Well, after staying home with Katie on Tuesday, I'm happy to report that she seems to be completely over all of the crud that was bothering her. Wednesday she was back in day care (she did come home in different clothes again - poop explosion), and she did just fine both Thursday and Friday. In fact, we went out, Katie and I, with Debbie who is expecting a baby in August - we went through and did the baby registry thing at Babies R Us and then had dinner at la Madeleine with another friend, Heather (Daddy was at the Rush concert with Debbie's husband, Mike).

Today is Skip's birthday so we went for breakfast at Whattaburger (his fave), we did a little running around and came home to watch the Avs lose mightily to the Detroit Red Wings (did not make Skip very happy). Not sure what is on the agenda for tonite ... maybe just a little driving around and dinner somewhere.

Betty Jo and Jim stopped by Sunday around 12:30, and Katie had done well all morning - not quite her usual happy self, but better than on Saturday and she's still eatin' like a champ (and, thankfully, keeping it all down - in fact, she hadn't poopied since Friday ... more on THAT later). We had a nice visit with them and went to Gloria's, a local fave for Mexican food before seeing them off. Grandma Betty Jo brought Katie a shirt from Hawaii that is a pink camo motif with a skunk on it, and it says 'little stinker' - very appropriate, in more ways than one (more on THAT later).

After getting Jim and Betty Jo pointed toward the Dallas North Tollway and back to Austin, we decided to go look at houses. AGAIN. So far all we've managed to do is to rule stuff OUT, and we can't make a decision on squat. Anything that buys us some commute time is very expensive for not much house; anything where we can get a lot of house for the money doesn't gain us anything in the commute department. But we looked at a neighborhood we liked, ruled out one house and thought about maybe another (if I knock off a bank first), and drove around some just trying to figure out what's what. Katie's being very good this whole time, jabbering away in the back seat, occasionally napping, and being very well behaved while we go trudging through houses.

We head back home and just a few miles out ... I smell it. Major poopie diaper blow out. I mean, MAJOR. Skip manages to get her out of the car seat and takes her immediately to the tub for a bath; she splashes away and is just a happy little girl the whole time. We figure it's just her body catching up after the trauma of Friday - seems like in the past when she's had stomach problems, then she'll go a day or two with nothing, one big blow out and then we're, well, regular again.

Katie gets up Monday morning, just SLAMS her bottle and then reaches for me to cuddle on my shoulder for more sleep. A little odd, but given that she'd been sick all weekend, I didn't think a lot of it. I put her back into her crib so she could sleep, I got ready for work, and Skip got Katie up and dressed for day care. He said she was very quiet on the way to school - and usually, once we get to the day care, when we open the back car door Katie is all excited to go, she kicks her legs and waves her arms and has this big goofy Katie grin on her face the whole time. Not Monday - somber as a preacher at a funeral. She doesn't cry when he leaves, nothing. Again, he doesn't think a lot of it, given that she's just coming off of being sick.

WELL ... you guessed it. 3:00, my cell phone rings: Creme de la Creme, Katie's ripped through the clothes she wore to school, her two spare outfits we left there, and is now wearing a Creme uniform (the older kids wear unis). So - off to get her I go. She's pretty fussy Monday night - nothing too terrible and again, she manages to keep all of her food down (not necessarily IN - she did blow through three diapers in pretty short order). She acted sleepy at about 8, so we put her to bed.

10:15 and Katie is SCREAMING - and she just never does that. Nothing we do will calm her - no walking, no cuddling, no singing, nothing. So I called the doctor's office and spoke to the PA on call - she recommended infant motrin, and if in 45 minutes the crying didn't stop, then we should take Katie to the ER. So we get the motrin in her (pretty easy when her mouth is WIDE OPEN, screaming) and she immediately calms down ... some. Katie would fall asleep but then wake up and cry/scream a little every 2-4 minutes. This goes on for about 45 minutes and we're both dressed and ready to go to the ER when the medicine just completely takes over and she's OUT. WHEW.

So we put her to bed and this morning, I took her in to the doc's office - actually had an appt with the PA who took our call the night before. She checked Katie's ears and she's got fluid in them, which is what is causing all of the pain. So we now have ear drops and instructions to flush out her nose with saline on a regular basis in order to try to clear the sinus passages. We haven't yet used the drops - I gave her more motrin earlier today and that seemed to take care of any pain she was having this morning, and she didn't seem to be having any problems later (we'll see how things go tonite!) Since Skip was at work, I had to sort of put her in a headlock in her high chair to squirt the motrin and her antibiotics into her - but that technique wasn't going to work for ear drops, I don't think.

SO ... that's that for now! Hopefully the next blog will be poop, puke, and boogie free!

Skip picked Katie up from day care on Thursday, and we're talking on cell phones from our respective cars when Skip says "Oh no, Katie just threw up." (At least this time it was SKIP'S car, and not mine.)

Fortunately they were very close to home, so Skip hurried Katie into the house, gave her a bath, and she was just as happy as could be! We gave her Pedialyte that night, she kept it down, and all seemed to be OK. No fever or anything. She had gotten a "fussy" mark on her daily sheet from day care - she'd been pretty sober all morning while we were getting ready and apparently that made her cranky at school.

So ... Friday morning comes, she gets some formula, she's not having a fever ... so yes, being crappy parents we carted her off to day care. Katie was pretty somber that morning, too, but she would smile and giggle periodically so we didn't think much of it.

Well, 11:50 and my cell phone rings: Ms. Jackie from Creme calling to let me know that Katie's had two bouts of diarreah. Lovely. So I called Skip, who was enroute to lunch; he turned around and picked up Katie. By the time he gets there she's puked again (poor baby). So Skip and Katie go off to the doctor's office, where Dr. Latta diagnoses an ear infection in both ears and maybe a little tummy virus.

So we're back on antibiotics (omnicef, which Katie seemed to tolerate a little better last time she had to take it) and a few acidopholus granules in her pedialyte/water to hopefully help with her tummy. She took over 4 hours worth of naps yesterday, got about 11 hours of sleep last night, and is now on hour #3 of a nap today ... but we figure it's good for her; last time she had a bad ear infection she slept a lot and I think that helped more than anything. Katie did have Pedialyte and Cheerios and a little bit of applesauce this morning, and I'm happy to report, it's all stayed in her tummy so far.

Tomorrow hopefully we get to meet up with Dr. Jim & Grandma Betty Jo; they're passing through Dallas on their way home from seeing Skip's brother Scott and his wife Missy, who live in Oklahoma City. Betty Jo & Jim were supposed to stop on Thursday night, but they changed their plans and left Friday morning instead. Probably just as well, given that Katie was pukin AND we had another strong strom come thru (the sirens went off this time, so another brief stay in our crowded bathroom with pillows, a quilt, flashlight and radio ... but of course the AM stations were playing baseball and hockey! THAT was helpful.)

Hard to believe Katie will be one year old in only a couple of weeks. We're actually having her party on the 17th, so that Grammy DiAnn and Cooky can come spend a couple of weeks with us before we go back with them to Nebraska for a while to catch up with some friends there. More to follow later!

I'm happy to report that Katie has been spew-free since the previous blog. So, what have we been doing? Having a garage sale, of course!

Our neighborhood has a garage sale every year, and I'd heard that baby stuff usually sells well, so thought, what the heck, we'll give it a shot. So I organized all of Katie's now too small little onesies, pants, dresses, and assorted other items (bottles, bottle warmer, car seats, strollers) and we also scoured the closets for those things we'd been hanging onto, just waiting for a garage sale. And ... two old car stereo subwoofers were the first to go! Skip's old electric guitar amp went shortly thereafter (no worries, ladies: Skip the Rock God does still have the guitar).

And as far as all of Katie's stuff ... hardly any of it sold! Most people were looking for clothes for older kids, not babies - which makes sense, since most people (like us) get flooded with clothes for a newborn / little babies. (Katie's closet, while hardly bare these days, is nonetheless significantly less full than it was pre-garage sale.) I was a little surprised that the car seats / stroller didn't sell, until I thought about my "shoppers": a lot of Hispanics (who, no offense, didn't look twice at the car seats - there was literally one Suburban and no fewer than 12 people spilled out of it, including more than a couple babies and toddlers; I'm pretty sure they didn't all squeeze in there around car seats) and a lot of soccer moms - who, like me, are likely to get that kind of stuff as shower gifts). So, we ended up boxing everything (except the car seats & stroller - those are going to a friend who is expecting a granddaughter in June) and taking it to the Goodwill, where we'll probably end up getting a better tax write-off than we would've made selling the stuff, anyway.

And we spent part of early Thursday morning in our powder bath - the only room we have without windows - waiting out a tornado warning. The storm kicked up fast and moved quickly through the area; Skip, who sleeps with the radio on sometimes, heard the "beep beep beep" of the weather alert and got Katie out of bed (she promptly fell asleep on his shoulder) and rousted me and we all piled into our little powder bath with a flashlight, walkman radio, some pillows and a quilt. The power went out while we were in there, and the wind was AMAZING ... we could actually hear it whistling through the house and I heard the window blinds rattling against the windows. Afterwards, we looked outside and saw that our Bradford Pear tree had lost a large branch and our umbrella from our patio table was gone, but other than that, our house seemed to be OK. So we all caught a little more sleep (well, Skip and I did - Katie slept through this WHOLE THING) and when we woke up ... wow. The wind snapped our umbrella off its pole and tossed it into the pool, our trashcans were overturned and a Huggies box landed in the pool as well, and of course we could better see our poor little tree. We walked through part of our neighborhood and every house had something - missing shingles, broken windows, fence damage (our fence is still standing - woo hoo!). The "experts" (whoever they are) think that there was a small scale tornado that touched down in Allen, which is just east of here - so we suspect that what we went through was the leading edge of that same storm, since the damage was pretty random (most houses on our block were missing shingles / had fence panels down, but just a block over: nothin'.) Skip spent the morning doing the back-breaking work of taking down the tree branches while I got up and got myself and Katie ready ... but the day care was without power, so back home we came (which was a struggle in and of itself, lots of stop lights out, lanes blocked from downed trees, etc.) So I ended up staying home Thursday, but didn't really have much choice I guess!

I'm happy to report that day care is powered again, so Katie is back at "school" and I'm taking a previously scheduled day off to get caught up on a few things around the house and hopefully do some running around on my own later.

And, no decisions on a house - we found a neighborhood we really really like, but it doesn't do much for us in the commute department. But it's a beautiful neighborhood and we can get a lot more house for the money there than in other neighborhoods. It's near lake Lewisville so at night, you can hear the bullfrogs and crickets from the lake. But since it is on a peninsula of the lake, there is ONE street in and out ... and the main drag up there is only one lane wide in spots, and hasn't kept up with the growth so far. So the quest continues ...