20
June
2008
If you’re not planning on buying Dorrie anything for her birthday, and by no means is anyone obligated to do so, you can safely ignore this message.
If you do want to get her a gift, Dorrie will not turn it down. She’s greedy that way. But for some categories of gift she has some slightly specific requirements, so I thought it might be a good idea to list them.
Clothing: Dorrie is currently wearing the size of 6-9M, and she is starting to fill those out pretty well. Please do not get her anything smaller than 9-12M, and if you’re looking at something for the winter, adjust upward appropriately. Thus far she has stuck pretty well to her adjusted age in sizes, so you can use her due date of 11/3 to figure out how old she will be at a given time.
In addition, please avoid the combination of zippers and feet when making purchases of clothing. Dorrie has a lot of tubes and wires and they cannot come out a zippered and footed outfit. Her legs are a bit shorter than the rest of her, but her bottom is big, so buying pants in a size smaller doesn’t work out very well. For that reason dresses and suits with no or short legs will fit her best.
Dorrie is a very hot baby. She gets overheated very easily if she’s put into those lovely plush sleepers that are so tempting and cute.
Toys: If there’s interest, I can make an Amazon wish list, but otherwise I think babies are easy to shop for in terms of toys.
Books: We love books. If you think we might already have a book, you can ask me (or see above re: wish list)
Posted: we interrupt this blog
9
June
2008
While we were still up at the PICU, at the beginning of April, our furnace died. The guy came and fixed it, to the tune of $ridiculous-amt-for-30m-work (… reminding me I’d better check if I actually saw that bill and paid it) but told us probably we would need a new furnace and suggested it would cost us on the order of $4500. The fix lasted about a week before it went kablooey again, but we just do not have $4500 lying around. It being the beginning of summer, we elected not to replace it immediately.
Toward the end of May, some debris at the bottom of our oven was causing some concerning sparks so I tried to clean it up. It is self cleaning, but there was enough junk that it seemed like it would need some assistance. But as it turns out, the heating element at the bottom of the oven had somehow disintegrated and pretty much fell apart as soon as I touched it. Lovely. So we used the microwave and the grill for several weeks, until one of us could finally get out and price new stoves. We finally got a replacement last week to the tune of $420 which we also did not really have.
And now, the dryer may be acting up. Or rather, is definitely acting up. Why, I do not know. Unlike the furnace and the oven, the dryer we actually purchased new when we moved in. It’s only 5 years old, so it shouldn’t really be on the verge of collapse. Probably we’ll have to replace it too (with what money?).
My biggest fear is that the AC will die, and to get that repaired/replaced will probably cost not quite as much as the new furnace, but close. Being up at Dartmouth for 8 months out of the past 11 has been a real financial strain on us, and even though some family members have been more than generous, it’s still very stressful to have to worry about replacing all of these big items one after another.
When added to all the puking this weekend, which is enough on its own to have us tearing our hair out, it’s just not shaping up to be the best of weeks.
Posted: we interrupt this blog
25
April
2008
I’m sitting here in the hospital room with Dorrie on her CPAP next to me and her dad asleep on the bench/cot with his.
Should I feel left out?
Posted: we interrupt this blog
25
December
2007
I suspect I’ll be using a lot of random abbreviations and terms which some visitors may be familiar with, but which are mystifying for others. So I’ve added a glossary page which will be specific to this blog. If I talk about something in a post that isn’t clear, leave a comment and I’ll add it to the glossary page.
Posted: we interrupt this blog
16
December
2007
For many reasons, I was reluctant to create a blog for Dorrie. I am still not 100% certain about it, but I do want to set down a record of her experience, and that’s far more likely to happen in this format than in any other. So here we are.
The intent is now to go back and fill in the past while continuing from the present. So the archives will eventually be populated and new posts will not necessarily be chronological. I think the feed doesn’t care about that, but it may well republish everything since the new post — or just ignore a new “old” post altogether.
Posted: we interrupt this blog