“Fun is not going to pay for daycare!”
“Don’t listen to anything your father says and everything will work out.”

The Blue Angels have been roaring overhead practicing for their annual Seafair shows. Lonan Kai does not like them and has been continuously waking up and wailing. Of course, he was wailing when they weren’t around, but the loud flyovers and shaking of the house is probably not encouraging him to continue sleeping.
I still like them, though.

26 JUL 2008 : SATURDAY (continued)
Amanda wanted to go out to eat because Lonan Kai is better behaved now and our eating out will go down even more after spending $1300 a month on daycare shortly. And because “eating is no longer fun” since she can’t eat dairy. She settled on Cafe Flora because it would be easy to eliminate dairy there. We also could have gone for various Asian cuisines, but she was not into that.

We stopped by City Peoples first so that I could pick up a few more bamboo stakes for our tomatoes. I also got a pair of leather (evil!) work gloves.

Alas for Amanda, Cafe Flora’s current three course prix fixe / market fresh menu was asian inspired. She was still happy about eating out.

Lonan Kai was pleased to be in a different place as well, and he was fairly well behaved. In this picture he is munching on a plate.

Amanda got some type of vegan burger with yam fries. It came with a very tasty aoli. I did get the fixed price dinner with a glass of sake.
The first course was a fresh roll. It was good, if a bit hard to eat.

The second course was a noodle dish with pieces of breaded tofu.

The dish was alright. I think it was a combination of little things that tempered my enthusiasm for it. The ingredients were fresh, but the overall taste was a bit mediocre. Even though it was a noodle dish and predictably mushy, I think it could have benefited with more crunchy/crispiness. There were some crunchy noodles in it, but more would have been nice.

I got a ice cream/frozen dessert thing (no picture, though) which was very good. Amanda got a vegan chocolate tart. I unfortunately did not take any pictures of her food.

In the evening we debated on how we should handle Lonan Kai’s waking periods that night. There are a number of issues: getting him to sleep throughout the night, getting him to sleep without any intervention on our part, and definitely getting him to sleep without nursing. We eventually decided to punt the real decisions and plans until later and just see if we could make some progress on any of the issues.

The evening was not as pleasant as the night before, although I did get a lot more sleep. Amanda did end up nursing him the one time he woke up. Fortunately, he only woke up once.

27 JUL 2008 : SUNDAY
Amanda went on her usual grocery run with Mandy. She took Lonan Kai with her because she wanted to start keeping him up three hours in the morning before her first nap. I don’t recall what I did; idle cleaning, reorging the garage a bit for Armando, and perhaps other random things.

I spent a bit of time in the garden staking the rest of the tomatoes, pruning them, etc..

Amanda at some point went to REI to pick up some stuff she ordered. Our P-Patch neighbor is the manager of the downtown store, and she gave us a friends and family coupon to use online. Amanda bought a portable LP stove (for car camping really) and a new wallet for me.

I made a random pasta thing for dinner. I was going to make pesto, but I did not get enough basil from the farmer’s market last week.

25 JUL 2008 : FRIDAY
We took a closer look at the daycare/”Center for Early Learning” that we will undoubtedly be taking Lonan Kai to. It’s called Seeds of Life, and it is located in Columbia City. We did not actually think we would get into any child care places because the waiting lists are huge.
It was nice. I have zero experience in such things but Amanda did work in a Montessori daycare right before entering medical school, and she thought it nice as well. They speak English, Spanish, and Somali to the children there, which I find cool.
Like most places around here kids need to be picked up before 6pm (and kids can only be there a maximum of ten hours… a state law?), so that will constrain my future employment in the sense that any position in the tech heavy Eastside will be out unless I can get flex time. Amanda is still working out her schedule with her future employer but it will be constrained by daycare times as well.
As mentioned in the previous entry, I trapped Armando in the garage again. Amanda spent the night at Eve and Karl’s to get a full nights sleep.
The evening went much better than I thought it would. After the initial nightmarish screaming blowout, Lonan Kai gorbled a lot in his sleep but did not actually wake up until around 3am. Of course, he cried then, but I decided to let him cry for a while as I have a far higher tolerance for such things than Amanda. LK was not pleased, but he did eventually fall asleep by himself with no intervention on my part. He woke up again many times, but again eventually fell asleep after he realized no one was going to come in.
Had I realized it would have been so easy, I would have just slept. As it was, I did not sleep at all.
Amanda arrived a bit before 7am looking like a new woman. I slept for a couple of hours then.
26 JUL 2008 : SATURDAY
I took Armando to the vet. He is freakishly strong for such a slight looking animal. The outside world is harsh.
Since the vet is first-come first-served and it was Saturday the vet was busy. I believe I was there for over three hours. I passed the time listening to music. Armando was curled up in the carrier, but I doubt he was relaxing.
I did get to see a stereotypical example of a rude dog owner. It was obvious that her dog wanted to hassle/jump on the other dogs there and any new ones that came in, so why not keep her dog right beside her? She seemed to think it funny that her dog triggered barking contests and whatnot all the time. Fortunately, I got called in before bloodshed occurred.
The vet, after verifying that I would be willing to keep Armando as an outside cat, then examined him. He basically said that Armando was a “mass of infection”. His leg was swollen because of a bite, but he has infected cuts and whatnot everywhere. We developed a preliminary plan to hopefully get his infections under control via antibiotics first and then take care of everything else: shots, testicle snippage, etc.. He will also have to get tested for feline leukemia. I hope he does not turn up positive because I would almost have to put him down.
I noted that the waiting area was calm when I left, so someone must have clued the rude dog owner in.
We managed to get his antibiotic in Armando at home. He is a lot stronger than piglet (even sick!), but once his jaws are pried open he will not spit the medicine out unlike our current lovable feline.

I got Armando back into the garage tonight. I let him out in the morning because his rear right leg looked much better, but this evening he it seemed much worse. I dunno what to do about Armando. Perhaps some enforced rest in the garage will perk him up.
Amanda is staying at Eve and Karl’s tonight because she needs a break from Lonan Kai. We are going to do the Ferber/cry-it-out technique on him ASAP, but we have not managed the timing of it yet. Amanda can’t handle his crying very well, so she can’t be in the house in the beginning stages; therefore some planning will be required.
Tonight LK decided to not go to sleep and instead howl a lot, which delayed Amnada’s departure. Of course, once she did depart, he started howling again a few minutes afterwards. Sigh. (Un)fortunately for him, I am far more immune to his wailing than Amanda.
I did manage to get him to sleep after an hour-and-a-half. I did not really let him cry-it-out as we probably won’t be able to continue it over the weekend, but I did let him scream a bit by himself in between checking-up/comforting him to let him reorganize his thoughts. Although in tonight’s case I don’t think he was doing any reorganizing… he was more trapped in this bad trip negative feedback loop.
Hopefully he will sleep for a good long while. I am not hopeful, though, and expect to be awake all night. That way I will be pleasantly surprised later as opposed to being bitterly disappointed with life.
Alas, this lack of sleep and use of CPAP and large quantities of caffeine I have been drinking lately have wrecked havoc on my blood pressure. Three consecutive checks at the Safeway pharmacy today showed my BP was almost what it was pre-CPAP days. That is, way too high. Perhaps I will go back on my beta-blocker until Lonan Kai’s sleeping is better. I guess I should talk to my doctor about that rather than self medicating myself. Like soon before I am paying for everything out-of-pocket.