Getting Sick For Real

Katie was sick last night. She kept me up most of the night, running a low grade fever until it finally culminated in her vomiting this morning at around 7am. She is feeling much better now, but what a rough night. Amy was also sick last night. She came home from work, drank some cough medicine and crawled into bed. It was no later than 6pm and she never got out of bed again until this morning. On the positive side, this is the first time in a long time that Katie has been truly sick and it wasn't being caused by some drug that we had to give her. This time, it was just some kind of stomach bug.

Blogging Slows Down Considerably

Now that Katie is feeling better and getting back into a far more normal routine we feel the need to blog about her status far less than we used to feel it. There just aren't as many life and death struggles or even simple ups and downs to report. Therefore, we will post to the blog only when something really interesting, important, or disastrous happens. We hope to never have to post to the blog for any reason in that latter category again.

For those of you who have become accustomed to following along, please don't stop. However, may I suggest an easier way of doing it. You don't need to visit the blog every day checking to see if there is an update. If you subscribe to the blog's RSS feed, that feed will get updated automatically anytime we post something to the blog. If your feed reader is a part of some program or website you visit every day you will know whenever we put up a new post without having to stop by just to check. So, how can you subscribe to the RSS feed and what is an RSS feed? Keep reading if you don't already know. Otherwise, click here to subscribe.


RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and you can read a very technical definition about it here if you are so inclined. Basically it means that whenever we publish something here, the headline and a summary are automatically pushed out to all subscribers, sort of like email. However, instead of checking your email, you would check your feed reader or feed aggregator. That sounds like one more thing to do, but actually feed readers can be a part of your computer's desktop or part of some web page that you visit regularly anyway; making checking your feeds something you can do without having to take any extra steps.

Two of my favorite feed readers both use Google. One can be part of the Google Desktop and the other can be part of IGoogle. Both Google tools allow you to add widgets that are capable of doing all sorts of things. Some of the available widgets are RSS readers. Windows Vista also has a Google Desktop like feature called the windows sidebar. It works the same way.

IGoogle is my favorite online place for viewing feeds. IGoogle is a customizable Google page that can include your calendar, gmail, RSS feeds, news, weather, and more. I use IGoogle all the time and I have an RSS widget on my IGoogle page that shows the latest comments on Katie's blog so that I don't have to check my email or come to the blog to read the comments. You could set your IGoogle page up to display the latest blog entry for the Katiegracekelley blog. My favorite rss gadget for IGoogle is "Custom RSS". It is very customizable and easy to use.

If using Google Desktop, which also has great search features, you can turn on the sidebar and have a list of your favorite feeds always available right there on the side of your screen. Of course, this blog should be one of the feeds. My favorite desktop gadget is Google "Web Clips". It can be found by adding gadgets from the Google Desktop program and searching within that program for "web clips". There are lots of options out there other than what I just wrote about, so if you already use something else, or just don't like these options, feel free to google the term "rss reader" and see what's available.

That is all there is to it. So subscribe to our feed and keep getting updates whenever we post something new without having to check just to see if there are new updates.

A Multi-Day Update

It has been a few days since we posted anything to the blog and we are starting to field questions because of it. Therefore, it must be time to post an update.

Katie is doing great! As always, when things are going well, the blog takes a back seat, but rest assured, things are going very well. Day care continues to help Katie get back to being a normal 3 year old kid. Every day, I can see her changing a little more and gaining back some of what she lost over the past 7 months.

Josh is acclimating to life in first grade. Behavior expectations are a little more strict than they were in kindergarten and he has gotten in trouble a couple of times this week for being unable to control his urge to talk to anyone and everyone around him. It's going to be a sharp learning curve.

Amy and I are still feeling pretty well overwhelmed and are just trying to stay on top of things. It has been extremely difficult to jump back in and start school up again this year, but we are managing. I keep waiting for things to get a little easier, and they have in the last week or so. But I sure could use a bit more of a break.

Katie went to North Country Hospital again this evening for a finger pick blood test to determine how well she is handling the new doses of medications. We won't get the results for a day or two, but there was good and bad news that came out of the finger pick process itself. She had to have two fingers picked because the first one clotted up and couldn't be used. Her blood hasn't clotted that quickly since she first got sick. That was the good news. The bad news of course was that she then had to be stuck again to get more blood. I don't think she considered any part of it to be good news.

Cheese

I snapped this picture Sunday afternoon as Katie was sitting on her Dora couch, eating some soup for lunch. She really likes the camera.

Life Returns To Normal

It's a new normal, but it still feels as close to normal as we have been in a long time. We get up every morning, get ready for school, drop Katie off at day care and Josh off at school then we head to school ourselves. At the end of the day Josh joins us at LR and we all go to daycare to pick Katie up. We go home, have dinner, relax for a bit, go to bed and repeat. Katie feels fine for the most part. She is still three, so she is prone to the occasional tantrum although they are typically short. A good nap in the afternoon really helps.

Katie really had a great end of the week once she started staying at daycare all day. She napped very well with the other kids, ate what they ate, and even started using the potty. She had been refusing to use the potty at home.

Today has been much the same. She has really been in a great mood with lots of energy to spare. It was my (Rick) birthday today so we dragged Katie out to breakfast, then to my parents house, then to her Nana's and grandpa Jerry's house for dinner. She is running on just a 15 minute nap that she snuck in on the way to my parents house, but she has more energy in her right now than Amy does. She is still dancing around the house as I write this.

Another Good Day

Katie had another good... no, great day at day care today. She is really doing well there and the full day program is agreeing with her.