Day +578: Thanksgiving stories
Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. We spent ours with our good friends Rich, Olgica and Nikola in San Leandro. They do a gourmet Thanksgiving feast every year, and they usually have a houseful of guests. This year, with the kids being so young and such a handful, it was just our two families. But they still made the full gourmet meal, and wouldn't let us bring anything. We had a great time. And the kids get along really well. Niko is only three months older than Isaac, but at this stage he's actually more friendly with Mina, who I suppose is more entertaining.
We spent the night there, and then headed down the coast to Monterey in the morning. Keri's stepmother Tutu and her husband Richard were driving up to northern California from their home in Laverne, so we met them at a great seafood restaurant in Monterey and they went with us to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the afternoon. We still have a membership to the Aquarium thanks to Kari and Steve, and the helpful folks in the membership services department who agreed to extend it for a year after Mina relapsed. The kids had a lot of fun, but the place was totally mobbed so it was a bit stressful for the adults. I was glad there were more adults than kids. Mina and Isaac got to feel starfish, sea cucumbers and other creatures in the touch pools. Mina is now beginning to be aware of monsters and other scary creatures, and she was a bit worried about the sharks. She said the part she liked best is when they fed the tunas, barracudas, and other large fish in the "Outer Bay" tank. It really is quite an awesome sight to see a 600-lb tuna zooming through the tank gobbling up everything in sight.
There was a Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Cannery Row Friday night that was starting right about the time we left the Aquarium. It was pretty low-key, so we went and planted ourselves right near the stage. The first performer was a very talented woman singing jazzy Christmas songs to a soundtrack. Mina was standing by herself right in front of the stage, watching intently, and the woman couldn't take her eyes off her. She kept smiling at Mina, and in between songs she'd make comments like "you're darling!" After she finished, Mina went right up to her at the side of the stage, they chatted for a while, and the woman gave her a big hug. The final person to come on stage was Santa Clause himself, who did the countdown for the tree lighting. Afterwards, Santa was making his way over to the booth where he was going to greet the kids, but he stopped to say hello to Mina. He asked how she was doing, she smiled shyly, and he touched her cheeks and said "You have a beautiful smile!"
Isaac continues his guitar jones. He still asks to go to Cheryl's house (sometimes still mistakenly calling her "Christy") and says he doesn't like our house. The teacher at their music class plays guitar, and Isaac always mentions that now when he talks about music class. We stopped at the beach on the way back from Monterey Saturday afternoon, and Isaac could not resist playing guitar by plucking the stabilizing rope for the pole of a volleyball net. We waited for a few minutes, then finally went and put our blanket down while he played "guitar", sang, and clapped his hands. His concert must have lasted 15 minutes, even though the rope wasn't actually making any sound.
We had an occasion to touch base with the BMT doctor on call on Thanksgiving Day -- I noticed that Mina felt warm when I went to bed late Wednesday, and it turned about she had a fever of 101.7, or 39 degrees Celsius. She was down 99 or so in the morning, but back up to 100.5 Thursday afternoon. In the old days, we were supposed to call in whenever she had a fever higher than 38.3, which generally resulted in a trip to the ER and a blood draw. This time we weren't sure what to do, because she's been off all of her drugs for so long. We finally decided it didn't hurt to call, and our old friend Dr. Goldsby was on call that day. He told us just to watch her, and to call back if her fever wasn't gone by Friday, then he called us back Friday when he hadn't heard from us just to make sure. We had our moments with Dr. Goldsby on the floor, but he's a very dedicated, caring doctor. Luckily, Mina's fever was totally gone by Friday, and she was never acting sick at all anyway, so we stopped worrying about it. It did give us the occasion to remark that this was her first fever since February or March, despite the fact that she's been in preschool and been exposed to all the germs that all of the kids bring in. Her new immune system must be a pretty active one, luckily for us! Thanks, Sean Rodriguez, whereever you are!
In other medical news, Mina is continuing with her vaccinations. This month she got a polio shot, and Keri said she was such a big girl that she didn't sit on Momma's lap and she didn't even cry! And when Momma put her arm around her, she asked "Why did you do that?" When it was all over, she wandered around the doctor's office like she owned the place (even though it was the pediatrician's office, not the BMT/Oncology clinic), checking things out, poking her head into the other examining rooms, but always in a way that they weren't worried she was going to get into something she shouldn't. Isaac, on the other hand, sensitive boy that he is, started to wail as soon as he came in the door of the doctor's office and didn't stop until after they left.
We spent the night there, and then headed down the coast to Monterey in the morning. Keri's stepmother Tutu and her husband Richard were driving up to northern California from their home in Laverne, so we met them at a great seafood restaurant in Monterey and they went with us to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the afternoon. We still have a membership to the Aquarium thanks to Kari and Steve, and the helpful folks in the membership services department who agreed to extend it for a year after Mina relapsed. The kids had a lot of fun, but the place was totally mobbed so it was a bit stressful for the adults. I was glad there were more adults than kids. Mina and Isaac got to feel starfish, sea cucumbers and other creatures in the touch pools. Mina is now beginning to be aware of monsters and other scary creatures, and she was a bit worried about the sharks. She said the part she liked best is when they fed the tunas, barracudas, and other large fish in the "Outer Bay" tank. It really is quite an awesome sight to see a 600-lb tuna zooming through the tank gobbling up everything in sight.
There was a Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Cannery Row Friday night that was starting right about the time we left the Aquarium. It was pretty low-key, so we went and planted ourselves right near the stage. The first performer was a very talented woman singing jazzy Christmas songs to a soundtrack. Mina was standing by herself right in front of the stage, watching intently, and the woman couldn't take her eyes off her. She kept smiling at Mina, and in between songs she'd make comments like "you're darling!" After she finished, Mina went right up to her at the side of the stage, they chatted for a while, and the woman gave her a big hug. The final person to come on stage was Santa Clause himself, who did the countdown for the tree lighting. Afterwards, Santa was making his way over to the booth where he was going to greet the kids, but he stopped to say hello to Mina. He asked how she was doing, she smiled shyly, and he touched her cheeks and said "You have a beautiful smile!"
Isaac continues his guitar jones. He still asks to go to Cheryl's house (sometimes still mistakenly calling her "Christy") and says he doesn't like our house. The teacher at their music class plays guitar, and Isaac always mentions that now when he talks about music class. We stopped at the beach on the way back from Monterey Saturday afternoon, and Isaac could not resist playing guitar by plucking the stabilizing rope for the pole of a volleyball net. We waited for a few minutes, then finally went and put our blanket down while he played "guitar", sang, and clapped his hands. His concert must have lasted 15 minutes, even though the rope wasn't actually making any sound.
We had an occasion to touch base with the BMT doctor on call on Thanksgiving Day -- I noticed that Mina felt warm when I went to bed late Wednesday, and it turned about she had a fever of 101.7, or 39 degrees Celsius. She was down 99 or so in the morning, but back up to 100.5 Thursday afternoon. In the old days, we were supposed to call in whenever she had a fever higher than 38.3, which generally resulted in a trip to the ER and a blood draw. This time we weren't sure what to do, because she's been off all of her drugs for so long. We finally decided it didn't hurt to call, and our old friend Dr. Goldsby was on call that day. He told us just to watch her, and to call back if her fever wasn't gone by Friday, then he called us back Friday when he hadn't heard from us just to make sure. We had our moments with Dr. Goldsby on the floor, but he's a very dedicated, caring doctor. Luckily, Mina's fever was totally gone by Friday, and she was never acting sick at all anyway, so we stopped worrying about it. It did give us the occasion to remark that this was her first fever since February or March, despite the fact that she's been in preschool and been exposed to all the germs that all of the kids bring in. Her new immune system must be a pretty active one, luckily for us! Thanks, Sean Rodriguez, whereever you are!
In other medical news, Mina is continuing with her vaccinations. This month she got a polio shot, and Keri said she was such a big girl that she didn't sit on Momma's lap and she didn't even cry! And when Momma put her arm around her, she asked "Why did you do that?" When it was all over, she wandered around the doctor's office like she owned the place (even though it was the pediatrician's office, not the BMT/Oncology clinic), checking things out, poking her head into the other examining rooms, but always in a way that they weren't worried she was going to get into something she shouldn't. Isaac, on the other hand, sensitive boy that he is, started to wail as soon as he came in the door of the doctor's office and didn't stop until after they left.
posted by Arne Olson @ 9:19 PM
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