Saturday 13 September 2008

Hurricane Ike

I'm due to go to Houston again for a few days next week, flying out on Tuesday and arriving back on Friday. It looks like I should just miss the worst of Ike, which is centered on Houston as I type, on Saturday morning, as this graphic from the US Hurricane Centre shows:

For a change I might get a window seat on the flight out so I can have a look at the aftermath when we approach Houston!

Lara Update

We started Lara on her antibiotics on Thursday afternoon around teatime; not a pleasant experience for anyone involved, it's a syringe full of bright yellow goo that we have to squirt into Lara's mouth. It smells of banana, and despite that being one of Lara's favourite foods, it certainly isn't the texture of banana, and there are tears whenever Olga administers it. Lara's not eating or drinking anywhere near as much as she would normally, which is our biggest concern, but all we can do is try to feed her and offer her water frequently. Olga is breastfeeding her too which certainly helps. Lara was sick a couple of times on Wednesday and Thursday, including after her first antibiotics, but - touch wood - she's not been sick since, and she's had four doses since then.
She slept a little better last night, much of the time in her cot rather than in our bed, which is encouraging. Hopefully she'll continue to improve and be back to normal by Monday. Olga and I, on the other hand, are now going in the opposite direction and the lempsips and strepsils are out in force!

Thursday 11 September 2008

Good Samaritans and Lara update

Firstly, Lara is no worse today than yesterday, which is good, but we wouldn't exactly say she's on the road to recovery either. She actually seems happy enough most of the time, there's not a lot of tears, she just has a runny nose and chesty cough. She slept with Olga last night and I had the spare bed, and Olga said it wasn't a bad night, just that Lara would wake up regularly, perhaps every hour or so, when she coughed, but it wasn't too long before she'd go back to sleep.
We've not started her on antibiotics just yet, we want to give the calpol treatment as much time as possible to work, but really today is the last day we can give her calpol, so if she's not showing much sign of improvement by tomorrow morning, we'll start her on antibiotics then. As far as the nursery goes, she can't attend for 48 hours after the first dose of antibiotics, which is good news, as we thought it would be 48 hours after the last dose, and considering it's a 5-day course of treatment, that would have kept her out of nursery for some time, and kept Olga or me off work. As it is, even if we wait till Saturday morning to start the treatment, she should still be able to go to nursery on Monday, so long as she was improving, of course. Most likely we'll start her tomorrow and that will give her three days to improve before going back to nursery.

We were good samaritans yesterday, at least towards a juvenile pigeon. We had seen two young pigeons sitting on top of the lamppost outside our house yesterday morning, but when we got home from work at 5.30 one of them was on the pavement, alive but barely moving, with disturbed tail feathers. We assumed it had had a run-in with a cat, and we couldn't just leave it there for the local cats to play with, and people - including us - walk their dogs along there and it would be a sitting target, literally. Olga went and got one of Mishka's old blankets and a cardboard box and she managed to pick it up and put it in the box, it did show more signs of life at that point! It couldn't fly but it could shuffle pretty quickly. I checked and the nearest RSPCA place was closed, but the RSPB website suggested taking it to a vet, so I called our usual vet and they said to bring it straight over, so I deposited the little fella there, they'll try to patch it up and pass it on to St Tigglewinkles ("The world's busiest wildlife hospital" so they claim!) near Aylesbury. I know pigeons are considered to be a pest and flying vermin, but we couldn't just let it become a toy for the local cats (hopefully the local dog owners wouldn't let them play with it!).

Wednesday 10 September 2008

Off school already!

Lara had a disturbed night last night, lots of sniffles and gurgles and some effort required to get her back to sleep, although once she got to sleep she slept until 8.30. We decided not to send her to nursery today, and Olga took her to the GP this morning. She recommended calpol four times a day for today and tomorrow, and if Lara doesn't seem to be improving then she also gave Olga a prescription for antibiotics; she couldn't say if it was a viral infection (just a bad cold) or a bacterial infection yet as the symptoms are the same. If it's bacterial then Lara will need the antibiotics, and antibiotics means she has to stay away from nursery. Part of our office looks like the set for those Andrex adverts, with the little boy in the suit (or the current advert with "dress down Friday" which I like) as Olga's brought Lara in, and we've set up the creche in an unused office downstairs. Lara is asleep in her buggy as I type this in that office, while Olga is on a call to Houston upstairs.

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Did we speak too soon?

We came back down to earth with a slight bump last night when Lara showed signs of having a cold; the symptoms have come on rather quickly if she only picked up the bug at nursery, maybe she got something at the wedding over the weekend. Either way she was pretty snotty last night, and I spent the night in her room sshing her when she stirred, but she seemed brighter and less snotty this morning, and her temperature had gone down from 37.8 to 37.2 overnight, so we'll monitor her today and see if she's up to going to nursery tomorrow - they have rules on whether kiddies can attend if they're ill, of course.

On the Mishka front, he was of course happy to see us, but the kennels owner told us he'd not eaten a thing over the weekend. We took him home and prepared some food for him, and he tucked in and ate most of it, then in the evening and this morning he polished his food off again, so we're happy he's not ill, he just wasn't a happy doggy while he was in there. It does throw a question mark over leaving him in kennels for any longer than a weekend, but also we hope that now he knows that we're not leaving him there for good, and next time he might be more relaxed. We'll also tell the kennel owner about this when we next leave him so they can keep a close eye on him.

Monday 8 September 2008

First Day? Easy!



Lara had fun at nursery today, with no tears, according to Sam, the assistant looking after the baby room. Above is the scanned report, we get that after each day that Lara's there so we know what she's been up to, when she's slept, when and what she ate, etc...
Lara's chin did wobble when she saw Olga when we came to pick her up at 5.30, but that soon passed, and she fell asleep in the car as soon as we left. We'll be interested to see how well she sleeps tonight after this exciting day.
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The First School Run and other things!


Today was a big day - our first School Run. We fulfil the requirement of having a big 4x4, but we failed miserably on the rubbish, selfish parking aspect that is required for a proper School Run; we're lucky that the Marlow Day Nursery has a large car parking area, and we were quite early - 8.10am. The plan is to get Lara to nursery this early so the staff can give her her porridge rather than us feeding her at home, and to this end we need to get her there well before 8.30, which is when "breakfast feeding time" finishes.
Lara has her own peg in the babies room, and her raincoat has her name written in for the time being, until the name tags I've ordered arrive and Olga sows them into Lara's clothes.
We'll pop in to check on her at lunchtime today, but secretly so she doesn't know we're there, in case this upsets her. We're pretty confident that she'll be OK, she seems to enjoy the company of other children, and didn't mind at all when left there for an hour on Friday morning. 8 hours might be a different matter of course!

We'll be popping in because we'll be driving past on the way to pick Mishka up from kennels; it was strange to come home yesterday afternoon from the wedding reception and not hear Mishka yelping as soon as he sees us pull up in the car. It did make things a little easier this morning when we getting things ready, as I didn't have to walk him and it was one less job to do, but it'll be great to get him back home again, and see how excited he is to see us again.

Other Lara news - she is now officially a Dual National; Olga checked on the Russian Embassey's website today and Lara's Russian Citizenship has been confirmed, so we can proceed with the application for her Russian passport, which should be a formality, once we've filled in the required forms in duplicate and had six more photographs taken.
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