The Month Of May, Mother's Day & Memorial Day

How exciting! May is just 'round the corner (tomorrow!). And hopefully this means consistently warm and gradually, hot, temperatures. Last night was hopefully the last cold night for the next few months. It got down to about 35F, just above freezing. There was a "frost advisory" and so I had to move back all of my house plants which I purposely brought all out since we'd been enjoying 70s and even a day or two in the 80s the past week or more.

It took a lot of work to bring them all back in, and although starting today already the warmer temperature begins, I think I will wait until this weekend to bring all the plants out again, and do some gardening for the first time this season/year.

Actually, I had planned to do some gardening last weekend, but it rained a lot (which I will never complain about again, given last summer's drought). A bush/shrub on the side of our home that has really grown out of control (i.e. I have not pruned since we moved in) fell over (presumably because the roots were so shallow still and it had grown so quickly?? and wind pushed it over?) and I had to do a rescue operation to get the plant upright. Hopefully it will strengthen it's roots and thrive again. So nice. Not sure what type of plant, but it produces TONS of white flowers that are so over fragrant (smells kinda like Jasmine??) .. so much for being a gardening enthusiast when I don't actually know any of the names of the plants I have around the house.

So anyways, May, May ...

Mom is coming to visit on the 10th. Yipee!!! Will celebrate Mother's Day in Blue Ridge. There's a quaint little "Victorian" style lunch place we discovered a couple of weeks ago that we would like to take Ma and Tita Flong (my auntie, mom's sister) for lunch.

And of course Mom will be staying through the Memorial Day long weekend. Kelly is on call that weekend, so we have to plan something local, but at least we can spend time together. Perhaps another excursion on the lake with our canoe? Speaking of which, the lake (Blue Ridge) is soooooooooooo full and looking picturesque. Just this morning it was "glassy", completely smooth surface reflecting all the trees and docks and boats, and because last night was near freezing, there was a mysterious "fog" rising from reflective surface .. I wish I had taken a picture.

A conference for me (18-21st) in Arlington (VA) will mean I will be away while Ma and Kelly and Ethan will be together. I have this CRCP exam to take (stands for Clinical Research Contracts Professional ???). Wish me luck. When was the last time I took an "exam"? This conference is for business professionals in the clinical research/pharmaceutical industry, and since I jumped straight to work without any previous knowledge or training of how to negotatiate budgets and contracts, I figured it would be nice to supplement the experience I have now gained, with some formal understanding of the process. Who knows, I may learn a thing or two on how to increase revenue for our company.

Chunky Monkey

Ahh .. looking back at old videos of Ethan, it is surprising to see him so rolly-polly actually. What a wonderful stroll through memory lane. You can check all my videos on YouTube. Just search for maxwelleblaghie (I think). Or watch the video (blog entry below) and at the end of the video, you will find small thumbs to other videos (links). Not all are mine, or of Ethan. Just FYI. A full head of hair and just roundness all 'round. Noomsie. Wish we took a more consitent effort to video his progress though. With our family having gone through a lot of life changes in recent past, we missed out on videotaping Ethan from roughly 10MO until the video I just posted with E at 19MO. Will try to do more. Unless I have the video at home but have not posted them? Hmm .. I'll check!

Ethan 19-M.O. Video

Finally, it took sooo long to upload this video but here it is. Ethan at 19 months old. In this video I ask Ethan what various animals say (animal sounds) and Kelly quizes him on his body parts (in chinese). For translation purposes, Kelly asks the following body parts in this order: nose, mouth, teeth, eyes, ears, hair, hand, tummy and foot. Kelly then asks "where are daddy's socks?" to which Ethan replies (in english) "socks" (but you'll have to turn up the volume to hear it). And last, Kelly instructs me to get a box, since Ethan can say "ba-ksss (box)" - again have to put up the volume for that one.

I am not sure how to get the HTML to embed that is specific to my video of Ethan; you will notice also other "Ethan" videos that others have posted (along with older videos I have posted) .... better than nothing :-D

Growing Up

Our Ethan is growing up. He turns 19 months today, and is now in full-time preschool. Today was day one back from "spring break" and Ethan and all his preschoolmates were excited to be back in school. Linda has done a fantastic job the past 7 months or so caring for Ethan. Transitioning to The Learning Depot, we had Ethan with Linda twice weekly (Mondays and Fridays), and now he will be at TLD 5 days a week.

Ethan's favorite or commonly used words are (Ethan's pronounciation in brackets): hi, hello (owww), bye (bah-yee), box, dots, baby (day-dee), mama, papa, ball (bow), deng (din; chinese for 'light'), socks, nay (chinese for 'milk'), si-sieh (chinese for "thank you") ... and of course his favorite word of all, NO!!

Animal sounds: mooo, meow (maow), baaa (ba-ha), woof (woah-woah)...

He understands the following body parts in chinese: hand (sho), foot (tsiao), belly (du-tze), hair (tow-fah), mouth (tsway-pah), teeth (yah-chuh), nose (bee-tze), ears (err-duah), eyes (yen-tsing) and not a body part but related ... socks (wah-tze) ... he doesn't say any of these words (yet) but points to these ..

We have a video but are finding it difficult to post currently...

Deck & Dogwoods

Our deck is finally screened. And the dogwoods are in bloom.

Bugs Out

With our 2007 tax return already in, I made quick work to hire someone to screen our deck. The project starts today, and David was at our home bright and early at 7:45am. It will probably take David a couple of weeks or more to complete the full deck enclosure, but it will be all worth it in the end, when we can enjoy our deck this summer and not have to worry about the many (ginormous) bugs that frequent our space come warmer weather. Will update and hopefully have pics soon.

Blue Ribbon Foods

Yesterday our Blue Ribbon Foods order arrived!!

We got a huge commercial-strength freezer (21 cu ft.) packed with 6 months worth of food! When Kelly and I first sat with Sylvia (our BRF rep .. who also happens to be a Baha'i!) to discuss the various BRF plans/options, I have to say it was a bit overwhelming. I never think of our food requirements in terms of "26 weeks of poultry" or "28 weeks of beef" ... or X number of pounds of ground beef to last X number of weeks or months. I can barely plan ahead for the following day or week, let alone for half a calendar year!

When all T's crossed and signatures in place, I thought for sure we had ordered way too much food. But yesterday, when everything arrived in neat packages, and the two BRF delivery men packed our brand new freezer with such order and precision, it hardly looked like a mountain of food we could not finish. In fact, it actually looked LESS than what I had imagined we would be receiving. Odd, but Sylvia assured me, after two months, our freezer will still look the same (i.e. the food WILL last at LEAST 6 months).

Anyways, I would promote BRF to all of my friends but this program is only available in the southeast USA. There are several other "food programs" around in the country, and in Canada, but I have to say so far (day 1) has been pretty nice.

Last night for dinner I cooked a top sirloin, medium-rare in about 10 minutes. Kelly had a chicken cordin-bleu (?? no idea how to spell it) and we both had steamed asparagus (super thick and green) and green beans for veggies. All in all, it was a quick meal, delicious, and supposedly very healthy and "top grade" foods. (whatever THAT means). But clearly it was enough to be sold on the program, and I have to say, it is nice having a "grocery store" in your basement freezer.

Hmmm.. what to try tonight??! I'm thinking tuna sashimi! (did I mention we got sashimi-grade tuna and salmon steaks?) Simply cut and eat raw :-D (I bought 16 steaks of tuna, Shar, since I know you won't want to miss this!)

Out Of Sorts

What a day. So crippling when technology lets you down. With the exception of a few important exchange of emails on prospective study opportunities, little else was accomplished today. Sigh. I guess I should leave work now and pick Ethan up and go home. I miss my friends and family. I miss playing sports. I miss so much of my earlier life. And THAT my friends is precisely how I feel and the product of putting thoughts to keyboard when at an end to an otherwise totally unproductive and underwhelming day. What the heck am I doing?

Life Saving Stuff

It has taken a long time, I know. And even still only a sampling was posted. But Kelly did a good job to finally get some (photos) on Facebook.

Another week has come and gone. All in all it has been quite an eventful week! Let me recall:

(1) Kelly saved a baby's life
(2) Ethan's been chatting up a storm with his classmates and knows about 20 words (does not speak them all, but can point or demonstrate understanding) - most if not all Chinese words
(3) I've secured nearly (cough) $1.3M in contracts for our research company (in the first quarter of 2008) and met with Ray to re-negotiate my employment contract

Blue Lips

Kelly was to round on a baby at the hospital after work one day. Quite routine really. On our way to pick up Ethan from Linda's place, I dropped Kelly off at the hospital, planning as we normally do to then pick her up once I got Ethan. I get a call from Kelly saying she will be a "couple of hours at least" and to just go home with Ethan and pick her up later in the evening.

As it turns out, an 8-hour old baby boy born that day had a congenital heart defect called Something Something (medical terminology). Kelly first noticed the newborn had slightly blue lips. Asked the nurse in charge if she had noticed the baby's lips, the nurse replied "Oh, they are just slightly bruised". Not content with the nurse's reply, and wanting to err on the side of caution, Kelly ordered a few "pulse ox" tests to be done. Basically, leads are connected to a finger or a toe that measures the blood oxygen level of the baby. For a newborn, blood oxygen level is normally at 95% or greater. Baby Boy was at 74% and fell as low as 54%. Some other medical insight that Kelly knows confirmed her initial instincts that this baby may have a heart defect (which is very common apparently).

Baby boy gets rushed to another hospital in TN that has a pediatric cardiology unit with surgeons and other specialists on board. Taken away by a helicopter, baby boy was given oxygen and monitored closely and parents were very worried and sad (understandably).

That evening, baby was stabilized and the attending physician calls Kelly to congratulate her on her insight, intuition and quick action.

Long road still for baby boy, but there is no doubt, remove Kelly from this story this particular evening and baby boy would not survive.

All other events (for us this week) really pale in comparison now, no? Hahaha ..

Well, sufficeth to say Ethan and Dad are progressing, too, thank you. And that's all we'll share for that. For now.