Do I look like I am smiling?

Lily likes to sleep during the day. On average, she takes about 3 naps a day; a 60 min morning nap, short 30 minute nap around noonish, and a 90+minute nape around 2. The other day, she was a bit off her schedule and slept a total of 30 minutes all day.

As you can imagine, this made for a very cranky Lily (I refer to this as "The LilyMonster"). She would go from laughing to screaming in a single breath. Toy out of reach? Meltdown. Binky on the floor? Meltdown. Looking at her to much? Meltdown. Not looking at her enough? Meltdown.

We decided early on that our best option was to do a quick rice cereal dinner, fast baths, and try to get her asleep by 8:30. Generally we try to keep her awake a little later so that we can play, but no one was in the mood for that. Luckily, she easily went to sleep for the rest of the night, and woke up a happy little girl.

Tonight it was my turn to be cranky. It was bath night again, and we all have our jobs. Carrie runs the bath water, and distributes the toys. I change Lily and get her ready for bath-time fun. Lily lays back and goes along for the ride.

Tonight as I was stripping her down, we went through the usual routine of losing her clothes and then doing a a little "naked dance" on the changing table until the bath is ready. This always puts a smile on her face. I noticed tonight she seemed to be a little distracted. When we headed towards the bathroom, I swept her off the table and tossed her up in the air a little, and that is when it hit me. Pee-toes. Right in the face.

Apparently, instead of focusing on her naked dancing moves, Lily decided to pee on the table, without me knowing it.

For the record, pee-toes are kind of gross.

Here are some more pics.

Take two of these and call me in the morning...

We've had an intesting week. For those of you who do not know, Lily has moderate-severe reflux from her bladder to her kidneys. This means, she is extremely prone to urinary tract infections (UTIs), that can quickly turn into kidney infections, which are bad. As a result of this reflux, Lily takes a prophalactic antibiotic every day. We are usually pretty vigilant about watching for any signs that she is getting sick (constant temperature checking, appetite monitoring, etc). So far, Lily has had two UTIs. This week she go her third.

Early in the week Lily's appetite had been a little decreased, but she didn't have a fever and wasn't acting fussy or unhappy. She had a GI bug the previous week, so we chalked it up to her still getting over that.

Tuesday night, we were giver Lily her last bottle of the evening, and right before she was about to finish it, she threw up all over Carrie, and our sheets. She never got upset, it was almost like she was pulling a "puke and rally". After Lily got a clean-up bath, Carrie got a shower, and our bed got new sheets, we put her down to sleep for the night. When I went to get her up Wednesday morning, she had clearly thrown up again in her sleep. It didn't wake her up, and so it didn't wake us up, which was a little unnerving. We pressed ahead, and gave her another bath and got her dressed for school. We had already decided make an appointment with her pediatrician.

I started feeding her breakfast, which she threw up again. This was very projectile, going straight up like a geyser, and landing straight back down on her face. It was in her eyes, her hair, everywhere. We gave her another bath, I took another shower, our bed got new sheets, and Carrie took her to the pediatricians.

Because of her past history with UTIs, there is a pretty low threshold for collecting urine samples, which mean catheters. At the pediatricians office, they catheterized her 3 times, with nothing coming out. You can imagine how happy this made Lily. A final decision was made to limit her feeding to an ounce/hour, and attempt to collect later, unless she got a fever or any other symptom.

That night around 11:00 (Wednesday) she started to get a fever. After paging the pediatrician (as instructed), we were advised to go ahead and take her straight to the ER at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

We got processed and seen extremely quickly. In fact, within 45 minutes, we had been registered, seen by an MD, catheterized, and had a plan. Unfortunately, the next few hours went a little slower. Because she had a serious infection (one MD refered to it as a "raging" UTI), they had to use IV antibiotics. Unfortunately for Lily, this required four attempts at placing the IV, 1 elbow, 1 hand, 1 foot, and the hand #2.

Because she wasn't tolerating any foods, and needed quite a bit of medicine, they decided to admit her. And that is were we spent the next two days, while Lily got her fair share of medicine, tests, etc.

Throughout this whole experience, the level of care, professionalism, and family-centered care from CCHMC is notable. Carrie works at CCHMC in the human genetics department, and so we are familar with CCHMC from an employer point of view, but to be a patient was something completely different. It is clear why this hospital is one of the best in the country. From the nurses who go above and beyond caring for these tiny patients, to the child life specialists that ensure every child is as comfortable as possible (they brought a basket of toys for Lily to keep in her bed and play with). It was really a blessing.

Lily has come through things OK. Although her appetite and feeding aren't quite 100%, they did improve dramatically when we stopped using the bottles provided by the hospital, and started using her own bottles from home (I shouldn't be surprised that she might be a picky eater).

When you spend much time in a hospital, especially a children's hospital, it can be a very humbling experience. There is no denying that we had a very sick little girl. But she had something that was identifiable, and very treatable, which made us very lucky. There were a lot of children who were not nearly as fortunate. I hope we don't have to go back anytime soon.

For those of you keeping score, here are the numbers:

• Times thrown up (6)
• Baths in a 24 hr period=4
• Sheet changes in a 24 hr period=3
• IV sticks=4
• Doses of ampicillian=7
• Doses of Ceftriaxone=3
• Days in the hospital=2
• Hours slept by Me and Carrie during this period=8
• Number of sick babies made healthy and happy again=1 :)

I have posted some pics from Halloween as well as from CCHMC here.

I've got a bad feeling about this....

As some of you may know, last weekend Carrie was going out of town for a few days to attend a conference, leaving me and Lily home. Alone. Up to now, the longest I have been alone with my daughter is about 5 hrs. It's not that I am inherently untrustworthy, that's just the way things worked out. Carrie, however, has been abandoned by me and multiple occasions. I took off two weeks after Lily was born for a 4 day weekend (all work related). When she was two months old, I left the country for a week(again, work related)! In retrospect, I don't know what in the world my wife was thinking to let me go. I am sure it wasn't pleasant thoughts.

Carrie was set to leave on Friday afternoon. That night, Lily and I had plans to attend a Halloween event at a local school with her cousins. This involved costuming a 6 month old and keeping her happy in a crowded unfamiliar environment, surrounded by monsters, fairies, and a collection of batmen in assorted sizes.

That night, we went to dinner with the family. I managed a quick costume change back into her "civies"in the car, and got right to rice cereal and squash before dinner arrived, so that she would be content to entertain herself while the rest of us ate. Towards the end of dinner, I noticed a red faced, grunty Lily. This was not good. Once enough time had passed, I decided to tackle this job and hoped that there would be a changing station in the Men's restroom.

There was not.

I proceeded anyway, and laid her up on the counter between both sinks, with her head against the wall. As I was going about the business of diaper changing, Lily had discovered that directly above her head were two soap dispensers, and she was determined to hit the release buttons. This was definitely a bad start. Luckily, I am faster than Lily and a soapy disaster was averted.

Saturday we headed to Louisville to see my family (Grandma Robin). Generally speaking things went well with one small hitch. Although I had packed four cans of formula, I only packed one bottle. After returning home that night, I remembered that I had left her jeans and several toys at Grandma Robin's house. It was at this point that I realized I didn't really need the extra set of hands around, I really needed the extra brain.

Sunday was fairly uneventful, however the late night drive home, caused Lily to sleep in late, thus causing us to be late to an early morning soccer game. Not that I am complaining, as I had all but forgotten what it was like to sleep in late on a Sunday. Sunday also marked bath night. This is something that neither of us (Carrie nor myself) has tried single handedly. My job is usually to keep Lily seated and prevent her from slipping down in the tub while Carrie gets more involved in the actual "cleaning" process. I also like to take on the role of splashing. During this one-man bath, I am not sure how "clean" she got, but she was definitely wet. We were both pretty wet.

Monday we got back into our usual routine. We were up and dressed before 7Am. We had breakfast, and I dressed her in a pink little number she wore just two weeks ago-a sort of "blousy" top with leggings. I dropped her off at school and went about my usual day. When I went to pick her up, I noticed she was wearing her backup clothes, which isn't uncommon. When I made a comment about it to one of the teachers, they replied that they could tell mommy was still out of town, because it looked like daddy had dressed her!

How could it be! I have always tried to pick clothes that were "cute" or at least not too baby like. In fact in intentionally stay away from most out fits with knit pants or or tops/bottoms made of the same pattern as I feel those are "old lady" clothes. Apparently the consensus was that here leggings, were more like tights.

I don't know the difference.

I felt both both a little guilty and challenged by this comment. After we left school, Lily and I headed straight to Macy's to go on a shopping trip. I had something to prove! After scouring the racks of little girl clothes, I decided on a pair of gray/pink jeans with a pink striped shirt. Not only was it good looking, but it replaced the jeans that were left in Louisville. She would not go to school looking like a crazy baby again!

On Tuesday, Carrie was coming home. Again, Lily and I went about our usual routine and dressed super-cute for her teachers and her mommy. Unfortunately, by the time Mommy got home, Lily had required another wardrobe change.

All in all, the weekend was a success. We all survived, and I didn't accidentally leave her anywhere. I left her clothes, toys, bottles and food other places, but not her. I am not sure if Lily and I exactly "bonded" while Mommy was away, but I think she definitely likes me a little more than she used to. Just today, we walked through an Ikea and she had her head on my shoulder for 10 minutes. Turns out she was just eating my shirt collar, but at least she feels comfortable enough to do that.

Let's just say we are both glad that mommy is back.

Here are some more pics.