Team Fein: September 2010

...was the worst weekend trip ever. There were some good times but I think you will agree with our sentiment by the time you read this really, really long story.

Team Fein flew to San Francisco for a 3 day weekend with the main goal of meeting up with Jon's family and Raina's mom, introducing cousins Harrison and Argenta and meeting up with great-grand-dad "Tai Kung" and uncle Billy and uncle Paul. We arrived to nearly 80* weather, blue skies and not a hint of clouds or fog which is practically unheard of this time of year. The entire gang met up for dim sum which would be our only opportunity to see Tai Kung and the uncles. Harrison hadn't gotten much of a nap so 70% of lunch was spent walking around the lobby, showing him the fish (soon to be someone's dinner) tanks and generally keeping him out of trouble.

After lunch we went back to our hotel and took the kids to the pool in the fitness center. Harrison was so excited and while walking around the wet pool deck suddenly slipped and feel flat on his back and hit the back of his head (he didn't even have a chance to brace himself). I picked him up and he almost immediately stopped crying so no harm done. Dad taught him how to blow bubbles with his mouth just under water and he practiced jumping off of the pool deck into dad's arms in the water below. Neither parents remembered swim diapers so we just put on regular diapers so within minutes, the diapers absorbed a lot of water practically keeping the kiddos buoyant!

After washing up and taking a nap, we all went to a Korean BBQ restaurant and ordered way too much delicious food. Harrison was rather fussy and wouldn't eat or sit still and near the end he picked up Mike's empty sake cup and tipped it back like he was drinking and then suddenly gagged and threw up everywhere. Yeah, gross. Our kid has a pretty quick gag reflex so I thought he might have gotten an unexpected drop of sake although dad swore that cup was dry. In any case, we packed up and left totally embarrassed (this is easily the 5th time he has done this in public since his first birthday).

After we parked the car Harrison threw up again in the parking garage and then again in the hotel room before finally falling asleep. But then he woke up from a deep sleep dry heaving and it quickly became apparent that he was really sick. I called the on call nurse at our pediatrician's office and after some discussion, we worried that he had possibly sustained some serious head trauma when he slipped at the pool. We were advised to take him to an ER immediately and preferably a children's hospital if possible. It was 2am and we could either go to the St. Francis hospital 10 blocks away or drive to the children's hospital in Oakland at 2am. Considering our safety and the distance, we opted for the city hospital and hoped it wouldn't be a total slum.

As soon as I checked him in at the ER, he experienced severe diarrhea and since he had thrown up all night, we only had one clean shirt left so we had this very sick, tired, half naked baby sitting in our arms in the ER waiting room... we must have looked pretty pitiful as several staff members kept offering him extra blankets. Our poor baby boy was SO thirsty and kept begging for a drink but he would immediately vomit even water; it is truly terribly to have to deny your child something so basic as water even if it is for his own good. Once inside, a kindly nurse give us 2 oz of pedialyte with an anti-nausea medicine and he was able to keep it down but then he just begged for more and we were told he had to wait.

The doctor that treated Harrison was fairly young; considering she was working at the downtown city hospital at 3am, I think it was safe to say she was likely only a few years out of med school. That didn't bother us but the following did: she came in the room and told us we had a really cute baby and kept telling us how we "make cute kids" (nice, but kind of weird) and then she asked us when we were going to have some more. Ok lady, we have known you for like 60 seconds and I would prefer that you treat the sick kid I have than have to answer questions about our future conception plans. Then she says that for a 19 month old, he didn't seem to be talking much... how are his verbal skills? Ok, I know she is trying to figure out if he isn't talking due to head trauma but then I tell her his vocab is at acceptable levels and that we also teach him sign language and he can sometimes use signs as a crutch rather than try to speak words (not to mention he is exhausted and dehydrated so he wasn't about to start reciting poetry). At that moment, Harrison gives us the sign for thirsty/drink and she asks, "oh, what he is saying?!?" and when we tell her she is totally incredulous. "Wow! Where did you learn this?!?" Um, books, the Internet... hell his day care even teaches basic signs! At this point we are really questioning her ability to successfully treat our child when a young doctor in San Freaking-cisco has never heard of teaching a child sign language. That 2am drive through Oakland is suddenly sounding really appealing.

To make this already long story short, she can't be sure if he has head trauma (vomiting is a possibly sign of bleeding in the brain), food poisoning or a bad stomach flu so we opt to give him some Benedryl hoping he will fall asleep and we can run a CT scan. Michael and I then struggle for the next 3 hours to get him to stay asleep while we wait for our turn and at 6am, we finally manage to put out awake child into the CT scanner bed and hope we can get him to fall asleep in it so he will stay still enough to run the test. We lay him down, cover him in warm blankets and the heavy lead vest, let him drink a couple of ounces of Pedialyte while we sing him "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" 15 times... and it works. He falls asleep with his bottle still hanging from his lips and he stays asleep while the bed moves around in the CT scan machine.

By 7:15am he is deemed head trauma free and we are on our way to discharge with the belief he has a bad stomach flu. Michael gets all our dirty clothes into Po Po's hands and she runs a laundry at the apartment they are staying in while clean up at the hotel and then walk around Union Square with a much happier toddler who is no longer throwing up and who had managed to get enough sleep to be alert, awake and ready to seize the day (poor mom and dad got maybe 2 hours that awful night... we were literally zombies). After a nice lunch outside in posh Maiden Lane with a man up the street serenading passersby with his operatic stylings, we stumble back to the hotel and the three of us sleep for over two hours.

Po Po, Jon, Audrey and Argenta meet us in the lobby and we let the kids explore a little so the adults can talk and spend a little time together before the ready to leave the city. We go back to the apartment to get our clean clothes and their luggage and have a little fun in the few minutes we have together.

Uncle Jon thought that the kids should have an upside down conversation; here is the bit that I managed to get.

After saying our goodbyes, Team Fein took a long walk downtown. During dinner in a diner, Harrison managed to be put into time out twice as well as throw a glass bowl on the tile floor which of course shattered everywhere.

Poor kid had a lot of pent p energy so we walked around a bit and taught him about the trolleys (ding, ding!) and let him run around Union Square to squeals of delight. We did manage to get a nice family photo which makes me happy because I don't think I can find a photo with the three of us since our trip to Maui in May.

Monday morning we met with friend Atilla, Claire and baby Andre for breakfast at Ella's Restaurant. Michael and Atilla spent most summers together for much of their childhood, vacationing in Lake Tahoe together. We told them that we wanted to try to find the spot where Michael proposed to me (on April 22, 2004; we had even had dinner with them the night before that wonderful day) and so they kindly drove all over the Presidio looking for a spot we could only characterize as near the Golden Gate bridge, near a cliff and near some type of old military spot with lots of old cement buildings and no, it was none of the obvious places they could think of. In the end, we got really close and got a great picture 6.5 years later.

So now, you might be thinking "Geez Raina, that ER business was really awful but it sounds like the trip ended well." Yes, that is what we thought to until we started on our way to the airport. Harrison had fallen asleep in the car as we drove through the Presidio however he woke up just after we took the photos and began driving to SFO airport and he didn't fall back asleep as anticipated. Therefore we stood in a 30 minute security line with an already sleep deprived toddler who now only had a 25 minute nap. He was acting up in line, whining and insisted on being held the whole time but wanted to switch parents every fourth minutes. On the plane, he would only watch his favorite movie for 10 minutes and wanted to walk or jump on our laps. Still this is all something we can work with and then hurricane Harrison blew in. For 20 minutes, he would only yell all his words with extreme enthusiasm (like he was really happy) and then he couldn't still for two seconds at a time, didn't want books or toys or food. And then the captain turned on the "fasten seat belts" sign and Harrison proceeded to scream, arch his back and hang over my arms into the aisle half upside down the entire decent. He finally fell asleep in my arms right after we landed, the three o us exhausted and looking forward to getting home.

Michael went to pick up the car while I picked up the portable crib and car seat from baggage claim, only the car seat never showed up. When we checked in, Michael mentioned that the woman didn't seem to really have her act together and printed an extra bag sticker and then threw the extra one away. Turns out she tagged our bag with another passenger's tag and checked the car seat to Palm Springs. Brilliant. The airline gave us a loaner car seat that was sticky and turned out to be missing the anchor belt (who removes those?! I could see some idiot had somehow ripped them out!) although I can still install it an alternate way so we just got out of there as fast as possible.

This has clearly been a very long post however it was not as long as our weekend. I do have a the CT scan on CD so the good news is that when Harrison turns out to be Einstein in 50 years, scientists who want to study his brain capacity will have the CT scan of 2010 to reference.

And one more thing, as I write this on Wednesday morning, I am at home sick with the stomach flu. Brilliant.

Grandpa Dale and Oma Barbi hopped a flight to Seattle for a quick 3 day weekend. There are a lot of fun pictures so I will keep the comments fairly brief.

Soon after their arrival, we enjoyed a long walk through the park and picked wild blackberries. It was the peak of the season and the blackberries were plentiful, plump and sweet. The past few weeks we took Harrison for some walks just to pick a handful of berries to enjoy. This is something else he will ask for "more more" of. Grandpa also said that he remembers picking blackberries off the side of the road when he used to visit family in Pennsylvania when he was a kid.

First escalator ride on his own two feet!

playtime with everyone!

We went to my favorite doughnut shop to pick up a doughnut each for breakfast. Grandpa was shocked that I would pay as much as $3 for a doughnut; that said I think he thoroughly enjoyed the two fritters he devoured :) By the way grandpa, I scored a couple special 60% off coupons so a dozen is only $8! Come back to visit us soon and then we can eat more doughnuts nearly guilt free!

this photo has nothing to do with dougnuts, although he looks like he is eying one...

Our big activity was a visit to the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, about 20 minutes from our house. Harrison loved all the animals and although he cannot say the animal names, he knows many sounds. Ba ba (sheep), neigh neigh (horse), moooo (cow) and bok bok (chicken) were most prevalent. As it turns out, our child couldn't get enough of the horses and kept asking for "more more" horses.

Whenever Harrison is out of his element, his meal possibilities suddenly blossom and he is open to eating all types of food. While there, he samples fair scones, a gyro, a buffalo onion burger, green apples and an elephant ear (fried delicious dough with jam)... usually it's tricky to get him to anything that is not fruit or anything not smothered in cheese!