Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica and I got no sleep last night.  Because Liesl spent all of her time in the hospital in the NICU and never in Dominica’s hospital room there was never any chance at all for any of us to get to know her outside of the NICU setting.  In the NICU we were only around Liesl while we were visiting or when she was hungry.  We never got to know what she was like at night at all so we have a lot of learning to do about each other.

Liesl didn’t cry all night but we did have to take turns holding her and she did cry quite a bit.  We both napped what little we could while the other was taking care of Liesl but there was very little sleep to be had.  Oreo was also kept awake most of the night and quite unhappy.

Needless to say, I was very exhausted when I started work at seven thirty this morning.  I worked for several hours this morning with it being very, very busy.  There was a lot of work saved up from the long holiday weekend.

I found out today that I have a pretty major paycut coming due to the market problems.  Everyone is affected in the banking industry hardly just me or even just my company.  It is extremely unfortunate that bad investing and bad businesses decisions get passed on to the people who work hard and have no connection to the monetary losses at all (in fact, the business areas for which I work had a banner year!) but at least by everyone taking a cut it saves thousands of peoples’ jobs who would otherwise have to be cut.  We don’t know when the cut is going to begin but it must be coming soon.  In a week or two, if I were to guess.

The good news is that I am on vacation for most of this week which will give me some time to help out around the house, get caught up on things other than work and, most importantly, run the constant errands that are necessary with a new baby at home.  There are tons of things that we need that we hadn’t thought about previously.  Luckily everything that we need is generally available from Stop and Shop which is right around the corner.

I remembered to pay the mortgage today. Today is our very first mortgage payment on our new house in Peekskill.  It has been a year and a half since we were last making mortgage payments.

This afternoon, Dominica’s father and I made a run out to the Beach Shopping Center to pick up some necessities.  We hit CVS and that took forever.  The pharmacists there were really bad about customer service and what could easily have been a two minute trip to pick up some over the counter vitamins turned into a major ordeal because the script was written in such a way that only a pharmacist could get us the right thing and translate it into something useful as the script was accidentally written for six times the actual dosage intended!

Then Dominica’s dad went to the dollar store to pick up some cheap plates as we do not have enough for everyone to use and I ran over to GameStop to get some games for our nieces in Texas.  Dominica and I only just learned this week that Madeline has been really into video games and has played through all of the games that she owns for the Game Boy Advance several times and that she has nothing new to play at all.  So we are sending down ten GBA games of ours that Dominica and I no longer play for her.

We also found out that the Grices were unaware that the Nintendo Wii also plays GameCube games.  So we are looking for some good, used GC games to send to the girls.  I got a great deal on a handful of games today and am sending them Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life, The Fairly Odd Parents: Breakin’ Da Rules and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.  We are hoping that with a variety of different types of games that Madeline might branch out into different areas and that Emily might find some types of games that she actually enjoys.

Then we ran over to Stop and Shop to pick up food and additional baby supplies.  Then back home because it was so late.  The original plan was to run to Buy Buy Baby down in Scarsdale but that is pretty far away and we would run into rush hour traffic if we did it today.  So that is being saved for tomorrow.  It is a good thing that I have several days off in which to deal with this stuff.

I talked to dad today and the plan is that he and my aunt Sharon and uncle Leo will be coming down to Peekskill to visit and see Liesl on Sunday.  So they are pretty likely to arrive pretty late, probably around six or so.  I am not sure if they will cross paths with the Toccos or not.  We aren’t sure of their schedule yet.

Liesl was much more relaxed today than she was last night.  Her grandmother knows how to take care of her and Dominica and I are getting better at knowing what it is that she wants and needs.  She is much happier today as there is much less upheaval and she got to spend pretty much the entire day with someone holding her.

Dinner tonight was Thanksgiving dinner which none of us had managed to have yet.  Dominica’s mother made turkey for them and Quorn fake turkey for us, stuffing, gravy (mushroom), peas with mushrooms, sweet potato crunch, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie, etc.

The PS3 as a movie and television surrogate has been extremely popular.  Dominica’s father watched The Gameplan with The Rock which was cute and somewhat entertaining.  Then everyone watched Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story which was really dumb.  Then a little Mary Tyler Moore before bed.  We had a fire in the fireplace as well.

The original plan had been to try sleeping downstairs in the living room because there are more places where we can sit and hold Liesl.  She did so well down in the living room all day today that we were hoping that that would extend into the night if we didn’t move her up to the bedroom.  The living room is also marginally warmer than the bedroom.  We were so tired, though, that we decided to give the bedroom a try again.  Oreo was too keen on sleeping in the living room either.  He has his routine and prefers to stick to it as much as possible.

My only plans for the day included sleeping in and spending the day at the hospital being ready for whatever might come up.  I slept in until around around nine thirty and then went straight into the hospital to spend the day with Dominica.  I was just on my way out the door when she called to let me know that the NICU pediatrician was making rounds and that it would be good if I could get there to be there when discussing Liesl.

It was before eleven when I got to the hospital and got about fifteen minutes to visit with Dominica before the charge nurse stopped in to let us know that all of the tests had come back clean and that there was no continuing fear of meningitis (we had found out last night that the tests for sepsis were clean.)  Shortly thereafter the pediatrician came by and filled us in on the details although there are very few since the end result is that all of the tests are good and Liesl is extremely healthy (she also got 9/9 on her Apgar scores.)

The other item of concern was her bilirubin levels which had been 11.3 yesterday morning and 11.7 in the evening.  So there was concern that those levels would get too high and that Liesl would need to stay in the NICU longer in order to receive light treatments, but this morning the levels had fallen to 10 and she was clear to come home.

We left the hospital with Liesl around one thirty in the afternoon.  I had to make several trips to the car to get everything loaded up as Dominica’s hospital room was pretty full of stuff.  Then we brought Dominica and Liesl down to the main entrance of Hudson Valley Hospital Center in a wheelchair and I brought the car around the circle to pick them up.  It was cold and rainy so we really wanted to minimize the time spend outside.

We got Liesl home and spent the afternoon and evening just hanging out with her in the living room.  Oreo really wasn’t interested in her at all and didn’t even come over to say hello.  He was extremely glad to see Dominica though.  He had to spend a ton of time just sucking on one of his binkies because he was so excited.

This afternoon is the first time that Liesl and Dominica’s father really get a chance to hang out.  Frank had a cold while Liesl was in the hospital so he could not go in to the NICU to visit her and she could not come out to see anyone.  So he only really saw her right when she was born and brought out to see Dominica.

We tried to put Liesl into her swing tonight but quickly discovered that the swing was broken and doesn’t do the swinging action.  This qualifies as a minor disaster as the swing was supposed to be the place where Liesl would go to sleep when no one was holding her.  Now we have to find a Buy Buy Baby and get out there and get this replaced as quickly as possible.  We are really sorry that we didn’t test this out before now.  It never occurred to us that it wouldn’t work.

I played some Fable 2 while Liesl was sleeping and eating.  I didn’t get to play much but I have started using the real estate feature to buy up buildings in the game in the hopes that I will be making money during the times when I don’t get to play.  It is a pretty neat feature of the game.  I am enjoying Fable 2 so much that I decided that I needed to go back and play the original.  So I have Fable: The Lost Chapters coming from eBay.

We watched some Hulu or Netflix on the PS3 and then around ten or ten thirty Dominica and I took Liesl upstairs in the hopes of getting some sleep.

I had to be up before eight this morning as I am working today.  So I didn’t quite get a full night’s sleep although it wasn’t too bad.  I got a decent night at the very least.

I worked this morning from eight until eleven.  Then I got ready to go and headed on into the hospital to spend some time with Dominica and Liesl.  It was a pretty busy day of running errands and doing this and that.

I forgot to get lunch today when I went into the hospital.  So I visited with Dominica until around three thirty and then went down to the Beach Shopping Center and got lunch at Nonna’s, did some shopping at GameStop and then went to Stop and Shop for supplies.

After shopping I visited at the hospital again for a while.  I got back just as the Toccos were leaving to go to mass.

Then, around nine, I went back out to Stop and Shop and got more baby supplies that we had realized that we would need and got an African violet for Dominica.  I had been trying to find flowers for a while but have been so busy and missed a couple of places that closed early because of the holiday or weekend.

I stayed for another hour or so at the hospital and then went back home to get some sleep.  We are really hoping that Dominica and Liesl can come home from the hospital tomorrow.  Being at the hospital has been really rough because Liesl is stuck in the NICU which means that Dominica has not had any time to spend with her in a “normal” setting.  So we are going to be far less prepared on how to read her needs when we have her at home.