Vacation

In July 2009, we celebrated our honeymoon (belated by 2 years) in Hawaii.


In September 2010, with a 5 month old baby, we visited Senpai's extended family in upstate New York.


This year, July 2011, we visited my family in Treasure Island, FL.


I love the beach.

I grew up in Maryland, not too far from either the Appalachian Mountains or the Atlantic Ocean. Just about every summer my family would spend a weekend at Ocean City: walking the Boardwalk, riding carnival rides on the Pier, and hanging out on the beach, getting sand everywhere, and getting knocked over by the waves in the cold ocean. After Maryland, I went to Sarasota, FL for college, and moved into a house just 5 minutes away from Siesta Key. Some days after school I would take a detour to the beach, grab the chair, towel, and umbrella I always kept in the trunk of my car, and let the lazy lapping of the Gulf of Mexico tune out my stress for a bit. After a brief stint back in MD and then an even briefer stint in Las Vegas, I moved with Senpai to southern Illinois, far from both mountains and ocean, as landlocked in the flat Midwest as we can be. Our little town is quaint, we're close to the big city attractions of St. Louis, but I miss being able to drive-- whether 5 minutes or 2 hours-- to the sunny, sandy beach. Well, this summer we did just that.

We packed up the car and left on a Wednesday night, just after dinner. R had a hard time falling asleep with her carseat facing forward for the first time ever (it gave us more room in the car that way), but after we turned it back to rear-facing she finally dozed off. We drove all through the night and the next morning, pacifying R with the portable DVD player we had bought just for the occasion. At 2:30 pm on Thursday, we finally arrived at Oma and Grandad's house in Northern Florida. Thursday and Friday we got to enjoy lazy time in my parents' pool, and we even tried to take R to her first feature film, the new Winnie the Pooh movie, but she wasn't in the mood to sit through the whole movie. After lunch on Saturday we made the two hour drive to Treasure Island where we all spent the next week. My brother and his wife and kids would join us later in the week.


Somewhere in southern Georgia, driving to Florida.


Grandad acts as a high chair at his and Oma's house.


Group photo in the beach condo. SIL is on the left holding O-buddy and O-lady, Oma is holding C, Grandad, Bro, and I are on the couch, and then Senpai and R are on the floor.


It was so wonderful to meet my brother's fraternal twins, the O's, who had been born late February. O-buddy is just like R at that age: full of gas that he can't get rid of on his own so he always wants to be held. As soon as you pick him up, sure enough, out comes a fart, a burp, or spitup, lol. And O-lady is such a gentle soul, always looking after her brother when he fusses.


R and her cousins, C, O-buddy, and O-lady


This trip was R's first time ever seeing sand and ocean. She was not a fan of the shoreline where the waves splash, but she was a big fan of going out into the water and bobbing up and down with the current in her baby saucer.


She loved the water!


Daddy enjoyed himself, too.


How R got around on the sand. I'm so glad I had this Boba Baby Carrier. I even got to bellydance with R on my back when we encountered a drum circle on the beach. ^_^


Other random things that we enjoyed while we were there: a couple's massage at Paradise Spa (I highly recommend them!!!), Senpai got his seafood fix at Bubba Gump's, the Harry Potter Experience at Universal Studios, the Harry Potter 7-2 movie, driving to the Tampa airport to eat Baja Fresh(!!!!), a very interesting karaoke experience at a local bar, the Dali Museum, taking R to a Disney Store, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa. It was a wonderful trip. The drive home was hard (thank you, Senpai, for picking up my slack), but it was so very worth it.

Poisoned

Image from PubMed Health

We will never eat at Buffalo Wild Wings again.

It all started as a great idea: Senpai and I would cycle with R in the chariot to Smoothie King and order delicious smoothies for lunch. Except that the day was Monday, July 4th, and Smoothie King was closed for Independence Day. It was already noon and we had cycled three miles away from our house, so what else could we do but try to find something else nearby to eat. We headed towards the Target shopping center just down the street that had a Buffalo Wild Wings.

The first interesting thing happened when I pulled my bike up next to the.. (can I call it a restaurant? You assume restaurants will feed you quality food, so I'll say no) place. I turned around and noticed an old man standing in Senpai's way. The man appeared to be just spacing out, and Senpai was patiently waiting for him to move so that he could park his bike next to mine and unload R from the chariot. The man suddenly noticed Senpai, said, "Oh, I never do that!" then he shuffled inside. After chaining everything up, we walked in wearing our bike clothes, ordered main dishes and side salads from the lunch menu, then proceeded to feed R the lunch we had prepared for her. You see, we thought we were only going to be slurping smoothies for lunch. I wanted R to have something solid to chomp on which is why I packed her a separate meal. We are so glad I did!

Senpai and my food took forever to arrive. When we were finally able to chow down on our food (I admit, it was delicious), Senpai explained what had happened out front: the old man had been staring at me (I am so oblivious; I never notice unwanted attention). When he turned around and saw Senpai staring HIM down (ha!), Senpai remembered him saying, "That never happens!" Senpai's retort to me over lunch was, "That you got caught?" Ahahaha!

We cycled back home after a quick walk around Target (still in our sweaty bike clothes, oh yeah, you know we were worth checking out ;-). We had guests over for dinner later with barbeque chicken on the menu. I am SO glad that the food poisoning came from Buffalo Wild Wings, and not the food we prepared and served to our guests! Senpai started feeling ill just before the guests left. R must have known that Daddy wasn't feeling well because she snuggled herself into his lap. She never gets cuddly like that with us. The cats and her stuffed animals, yes, but not us. So I took a picture. ^_^


"Will dollies help you feel better, Daddy?"

It was a long night for Senpai: he slept on the couch and was in and out of the bathroom multiple times. I felt fine, so I was quick to blame his malaise on not washing his hands well enough after cleaning a dirty diaper (shows what I know). I woke up around 1 am with my stomach feeling rocky. I blamed it on eating too much for dinner; for some reason my appetite had been HUGE. Feeling more and more uncomfortable, I tossed and turned alone in bed until R woke up at 7. I took her downstairs, did the usual routine of potty and diaper change, and then after I poured her Cheerios it hit me: I puked into the trash can. Ugh. I joined Senpai on the couch for the rest of the morning.

As lunch approached, we realized that we needed help taking care of R. She was doing alright, staring at us on the couch in between episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba! (her new favorite show), but someone would have to prepare lunch for her, pick her up to put her in the high chair and on the potty, and change her diaper. And while Senpai and I could glare at each other all day long, willing the other person to do it, Senpai deemed it a smarter idea to get someone healthy involved. Thankfully one of his friends who works at a school was off for the summer, and we are so grateful to him for coming over. I crawled over to the kitchen to show him what to make for lunch, and then I collapsed back on the couch.

The interesting thing about the sickness affecting Senpai before me is that we went through the exact same symptoms on a delayed timeline. There was a point late Tuesday night when I was convinced that I was in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). My heart was pounding in my chest and my muscles were locked up in burning agony, just the same as when ketones turn my blood to acid from too high blood sugars. But Senpai reassured me that he had experienced exactly the same symptoms earlier in the day, so it must be from the food poisoning. He later said, "Is THAT what it [DKA] feels like?? Don't ever do that to yourself again!" Haha, it's not like I ever try for DKA, but yeah, agony.

We ate nothing on Tuesday. Wednesday gave us slightly more energy, enough for Senpai to go to work, and me to take R to her physical therapy appointment that had been cancelled without my being informed. I dragged myself to that appointment, determined to not let my sickness get in the way of R making progress, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Just like Osaka from Azumanga Daioh (here comes my otaku nerdiness), I wish the receptionist would "Shikari! Shikari! (Get it together!)" Soup got us all through Wednesday, and then Thursday we were able to tentatively eat real food again.

We are never going to Buffalo Wild Wings ever ever again.

Baby Steps

We've reached a plateau in R's physical therapy.

She had been doing great, improving in one way or another after every session, but this last week brought no change, in fact, she refused to play along with the therapist. The break in progress was hard to swallow.

What really killed me is the dream I've built up of walking with R along the beach. We're making the long drive to Florida soon to visit family again, and to take R to the beach for the first time in her life. I knew I couldn't expect her to walk independently on the sand, but I at least had hoped to balance her between Senpai and I, each of us holding one of her little hands, and letting her feel the grains of fine, white sand slide under her feet as she took wobbly steps. I'm not sure that's going to happen. It may be too soon to get discouraged, there are still three appointments ONLY ONE appointment (edit: the PT receptionist failed to notice when she scheduled the appointments that the therapist was out on vacation all this week. That was fun to be informed of at the office that I dragged R and I to when I was ready to fall over from food poisoning.) left between now and when we leave, and she may surprise us. How sweet would it be, though, to have that dream become a reality?


The good news is that she spends much time standing, sometimes independently, but mostly with support. She sidesteps along walls and furniture like nobody's business.


She got a walker for her birthday that I hadn't been putting her in because she'd get frustrated that she could only scoot backwards; the forward motion seemed to elude her. She knows now that one foot goes in front of the other to get her going forward, so I pulled the walker out from under the side table in our dining room today to see if she would have better luck with it. It was such a monumental task just to get her in the walker, she did not want anything to do with it, and then it took some coaxing to get her to move: "Here, Ladybug! Mommy's holding Tigger. Come get him!" After some pouting, she did it! She moved those feet and began to cruise around the room. She needed help maneuvering over the floor rugs, but hardwood was her fast lane. We even collapsed the leaves on the dining room table and moved it to the wall (not a big feat, in fact, it happens every Tuesday when I practice my dance routines) to give her more space to roam around.

Today's breakthrough is just the booster shot of hope I(we?) needed.


After all, everything starts with baby steps.