As Promised

Here you go. Them pics.

I spent the beginning of the week sick, now Maja is sick. The baby thus far is the only one who’s not affected, thanks goodness, although he had a two hour meltdown before bed this afternoon. Couldn’t fall asleep but completely tired, and we’re still pluggin away at the sit still, hold him, and let him cry until he falls asleep on his own approach. (it has been showing improvement despite today’s utter failure.)

Man, sometimes getting him to be by himself for a bit or to fall asleep by himself is TOUGH. Real tough.

In any case, here are cute little photos for those of you who are junkies and just can’t get enough. (and i know you’re out there…)

Pics Tomorrow

Didn’t forget about y’all. Got new pics comin’ tomorrow.

Funny, despite all my bitching and moaning during the first 2 months, maja and i were talking the other day, and we both agreed that now, at 4 months old, we REALLY like him just as he is, and we would be content for him to stay like this for awhile longer.

He’s so interactive, so smiley faced, so small and holdable still, but so sometimes AWARE and present, so happy to see us, so innocent, so beautiful, so… nuggetlike… so big but sometimes so tiny. This stage he’s at is really endearing and wonderful and i could have him stay like this just a bit longer.

Especially if he could learn to fall asleep on his own. Although his appetite is WAY up, and he sleeps longer at night in between feedings. We lost a feeding somewhere in the past week or so (YAY!).

Yeah, i really like the way he is now. Sigh.

Anyway, pics tomorrow, promise.

Ferdinand Cheval: Eccentric Nut Or Visionary Genius?

Clearly i have a thing for guys who spend their life toiling away at their artistic dream, unrewarded but for the sake of the craft itself. I wonder why.

So, in southern France,  in the village of Hauterives back in 1879, there lived this postman named Ferdinand Cheval. His mail route was 32 kilometers, which he would walk every day, day in day out, delivering the mail. One day he tripped over a rock. He picked up the rock, looked at it, and thought it was just amazing. It reminded him of dreams of castles and palaces he used to have years earlier. He took the rock home with him.

From then on he started collecting rocks. Every day he would pick up more and more rocks and bring them home. After a while he would pile rocks he found at spots along his route and then come back at night to collect them. Eventually he scraped money together and bought a wheelbarrow, which became his most prized possession (he was buried with it), and with which he could cart home even MORE rocks. Piles of these rocks littered his yard.

His neighbors in the village thought he was a nutbag. One day he took his rock collection and began building with them. When asked what he was building, he declared “a palace.”

Now his neighbors were convinced he was nuts and would refer to him as the village idiot on occasion.

Ferdinand spent the next 33 years collecting rocks and building his Palace.

THIS is what he built:

Seriously.

This thing RULES. As of today this man is my new hero.

He wrote inscriptions all over it. One in the northeast corner says : “10,000 days, 93,000 hours, 33 years of toil”

All can perhaps hope is that one day, after my death, some shmoe with a blog will pose the question: Paul Shapera, Musical Awesomeness or Total Wanker? And perhaps, will decide for the former.

Naturally, after his DEATH (as is the artist’s fate) in 1924 he was finally given his props and in 1969 the French government declared the palace, called Le Palais Ideal, a historic landmark.

Never the less, Ferdinand Cheval, you sir, rule. My hats off to you. I can only hope to follow in your footsteps.

The UTI That Cried Wolf

So, uh…. we got the lab results back this morning when we took him to the hospital for his daily dose of antibiotics.

He, uh… he doesn’t have a Urinary Tract Infection. He probably never did. He’s fine.

Of course now that he’s ON antibiotics he has to STAY on antibiotics on the chance that he DID have some sort of bacterial infection. IF he did, stopping the antibiotics would be disastrous, and you know, what the hell. Why stop the party now?

So what happened? What the F*** is going on?

Sigh.

Basically, several days ago Maja woke up and discovered the baby was REALLY hot. She took his temperature and sure enough he had a fever. There were no other symptoms of sickness. What to do?

So she wanted to take him to the health clinic to get him checked out. ‘Cause, well, he’s 4 months old and has a fever. We don’t know that else to do in these circumstances. I brushed it off and didn’t think it was a big deal.

I want to say for the record, that while this turned out to be the case, i do not trumpet my nonchalance as the way to go and that she should listen to me from here on out. The fact is, i tend to be more nonchalant about these things and to assume they’re probably not a big deal. Maja takes the other approach. BOTH of these approaches TOGETHER work to his benefit. I am the one who doesn’t stress out and keeps her calm, and she is the one who sides on “better safe than sorry”. I don’t think she should be more like me and i am me and am not going to be more like her. Together these approaches make for a good parenting team. And sometimes i probably need to occasionally take some stuff more seriously and sometimes she needs to relax and take them less. This isn’t the point of my post today but i wanted it stated for the record.

We took him to the Health Clinic. They said the thing it was most likely to be was a UTI and needed a blood sample and a urine test.

I still don’t know what ever happened with that first blood sample. I’ll have to ask.

The urine test is where it all got screwy.

We needed to have him pee in a bag AND in a cup. The pee in the cup had to be NOT the first burst of pee, which was most likely contaminated, but the second half  which would be LESS contaminated. As we did all this and ran around to all the various places they tell you to run around TO, Maja got in touch with a friend of her brother’s who works in a hospital who could get us in to see aNOTher doctor, a specialist or something, that very evening.

Off we went to the hospital. Meanwhile, the first round of pee tests were coming back full of bacteria. While it could be contaminated, they were also full of proteins and white blood cells and stuff they said certainly pointing to a UTI.

In the hospital we had aNOTHER round of blood taking and peeing into a bag. They sent us home to pee into aNOTHER cup.

At home we were sitting holding the cup under his little willy AGAIN, waiting and waiting for him to pee when we got a call: come BACK to the hospital NOW, (it was night by now) , some tests are in.

Well, the tests seem to indicate there are lots of bacteria, my what an amazing amount of bacteria and while the only way we will know for SURE is to stick the that damned catheter in his willy and get a truly uncontaminated specimen, it’s looking pretty hard core. The bacteria is resistant to every antibiotic they have exCEPT the one that has a risk for hearing damage. ( in large amount and over a long time). We had best stick the catheter in, start him on the treatment and on sunday we will know for sure just how bad he’s got it.

So now it’s sunday, we went in for his daily dose and to see the doc about the results. And the results are negative. No bloody UTI.

It’s POSsible he had something and the antibiotics we gave that first day wiped it. Not really likely, but hey. It’s possible. There was definitely SOMEthing wrong with him that had caused that fever, but it could’ve been anything, like a virus.

Who knows. We’ll never know. A lot of hoopla over nothing. Lots of hoopla, lots of nothing. He’s still gotta take those antibiotics though, cause once you start, you gotta go the distance.

It’s hard to know what to do in these situations. What should we have done? Do nothing? I wouldv’e done that, but one of these days i’m gonna recommend that and it’s not going to be nothing.  how do you really know which? You have the internet, but self diagnosing over the net is actually NOT a great thing. LEARNING about what the problem is once you’re sure there’s a problem, the net is GREAT for that.

(“Omg,what wrong with him? Here, let me google his symptoms…. fever…. sweaty feet…. yeah he cried last night… didn’t poop in the last 3 hours… AAAAHHHHHH!!!!! OMG he has Beubonic Typhoid Urinasitice!!!!!!!” MY BABY!!!)

So there’s a lesson in here somewhere.

Don’t ever trust pee that was in a bag. That much i can tell you.

Jim Henson Chicken Soup For The Soul

Little guy is okay.

He’s got his little tube sticking out of his hand so that they can give him his shot every morning when we take him in. He woke up this morning happy as a clam and probably doesn’t remember the entire catheter experience that has his Dad still twitching in horror.

In any case, i’m going to have a little wind down with some Jim Henson’s Muppets more melancholy moments.

And from Jim Henson’s Funeral:

Kill Bill In 60 Seconds

Awesomeness.

UTI

They put a catheter in his little pee-pee today.

The entire day… he has a urinary tract infection. He’s peed in bags, into cups… we’ve SAT there for an hour holding cups under his little pee-pee waiting for him to pee for 2 days now. They’ve taken blood from his little finger, much more from his little arm, (he was not happy about that), done analysis, they need to check out his kidneys… they’ve told us the bacteria is some super resistant strain. No antibiotic will work except this kind that has a risk for hearing loss…

Through it all i’ve been nonchalant. Maja’s worried and scared like any poor, new momma would be, but i’ve told her not to worry. It’ll be fine. We need to go to some other health clinic, some other hospital for some other thing they’re sending us to now, okay, no problem. Don’t woooorrrry. It will be fine. It’s just a thing. We’ll deal with it and that will be that.

But then they said they had to put a catheter in his pee-pee. (anOTHER urine analysis. This one from the source)

That’s when i lost it.

Catheters. Is there any word that strikes more fear into the heart of a man?

The moment you even beGIN to think of it, you cringe and all but double over. There is nothing more evil of cruel in all the world.

Now it was maja’s turn to tell me not to worry, it’ll be okay, everything will be alright. I told her i can do anything else, but i canNOT be in the room when they do it. (which was fine since they don’t let the parents int the room when they do it anyway.)

A pox on the son of a bitch who first thought of the unholy, blasphemous catheter.

There. I got it out. We shall never speak of this again.

Urinary Tract Infection

So it looks like Adam has one. We’ll know the full story tomorrow. Uncircumcised boys run a higher risk. (i have wanted him circumcised since day 1 and it’s starting to piss me off.)

He’ll need antibiotics. We’re all set with everything to give him, we just need the final word tomorrow afternoon. The poor little guy is running a temperature that comes and goes, although he’s not sick in any other way, so he’s in still in a pretty good mood.

I went out for St. Patrick’s Day last night, to a real Irish Pub here in Belgrade where they serve Guinness from the tap (only 8$ a pint…) So on the positive side i had the first decent beer i’ve had since coming here a year ago today. On the down side, the place was PACKED, i mean SLAM PACKED with music at horRENdous levels (although once the band started the volume actually went down).

The trouble with never going out, like, EVER, is that one is SO not used to being in a slam packed bar where you can’t move, walk or talk. I’m out of practice and it was a bit overwhelming. My buddy commenting i’m getting old, and touche, however, i have always hated overpacked places and esPECIALLY music that is way too loud even back when i was 21, so there you go. I would go back to grab a pint, though. Guinness. At last. A REAL bloody beer.

Gd i miss Sam Adams.

I’m not overly worried about the baby, maja is doing enough of that for the both of us. I think he’ll be fine, just thank goodness we caught this quickly. (Maja noticed he had a very high temperature 2 mornings ago.)

And there’s your Belgrade news for today. We’ll keep it short and sweet.

Caio.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I can’t possibly offer anything better than this piece of classicness:

Really, really good commercial

Seriously, for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, this is totally worth 45 seconds of your day:

The Tale Of How

A gorgeous piece of animation, just gorgeous:

Made by a collective known as the Blackheart Gang, their website can be found here.

Little Steelers Fan

Dear Paul,

“Satan Worship And Your Child”…. “Gay Harry Potter Porn”…. Jesus, could you just, like, have a nice post where you show cute baby pictures?

Love,

Your Relatives.

.

Dear Relatives,

Here you go.

Love,

Paul.

P.S. the red marks on his face in the last few photos are from the damn mosquitoes.

Touchdown!