Our little girl has bulked up. She is now 11 pounds 11 ounces.  With that weight gain she also put on some height.  Shes now 23.6 inches.  This puts her in the 90th percentile for height, 80th for weight and 85th for head size. Shes getting HUGE!

Isabell is the most perfect baby. I like her so much that I’ve started trying to clone her.

Attempt #4

Unfortunately there are still some bugs in the hardware that I have to work out.

Last night little Isabell went to sleep at 9pm. She finally woke up at 5 am.  Thats a full 8 hours of sleep!!  Thats a schedule we can live with. Lets hope she continues with it.

Shes only on medication for pain and has NO tubes, wires, needles in her. YAY!

Well they pulled the drainage tube from Jamies side on Monday.  Then today they made a new drain right below her sternum.  They did a CT scan and found a pocket of fluid that didnt drain with the first one.  We hope she gets released tomorrow. She can go home with the new drain but will have to return in a few days to remove it.  Lets hope all of this is behind us. Having Thanksgiving Day in the hospital SUCKS!

Dr. Sloane just came in and asked if she wanted the tube out. I don’t think Jamie has wanted anything else in life more than to have that dang tube out.  He did it right here in her room.  Jamie was happily swallowing food just moments later.  One more step closer to coming home!

Jamie had a tube put in to drain out the excess fluid. Its working perfectly. She can now have clear foods. This picture is of her first water since last Friday night!

Hopefully Jamie is done with surgeons.  She had a bile duct stent put in.  The last tests shows bile leaking from into her abdomen.  This was very painful and was irritating her pancreas.  The stent was put in endoscopically and will have to be taken out in a few weeks, but in the mean time it will give her duct a chance to heal on its own.  The 6am blood test tomorrow should give us good news at 10am when the doc comes to let us know the results.  Under the best of all possible circumstances Jamie might be released on Saturday but Sunday might be a better bet.  After the surgery, Jamie came back to the room and was much more aware than the rest of the day.  After some cuddle time with Isabell, it was time to get Jamie ready to sleep.  Its looking pretty good.

Jamie has pancreatitis as well as extra fluid is building up in her abdomen She had a CT scan earlier today. Here she is having a gamma ray test to show where the fluid is coming from. We’ll know in a couple hours what it shows. Send her happy thoughts.

After some excruciating pain. Jamie turns out to have Pancreatitis too.  Some time and lots of pain killers later, Jamie seems to be finally getting better. She’s at least talking in full sentances again.   Carrie, my sister-in-law deserves saint status for watching Isabell for us the entire weekend and even taking Monday off work just to stay home with her while I stay with Jamie.

Jamie is out and coming out of anesthesia. Everything went well. One more procedure tomorrow and shes allowed to go home.

The Doc took her back about 1pm and should be finished about 2pm. Maybe while they have her there they could cut out her stubborn streak too?

Well, it seems that Jamie has gallstones. Who knew she was THAT old!?  Anyway, after a few pain problems during pregnancy, we finally found out that its caused by gallstones. So here we are.  Jamie is going in to have a few ounces of organ removed, she calls it her moms weight loss plan since my mother-in-law has had a few organs removed as well.  Its a short easy surgery, so Jamie isn’t too worried.  I asked if I could watch because, hey, that looks fun to see. Apparently no, I can’t watch. Oh well.  It looks like we’ll be in the hospital overnight because of some extenuating circumstances just in case.

All hooked up and no where to go.

Isabells first Halloween is here. She decided to be a treat this year.  Meaning that she was sweet and nice today.

Some people in Jamies family are in awe of Isabells brown hair. Apparently its pretty rare for someone related to Jamies family to have anything other than blonde hair and blue eyes.  Isabell has been wonderful today. She’s been pretty quiet and hungry all the time, but not much fussing.

We brought her home Sunday night about 8pm.   Waiting for us when we pulled into our neighborhood was:

Decorated House!

Now, without further ado, here are the pictures you’ve all been waiting for:

Here’s her pictures:

6 lbs 15 oz

19.5″ long

Well, at 1am Jamies water broke. So now its 6pm and we’re settled into a room at our hospital.   It was slow go until an hour ago, then everything seemed to really start moving forward.  So, hopefully in the next couple hours we’ll have a baby girl to show off.

10 things your IT guy wants you to know

Note: This article was not penned by me. I found it here. But, that blog has been deleted by the author. So I am recreating the post here. If anyone know the name of the actual author, please do let me know. I would be happy to give credits to him/her.

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
3. I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just cant always fix everything.
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.

We went to the Doc yesterday.  She told a very sad Jamie that it looks like our daughter is in there for the long haul.  The bright spot was that if the 6th of November came around, our doctor would be willing to induce.  I believe Jamie stops every hour or so, looks at her stomach and demands “COME OUT TODAY!”.   I fully blame the non-early birth on Jamie’s parents.  The told her when she was younger that they hope she has a kid “Just like you!”.  This means our daughter is going to be difficult and its already showing.

Jamie’s current refrain when asked how she’s feeling is “All done. Just done”.  Something wonderful for me though, is now Jamie wants to be in bed at 8:30.  I love my sleep and now all I need is for her to quit going to the bathroom every 30 minutes in the night.  Maybe she’ll sleep on the couch so I can get a full nights sleep?  Is that asking too much?

We’re 7 days from full term and 4 weeks from the bump’s due date of Oct. 30th.

So close to done.

Well, it took a year but I finally fixed the photo gallery. Go have a look!

Michael, I just want you to know. I’m the favorite son-in-law today. Yes, it was only because I could help mom out with a computer problem, but I won’t let that get me down.

Jamie’s family had a reunion last week.  I managed to escape early by claiming that I needed to be work.  I left Jamie to the wolves.  She was stuck for a full five days with cousins, nieces, aunts and of course her sisters and parents.  For me though, it was a blissful two nights left to myself. Yes, I will admit that I spent a majority of my new found free time playing video games. I’m not ashamed.  Anyway, one of the relatives is a very adorable 4 month old girl. This would be Jordan who is Jamie’s niece.

For 6 months pregnant, Jamie looks hot.

Shes kicking pretty well now. You can see the movement in Jamies belly when she kicks.  This morning, with my hand, she was really active and I felt four or five in a row.

So we went in for the 20 week ultrasound last week.  Our mooch wasn’t wanting to play nice and give up her secret.  The tech had to really jam the wand into Jamies belly to get the baby to move into a better viewing position.  After some coaxing we found shes a she!  We also got to see her throw a nice left hook into Jamies tummy.  She’s starting to really squirm. Jamie says she feels her all the time now.  The rest of the ultrasound was pretty standard. We saw feet.  We saw all the important parts and the tech said it looked like we had a healthy growing baby girl.  The ultrasound even shows parts of the brain and spine. Very cool stuff.

Jamie is definitely slowing down.  Her energy level is zero after 3pm.  It seems growing a baby is exhausting work.  Her appetite is picking back up though.  Breyers has come out with lactose free vanilla ice cream and made a lifelong friend in Jamie.  Jamies latest favorite item is a homemade milkshake with strawberries and bananas.

Well, guess what?! We’re pregnant! Jamie is 3 months along now. The due date is October 30th!

It’s our last day on vacation. Tomorrow we have to leave. Sad.  This morning started with a bit of a late start. Nashon enjoys his sleep.  After breakfast at the hotel, we started on our long walk across town.  The weather cooperated quite nicely. The day started with a light rain but by the time we got to the streets it was clearing up.  The sun was even showing through in places.

The walk was worth it. The Coliseum is beautiful.  We joined a tour just starting into the Coliseum.  Nashon enjoyed the history lessons, Jamie enjoyed the ruins. It was a win-win situation.  With the weather even sunnier, it was time to have a treat and relax before we tackled the Roman Forum and Palatine hill.  Jamie chose the largest donut ever made; it was almost a foot across. 

After the pick me up snack we were off to see the surrounding ruins.  The area must have been beautiful in its heyday.  The marble was all stolen during the renaissance for other things. The most prominent of these other things, is the Vatican.   Much walking and meandering over the hills around the Coliseum ended with a tired Jamie.  Nashons feet weren’t doing much better.  A taxi back to the hotel ended the day.  Tomorrow is a long flight home.

Woohoo, a day on the town in Rome, AND we had nice weather!.  The Vatican is our first stop today.   A nice long walk through town, stopping at Trevi Fountain, ended at St Peters Basilica.  We joined a tour for the Sistine Chapel because the tours line was much quicker than the general admission line.  They were recruiting people from the crowd, they were good sellers though.  It took almost 60 minutes for the tour to finally get moving, but the guide explained quite a bit about the Vatican while we were waiting.   The tour was nice, explaining the significance in certain paintings, statues, and tapestries.  The Sistine Chapel is gorgeous.  We learned that Michelangelo was completely full of himself, quite stuck up and demanding.  Even demanding certain concessions from the Pope himself. 

The tour ended at the entrance to St Peters Basilica Dome climb. It’s 551 stairs to the top of the dome.  Theres an elevator that will cut out 221 stairs but we opted to skip it and save the extra 2 euros.  What a climb. It’s all inside, some parts in narrow spiral staircases clearly made for smaller people. Nashons shoulders touched both sides at the same time.  Towards the top, the walls start curling inward and you end up walking with a 20 degree lean because we were now climbing in the dome itself.   The view of the city was beautiful. A nice breeze and a cool afternoon were needed after all those stairs!  We spent 20 minutes soaking up the views and then started the long climb down.

We took another taxi to Piazza Navona to have lunch.  Jamie really wanted to splurge on her lactose intolerance and have a pizza finally.   The Piazza was originally built in the 1st century for chariot races.  In the 17th century a Pope had the place redesigned and added in a fountain and church.  For a hundred years, every August, the piazza was flooded by stopping the fountain drains.  The rich would splash around in their carriages and the street urchins would paddle around.  For us though, it was in the middle of set up for a music festival.

We visited the Pantheon.  It has the largest dome in Rome.  While sitting outside admiring the building and the very large crowd, a bird flew overhead and let a present go.  This bird must have had GPS and laser guidance for its bomb.  It was a direct hit on Jamies glasses.  Some managed to get her in the eye, the rest ricocheted onto Nashons pants.  Fortunately for Jamie (and Nashons pants), this bird seemed to leave almost all water with a small amount of solids.  Jamie laughed so hard she cried.

We walked slowly back towards our hotel and enjoyed some of the quieter side streets.  Jamie didn’t care for the pizza she had at lunch, so we had an early dinner at a nice restaurant.  This time the pizza was tasty and the outdoor table we had was nice.  The rest of the evening was the stroll back to the hotel and dropping our shoes as fast as we could. Our feet were very tired!

Today was our last morning in Florence, and the first day we’re out of our room by 8am.  We had breakfast and caught the first train to Pisa.  After winding our way through the city, we arrived at the Duomo and Tower of Pisa.  Jamie was quite disappointed, as the Tower was not nearly as impressive or large as it was supposed to be.  Against his better judgment, Nashon did get the typical picture taken with the tower (though he’s pushing it over instead of holding it up).  The grounds, along with the Duomo, baptistery, and Tower were simply beautiful, though very crowded with families and classes.  We took a million pictures of the tower, and opted to not climb it (the cost would have been about US$50).  We got back to the train station with 2-minutes until the next train back to Florence where we picked up our luggage which we had stored at the train station, and boarded a train to Rome.  We made the train only because it was running about 10-minutes late, and found that we had needed prior reservations for the ride (after we had taken off of course).  After paying the train attendant (who appeared very patient with us), we got to sit back and enjoy the train ride full of 8-10 year old kids making a lot of noise.  Rome has some of the craziest drivers!  It’s like they haven’t discovered how to put lines on the roads to separate cars, so no one knows how to stay in their own lanes.  We’ll leave the driving to the taxi cabs and locals.  We walked to the Spanish Steps which aren’t far from our hotel, but the wind picked up, so we retired early after dinner for a video in bed.  We’re hoping for better weather tomorrow.