HollyWillis on DeviantArt

We had Secret Santa with our family this year for the fun of it and to cut down the cost of the holidays- our gifts were to be something made. My pick was my mom, Holly Willis. For her gift I gave her a GMail account and set her up on DeviantArt.com, also providing her with a basic user's manual for the accounts.

She has given me some art over the years and what I have here I posted on her art gallery. This evening we posted some of her more recent work online. As we were posting her art, some people started marking her paintings as their favorites and sending her messages. Mom was thrilled about this as this demonstrated the potential for networking and just getting your art out to people who appreciate it. It was fun to see her reaction.

Here is a link to her gallery

hollywillis.deviantart.com

Jack Is Back

Jack is almost completely back. The last time he spit up was about 5:30AM yesterday (Tuesday) morning, so its been a good amount of time past the worst. Now its just getting his strength back and making sure he's drinking lots of fluids. His spirit has returned and it is so wonderful to hear him laugh and blab. For short periods of time he seems back to 100%, but he mellows out fast and needs to rest. He's been using far less diapers, too. He's basically refilling his system.

Wow, it was scary. If I could step out of the situation and take a look I'm sure it never was that critical, but as dad- that just wasn't possible and I didn't like seeing the little guy so uncomfortable. I thank God for placing us in a time and place where this kind of thing is not such a big deal because of modern medicne. A different era or country and Jack may not have recovered. I didn't think such a small guy could derail a holiday's plans so effectively.

All Better

Jack is home

He came home yesterday late evening. We checked in to the Children's Hospital Sunday afternoon. He stayed over night and was there all of Monday. Jack was able to spend the night at home last night. He was sick every half hour or so from around 1:30PM to about 5:00 or 6:00PM on Sunday. He got sick early afternoon, yesterday.

I think he got sick one other time besides that while we were there.

They put us in a very nice room at Children's. Cara did stay the night there and failed to get good rest due to a poor little kid in the room next door who cried almost our entire stay. I went home to use my CPAP and retrieve a list of needs for the next day.

One of our favorite nurses was Catherine from Uganda. She was thrilled to find that Cara lived there for a short while years ago. She took to Jack and kind of gave him special treatment- ordering a red wagon for him.

Monday evening my parents came with Leesha to see Jack as well as feed us. Around the same time, Cara's folks came too (they had fun meeting Catherine, it was cool that they were able to meet). Jack was maxed out with visitors. Not much later, the doctor came to check out Jack and said it was ok for him to go home.

Around 1:30AM he chuck up a bunch o.f fluid and a little piece of peach he had eaten during the day. He got sick a few more times through the night, the last one around 5:30AM.

It is Tuesday evening and he hasn't spit up anything worth reporting. He's drinking a lot and eating a little. I think Jack even loaded his diapers- a breakthrough!

Not Quite The Day I Was Hoping For

Today was going to be fun. Our plans were to go to Greg and Mandy's house and open our Secret Santa gifts and just hang out, maybe play some games and definitely eat. We went to church and picked up Leesha and then started driving to Willis West. About 1/4th off the way there Jack exploded. Something caused him to throw-up everything he ate for breakfast. ALL OVER himself, and the car seat. Quick thinking we diverted our course to Cara's parents house which is sort of on the way. They were there and we all got him and everything else cleaned up. However, Jack threw up again. And soon it was apparent that this wasn't going to stop anytime soon. We decided to call off going to Willis West and started on our way back home. Jack then upchucked something yellow so we decided to change course again to the Children's Hospital.


He was poked and prodded, and x-rayed. They seemed concerned that he was getting dehydrated and finally they I.V.ed him- which he was a real champion about. Having an I.V. put into your little guy is a scary ordeal. It did help to hear that the ladies doing it had done 8 already today. And they pointed out that that was just her count, there were other nurses doing them, too.

When it seemed he was finished he was fed some pedialight or whatever. But that came up pretty quick. But that was the last.

All said, Jack threw up at around 1:30pm and continued to around every half hour till around 5:30. The poor little guy never had a nap and was completely exhausted.

Cara's dad came and took Leesha to stay with them for the night. They are so great.

They moved us up to a real fancy room with the fanciest crib you've ever seen. TV, toys. Jack is definitely coming back. He started to get chatty again. What a wonderful sound that is. Looks like Cara's going to stay here to sleep and I'm going to go home to my CPAP.

A doctor says this may be the beginning of it and this may carry on for a few days.

Post Christmas Reflection

Having some time to ponder the virgin birth, as we tend to do at this time of year, I submit this idea (now bare with me, I'm not sure I'll be able to word this correctly):

Because the King of kings' arrival to the world was so insignificant and so completely normal, does this make it more amazing? My birth, and probably yours too, was more glorious than His. He was born in a barn. Mary didn't even have wet nurses. No family. Nothing like that. And He is the KING!?! I imagine when a King is born there is usually an amazing amount of fanfare and celebration. There was nothing like that. There was the host of angels and that's no small thing, but the only guys to see it were some lowly shepherds.

This last year or so's studies are showing me how exactly appropriate this for the Kingdom of God, actually. The upside-down, backwards Kingdom of God. If there was a huge to do about the King of kings' birth, it would go against the nature of this Kingdom He is revealing (at least to me little by little).

I hope I'm conveying my thoughts clearly enough about this, because its profound.

Survivors

We don't watch TV. Well, sort of. We do watch programs that have been downloaded and watch them right off the computer. Why not? No commercials, 16x9 presentation, not quite HD, but cleaner than what would be broadcast over the air... And the shows... We pretty much watch BBC. Doctor Who, [ spooks ], and now Survivors (we do watch LOST, but that's not currently on).

Survivors is a re-imaging of a show that was on BBC in the 1970s about a breakout epidemic that wipes out 90 some % of the Earth's population. The show is about those who are left alive and how they deal with the lack of society. We've seen 3 episodes and so far it is fantastic.

According to Wiki there will be a 2nd season. The original series lasted three seasons. Its a great show.

Christmas

Yesterday was Christmas and we spent the afternoon at Cara's folks house. We had a nice quiet time there. Opened a few gifts, had a nice big dinner, installed a universal remote. It was also the usual- getting on Leesha's case to leave Jack alone, finish eating, eat with her mouth closed, not speak with her mouth full, enjoying Jack's ever-increasing vocabulary, etc. Leesha got a couple of gifts, but they were two things that she was very very excited about getting.

One was a Webkin dragon. She had been asking for this particular Webkin for a long time, long enough ago that she probably forgot about it. This was also kind of cool, because the dragon is no longer available anywhere other than places like Ebay (which is exactly where we got it).

Webkins are a fantastic marketing ploy, plush animals that include a code that you plug into a webpage and you can navigate your newly purchased animal through an online community featuring games and chats and all sorts of things like that.

Grandma and Grandpa gave her an MP3 player that she really wanted. An amazingly cheap little thing that didn't seem to work creating much drama this morning. Leesha is now with her dad and reports that she got it to work. That's good.

Tonight we finish the Doctor Who Christmas Special. We started it last night but put the 2nd half on hold because we were both fading.

The Willis East Posting Board

As an attempt to kickstart this blog back into gear, I'm going to promote another blog. The other one is focused on the children of Willis East. Cara and I are the main contributors so far. Since that blog has such a defined focus, this blog will become (or return to, rather) an outlet for my geeky interests and general observations about this strange world I live in.

So here's the link to the other blog...

The Willis East Posting Board

Its coming along well and it has been fun recording all the things Jack discovers everyday.

Its been a while since I've posted regularly here. A lot has been going on. My role at Monarch Bus Services has changed to where I'm now a trainer. My schedule is all over the place as I don't usually drive the same route anymore. I'm more of a stand-by driver when not training. So in anticipation of having days with downtime we saved up (during the early part of the school year, when we were overworked due to all the training going on, resulting in some extra cashflow) and I got a new laptop or notebook, but technically a netbook. What I'm using now is an ASUS EEE PC. And the model I chose runs on Linux instead of Windows.

It also turns out that I'll be working through the break. That's kind of nice and kind of not, too.