BumbleDad

Hey there.

Yes, I know…it’s been a few. There’s been an awful lot going on.

Daphne’s strep has indeed cleared up, and thank you all for your well wishes.

I will say that having to pin her arms down while shooting amoxicillin into her mouth before school every morning was not my favorite way to start a day…but she’s better now as a result, so all’s well that ends well, I suppose.

She actually wrapped up her school for the year a little more than a week ago, and was sent home with this adorable little guy.

Inside were a few other crafts, a snowflake, a Christmas light, and a painted snowglobe, all of which are currently magnetized to our refrigerator.

So last Sunday, Christmas Eve-Eve, we went over to the Sugar Land Skeeters baseball field for their annual holiday lights event.

You get to walk a path around the perimeter of the field and all of the seats are lit up in various colors. These, in turn, light up your daughter in various colors.

They smartly had a beer tent open as well, complete with rocking chairs, firepits, and s’mores.

Daph got to run around and do her thing here while we sipped a beer and relaxed in front of the fire.

In all it was a really good time. Definitely worth checking out if you happen to be in the west Houston area during the holidays.

I had a couple more gifty things to pick up afterward (Christmas procrastinator that I am), and so I purposely waited until around midnight that night to run over to our new 24-hour Wal-Mart, thinking that the crowds wouldn’t be so bad.

Which was a very correct assumption.

Judging by the cars in the lot, there were something like 4 people there…but I never saw them.

No one but me and Mac, the janitor bot.

I even checked out by myself at the self-service stations.

It was, in all honesty, a little spooky.

But I picked up what I needed, at which point Christmas was officially a “GO!”

And as it turns out, Santa would do his part too, and he dropped off presents for a particularly good little girl that we all adore.

He brought a Big Wheel…

And some new artwork that he knew Daphne would like…

That last one was particularly interesting, as Santa must have had to take her old picture down off the wall while she slept, and swap it out with the new one.

Sneaky Santa.

And finally, he brought a little something for the entire family…

Yes, there are fish in the house now.

Jen picked out all of the decor and artfully arranged their ichthy-condo, and I handled the biological additives and chemicals.

We dropped our first two fish (Lewis and Clark) into the tank last night, and I’m happy to report that they are both still alive and zooming around the tank (as of the time of this writing, anyway), blazing a trail along the nitrogen cycle and laying the groundwork for all the settler fish to follow.

It was a fun Christmas all around, and Daphne loved all of her gifts.

Finally, we went out on a post-Christmas sailing trip with the Sailing Angels on Friday, cruising around the Kemah harbor.

Daphne loved the rocking of the boat and, much like her daddy, seemed to find it soothing. So much so that she fell asleep on the way back to the dock.

Was a really good time, and we’re very appreciative of the folks at Sailing Angels, and for the people at Hope for Three for setting us up with them.

Speaking of Hope for Three, you’ll find a familiar face (and writing style) on their website, talking about a particular little mermaid.

Okay, I think I’ve gotten everyone caught up. There’s more to talk about, of course, but that will have to wait for next time.

We hope your Christmas was every bit as merry as ours.

See you soon.

j.s.

This has been a challenging few days…

Daphne has been a very sick little girl. 

She developed a wet cough out of nowhere on Saturday afternoon which, while unlike her, wasn’t in itself a huge deal.

Then by Saturday evening, a fever had begun to creep up.

And by Sunday morning, she was hot to the touch and our failmometer was vacillating between 99.2 and 101.5.

Regardless, that meant “fever,” and so we propped Daph up with some pillows and a blanket, gave her Little Baby Bum on the iPad, and tried to keep her stationary, insomuch as such a thing can be accomplished with a 3 1/2-year-old.

Unfortunately, her fever got worse as the day progressed and the failmometer read 102.1 on the high end of the samples (seriously, I hate that thing) by Sunday evening. 

So on Monday morning we cancelled swim class, called her school, and settled in for another day of rest here at home.

But, despite being completely soaked in sweat after two naps, her fever never broke.

Grandma picked up some toddler ‘tussin from the local CVS and we gave her a shot of it just before bedtime on Monday night. (Fun aside: this would be just after she threw up all of her rice and chicken nuggets while we were still sitting at the dinner table.)

And man, that stuff knocked her out like I’d spiked her Martinelli’s with Vicodin. 

She crashed out at 8pm and didn’t even move until 7am the following morning.

“Awesome…” I thought as I awoke on Tuesday. “That had to have knocked out whatever that bug was. We’ll have a chill day at home again and she’ll be ready for school tomorrow“

I stomped triumphantly upstairs to congratulate her on a great sleep and talk about what a fun day of videos we had ahead of us. But when I opened the door I found her sitting up in bed, flushed, and still burning hot to the touch. 

The Failmometer beeped back 99.5 and 101.9, unhelpfully.

Okay. This one is officially beyond dad’s over-the-counter skill to heal… We’re going to need a cleric doctor.

So I called the local clinic and, after some preparatory discussion about how Daphne would be unable to describe her symptoms, they found an opening for her at 11:30.

Now, getting Daph to cooperate with a doctor’s poking and prodding when she feels great is an Olympic sport. When she’s already sick, it’s a wrenching, muscling, screaming battle of wills and endurance, and one that’s entirely unpleasant for everyone involved.

Suffice to say, we did get her checked out.

And suffice to say, as you might’ve guessed by the title, Daphne does indeed have strep throat.

So today began the first of 10 days of amoxicillin shots, administered via one of those weird oral syringe thingies.

And I’d love to say the stuff was a fast-acting miracle drug like they described…but that would be a total lie.

No, now she has the exact same fever, but has added a gurgling cough to it. (One with a tendency to spackle throat yuck on everything within a 10′ cone area of effect.) Couple these with a mucus spigot where her adorable little nose used to be, and you can probably guess how entertaining our homelife has become.

This, of course, leaves out the bit about strep throat being ridiculously contagious. And Daph has, on more than one occasion, coughed directly up my nose.

At this point I have zero hope of escaping the streppy fate that’s ahead of me.

Anyway, Jen has taken the day off today to help take care of Daphne while I finish up the writing that I have due at the end of the week.

Oh, I haven’t mentioned that have I?

Yeah, I’ve been hired to do some creative writing for an role-playing game. It’s not a huge deal, as I’m just one of several writers working on it. And it certainly isn’t going to pay the mortgage…
But, full disclosure, this is one of those things that I’ve dreamt of doing ever since I was a kid, and I’ve been given a chance earned my shot right now.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it if/when it’s published. (Pending, of course, my stuff ends up being good enough to make the cut.)

I can’t say a whole lot more about it right now, NDAs being what they are, but I am a little excited. And, whatever happens, it’s been fun to work on.

Okay, I’ve got to run. I need to take some more vitamins…

j.s.

Yeah, it’s been a few. We’ve had a lot going on though. Let’s set the Wayback Machine for Halloween and just go from there.

So, Halloween. 

Daphne’s school put out a request for kids to dress up as a character from their favorite book for a little parade. But since we weren’t sure how well-known the tap-dancing pigs from “Moo, Baa, LA-LA-LA” were, we opted to revisit her Alice costume from last year and halve our cost-per-wear on that little investment.

Thing is, I wasn’t entirely sure if the ECAP kids were going to be allowed to walk in the school’s parade. There were quite a few parents with cameras lined up on both sides of the parade “route” (which was really just the sidewalk in front of the school) which might very well have constituted a sensory issue for some of the more sensitive kids. So, I didn’t stick around for any pictures.

Later that evening, we dressed Daphne in this year’s Halloween costume, which seemed perfectly appropriate.

Jen walked with her around the block and did the trick-or-treat thing, and Daphne did fantastically well. Obviously she didn’t say “trick or treat,” but she did pick up candy from bowls and drop it into her bag.

I stayed home and manned the door for the rest of the trick or treaters. 

Unfortunately the entire business was cut very short by inclement weather, but I think Daphne was done after about an hour, so it worked out well. Another successful Halloween.

The weekend that followed, however, was not so great.

A cool front came through on Friday night, and so the weather on Saturday was 72° and sunny, perfect weather for a trip to the Renaissance Festival. So we packed a day bag and headed out toward Todd Mission, Texas.

We’d been in the car for about an hour before traffic began to slow, and Siri informed us that, instead of it being 15 minutes to the Ren Fest, it was now going to be an additional 45 minutes.

So we sighed, accepted that as the cost of being out on such a beautiful day, and plodded our way along Route 1774 at 3 mph. 

Unfortunately, Siri was incorrect in her calculations, as she was assuming the side roads to the Ren Fest weren’t closed down to festival traffic. So after each intersection where we were unable to turn, she would recalculate the route and subsequently add 15 minutes to the total drive time. 

After an hour of waiting in traffic, and having our time to destination remain unchanged at 45 minutes like some kind of GPSisyphean torture, we decided to call it and head back home.

I did manage to get a bit of the traffic on video on our trip back:

As it turned out, however, going home would be a good thing.

We had just about gotten to our house before Daphne became really, really, really fussy. And she remained so for the rest of the day, despite a very long nap.

The following morning Jen checked her temperature, and found that Daph was running a fever of about 102. And no sooner had she settled her back into bed for a day of rest, when Daphne promptly threw up all over herself, Jen, and the bed.

Jen took a shower while I stripped the bed down and wrapped Daph in some blankets, and she basically slept the entirety of Sunday away. I don’t know how it is for everyone else’s kid, but for our 3-year-old to sleep through an entire day, she must be really sick.

Later in the afternoon her temperature began to creep up to the 102.7 range, and so we battered it back down with some Tylenol, which took it to a respectable 99.9.

Although that was not without drama either. Because Daphne hates Tylenol.

We have to hold her down and force it into her mouth with that little Tylenol Super-Soaker syringe thing, all while she turns her head, clenches her teeth shut, and fights us the entire time. Normally it takes 3 shots to get a proper dose of medicine in her; the rest of it ends up on her face, her pillow and in her hair.

It is unpleasant. But it worked.

On Monday morning when I checked on her she was back down to 99.3 and seemed to be feeling more like herself again.

 We stayed home from school anyway, just to be on the safe side, and spent a lot of the day snuggling and watching StoryBots.

And, as you can see, it was torturous for everyone involved.

That pretty much catches you all up to speed. Daph’s in school today and I’ve just finished working on my submissions for a potential writing gig. (Fingers crossed there.) I also have a lunch n’ learn this afternoon for my VR thing.

Speaking of which, I need to get working on some changes to the PowerPoint…

In my next post I’ll talk a bit about this past weekend, and our trip to see Grammy for her birthday.

Talk to you then.

j.s.