Night terrors

We had a night terror incident again last night. This is the 2nd, so far, during this round of antibiotics. I really have to note this down and ask Swe-cha's doctor for an alternative next time. The thing is, his meds now - Omnicef - is already an alternative to Augmentin which he could not tolerate (he keeps vomiting). On this note, I'd also like to comment that Augmentin does seem to be overkill for an ordinary ear infection. I wonder why Dr H prescribed it to him last time ?

In any case, I did confirm w/ Achi (she's a pediatrician) that medications do cause night terrors in people. There is a very very very small chance of this happening but it does happen. In fact, my nephew at 2.5 years old has a consistent reaction to a specific asthma medicine (w/c Achi does not remember anymore). He would always have nightmares when he takes that medication.

Kainis, no ?

Today is day 10, the last day, of his antibiotics. Hopefully, last night's is also the last of the nightmares. He kept screaming and crying and nothing could pacify him. Eventually, we turned the laptop on and brought up Netflix. Swe-cha's attention was caught by Thomas the Train and after that, it was Bob the Builder and later, Big Bird in Sesame Street. I don't know what happened after that because I cradled him in my arms and lay him down in a sleeping position and I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, it was already 6a, the show had already stopped (whichever one it was that he last watched) and Swe-cha was already sound asleep.

Tommee Tippee Insulated Cups

We've been trying to transition Swe-cha to using a straw cup for a few months now and purchased these Tommee Tippee insulated cups for him.

The cups look nice and are insulated so they'll keep liquids cold longer and they were spill proof - it was a no-brainer so we quickly purchased it for our son.

The first time Swe-cha used this, he wasn't drinking a lot of water yet so we didn't really notice anything unusual. He liked these cups well enough.

Soon, I started sending him to daycare with these instead of his old sippy cups and the daycare staff told me that he (Swe-cha) doesn't like drinking from these.

We reverted back to the old sippy cups for daycare but we'd bring water for him in these TT insulated cups whenever we go out. We noticed that he didn't like the straw but would often ask us to unscrew the cup and he would drink directly from the cup. As expected, things did get messy & wet a lot.

Tonight, when hubby assembled the TT cup he had just washed, he decided to try it out for himself. He was curious why Swe-cha would rather just bite on the straw but not drink from it, Swe-cha does seem to know how to use a straw because he has no problems drinking from our straws!

Hubby tried to drink.

Then, he called me, "Honey, will you try this ?".

I tried to drink. Nothing came out.

I sucked. And sucked. And sucked. I sucked till I felt the pressure in my eyeballs and still nothing!

Eventually, hubby and I each had a TT insulated cup in hand and we were alternating between laughing and trying to get a drink and we felt so guilty that we kept trying to give this to our child.

And then suddenly - I don't really know how or why this happened - I started getting something. I was drinking!

So I decided to check out Tommee Tippee's website. I figured, we must have been assembling it the wrong way and if we were doing it correctly, then I wanted to write to the company to complain.

1 minute and 17 seconds later, we were disassembling and assembling the cups correctly na and we are able to drink easily - not as easily as it feels drinking from a regular straw and cup (say, your soda from McD) - but there was no resistance anymore. And no more popping of my eyeballs.

*hay!*

http://www.tommeetippee.us/explora/546010_aqua_blue.html

Next time, we will try everything out for ourselves before giving it to our child. Promise!

Hurricane Irene

• Rice - 1 sack. check
• Spam - 2 dozen. check
• Cookies (5 packs), crackers (3 boxes), snack bars (200+pcs) and chips (2 cans)- check
• Portable stove, fuel - check
• Swe-cha's food (gerber & earth's best jars and a huge pot of homemade lotus root and red bean soup)- check
• Someone who can cook rice in a pot (instead of a rice cooker) - check
• Flashlights, batteries - check, check

• Freezers & refrigerator set to HIGH.
• Water containers filled w/ drinking water. 6 more spare gallons of drinking water plus 2 extra cases of individual water bottles.
• Extra water containers filled w/ water in the bathrooms in case pipes burst & we don't have clean running water.

• Laptops & spare batteries fully charged.
• Kindle, PSP and DS fully charged.
• Camera battery full charged.
• Cellphones fully charged (& spare batteries too).

• Plants, outdoor tables, pots and the George Foreman grill brought in from the balcony.
• We might run some tape on the windows (we were reminded by MIL). We feel that this is overkill for our area... but hey, there's nothing to lose so we'll do it anyway.
• During the day, we wash dishes as we use them - no more soaking & leaving it in the dishwasher for an evening run as we might lose power later on.

Last night, while talking about the preparations we still need to do before Hurricane Irene arrives, hubby suddenly looked worried, "If we lose power, how will we take a bath ?"

"We can use candles to light the bathroom," I replied.

"Noooo, that's not the problem. If there's no power, there's no hot water heater. How will we take a bath without hot water ?" Worried siya talaga, haha!.

"For Swe-cha, we boil water on our portable stove to heat it up & give him a bath from a pail using a tabo. For us, we rough it out. Cold showers. Summer naman eh. "

Hubby cringed. Arte. *laughs*

I guess, this is it. We're as ready as we're ever going to be. The thing is, the water, food and batteries stockpile ? That's normal in our household :) We almost always have that much on hand because I stock up when there's a sale.

Panfried Wontons

We recently tried our local chinese takeout place's Pan Fried Wontons.

It wasn't what I was expecting but I was pleasantly surprised when I started eating and realized that the chewy texture and the taste reminded me so much of my favorite fishballs from home - even the sauce vaguely tastes like the sweet fishball sauce of those street carts I used to get my fishball fix from at university.

Happy.

Heatwave

We're experiencing a heat wave here in the Northeast. The city, thankfully, has announced the location of its cooling centers - the Main Library and the Senior's Barn at the city hall complex.

Related to the heatwave, hubby's company sent out a memo yesterday announcing that all employees are allowed to come in to the office in beach attire today - shorts, shirt, flipflops, but no swimsuits allowed. Haha! I asked hubby now and he tells me everybody came in shorts, except for him, he does not wear shorts outside of the home. Kaya maputi legs nyan eh, heehee.

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Swe-cha has been dropped off at daycare and he's been happy at dc this week - no crying or fussing at all. Last night was also the first full night's straight sleep he's gotten this week and we're thankful. We really should keep him awake long enough to burp after he has his milk at bedtime, even if it means risking him shaking off the drowsiness and staying awake for another hour or so. I think it's worth not having him cry & scream in the middle of the night due to gas pains.

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I've just started a load in the wash and it amazes me that we (hubby, mostly) have so many gray shirts that we filled up one huge load of laundry just with the grays alone! I am still shaking my head in disbelief.

Excited

My parents are coming for a visit next week and at 3 weeks, this will be their longest visit ever. I've given their visit a lot of thought but I haven't really decided where to bring them yet, it's so much more difficult looking for places to go because we have Swe-cha to consider now so our choices are now limited to family-friend (or specifically, toddler-friendly places).

Then, there's also the fact that Swe-cha isn't really that adventurous when it comes to food choices and we always have to bring food along. He's also still on (expressed) breastmilk so we have to bring a cooler along to store his next bottle of milk. Basically, it's such a big production when we go out.

*sigh*

In any case, that request hubby put in to the state for NJ's travel guide finally came through. We got a "Travel New Jersey" magazine and a huge fold-out map of the state - it's good to see our tax dollars at work (log in to http://turbotax.intuit.com and file 'em irs extension form 2009). You may also want to check out tax comparisons while you're at it. Anyway, I hope to be able to find something (or someplace) by next week.

Delinquent

I received a letter from a collection agency last Saturday. I thought it was junk mail at first because we've always been religious with our payments.

This turned out to be a bill (a final payment) that we still owed our previous auto insurance carrier. They'd always gotten paid directly from the bank - we're on an auto-debit plan - and for some reason, they did not get the final month's payment directly from our bank.

So last night, while in an extreme panic mode, I quickly made an online payment to settle the the bill and I quickly called the credit collection agency this morning to make sure that:

(1) my payment has been posted

(2) to ask if my credit report will get affected - as it turns out, they do not make adverse reports to the credit reporting agencies *whew* BUT the insurance company might report my delinquent account *sigh*

Now, I need to call up the insurance company to confirm & make a complaint as to why they sent my acct to a collection agency.