the recipe has me cooking the things again for an hour while swimming in the chicken broth I made, which just washes out all the spices.  About this time, Amy gets home and dinner is already late.  Addy had to eat something else and get put to bed long before the food was ready.

When I pulled out the cabbage rolls from the oven, I had to take out each individual roll with tongs and leave the liquid behind.  By this point, the leaves have been steamed or baked for near an hour and a half.  They are see-through and held together by hope and faerie farts.  Tongs tear them to shreds so that I am left with a quivering mass of filling and cabbage on a plate and a pot filled with stock and filling.  I am hoping and praying that they are done, but no.  There's another PARAGRAPH of directions in the ingredients that involve reducing the stock and turning it into a delicious sauce.  So I put it on the burner and sit down.  A few minutes later, Amy and I smell the concoction burning itself into a mass of carbon on the bottom of the dutch oven.  Of course all the stock is gone and it is fairly inedible.  We eat the rolls but it wasn't nearly as flavorful as I had hoped it would be.

I am rather depressed that this was such a failed recipe.  Sure, it could be worse, but Addy didn't eat it and I spent all day on a mediocre meal. I'm not sure who is to blame, if anyone, but after spending most of the day trying to fix this darn meal, it's hard not to think it was my fault.  Hopefully, this will be the last epic fail at meal time.

Happy New Year

This Christmas, my family went up to the DC area to see my parents, along with both of my sisters and get a chance to meet my 4-month old niece.  We had a lovely time and I wish we could have stayed longer, but this post is not about Christmas, my family, or anything like that.  Perhaps another time I can regale you with story of the Clan.  This post, however, is about why we were late coming back.

We were fully intent on returning home on the 29th, Saturday.  We had an obligation at church on Sunday that we wanted to fulfill.  Now, there had been some talk on snow falling the night before and we weren't certain we wanted to risk driving in it to come home.  Mom and dad said that they would watch Addy all day so that if we wanted to stay, we could just relax.  I had, in fact, been counting on it, and let myself get caught in a somewhat productive conversation with my sister (the one with the baby had left already) about writing until 3 or 4 in the morning.  But when we woke up that morning, we learned that the weathermen had, lo and behold, lied to us yet again.  The streets were clear.  Huzzah... time to pack the car.  But first, breakfast!

Addy is being her happy self; at least after I give her some milk to drink she is.  She likes to wander around the kitchen watching me make breakfast for her while drinking her milk in her sippy cup.  I had actually intended to make breakfast for Addy and bring up some more for Amy!  I broke open 5 eggs, added parmesan and milk and was about to add some herbs (I make GOOD eggs) when Addy suddenly vomits all over the kitchen.  Twice.  I'm practically standing in the stuff and so is she.  So, of course, other than crying, the first thing she does is try to walk through it to me.  I toss the eggs aside and plead with her to stay where she is while I go around the island to drag her out of her own stomach contents.  As I hold her in the air trying to figure out how to keep my mother's operating-room-clean house from getting even more contaminated, I realize that we aren't going to be going anywhere that day.  Well, at least I have eggs for Amy, I'm sure she'll love breakfast in bed.

I take Addy upstairs to give her a bath, but on the way up I run into Amy.  Guess what!  She's feeling nauseous, too!  Yeah, definitely not going anywhere.  We give Addy a bath and change her clothes, then I head back downstairs to the wonderful smell that is now filling the kitchen.  After cleaning it, the LAST thing I want to do is eat.  Oh, and Amy only wants toast.  I guess... my parents might like eggs?

I've never had to handle a truly sick Addy before, and let me tell you, she doesn't like being sick.  It is hard to get her to calm down when she's not feeling good.  I'm watching her, trying to do laundry (now that there is definitely laundry that needs to be done), still packing things up in the hope that we might leave on Sunday, calling a variety of people to make sure that our obligations are church are met and our cats back home are fed, and I'm dead tired and have a headache by 8am.  Dad doesn't get up until about 10:30, mom about 11:30, and my sister until... well, it was past noon.

Eventually the eggs do get eaten, or at least most of them do.  Although very grateful to have parents to watch Addy, by the time they are up and ready to do so I am "done" and so is she.  She didn't feel well enough to take a nap, which always spells disaster, and eventually we realize that all she really wants is me.  Now it does feel good to be loved and needed, but at the same time it feels good to have a break from it now and then.

The next day, Amy felt well enough to head home, and Addy hadn't thrown up for about 24 hours, so I pack up the car in record time and off we go!  It was later than we would have liked, nonetheless, and by the end of the 10-and-a-half-hour-drive both Addy and Amy have had enough.  I've never been so happy to go to sleep at 9:30.

One would think this is the end of the affair.  I certainly did.  The next day was New Year's Eve and we had made plans with some close friends to celebrate an early New Year's countdown with Addy (Sesame Street likes to do it at 8).  Afterwards, we were going to head over to another friend's house to have the real thing, this time with games, alcohol, and bad-for-you foods.  It was going to be perfect!  Sure, Amy wasn't feeling good again but... oh, she's REALLY not feeling good... well, Addy and I can go and we can still make it to....     oh, one of our friends got bronchitis... We quickly realize that it is safer if we don't expose Addy to bronchitis.  Curses!  It seems everyone I know is sick.  Our friends decide to reschedule.  Amy was going to stay home with Addy anyway, so I'm hoping our other friend can make it with me to the party....  but he doesn't want to leave his wife sick at home with bronchitis on New Year's Eve.  Now I get to go to the party alone and feel guilty about it!  :P

Well, the party was great.  I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a while because they moved!  I had some delicious food and we were playing Rock Band.  I was just about to start up one of my favorite songs to sing (Panic Attack by Dream Theater) when my phone rings.  It's Amy.  Addy threw up again.

I rush home to find Addy in the bath, her room wreaking of vomit, and vomit all over her crib.  We cleaned her up, did the laundry, cleaned the crib (though I'm still trying to figure out how to get the smell of vomit out of a stuffed animal), and I put on The Adventures of Tintin while holding Addy.  It takes a while before we get her to sleep again...

So, I ring in the New Year with my sick wife and kid.  The next day I find out BOTH of our close friends got bronchitis.  Several of my friends on Facebook are out-of-commission because of various sicknesses.  Amy's lab partner has been out sick.  It is only a matter of time before it gets me, too.

My resolution for this year?  Don't go crazy taking care of sick people.