A 4 for 1 Deal

Aren't you lucky? I've been gone so long and have so much to talk about that you're going to get a huge entry!

I - Jess's Year Appointment (or Traffic, the first)

We're keeping the same pediatrician for the first two years of Jess's life because it's easier than trying to arrange for a new doctor and get all the records transferred and stuff. Especially since comparing with the Brookses, our doctor is doing a slightly different series of vaccinations, and I wouldn't want to skip one or overlap or anything.

So, her appointment was Friday - in Newport News. We left a little early, to make sure we got there on time. We did. We ended up getting there about an hour before her appointment. Which did not keep the doctor from being almost an hour late in getting to us.

Jess is 19.7 pounds (and here I thought she'd be heavier than that. She certainly feels heavier) and about 29" tall. She's perfectly on her curve of 25% weight and 50% height. She got her chicken pox vaccine and her flu vaccine. She was pretty good for her shots and only got grumpy at the chicken pox one. Guess the flu was only a little sting, since she didn't cry about that one at all.

We left Newport News and headed home around 4:45. At the tunnel, we got caught in dead-stop traffic for almost an hour. I spent most of that time messaging back and forth with Liz and Karen. We got home around 7pm and I was very, very glad I'd had the foresight to cancel the Shadowrun game.

II - For better Or Worse (or Traffic, the second)

Ashby got married on Sunday to a woman that none of us have met. They've been dating for about two years now, but Ashby's such a lousy correspondent that I know almost nothing about her. I think I only found out about the wedding because I called him like 2 months ago for his 6-month "are you dead yet" phone call. I don't actually usually get to talk to him on these phone calls - since getting a message passed on in the Gunter household is like pushing water uphill - but it usually confirms that he's not dead. Wonder of wonders, when I called a few months back, he was actually home.

So, anyway....

He got married up in Annandale, which is about 200+ miles from here. I decided that I really did not want to try and put Jess in fancy clothes (and me in fancy clothes) and drive all the way from Chesapeake to DC in one morning. That would have had us up earlier than Jess normally gets up, skipping her breakfast and lunch and nap to get to a wedding at 2:15. So we made arrangements to stop at my dad's on Saturday night, so we'd only have about an hour and twenty minutes to drive up to the wedding. Which is still far, and had we had enough money, we'd have gotten a hotel in DC.

Denise fretted at us enough about possible traffic that we left even earlier than we planned and got to the chapel almost an hour ahead of time. (Still, we were in the car from 12pm - 1:30) So, of course, by the time the ceremony actually happened, Jess was totally and completely bored with this sitting still thing. But she wasn't so bad that we needed to take her and leave, so I guess that's good enough - she was just voluble at the prayer-reading part. "Blah blah god is wonderful, example of Jesus's marrigage with the church blah blah MAMAMAMAMA BOOK"

The ceremony was quick - about 15 minutes - and I got a few pictures. I'll let you know how they turn out, since I actually used the disposable camera I got several months back to take pictures of Jess with, before Liz gave me her old digital camera.

Then we got back in the car and drove to the reception (about 30 minutes). I talked with a bunch of Ashby's friends from DC that I have met before, including Beth (Boofer) who looked so different that I actually had no clue who she was for about 10 minutes. I met Norf's wife and step-daughter, talked with Ashby's sister for a while, and finally got to see Ashby and his wife for exactly seven minutes.

After that, we really had to go. The wedding party had stayed so long at the chapel for pictures, that by the time they showed up, it was nearly 4:30. We got back in the car and headed back to my parents to pick up our stuff and change clothes.

Just outside DC we hit gridlock. It took almost an hour to get 8 miles. By the time we got to dad and Dee's, it was full dark and Jess was being a major weasel baby - although I'm not sure Greg helped the situation much by mocking her in the back seat (did I mention we took Greg along? yeah, anyway...) This, of course, put Kevin in extremely foul mood by the time we got there. Joy and rapture.

We got our stuff together, I stuffed some food in the baby, and we left again. Jess settled down again after about ten minutes or so, which was really, really good. We grabbed some fast-food on our way back to the interstate and headed home.

Just outside of Williamsburg, we hit gridlock again. For the space of one exit (143 to Lee Hall - where we immediately got off the interstate) we were moving at no more than a mile and a half an hour. We drove down 143 until past the mall, where I could see that the traffic had cleared up. We got back on there, then headed down 664 towards Greg's place to drop him off.

Apparently they've done contruction around there, too, since the road near Mt. Vernon avenue suddenly came to a dead-stop and headed off in the opposite direction. Greg had NO idea where the road came out now, and neither did we. Eventually we got back to London Ave, which is where we were headed. We dropped Greg off (he forgot his hat in the back seat, but I think we can get it to him later) and headed home.

We pulled into our parkinglot at just after midnight. If you're keeping count, that's almost 10 hours in the car on Sunday. And two hours on Saturday. If Ashby and Angie get divorced in anything less than 12 years, I will personally beat them to death with a volkswagen newbeetle.

III - The Peanut-Butter Conspiracy

So, finally home and somewhat rested, I started Monday as normal. Get up, feed the baby, putter around on the computer. Messaged a bit with Liz and Karen Kevin came home for lunch because one of his co-workers had given us a present for Jess's birthday and it was large. Kevin didn't want to keep kicking it under his desk all day, so we opened it and set it up for Jess. It's one of those whirly do-hickeys that runs on batteries and has lights and sounds and whirly bits and... yeah, I hate it. Fortunately, Jess seems a lot more interested in the balls that came with it than with the whirly-gig itself.

I got her off the floor and started feeding her lunch. The doctor said we could try her on peanut-butter if we wanted, so I spread a thin little bit on some bread, and gave it to Jess along with a slice of cheese.

Jess decided she didn't really care for the peanut butter and only ate like two bites of the bread before she started dropping the pieces off the side of her high-chair. This is probably a good thing.

Kevin had just left to go back for work when I noticed Jess's chin was a bit red. I leaned forward to look and as I was looking, her lip started swelling. Visibly. Small puffs of skin started popping up around her cheeks and nose. She made a hacking, gagging noise and began scratching furiously at her cheeks and throat.

I called Kevin. "Get back here this SECOND!" I yelled and ran into the back room to grab a pair of shorts and shoes, since I wasn't dressed yet. I tried to call Jess's doctor, but the office was "at lunch" and there wasn't anyone there answering the phone. By the time Kevin got home - no more than a minute and a half after I'd called him - Jess's eyes were swelling and she was drooling copiously from a mouth too swollen to close. And I don't mean the skin around her eyes was swelling, I mean her eyes were swelling - the pupils and iris were slightly sunk in with puffy whites rapidly turning pink. This all happened within minutes - she went from sweet, cheerful, cute baby to this drooling, swollen alien-looking creature. It was terrifying. I can't even begin to tell you.

We got to the hospital and were seen immediately. They gave Jess a dose of benedryl, a small dose of steroids and a shot of epinephrin and within forty minutes, she was back to normal, except her eyes were still really red and her cheek and throat were a bit scratched up from where she had been clawing at herself. She was also really good at the ER, not particularly fussy and once the swelling started to receed, she was back to being her normal, cheerful self.

I dropped Kevin off at work and went home. Jess settled into a nap immediately and I followed soon after. After her nap, Jess was completely back to normal, except for being extremely thirsty, which the ER doctor had said would probably happen. I picked Kevin up from work, dropped off Jess's scripts at the drugstore (That'll be about an hour, ma'am.) and went to Wal-mart to get a few things.

IV - Drugstore Snafu (or Traffic, again)

We came home after our errands and I logged on to Hall. We didn't actually have Hall as everyone was reeling from exhaustion and various stressors. (I'm not the only one who had a bad couple of days, and I might even allow that Jeff's problems outweigh my own). I fed Jess some dinner and Kevin went out to pick up her prescriptions around 7:45.

Hah! Hah, I say!

Kevin got to the Walgreens and they informed him that they didn't actually have any of the script in stock. Why hadn't they called us to let us know? Well, they paged us in the store, but we'd left already. EXCUSE ME! You have my PHONE NUMBER. Argh. So they sent him over to Great Bridge to get the script. Just as he was getting to that area - the bridge lifted. So he was stuck in traffic. For about an hour.

He finally got home around 9:30, shoved the script bag at me and went to bed.

I had a side-hall session with Matt and headed off to bed around 11:30 or so. At 2am, Jess decided she was really, really thirsty again and woke me up howling for her bottle. I gave her one - she slucked it back in about three minutes and stood up to hand it back to me - and I gave her another. She slucked about half of that one and then was sleepy enough to go back to bed.

And now, if it's ok with you - I don't want to see the inside of another car for at least a week.

Posted by tisfan at October 19, 2004 10:29 AM