Monday, May 25, 2009

Owen Dancing

I'm sure this will be embarrassing for Owen when he's in High School, but this is just too cute not to post... 


Owen Dancing

It's Not Swine Flu

Shortly after I got to work on Wednesday the chills and aches began. I bravely put on my rain poncho (the only additional layer I happened to have in the office) took my allowed allotment of extra-strength Tylenol and continued working on some health statistics for the Hill. A few hours later the sweats began at which point the poncho was removed. By the time we sent my numbers off, I felt good enough to cheer Allen and the rest of "Bad Air Daze" while wrangling Owen at the softball season opener against the "Reg Soxs."

After a brief celebration we went home to discover that I had a 102 degree fever. It broke a bit after Owen went to bed, but returned around 3 am, breaking again around 5 am. I woke up for work, and a series of meeting, with little trace of the previous day's issues, but they quickly resurfaced as soon as I got to work. I went home and continued the series of peaks and valleys well into the early hours again (this time reaching all the way up to 103 degrees).

Friday we decided I should stay home and try and get a doctor's appointment, which isn't the easiest thing to do at 8 in the morning on the holiday weekend, particularly when your illness concerns 2 specialties. Multiple calls later, OBGYN decided that it was an internal medicine issue, but internal medicine wasn't sure what to do with me. My fever having broken again, I'd decided to forget the whole thing, but alas Allen was there on speaker phone when they called back and informed me I should go straight to the ER.

I protested, but Allen insisted, so off we went. Upon arrival, ER took one look at me and escorted me to to Obstetrics. Upon hearing my symptoms, Obstetrics moved me to an isolation room, put on a mask and order a swine flu test. Eight hours and once incredibly painful and intrusive procedure later (with nary a temperature above 98.6 recorded officially the whole time) I was informed 1) that the baby was fine; 2) that I officially didn't have swine flu; and 3) they had no real idea what was causing the temperature spikes (which recommenced shortly after we tucked in Owen that night, who was still wired from hours of play with Grandpa Fawcett).

Saturday continued to be unpleasant but on Sunday I rested comfortably (thanks to Mom Mom who kindly watched Owen for the day). Now I'm feeling much better and ready to celebrate Memorial Day with friends.

not swine flu...

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Sonogram

sonogram 5-11-09

Elaine had a sonogram on Monday, and once again we were told that the due date was considerably earlier than we thought. Owen's original due date was August 16, but after the first sonogram his due date was estimated as August 6, and after the second his due date was moved all the way up to July 26. Of course Owen wasn't born until August 20, which meant that we had a full three weeks in a hot DC August expecting a baby anytime (plus Grandma Z came out a wee bit earlier than needed).

Well, fool us once, uh, shame on you, fool us - well we can't get fooled again. This time we won't give any heed to the sonogram technician's silly August 21 due date. We're sticking with September 1 thank you very much, and surely this time all will go according to plan...

Monday, May 11, 2009

Mothers & Motorcycles

Having learned our lesson from years past, we kept our plans for Mother's Day fairly simple this year: Owen and I baked some fresh blueberry muffins for breakfast, and we planned on a trip to the Arboretum before nap time. We also thought we'd swing by Frager's to pick up some pepper plants before heading up to the Arboretum, and in this small, little detail, the seeds of our plan's destruction were sewn. As we drove down towards Lincoln Park on our way to Frager's, we hit a bizarre Capitol Hill traffic jam -- we could see up ahead that the police had blocked off the road ahead for "Rolling Thunder", a parade of motorcycles. Trapped on a one way street with cars behind us, we were lucky enough to be next to an open parking space, so we parked the van and changed our plans. Owen had a lovely Mother’s Day morning watching the motorcycles roar by and there was eventually enough of a gap for us to cross the street and play in the park as the parade of motorcycles turned into a parade of Corvettes. We headed back home for lunch and a nap, but we weren’t done with the park quite yet. Our friends Andrew & Claire and their son Luke were down at Eastern Market in the afternoon, and gave us a call from Lincoln Park right as we were waking up from nap-time. So we went back to the park so Owen and Luke could play together, making salad in their hats and chasing monsters around the grass. We topped off the evening with all of us heading back to our place to grill some sausages for dinner. Nothing went according to plan, but we had a lovely Mother’s Day none the less.


Motorcycles