please don't call OSHA
the workplace of the insane
is my living room

I know I've said this before, but you guys, it is WEIRD having my house as someone's workplace. Equally weird is that one of my kids is someone else's full-time job. Not just that, he's TWO people's full-time job. Plus, my full-time job, and my husband's full-time job. How many adults does it take to care for one trach baby? Exactly a lot.

Seriously. That is weird.

Side-stepping the weird, though, was today. A non-nurse day. We traded out hours with our Friday nurse so that she can come on Halloween while we're at the Texas Book Festival. (side note: Come to my panel at 1:30 on 10/31! It will be awesome – or you'll get to see my real-world interpretation of Liz Lemon. Either way? Win!)

To be honest, when we know we're going to have a no-nurse day, we kind of dread it. Our weekends are usually nurse-free, and while they start off fun, they don't always end that way. Today, though, was different. Ike-a-saurus played around the house like a 14-month old should. He ate well, napped well, ripped electrical components out of the wall well. And not only that, the wee-er one enjoyed the one-on-one time with mommy and daddy. No fits, just a fun day.

I don't know what this means for the future – usually good days are followed by "Oh, hell no" days. But for now, it's really nice.

Now, this doesn't mean we won't cheer with glee when the night nurse arrives. And it doesn't mean we're not counting down the hours until reinforcements arrive on Monday, but for now – at this moment in time – it's been a lovely day.

It's nice to have one of those every now and then, isn't it? Even if it means reflecting on the weirdness of having people work in your house, and what it's like when they take a day off.

on this day last year
eight weeks old and coming home
four pounds of wonder

It's been a whirlwind day today. The computer blew up, I had a school visit to talk about Mike Stellar, we had a very early am appointment with a speech therapist. Maybe not a normal day for everyone, but on par for us.

Still, though, it's not like the whirlwind day we had on October 20th last year. Last year, I woke up super early in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I packed up a bag of food I knew I wouldn't eat and went straight to the NICU. We were pretty sure Ike-a-saurus was going to get the heave ho and be able to come home, but we didn't know for sure. We had to get the OK from the doctor, see some MRI results, make sure he passed his car seat test, etc.

Eight long weeks he'd been in the NICU. Eight long weeks of going back and forth and having to live away from my baby. Eight long weeks of the wee-er one not being able to meet her brother because she was too young to visit the NICU.

At the time, those eight weeks were long and torturous and seemingly endless. What we didn't know then was that they were training us for the future. A time when things would be even more long and torturous and endless. But for that moment, that day last year, I was in agony to get my baby home. To put together a fractured family. To get things situated and "normal". To just be home for good.

Now it's been a year. A kind of long year, actually. And we're not normal like I thought we were going to be, but that's OK.

It's better than OK.

It's great.

Happy home from the NICU anniversary, little dude. You amaze us everyday.

There's a point in the night when you want to go to sleep. And even though you are not asleep because you are keeping a watchful eye on your little dude who needs a watchful eye, you still think, "The alarm will go off if he really needs me, plus I'm right here on the couch, an arm's length away." You decide, then, that it's OK to close your eyes. So you find a pillow and a blanket, and you turn down the lights and snuggle as best you can into the nest you've created in the couch. Then…

KA-THUNK KA-THUNK KA-THUNK

The mist collar tubing is full of water.

The mist collar tubing being full of water is one of those things that always happens at the most pain-in-the-ass time. Like your kid always having to poop at the grocery store. Or Kanye stealing your microphone when you finally have your notes out. Almost always, the mist collar set-up needs emptying when you're just about asleep. This is especially true in the hospital when you are so exhausted you can't see straight, and the mist collar tubing is elaborately snaked through the rails of a crib and thus impossible to reach without getting up, walking around to the other side of the room, and dealing with it.

It's ka-thunking at me right now. Always at 2:30 am. Always when I'm hunkered down, eyes tearing from exhaustion. At least we're not in the hospital.

The mist collar set-up really isn't that big of a deal. You have an air compressor with a big water-filled nebulizer tank. This is hooked to a little water heater via some plastic tubing. More tubing hooks from the heater to a little mask that you put over the trach. This way, the trach gets warm mist blown into it all night so that it doesn't dry out and get plugged up. Simple enough.

The tubing fills up with water from all of the condensation, though, so you have a little water catch attached in the middle that allows you to drain the water out. This stops the ka-thunking noise, and gives you a cupful of water to dump in the plant on the sideboard when you are too tired and/or lazy to dump the water in the sink.

Except that, when you do this night after night your plant will overflow onto the sideboard, drench several library books with plant water, drip onto the carpet, and make your husband go, "WTF? Who's been drowning the plant?"

In case you were wondering.

Now I am going to go empty the mist collar tubing. But not into the plant. Because I want to stay married. And I want to go to sleep.

change this to sick blog
is that all I write about?
WTF you germs

Now that we have H1N1 checked off the list, we can check off strep, too. Well, the wee one has strep. Ike-a-saurus' strep test isn't back yet. The tiny man also enjoyed a pertussis swab today. Ever had one of those? The (apologetic) doctor has to ram a flexible metallic q-tip apparatus so far up your baby's nose you begin to worry that maybe there is a brain jar sitting on the shelf and that your (apologetic) doctor is actually a skilled ancient Egyptian.

Two weeks until the pertussis test comes back, though we all agree it's a huge shot in the dark. No one was pleased to hear the sound of a wounded dog coming from Ike-a-saurus' trach this morning as he coughed, though, so we figured it was better to be safe than sorry as far as testing goes.

Not so much fun around the Haiku of the Day household over the past few days.

As exciting as it is to see your pediatrician gown up and try to see how far up your kid's nose he can get before touching brain, it is not something I would like to repeat. I think Ike-a-saurus is with me on this.

Something else we've learned today… Ike enjoys drinking thickened chicken broth mixed with olive oil from his bottle. Weird kid! But I'm glad he's eating.

In other news: the wee one will not eat any chicken broth, thickened or no. He, in fact, will only eat strawberries and goldfish crackers with the occasional pain reliever tossed in for good measure.

In other, other news: that sound you just heard was me falling to the ground in an exhausted heap.

This is going to be bitch of a cold and flu season, isn't it? And word on the street (or rather, word from the Infectious Disease doctor with the awesome cowboy boots) is that RSV season hasn't even started yet.

Anybody have a bubble handy? Preferably sanitized from when John Travolta was in it? I don't have any money, but I can trade you some hand sanitizer and maybe a N95 face mask. Let me know.