Which Sweater To Knit?
I'm having a tough time deciding which baby sweater to make. I know who I'm making this for -- an almost-4-month-old girl. I want to take on a challenge, but I don't want this to be impossible to complete during the Olympics, either. That's the whole point of this Knitting Olympic Challenge, after all!
So here are a couple links to patterns I like. They are all free patterns found online. The first two are my favorite.
Cutie Patootie
I know I could do this one within the time constraints - well, reasonably sure anyway, having never knit a sweater before! This pattern says it's intermediate. Another perk is that this one has sizes and measurements for babies the size of the one I'm knitting for. The body is plain stockinette stitch with crocheted-on edging. Not so sure about that - perhaps it doesn't qualify for a Knitting Olympic event? I like the edging - it looks a bit lacy. I'd love to try a lacy-ish pattern.
Trellis
I'm itching to try cabling. This too is considered intermediate (I think - this website has goofy names for their difficulty levels). It has a 6-month size, which would work. I believe it will be more difficult, or slower at least, than the above pattern because it has cables and seed-stitch borders throughout - back, front, sleeves... But it wouldn't be boring and would definitely be a challenge. Perhaps too much of one?
Baby Ensemble
This one is really hard to visualize because the photo is crummy. The model is a rather scary doll. But the idea of mock cabling is attractive - sounds easier than real cabling and might be a better starting point. However, reading the directions I'm totally lost. Partly because I have no idea what "psso" means. Oh wait. I just found this website's list of abbreviations and told it to print - holy cow. It's 9 pages long! Yikes! This might be a good challenge too. I think the sweater has squares of pattern divided by little edges. Might be really cool, especially color-blocked in different colors.
Hmmm....
When To Take Elli to the Doctor/ER?
Ok, so this is a debate on a much higher level. However, having now spoken with Elli's pediatrician, I'm feeling reassured in my decisions so far.
We currently have a lovely virus swirling about the halls of this house. Anna is about done with hers - she ended up with a double ear-infection and is still draining quite a bit. We left her antibiotic at my in-laws' house over the weekend and had to pay full-price to replace the meds - about $40. Ouch. Unfortunately, insurance wouldn't pay to replace her "lost" meds.
Anyway, Elli is now deep in the throes of this virus as well. She is congested and plagued by a persistent cough. We have just about everything we could possibly need to care of her here... except oxygen. We have a nebulizer which delivers medicine in a mist for her to breathe into her lungs. We have two kinds to give her, each doing a different thing. We have just about every kind of pediatric cold medicine known to man in every combination. We have a pulse oximeter, which measures the percentage of oxygen in a person's blood.
Fortunately, Elli hasn't been sick enough to need the pulse oximeter in over a year. Until early this morning, that is. I woke up about 3:15am to hear her coughing really badly. I got up and started a breathing treatment through the nebulizer. She immediately calmed down and the cough got much better. The treatment takes about 20 minutes, so while that was going, I got more night-time sleepy medicine. That way it would be fully on-board by the time the breathing treatment was done and she'd hopefully get back to sleep quickly. She seemed especially bad to me, so I dug out the pulse oximeter and tried to get a reading.
To get an accurate reading on a pulse oximeter, the patient needs to be really still. This is very difficult for Elli due to her brain injury. So I had a really difficult time getting a reading -- got numbers everywhere from 84% to 92%. None of these numbers is good. A healthy, average person is between 98-100%. Based on the way it was not able to get a good pulse rate on her for more than a second or two, I didn't believe the really low numbers. Plus, the color of her skin didn't bear out a really low reading -- she was still pink.
So I decided to leave the sensor on her foot and come back after she fell asleep to try to get a reading when she was still. But I stood there at her bedside, watching her and debating a phone call to the hospital for quite a while. I didn't want to take her to the ER if all they would do is what I could do more easily and comfortably here at home (and way more cheaply). I prefer to go to that extreme only when I'm reasonably certain she's going to be admitted. My gut said that while she was definitely sick, the breathing treatments were doing what they were supposed to, she wasn't struggling for breath, her color was still good, and a night of sleep would do both of us more good than a vain trip to the ER.
So, I went back to bed.
This morning her levels were definitely lower than they should have been -- 89-92%. A breathing treatment brought it up slowly to between 94 and 96%, which made me feel MUCH better. I couldn't remember exactly where her doctors get nervous though. I searched all over for this sheet containing the "rule of two" from her pulmonary doctors and the phone number to call if we met that rule. I could NOT find it, which was a real bummer because I had a feeling it had a direct-line number to a nurse who could answer my questions. I tried the general number around 8:45am, and as of noon today, I still haven't heard back from them!
So after waiting for an hour, I decided to call the pediatrician. I knew the doctor himself, not a nurse or a physician's assistant, would call me back since it was about Elli and he knows us pretty well. Sure enough, about 10 minutes later he was on the phone. I explained what I was seeing and he said that as long as she stays above 92% and isn't wheezing when she breathes, she's ok to stay home. He wants to see her and x-ray her lungs if she doesn't improve with the treatments, starts labored breathing, or her level drops below 92%. He also thinks that today will be the key day for her -- she'll either start improving or she'll get progressively worse. Either way, she'll not stay on the borderline for long.
Meanwhile, Sam is still not doing too bad. He has a fever, a barking cough (which is his trademark cough), and a bit of a runny nose. He's well enough to race around the house, yet he's not great - he really wants some mommy cuddle time. I'm still symptom-free. And I'm feeling fine with all this so far.
It probably helps that Scott and I got to have dinner out last night! He got a really nice gift card from work a couple weeks ago -- it's one of those credit cards with cash on it so you can use it anywhere. We went to one of our new favorite restaurants -- Rafferty's -- and I have leftovers for lunch! I'm so excited - Black'n'bleu Steak with garlic mashed potatoes.
PLUS we'll be going out again Saturday - our church is having a Parents' Night Out and providing free babysitting.
PLUS the next weekend is my birthday weekend and we're going to visit my parents and we're leaving the kids with them overnight so we can have a night at our favorite bed & breakfast and dinner at our favorite restaurant there. The Brick House has THE BEST French onion soup I've ever had. So February is turning out to be quite a great month for us, in spite of the viral invasion!
