Gabriel News

July 2nd, 2009 1:54:32 pm Jayman

Just a quick post with general Gabriel news and updates:
-He now knows the signs for bath and drink in addition to more, eat, help, and nursie. He will also point up or down if he wants up on something or wants you to put him down.
-He is has gotten so used to me giving him a bath each night that he gets upset if Devon tries to give him one or if I’m not home to give him one. Which is kind of cute but also means that I pretty much always need to be home to put him to bed.
-He is a huge fan of music with bass but has now progressed to the point of dancing to almost all music. It’s incredibly cute to watch him bop and spin to the beat. He will often request to listen to music and run to the iPod to turn it on.
-He absolutely LOVES the Law and Order theme song. (It’s sad to admit that he knows it, we feel like bad parents sometimes). He will walk around sometimes singing “dun, dundun dun dun duuunnnnn.”
-He can now reliably go up and down the stairs crawling. He will sometimes try to go down standing up but we’re not comfortable letting him do that yet.
-He understands so much now, just about anything we point to or ask him to get he can go pick it out.
-Food wise he loves “dip” with things. That’s what we call ketchup, sauce, or butter. If he can have bread dipped in sauce or soup he will ask for it until he can have some. He knows when we are having things with sauce such as breadsticks or spaghetti.

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Lyrics

June 30th, 2009 9:53:55 am Jayman

Sissy’s Song by Alan Jackson
Loved ones she left behind
Just trying to survive
And understand the why
Feeling so lost inside

This song was played at my nephew’s funeral and aptly describes how we all feel. The mood has been pretty somber for the last week or so.

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Corn (With a C not a K)

June 19th, 2009 10:45:46 am Jayman

Yes grandpa the title is just for you! Gabriel had corn on the cob for the first time last night and boy did he LOVE it! He just gnawed away at it and would not let it go, even after he had finished off all the kernels. He even checked over our two ears to make sure they were picked clean as well. Then he got really upset that it was all gone! He looked so cute with corn all over his chin and clutching his little empty cob. We did take pictures so hopefully I will get those posted here soon.

In general Gabe was a big eater last night. After some meat loaf and corn he ate about 6-7 slices of cucumber and finished off his box of goldfish crackers. He is also starting to make the sign for drink more consistently now too. It is so nice that he can have some form of definitive communication with us now. He is also back to doing the signs for eat and more again. He had stopped for a while there and would simply nod yes when we asked if he wanted to eat or wanted more.

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Server Information

June 17th, 2009 10:09:30 pm Jayman

The new server setup seems to be working fairly well now. I had to solve some issues with the hard drive thrashing but I think that was due to insufficient swap space for the install I ended up doing. The problem was that when I did the OS installation I told the installer to automatically create the swap space for me and the installer was for a minimal system. After getting things up and going I built up from the minimal system by adding X11, xfce, and the xubuntu-artwork packages. This was then causing my system to run out of memory and use the swap. The swap was only 384MB large so this was also used up quickly.

I ended up using a GParted LiveCD to adjust my partition scheme such that my root partition was 8.5 GB and my swap partition become 1.0 GB in size. Since this adjustment and a few minor tweaks (which I think actually didn’t really do anything) the hard drive has not thrashed since. The server hardware itself isn’t all that impressive and I’m finding out exactly how much the hard drive specifications can effect performance. I’m fairly certain that the hard drive is only a 4200 RPM drive so it takes longer for the drive to spin up and seek data. What this means is that if someone comes to my site and nobody has been using the server for a while there is an added delay while the hard drive spins up. It’s not a real big deal and I may replace the drive later on down the road.

Nobody is probably really going to care about all these details but I felt like writing something.

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The Routine

June 8th, 2009 4:33:09 pm Jayman

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while now. We found a bedtime routine that works fairly well for getting Gabriel to sleep at a regular time. This had been a huge problem and it had gotten so bad that some nights he would be up until he wore himself out and fell asleep on the floor. We would then carry him upstairs to bed. One night Devon was at the hospital helping a doula client and I was home with Gabriel. We had finished up dinner and he was acting a little tired and cranky. Devon and I had previously read that a routine can help children know when it’s bedtime and one routine suggested was to bath them and read stories. So I thought I would give the bath a try. I gave him a bath and we splashed around in the tub for a while, then I got him out and dried off. I got him in his jammies and turned out most of the lights on the main floor. I began walking him back and forth in front of the picture window while making a “shushing” sound. This was around 8:30pm when I began walking him. By 8:45pm he was out cold and snoring on my shoulder.

He slept pretty good that night and ever since then we’ve kept that same routine. Around 8pm we get him settled down and calm, then we give him a bath, get his pajamas on, and he and Daddy go upstairs for “walkie night-night.” Some nights he will even tell us that he wants to go upstairs with me to go to bed! It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but the success rate is much higher than before we began the routine. Hopefully I didn’t jinx it by posting it here.

Oh and this also doesn’t really work when we’re traveling. I think it’s something about familiar surroundings or something. If we try to do “walkie” in one of the grandparents homes he simply starts screaming. In those cases we usually end up driving him around in his familiar car until he falls asleep.

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Updates

June 2nd, 2009 8:56:56 pm Jayman

There won’t be any updates on the blog for the next few days as I’m moving servers again. This should be the final time!

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Gabriel Pictures

May 18th, 2009 10:14:41 pm Jayman

I am finally putting up new Gabriel pictures! I’m currently in the process of updating them but thought I would give everyone the heads-up if they want to check as I get them done.
Newest Pics

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Conference Finals

May 15th, 2009 8:08:58 am Jayman

Ok, so I’m going to make my predictions for the NHL Conference Finals.

In the Western Conference it is the Detroit Red Wings vs. the Chicago Blackhawks. While I would love nothing better than for Detroit to lose and Hossa to be denied his cup with the “better” team I just don’t think it will happen. I am picking Detroit to win the series in 6 or 7 games. If Chicago is going to win they’ll need Khabibulin to steal several games for them and be outstanding. Chicago’s young forwards are also going to have to play an exceptional two-way game as Detroit has the personnel to over-power a team offensively or stifle a team defensively. Chicago is going to have to be able to do the same

In the Eastern Conference it is the Pittsburgh Penguins vs. the Carolina Hurricanes. My pick here should be no surprise as I am a HUGE Pens fan. I am going to go with Pittsburgh in 6 games. So far I’ve been wrong each time I’ve predicted what game the Pens would close out a series on but hopefully I’m right this time. I’m also going to make a details prediction as well – Jordan Staal will step up his game and out-play older brother Eric. That could very well be the difference in this series as Eric Staal has clearly been leading the Hurricanes this playoff season. Pittsburgh is going to need good games from Marc-Andre Fleury and to keep plenty of traffic in front of Cam Ward. For Carolina, their problem is the same as everyone in the East – stopping Crosby and Malkin from having an impact on a game. Carolina is going to need to force Pittsburgh’s secondary players like Staal, Fedotenko, Guerin, and Kunitz to step up. If they can do that the Hurricanes greatly increase their odds for advancing.

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Health Update

May 1st, 2009 10:14:31 am Jayman

Just a quick update on Gabriel’s health. He had an EEG test done yesterday and we should get the results back by Tuesday, May 5th. Hopefully this will tell us that everything is perfectly fine with his brain. That would be good but also scary since it would mean that we don’t really know the cause of the seizures.

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Weekend Events

April 27th, 2009 11:04:12 am Jayman

So this turned out to be a very eventful weekend and NOT in the way that we had planned. Friday night Gabriel was extremely clingy and unrestful during the night. He had had a slight fever so we gave him some Tylenol. Devon and I figured that he was just teething again (seems like we only get about a week break between teeth). Saturday brought more of the same from Gabe. We were supposed to be heading to Norwalk on Sunday for a baby shower so Devon was cooking chicken to make homemade chicken salad and I was keeping Gabriel out of trouble. Come Saturday night Gabe still hadn’t really eaten a lot and was still clingy. Devon went to pick him up out of his booster seat and she was holding him against her chest. All of a sudden his chest got ultra hot and his feet got really cold. He was staring straight ahead and was not responding to either her or myself. I picked him up from Devon and took him to the bathtub for a tepid bath while she called 911. In the tub he continued to be unresponsive and simply stare straight ahead. His limbs were all very rigid as well. I did my best to comfort him while Devon talked to the dispatcher. An ambulance and firetruck were on their way.

After a few minutes Gabriel started to follow us with his eyes again and he was moving his arms and legs. We met the EMT at the end of the drive and started describing what had happened. They told us that he most likely had had a febrile seizure. It’s a seizure due to fever, usually caused by a virus or bacterial infection that causes a sudden, large spike in temperature. Devon and Gabe rode in the ambulance down to Children’s Medical Center in Dayton and I followed in the car. Once at the hospital they took all of his vitals and measured his responses to stimuli. His temperature was above normal so he got a dose of Tylenol and we waited for the doctor. The doctor’s examine involved listening to Gabe’s breathing and his heart, looking in his ears and throat, a blood draw, and a range of motion test of his neck. Gabe’s breathing and heart rate were good, his ears looked clear of infection, his throat did not have fever burns, and his range of motion on his neck was fine (which indicated it was not Meningitis). The blood draw was to measure his white blood cell count. That came back normal so it meant that he did not have a bacterial infection and that he most likely was working through a virus. The doctor recommended that we not be around any groups of people for the next 24 to 48 hours while the risk of spread was high so that meant the baby shower was out.

The doctor talked to us about what febrile seizure was, what it meant for Gabriel as far as long-term health, and gave us a fact sheet to take with us. Health wise for Gabriel it doesn’t increase his risk of developing epilepsy and it doesn’t cause brain damage unless it goes on for long amounts of time (he said hours of duration). Some babies get these every time they have a fever and some never have it happen again. He said that most toddlers will grow out of them by the time they are 5. So after a long night in the hospital and Gabriel’s first ambulance ride we headed home.

Sunday we all just hung out at home and Devon called her shower guest to apologize for having to miss (she understood our reason!). So we were expecting a busy weekend of cooking and driving but ended up with a busy weekend using our local emergency medical system. It was scary to see Gabriel like that but good that everything turned out alright and that Devon and I were both home to support each other.

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