I’ve been promising Kaeta some one-on-one girl-time with Mommy, so today I finally got a chance to take her ice skating.  We had a blast!  She was so excited that on the way there she said, “This is the most fun part of my day.”  She had such a great attitude about everything.  She wasn’t the least bit scared.  We laced up her skates, and she walked easily in them, and she stepped confidently onto the ice.  We got almost all the way around before her first fall.  She even let go of the wall and my hand a few times.  And her smile never left her face the whole time.  Later she said, “This is the most fun part…of my WHOLE LIFE!”  I love this little girl.

She was a natural on the ice.  She fell a few times, of course, but each time she got right back up.  Many times we whirled around together, trying to keep our balance and catch each other, and she laughed so hard you’d think I was tickling her.

Afterward we went out for ice cream.  On the way there I looked in the rearview mirror and caught her just grinning to herself.  She told me she wants to go ice skating again sometime, and to go out for ice cream again.  Well duh!

I’m working from home today. A few minutes ago, Kaeta wondered in and asked me (apropos of nothing) what’s at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Naturally, I googled, “top of the eiffel tower,” and I was rewarded with a youtube video taken from up there.

The video’s not all that interesting, but hey, now I know what the view looks like from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Pretty cool so far!

Then, because I know she loves maps, we looked up the Eiffel Tower on google maps.

This was immensely satisfying! After looking around Paris for a minute, we decided to watch the youtube video again, but this time, we paused it when we saw something interesting (like the Seine River). Then we’d go to the map and find the same thing there, and learn its name. For example, there’s a beautiful park just south-east of the tower called the Parc du Champs de Mars — Champ de Mars means “Field of Mars”, after Mars the god of war. It was named for its original use of military drills. (thank you, Wikipedia!)

Anyway, we had a good time talking about all that! I love getting unexpected questions from the kids.

One day last week, Kaeta washed her hands in the upstairs bathroom right before leaving the house for lunch, and she forgot to turn off the sink. When Karianne walked into the kitchen an hour later, water was streaming down through the kitchen ceiling!

She sprang into action and… called me to come fix it! While I was busy dealing with that, she took the kids shopping. Ah, another one of my “manly duties.”

I called our insurance co., then The Steam Team. They were at the house in under an hour, and they quickly set up a bunch of fans and dehumidifiers to get things dried out.

All’s well now, although we’re still working on getting some things back to normal. We found a carpenter through The Handyman Connection, and he’s working out well so far. His name is Paul, but due to his thick Irish accent, we usually call him Desmond (after the character from LOST).

Also, on the same day that this happened, I found a huge moth in the bushes in our front yard. I caught him and we ended up buying a butterfly sanctuary thing for him:

That’s the biggest moth I’ve ever seen outside of a butterfly garden.

Because the spots on his wings looked like eyes, we named him Argus (after Argus Panoptes, whose body was covered with 100 eyes). Later, I looked up what kind of moth Argus was, and he’s called a Polyphemus moth — Polyphemus was the name of the cyclops in the Odyssey. I thought that was cool, but I think Argus is a better name, since the moth has more than one “eye”.

Finally, here’s something weird — many moths, Polyphemus moths included, do not have a mouth as adults! Once they metamorphosize, they don’t eat any more. Weird!

And here’s a picture of Jonah wearing my glasses:

Kaeta and Jonah both love to build things.  This week, Kaeta noticed this picture on her tub of Legos:

So she studied it carefully and built this:

Another day this week, Jonah and I built this together:

Early on we noticed that Jonah is a “figure-outer.”  He really studies things to figure out how they work.  This week he figured out how to open a can of soup all by himself.

We were all sitting in the living room hanging out, and Jonah wondered into the kitchen.  A few minutes later I heard him jabbering very excitedly, so I got up to see what was going on.  In the middle of the floor was an open can of soup!

He had found the can sitting on the counter, dug around in the drawer to find the electric can opener, and figured out how to put the can opener on the can and press the button.  It’s an easy can opener to use, but we had never showed him how, so I was pretty impressed.  Then I took this video, so you can see how excited he was:

So I posted a short Amazon.com review of that can opener called “So easy my two year old figured it out.”

Let’s begin the story with the end: Everything is fine.

And now, for the recounting of the most terrifying day of our lives as parents.  In the wee hours of the morning during our first day at home after being discharged from the hospital with Daniel, we were just getting ready to change a diaper Daniel was working on.  Suddenly, Daniel began to sputter and choke and when I looked down at him, he was foaming at the mouth and having trouble breathing.  Needless to say, I panicked, picked him up, and grabbed the bulb syringe to suction out his mouth.  He still seemed to be having trouble breathing, and the foaming? — a seizure? we wondered.  We called 911 and the paramedics were on their way.

I was terrified.  Ever since that scare we had early in the pregnancy with the fluid in his abdomen that mysteriously went away, I’ve felt as though I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Could there really be something horribly wrong?  Could this be it?

Four minutes later about a dozen big burly paramedics, firemen, and sherriffs came charging into our house and into our bedroom.  (Kaeta and Jonah, by the way, were sound asleep in their bedroom, oblivious to this 3 am intrusion.)  By this time, Daniel had stopped foaming and could breathe just fine.  The paramedic who checked him out said his vitals were perfect, he was showing no signs of distress, his oxygen level was great, and he looked like a perfectly healthy 2-day-old baby.  And these were not the symptoms of someone coming out of a seizure.  He said we could take him to the hospital if we wanted to, or we could just follow up with our pediatrician at our next visit.  Big sigh of relief.  Now maybe we could get some sleep!

Nope.  Two hours later, after nursing the baby and trying to get back to sleep, Daniel spits up.  Blood.  Trying not to panic this time, we called the after-hours nurse.  She says we better take him to the emergency room.  It’s possible that he could have a tear in his intestine.  Thump.  The other shoe.  So now I’m back to panicking.

Having just come home from the hospital, we still had a lot of stuff packed, so we quickly loaded it back in the car.  Maintaining the speed limit (really!), we drove back to Seton, since we had just been discharged from there.  But apparently that was wrong.  Once they’d admitted us and checked him over, they said we’d need to transfer to Dell Children’s Hospital.  They loaded Daniel in an ambulance, and I rode with him while Derek drove our car to Dell.  (And to complicate matters, it was the day of a half-marathon, so Derek had to drive way out of the way to avoid the race route!  But it worked out fine.)

At Dell, we answered the same dozen questions over and over (what happened? how much blood?  breast or bottle?) and eventually they decided to (1) x-ray his abdomen and (2) put a tube down his throat into his stomach to examine the contents.  Believe it or not, he objected much more strongly to the x-ray (I guess the table was cold).  The tube down the throat didn’t seem to bother him that much.  Not nearly as much as it bothered us!

Not finding more fresh blood in his stomach was a good sign (it meant he wasn’t actively bleeding), and the x-rays looked good too.  It took a while to check everything out, but the doctor and nurses were great, and they discharges us around 11:30.  The doctor’s theory is that Daniel must have been choking on some mucus or something in the back of his throat, which would explain the foaming.  Then in our panic to suction out his mouth right away, we might have scratched the back of his throat (apparently an easy thing to do), causing it to bleed and drain into his tummy, which would explain the spitting up blood.  A plausible explanation, but nonetheless terrifying to witness!

Derek’s theory is that Daniel just wanted to ride in an ambulance.  When the foaming at the mouth and consequent 911 call didn’t work, he had to go to Plan B: spitting up blood.  But one way or another, he was determined to ride in an ambulance.  I don’t want to know what Plan C might have been.

So, that was a looong 9 hours of insanity!  Our goal the next night was: “No trips to the hospital,” and we’ve now pulled that off 2 nights in a row.
Daniel went to the pediatrician yesterday and is doing just fine.  He is almost back up to his birth weight.  He is the picture of perfect health for a newborn, despite all his efforts to scare us half to death.  Our prediction: he’s going to love roller coasters when he gets bigger.

Born 1/21/2010 at 5:18pm

6 lbs. 11 oz., 19″ long

Here he is with the special gift his brother and sister picked out for him:

Mother and baby are doing great!

Coco and I had our last regular OB appointment this morning — during which we found out that even though I am not in active labor, I am already 4 centimeters dilated!  Translation: nearly halfway there with very little pain.  And hopefully Coco will be born very soon.  We also found out that while Coco seems to be doing very well, the amniotic fluid level is getting a little low, so my doctor is not very comfortable letting me go much past my due date (this Friday).  So an induction will be scheduled for next Monday if I’m still pregnant by then.  But please, pray that I’m not!