Month: March 2011 (Page 3 of 4)

Jack has really advanced his motoring over the last week!  He picks himself up off the ground to a sitting position and goes back down on his own.  He gets in a crawl position, but only advances one knee before giving in to rolling again.  Ben helped me get some video of him, because every time I whip out my camera he stops moving around.  (The last minute or so of this is pretty boring.  I just kept the camera rolling with no real action.  A true snapshot of our home, I suppose).

Hey, fellow high school friends, check out these two dads and their cute kids.  Can you believe it?

We detoured from the usual block walk to roll on the grass in the little park near our house.  Jack was fascinated by this ground, covered with this crumbly stuff that he could pick up.

Ben noted the lack of ceiling and starting tossing Jack around, to his great delight. 

Some video of the adventures.

I hear you.  You don’t want texty posts about work.  You want Jack Action!  I can deliver 🙂

We started playing catch with Jack. I thought it was luck that the ball rolled back to me, but now I’m thinking he actually guides it. Cooperative play is da bomb, y’all.

Here’s more playing catch, shot from a fun angle. He stops playing part way through and flops around, ending with a fart.

This last one is for Betty. She wanted to see how Jack motors around. Of course, he slowed down right when I pulled out the camera. This movie is slower in action, but it does show off his maneuverability.

As 19 hour shifts go, this was a good one.  I got to work at 5:30 to start setting up for the day.  The first patient I was supposed to do as a portable in her room.  Her dark, warm, room that was not in the ICU, she was just on isolation for flu.  I was not happy about spending the morning in there wearing a hot gown and mask in this yucky room with what turned out to be a very crabby, whiny lady.

But hurrah!  Someone in the ICU showed up who was more emergent so I started on her instead.  The second lady was in kind of scary shape.  Her K was 6.9 and her heart was in a wide QRS tachy complex.  While I was setting up machines her telemetry was dancing all over the place with missed beats and other scariness.  They had an AED next to her just in case.  But lo, within 20 mintues of me starting treatment she smoothed out into a sinus rhythm.  Science is real, yo.  I was happy about that, plus she had a really nice nurse for me to work with.

I was ready to head back to the main HD room of craziness, but another ICU emergency appeared.  This one a patient I know very well who had a K of 8.0.  Geez, people!  Again, within an hour she was doing much better.  These two portable treatments were very low stress compared the frantic pace of working a Monday in our room.  I even finished a book.

So when they told me I had to stay because I was on call to do two patients in our unit who wouldn’t be done until midnight, I was ok with that.  I was long over due for some call back.  I have pretty good luck with not having to go in very often.  I took a real dinner break before going up there around 8:30.  My first patient came off about 30 minutes after that and I was down to one really nice guy who just couldn’t breathe well.  It was cool to be able to get him from 10 L at 88% to 5 L oxygen at 100% as the treatment went on.  There was a fair amount of chores to do that the day team didn’t have time to get done, so that kept me occupied.  When the timer rang I quickly got the patient out of the room (yay for fast clotters!)  and got in my bed by 1:30 am. 

The saddest part of the night was when Brian texted me to say trivia round 7 was about musicals!  Boo!  Wish I could have been there.  Oh well.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

(PS: Potassium (K) should be between 3.5 and 5.0.  You can get admitted for dialysis when it’s at least 5.2.  Higher than 6.0 things get a little scary for your heart).

I grew weary of my purple cardigan, with its endless all knits, then all purls.  Such tiny yarn, and wo, I’m so far from the fun smocking section! So I cast on a new cardigan with my handspun yoke.  It’s bulky and uneven and quite fun.  This one starts with the patterned yarn (top-down knitting, my other cardigan was bottom-up knit).  I tried it on tonight to see if it’s fitting ok.  Not bad!  Sure I could tweak it here and there, but it’s kind of a rough and wild cardi.  I’ll keep going.  Hopefully I have enough yarn to finish! I’m all out of matching roving to spin any more.

(The pattern is the Shalom Cardigan.  I’m doing it with 7 mm needles, no mods to the pattern so far.)

Ben and I are bad at going out on dates since we became parents.  I could count on one hand the number of dates we have had since last summer.  Let’s see, The A Team, Inception, Scott Pilgrim, the zoo date, . . .  that might be it.  Did I miss any, Ben?  Maybe we went to Virgilio’s once without Jack?

Luckily, I have an awesome sister who helps us overcome this.  For Christmas we received tickets to Colorado Ballet with babysitting included!  Today I cashed in.

We got all dressed up to see a matinee of Romeo and Juliet.  Fantastic show, if a little light on the dancing and heavy on the emoting as it wound down.  Sumptuous costumes, interesting choreography, and a live orchestra.  So much fun.  I only wish they could have gotten together in the end 😉

After the show we walked a few blocks down 14th to a new restaurant, Euclid Hall.  We were surprised when they told us it was 5280 Restaurant Week!  We usually look forward to this every year but hadn’t given it any thought this time around.  Participating restaurants offer a special menu of options for a dinner for two for $52.80.  This place had most of their menu on the list.  We took advantage of it and had an awesome meal.  We ordered:

Pickle Sampler (Sweet Bread and Butter Pickles, Hops Infused Pickle, Hot, Spicy and Very Sincere Pickles, Seasonal Pickles)
Roasted Cauliflower Salad, shishito pepper marmalade, Haystack goat cheese, scallions, tempura crunchies
Beef Short Rib Kielbasa  
Boudin Noir, avec curry e aubergine
Roasted Duck Poutine, duck gravy, black pepper, Wisconsin cheddar curd 
Griddled Camembert and Peach Preserve Sandwich, Waldorf salad
Red Velvet Cupcake, 7 minute frosting
Funnel Cake Fried Bananas, peanut butter caramel

So yum.  We got home in time to chat with ma soeur for a bit and put Jack to bed.  Thank you again, Amanda, for a wonderful afternoon out!