Five Minutes.

Alot can happen in five minutes. A perusal of the WWW shows you can get six-pack abs, buns of steel, and a healthy posture and spine, all in just five minutes. (No, seriously, you can!)

In five minutes, you can have a hot bowl of Ramen Noodles .... mmmmm, remember back to those days?!?

In five minutes ... well, you get the picture - not much you can do in five minutes ... or is there?

This story really begins on Friday, so I'll start there (trust me, I'll get to the "5 minutes" in just a minute).

Ashley left for the OSCLG conference (Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender) early Friday morning. Her flight was supposed to leave at 6:30 a.m. So she got up at 4. Friday night was her first night away from Eden. The business of the conference and catching up with close friends helped the time go by quickly.

On Friday, Eden and I played alot.

She was messing around with the Einstein when ... huh? What WAS that? She began turning the dial that makes animal noises ... Quack, Quack ... Arf, Arf ... Meeow ... By Saturday, she had it all figured out and even started making (what seemed like) impressions of the animals as they quacked, barked, and meowed. To support this hypothesis (that the noises she was making were an attempt to immitate the animals, when Ashley had her on the porch yesterday, our neighbor's cat came for a visit. Eden began making these same noises ... hmmmmm .... but I digress).

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So, what does this have to do with Five Minutes? Nothing, really, but it sets the stage well, huh?

Back to our story ... and the real point of the post ... On Saturday night, Eden spit up alot of her bottle but went to bed as normal. Ashley got back late Saturday night. I told her the story. She felt bad for Eden. Sunday morning, when Ashley went in to get Eden up and ready for church, Eden was hot. Yep, her first real fever. 100.8. But, she acted like her normal self except for a little bit of crying.

She and Ashley, of course, stayed home from church and played that afternoon (there is also a funny story about me locking them on the front porch, but that's another post). Then, that afternoon, she threw up another bottle.

So, we called the hospital. Our instructions ... "Give her one teaspoon of Pedialite every five minutes for four hours. If she keeps that down, go to 2 teaspoons. If, after another 4 hours, she keeps that down, try a bottle." Seriously? No food for 8 hours. This would be fun!

She cried. She slept. She cried some more. She slept ... Ashley fed her a bottle around midnight. She woke up Monday, seemed all better (no fever, no diarrhea. no throwing up). She did, however, stay home from PDO and play ...

Now it is Wednesday. Although she is not running a fever, she had runny diapers all day yesterday and threw up another bottle last night. More Pedialite! But, she slept through the night last night. I'm at the office, and Ashley will take her to the doctor this morning. I'll take over this afternoon. Hope our little girl is ALL better soon. We could use five minutes of normal.

...........................

Update ...

Well, the doctor this morning said Eden looked fine, and that from what I told him about things since Saturday (I had notes of course) it sounded like she had a normal run of a stomach virus. She was still drooling everywhere, and after 2 or 3 minutes of solid staring, sitting completely still when the doctor came in to check her, and then crying with immediate tears once she realized she just wasn't so sure about him ... he said she was definitely not dehydrated. Nothing much to worry about. We may have some random gushers of formula coming back up as her stomach gets back to normal (what fun), but overall he said she'd be perfectly back to normal in no time. She of course charmed everyone else in the clinic with huge smiles and watching their every move which prompted her nurse to say, "She's just so beautiful. Look at those eyes ... and she just positively glows ... lights up the whole room." I couldn't agree more.

Eden's granddaddy and I agreed that this was actually all a good thing. Shows that her little body knows what to do when some yucky germs come in. Oh, and here are her updated stats:

• 26 1/4" tall (up from 25" on Oct 3 although Graham thinks they measured wrong earlier in the month)
• 17" head circumference
• 15 lbs. 15 1/2 oz. ( up from 15 lbs. 10 oz. at the last visit)

In other news, with everything going on with Eden we forgot to mention that on Tuesday morning at 1:05 a.m. my advisor from Purdue sent me an email. His comments in a nutshell: "Great work! Go ahead and email your committee to set a date for your defense." Crazy. So if all goes as planned, I'll send out the final document (all 200 or so pages) next week and in a few weeks will be back in Lafayette for the final meeting (don't worry Purdue friends, I'll be in touch as soon as I know a date). I'm really just ready for it to be over. Now just a few more crazy days to wrap things up which means I'm off to work now.

good night,

ashley