Welcoming back the light
It's really wonderful to be able to leave work and see that the sun has not yet set. It makes the cold seem a little less harsh.
http://www.wunderground.com/US/IL/Chicago.html
Length of Day: 9h 46m
Tomorrow will be 2m 3s longer.
Chicago Public Radio – January 17th 2008
Featured today. This wall has 6 different types of building materials and it doesn't appear to have helped the stability at all.
Photos of Nate – June 2007 and Age 1
One of the projects I had hoped to complete over the Christmas holidays was to catch up on my uploading of photos of Nate.
I was able to upload photos from June 2007 and had started on his Age 1 photo album, however I've not completed the captioning and "Age 1" only is July and August I think.
Here are the photos from June:
http://www.bernhard.us/photos/nathan-062007
And here are the first photos from the Age 1 album. Please note that in this album, the photos are sorted Newest to Oldest, so that as I add photos, they will show up on the first page rather than the last.
http://www.bernhard.us/photos/nathan-age1
Sick again
Nate became sick again on Friday. The viral-really-scary-might-get-dehydrated kind of sick. 
helloheather and I spent hours upon hours on Saturday and Sunday forcing Pedialyte (tm) into him every 10 minutes in order to stave off dehydration and another hospital visit. It was a scary and stressful and agonizing weekend.
He is on the mend, thank goodness, but my nerves are shot. I'm a wreck and helloheather is not fairing well either. I know that I'm far too nervous a father to begin with, but this last event has me downright frightened.
I just don't understand how people can take care of two, three, five, and six kids at a time, when I can't mentally handle just one.
Some of the better parts of December
Not to make every post today one of sorrow...
(In no particular order:)
- Tora Pines and Mr. Pines visiting early in the month.
- Aaron, Serena, and Charlotte visiting for New Years
- Won a iPod Nano from a raffle at work
- Left work at noon on December 20th and did not return until January 2nd.
- Was able to afford a new snow blower which cut the time to do the driveway down from an hour or more to a paltry 15 minutes.
- Received a gift of a family ticket to an indoor water park, which should make a Saturday in cold January far, far more tolerable. And plus, a water park with Nate will be an absolute blast.
- Did you see that photo of Nate? He was so very, very happy. It warms my heart every time I look at it.
More bad things from December
Continuing the doom-and-gloom
- My grandmother went into the hospital on the 28th with double-pneumonia. She is still there and on two different antibiotics. However, she seems to be on the mend.
- My sister is now sick with probably what nate and I had over Christmas.
- helloheather's step-mom also became sick with the same or similar symptoms.
- The power went out for 8 hours on the 23rd (starting at about 3:30 am)
How not to spend December
December, in terms of health, was not a very good month.
As many of you are aware, Nate was in the hospital from the 5th through the 7th due to dehydration from a viral infection. I was sick with the same virus at the same time and helloheather was left to deal with the both of us. Unlike Nate though, I did not feel recovered until the 12th or 13th.
A few days after Nate came home from the hospital, helloheather contracted a nasty cough, aches, and general illness. She was feeling better by weeks end but still had the cough. By the 23rd I was sick and the 24th Nate was sick. It wasn't until the 29th that all three of us finally were prescribed some antibiotics. Unfortunately for me, the possible side-effect of "headaches" has been a reality and something that tylenol and advil /together/ have been only able to reduce but not eliminate.
In the mean time, we missed out on all Christmas activities on the 25th. We had to cancel Christmas morning with my parents, the afternoon with my grandmother (who has since gone into the hospital with double pneumonia), and the evening with helloheather's dad's side of the family (all the cousins). And I was so sick on the 24th and 26th that I am not sure how I made it through.
Yet again, the week was spent with helloheather tending to two sick people in the house. Oh and, like during our last illness, we had house guests and at least one of them also became sick.
helloheather is, rightfully so, very frustrated with how December went. We have been sick since December 3rd. We had to cancel time with family, she worried herself silly with caring for the both of us, and quite frankly the continual coughing, nose-blowing, body-aches, etc has been just about too much.
My plans to finish the tile in the bathroom, go sledding with Nate, work on my photography, visit people, and everything else were all forced aside. But really, this pales in comparison to what helloheather has had to go through. I'm really not certain how she has stayed sane. But I'm sure glad she has.
I really hope January turns out to be a little better than December.
edit/update: I messed some of the dates up. Corrections made.