What did you do this weekend?

What did we do this weekend?

  • Took the kids to the pool.
  • Went to a Chinese wedding reception.  (Yeah for mayonnaise walnut shrimp!)
  • Spent the night in Denver. (The Westin is excellent.)
  • Painted the house.  (Most of it any way.)
  • Had dinner at Frank’s parents.
  • Went out with friends.
  • Volunteered at the Boulder Bolder.

Can we have a weekend now?

What kind of blog should Stormy’s Corner be?

Common wisdom says that successful blogs are niche blogs.  Actually Ben Casnocha puts it well when he says blogs are either niche blogs or personality blogs and each blog post gets evaluated by:

a) Does the post cover one of my preferred topics?
b) Is the post from someone I like and want to stay connected with?

So I struggle with Stormy’s Corner.  I have lots of regular readers that probably read all posts because they want to stay connected with me and secondly because the topics may or may not be interested to them.  But at the same time most of my blog visits are from somebody searching for an answer – at the moment they are searching for help stopping breastfeeding or about dogs and alcohol. I even created a "niche blog,"  Humans for Dogs, since a lot of the searches came from dog related topics from alcohol to chiropractic care to sleep.  (Breastfeeding posts are by far my most popular but I don’t feel like I have enough to say about breastfeeing to create an entire blog about it so I will just continue to post the occasional story on Stormy’s Corner.)

I’ve been reading a lot about blogging about blogging and how to make a blog successful and while I want Stormy’s Corner to be successful, I think it is right now. 

If there’s a way Stormy’s Corner could be more to you – could meet your needs more – let me know!  Comment now!

We’re home!

We’re home and Caleb is doing well!  His crib mattress is at a 45 degree angle and he has his own humidifier.

Cross Your Fingers!

We’re two hours into the four hour test – can Caleb maintain his oxygen levels without supplemental oxygen?  If he can, we’ll be going home in two hours!  Yeah!

Monday update to “Caleb has RSV”

We had kind of a rough night.  Caleb was doing good on 1/4 L at midnight so they decided to slowly turn down the oxygen overnight.  (They were trying to get us home today!) Only they didn’t tell me.  So in the wee hours of the morning I couldn’t figure out why his oxygen levels kept falling to 80% and then spontaneously going back up to 90%.  When they fell below 80% I paged the nurse.  The nurse that responded wasn’t our nurse but she figured out that Caleb was on room air!   We turned it back up to 1/2 L and he fell asleep for a couple of hours and woke up his usual happy self.  But neither of us got a whole lot of sleep.  (Caleb’s taking a nap now so all is good.) 

We are now back to a 1/4 L and expecting to see the doctor over lunch.

(Caleb’s figured out how to get the oxygen tube out of his nose.  So he did that 3-4 times last night.  Luckily he hasn’t figured out how to keep the machine from beeping when his oxygen levels falls so I always find him out!)

Sunday evening update to “Caleb has RSV”

They got his oxygen down to 1/4 liter this afternoon.  (They turned it down little by little and then waited to see if his numbers held steady.)  But we had to turn it back up to a 3/4 liter this evening because his heart rate jumped back up to the 200s and his oxygen went down to 88%.  (Actually, probably his oxygen dropped and then his heart rate went up as he tried to get more oxygen.)

I don’t know much about this but I don’t think we’ll be going home tomorrow.   He has to be completely off oxygen for four hours and still doing well before he’s ready to go home.

Sunday update to “Caleb has RSV”

Caleb is doing much better today.  He slept all night, ate 5 ounces in
one sitting and woke up "talking" like he normally does.  His heart
rate has also come down a lot.  We even got a couple of smiles out of
him today.  (He’s been playing and interactive most of the time but no
smiles.)  As soon as he can maintain this without oxygen, we’ll be able
to go home.  In the meantime, it’s nice to be here in the hospital with all the help
from all the experts.

Oh … and did I mention that everyone that comes to visit has to wear
a mask, gown and gloves?  (RSV is very contagious.)  I think Caleb’s wondering why everyone looks
so funny … he stared at our new nurse this morning for a good 10
minutes.  Then he finally gave her a big smile!

Caleb has RSV

In case you are wondering where we are – Frank and I are camped out with Caleb in a hospital room this weekend.  Caleb has Respiratory Syncytial Virus, RSV for short since I haven’t even figured out how to pronounce it yet.   For most of us this would be just a common cold but for the little guys like Caleb who are under six months of age, it can be quite serious. 

Caleb had been sick with a runny nose and a cough since Wednesday.  Many thanks to his day care provider who on Friday called us at work and said she thought we ought to take him to the doctor.  With a temperature of 99.6, a runny nose and a cough, we would have dismissed it as a cold until much later on Friday when it got much worse. 

After a very long wait in the urgent care waiting room (over 90 minutes during which our six year old was very, very good), we finally got in to see a doctor.  They immediately determined that his oxygen saturation was not sufficient (85% instead of at the 92+% they would have liked to have seen), his temperature was 101.6 and he was starting to have problems breathing.  You could hear him struggling to breath.   His heart rate was also over 200bmp – part of the trying to get enough oxygen to his body.  They immediately did chest xrays to eliminate pneumonia.  (The xrays were very cute – his whole torso fits on one xray.  You could also see his teeth even though none of come out yet!)  They sent us over to hospital and by 9pm we were checked into this room where we’ve spent the last few days.  They’ve been treating him with oxygen and nose suctioning.  (Not his favorite but he must realize it’s helping because he’s gotten better about them.)  The earliest we can hope to take him home is Monday morning.

Physical punishment

Here’s a great post on why physical punishment often doesn’t have the desired effect. Some Reasons: Ten Reasons Not to Hit Your Kids.  I think it applies to all punishment, not just spanking.

Some I definitely agree with:

1.  If you hit your kid, they are likely to hit others, because hitting must be ok.  And if you yell at them, they are likely to yell at others, because yelling must be ok.
3.  A child who’s been punished becomes angry and focuses on the punishment and the punisher instead of how to solve the problem at hand.  (I’ve found this hard to prevent when just using simple time outs or "you can’t do that."  We always have to ask, "do you know why you are in timeout" and often he doesn’t!)
7.  Anger and frustration build up.
9.  Spanking shows the "might makes right."  Someday both of my kids will be bigger than me.  Does that mean that they don’t have to listen to me then?  No!
10. It shows that hitting is an appropriate way to solve problems.   That will be very frustrating for them when they enter corporate America!

The article explains these and the other points much more clearly.  It’s worth reading.