Prayer request.

Hello, everyone.

I realize that I should be posting Christmas pictures right now. I will get around to it; I promise. But right now I have an urgent prayer request.

The niece of a friend of mine went in to the hospital with pneumonia and is still there with a collapsed lung. Details are below.


Today was not a long day, but it was a tough day as we were confrontedwith the possibility that our precious little baby may have to undergosurgery to repair some of the damage in her chest. A CAT scan doneearly this morning confirmed that the damage in her chest is prettysevere and that there is still some sort of leak that's allowing airinto her chest. This is the same air that collapsed her lung for thesecond time yesterday. While the new chest tube is releasing some ofthe air pressure, the concern is more that the air continues to leak in.Now, I was mostly hearing blood rushing in my ears when the surgeonspoke with us and so I'm not sure I have this exactly right, but it hassomething to do with the bronchial tube and how it's supposed to divertair up and out and, due to damage caused by the infection, the bronchialtube is not doing its job and is instead pumping air into the chest. Orsomething like that. At this point, our rather conservative surgeonwould like to wait another day or two to see if there is any improvementat all (perhaps the bronchial tube will heal itself?) because, as hecautioned, that recovery from this surgery would be very difficult, atbest.

It's an eeeevil little toy!

(As of December 28, 2008).

Hello, All. It's a good day. Christmas has come and gone. The foot of snow that shut down Kitsap Peninsula for nearly a week is melting. My house isn't that messy. My baby is happy. My husband might get off duty early. Pastor had a good sermon this morning. It's a good day.

Yes, you read right. My husband is now home from the boat. He got home just in time for Christmas, and he brought gifts from the orient for us.
In return, we had gifts from American for him (that's a Broncos jersey if you don't know your football colors). And BooBoo (as I'm calling her right now) just enjoyed the wrapping paper.
I have only one complaint. It's this toy. . . . See this year was Niki's first Christmas, and I told my parents that I thought Niki needed toys with working parts. So far, so good. We got her a couple of wonderful toys, and they got her a couple of wonderful toys, but they also got her this "Learning Toolbox," which in itself isn't bad. It has light up shapes that she's supposed to hit with a little hammer rattle, and it counts outloud when when she hits it, or it names shapes and colors. Very educational, and she really likes it.

But it also does this little bit of positive reinforcement: it plays "This old man, he played one; he played knick-knack on my thumb" to encourage the baby to hit the lighted shape again. Now some of you will remember that a few years ago when Barney the Purple Dinosaur was at his peak that Barney took that tune and sang "I love you; you love me; we're a happy family" to it, and mischevious children took that and twisted it into death threats. I dreamed about chasing Barney with a baseball bat all night last night. I kid you not. I woke up thinking "Where did that come from? Why do I hate Barney so much?" Then BooBoo hit the lighted shape, and it all came back to me. I So I think I might pull the batteries out of that toy. It's a danger to my sanity.

Baby's first snow.

The first snow of the season came last night, and church was canceled this morning. My friends in flatter and drier climates would laugh to think that church could be canceled because of an inch of snow, but I assure you, around here it's a necessary precaution. Quite apart from the fact that the peninsula is mostly hills and the snow turns to snot as soon as the temperature approaches 30 degrees, people around here only get the chance to drive in snow once or twice a year, and each county keeps one (count 'em -- one) snowplow for situations like this. So our elders did the responsible thing and called off the morning service, and all the kids shouted for joy and went out to play in the snow.

Now I lost my taste for playing in snow when I turned sixteen, but since Niki had never seen snow before, I thought I would put my poignant dislike of cold and damp aside and let her get her first taste of winter. She seemed struck by it when I held her up to the window to see the new white world outside, so I bundled her up in several layers of clothing, her hat and mittens, and her Halloween costume, which is a close to a snowsuit as we have right now, though if global warming continues as it is, we may have to invest in a real one. Then I took her outside and put her down on the porch where the snow is cleanest. She wasn't too sure about this white stuff at first. It was cold, and it moved when she tried to touch it, and it stuck to her fingers.
She sat there patting it for a while. Then she leaned in another direction and patted that snow for a while. She rubbed her hands on her legs, leaned over and looked at the snow up close (I have all this in a video, but it would take forever to load).


Then she looked up and grinned at me. Look at how red her nose is.

All in all, I think Niki liked the snow. She was still happily playing in it when I decided that the cold was too much and brought her back inside.

Baby's new friend

Well, she is definitely her father's daughter. At the age of nine months, Annika is showing an affinity for computers that rivals anything her mother ever felt before college and therein the necessity of getting along with computers. She's always loved the keyboard with its black and white buttons that move, but now that she can see the blinking lights on the tower, she's hooked. She's even found out where the power switch is and turned the computer off while Mommy was blogging.

I know the pictures are a little blurry, but see if you can follow me here:

"Well, ma'am, what you seem to have here is a pretty basic computer problem. I see it all the time. I'll have it fixed in no time."

"Let's see, I'll just need to reattach a couple of cords and make sure everything is hooked up properly. You wouldn't believe how many people have their speakers hooked up to their subwoofer." (Yes, she's unplugged my speakers too.)

"Hmm, that didn't work. I'm going to have to turn the tower off, take off a panel and get right at the hard drive." (No, she's never actually done that!)

"There you go, ma'am. Good as new. Not bad for a first time, huh?"

Still growing.

And she's off, and nothing's going to get in her way! No, she's not actually crawling yet, but she is digging in drawers and climbing furniture and helping me wrap Christmas presents and pulling herself up in her crib. I'm beginning to think that she's going to forego crawling altogether and go straight from scooting to walking.

Our table has iron bars on the under side. I cringe every time she gets near one because she already has two bruises on her forehead from running into them, but she thinks they're great fun. This is Annika on her way down. She was halfway over the bar when I grabbed the camera.
She loves the drawers on the bottom of the china cabinet. She crawls out of her room in the morning and goes straight to the drawers and pulls them open and jiggles the handles and pulls all the stuff out.

'Tis the season of rustling paper, tape, and scissors. What baby doesn't love paper, tape, and scissors?

We've started some new foods too now that she's older. I thought we were supposed to avoid dairy products until one year, but the authorities ( Drs Sears, family doctor, my mother, and my mother-in-law) agree that babies of nine months can handle yogurt. Of course, feeding baby yogurt and letting baby feed herself yogurt are two different things. I was a little tired last night, so I just let her have the whole yogurt cup. Doesn't she look like an abstract painting? I'll call it arte enfant (would that be correct? I don't speak French.). What do you think?