Eli must have activated some secret baby powers recently.
secret baby powers….
Before I get to that, I have to note that my husband is on a play date with his friends. He is playing PS3 football online with a friend in Chicago. In the mean time, Mark, his Chicago friend Bryan and St. Louis friend Steve are on a Google Hangout (basically, video conference call with multiple people). The computer is propped up on a tall lamp. I note this only to say: Boys…oi. Don’t get it.
nope, don’t get it
Any way, back to Eli’s baby powers.
We found a new, new new nanny. Yes, nanny 3. Nanny 1, ie Nanny X, was coo coo. Nanny 2 was an absolute dream, but life led her on a new path and a fresh start! I’m so glad we crossed paths in this life, you lovely woman, Lo, you! Nanny 3 is a psychology graduate student who strikes me as sensitive to others, caring and kind. I had wanted to hire her initially, but she got an incredibly demanding internship and her availability changed. I had checked her out – her background, her references, met with her, liked her a ton and had her over to watch the kids — so I’m glad it worked out this round.
She will work out for hopefully two of the three days I need a sitter, starting next week. We met this afternoon to hash out the details.
I have one week to find someone for the third day or figure something else out. What? I don’t know! It’s really tough being new somewhere when it comes to kids. We have so few connections — though more than even a few months ago!
For anyone new here, Eli, my son with cystic fibrosis, really needs to avoid day care. There are a lot of great things about good day care centers, but one crummy thing is this: they are germ cesspools. My son is really little, and I’m trying to keep him as well as I can for as long as I can. His last cold put us through the ringer — though experience might prove that was really, just, kind of…no big deal. He caught a cold, it flared up CF bacteria in his lungs. He hacked, deeply, but not gut-wrenchingly, throw-uppingly deeply — for about two weeks, during which time we put him on his vest for about two hours a day. He was on an antibiotic for 21 days but has not yet had to have a breathing treatment, outside a puff of Albuterol before vest sessions while he was coughing. That’s something they give asthmatics to open up the airways. A cold is not just a cold, when it comes to CF. I look at that first one as mental strength training for what lies ahead.
In other magical baby power news, we had a news crew at our house this morning!
my magical secret baby powers have attracted the attention of a local broadcaster!
No, Mark and I did not get into a street domestic involving strange weaponry. My friend and fellow hard-working reporter Rachel Calderon did a segment on hithisiseli.com and our experience getting Eli’s life-saving surgeries at The Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center.
Her station agreed to do a segment on her personal effort to help raise cash for Children’s for a fund to hire high-quality doctors and surgeons. It’s hard to get them here to the plains, because we are not the coasts, basically — but we have charms of our own people!
Rachel is somewhat outrageously doing a Dancing with the Stars-esque fundraiser this weekend for a Children’s gala, for which I must give her mad props. Because woman, that’s bold! She, like me, has bbs who are 3 and newbie new. Her baby Viv is just a few months younger the Eli.
She didn’t want to do the segment all on her own effort, and she really likes this blog and has read it for a while, and because Children’s saved Eli’s life, she brought her cameraman here today and asked me questions, which was so sweet and thoughtful!
It was quite fun, I admit!
I think it airs on Thursday or Friday…
I will find out, and also find out more info about her fundraiser to share.
We do need to make an effort to continue to recruit high-quality doctors and surgeons to the plains.
Dr. Tuggle, Eli’s surgeon, who I have called a bad ass (hey, he did an on-site amputation under the bombed-out federal building here) as well as the Jesus mechanic of baby guts — well, he retired this month! He was the chief of pediatric surgery at Children’s and had been here since ’85.
In fact, before he took off, I met with him to, once again, thank him for saving Eli, and, take down his story.
I plan to write this up this week, and hopefully add info about Rachel’s effort to fundraise to that piece/series.
But now, it’s time to sleep.
