I caught Zach's stomach virus. Lucky me.

Needless to say, the weekend was shot and I missed out on Jasmine's birthday dinner. (Jaz, I request a do-over, even if it needs to be on a smaller scale.) Bryan and Zach went to the Rockin' Baja Lobster without me, and I got to stay home in bed, trying to drink Pedialyte, since Bryan was going to stop and pick up Gatorade on his way home. Have you ever tried Pedialyte? It was like the stuff I had to drink for my glucose test when I was pregnant - sickeningly sweet. No wonder Zach made weird faces when we gave it to him.

Oh well. I'm almost back up to speed now. I have today off because of Presidents' Day and then I'll be back at work tomorrow and Wednesday. We made a quick trip to the mall and Zach and I found some Carter's clothes on clearance at Macy's. Love the Macy's card which gave us an extra 20% off. So for $8 and change, Zach got jeans (which snap up the insides - hard to find, and good for lazy moms like me) and a sweatshirt. He won't fit into them for a while since the jeans are size 24 months and the sweatshirt is size 18 months, but I couldn't resist a good bargain on cute clothes. Macy's was enough for me, now we're home and planning a low key afternoon.

I'm sincerely hoping that we're all finished with stomach viruses for quite a while, as I don't want to dodge a sick Zach, Bryan or Gina anytime soon.

Just as I was finishing my blog post on Tuesday night, Bryan said "Honey come here." Zach made a funny noise and threw up all over Bryan. I couldn't help it, I laughed (keep this in mind, because I get my payback later). We cleaned Zach up, cleaned Bryan up and put Zachary back to bed. At 2, Bryan changed his diaper and tucked him back in, but then heard a noise around 2:30. We discovered Zach had puked again, all over his crib. We changed him and I was holding him, trying to see if he felt like nursing when he barfed all over me. Payback stinks.

There are many great things about the medical group I work for, and two of them are definitely Nurse Connection and After Hours Pediatrics. At 3 am, after getting the puke off, we called the Nurse Connection to find out what they recommend - it's not like we've done this before with a baby. So they walked us through his symptoms, had us check his temperature, poke his belly, assess his hydration, etc. and made some suggestions about Pedialyte, etc. I called in sick to work (since obviously daycare is not the place for a sick baby) and went back to bed around 4 am.

In the morning, Zach did pretty well at keeping down Pedialyte through most of the day, but as soon as he got some milk in the afternoon, he started throwing up again. Of course, it was about 4:15 pm, so I got on the horn to his pediatrician who set us up with an appointment with After Hours Peds (which is open 5 pm - 9 pm and on weekends and holidays) because she was worried that he was becoming dehydrated. After Hours Peds is a great option, and certainly beats not being able to do anything until the baby is in rough shape at 3 am and you then have to take him to the ER. As it turned out, he was getting fairly dehydrated and they really didn't want him going any further.

The After Hours doc gave us a prescription for an anti-vomiting med, so we got it filled, headed home and gave it to him. We sloooooowly started getting more Pedialyte into him. It was another night of very little sleep, as it was super-important to get Zach re-hydrated, which meant waking him up every 2 hours or so to give him a couple ounces of fluid.

Thankfully he held everything down yesterday, so today we'll be tapering off the Pedialyte and back on to milk. He's still not completely back to normal, but certainly better than he was on Wednesday! I'm hoping today will be nice and low key and he'll get plenty of sleep. I could use a little, myself!

I'm back at work this week. I'm beat, so here's a few quick tidbits, and I promise to write in more detail later this week. The new clinic is beautiful and our space is exactly what we've asked for. We're slowly getting moved in and figuring out what other stuff we need to order that we didn't think about until we got in there. It's really nice to work 12 miles from home and 6 miles from daycare. It takes less than half the time to drive home at night! Zach is doing fine at daycare. It's been a lucky week with Bryan in port because he's been able to pick Zach up early (earlier than I would have been able to) each day. Tomorrow the dog goes to daycare, too, and I'm working in Chula Vista, quite a ways south, so it'll be an up-and-at-'em extra early day. On that note, I think I'm headed to bed.

A blog reader recently sent an email expressing their concern that having a blog will hinder my ability to be hired, based on the fact that my blog is easily found via a Google search. My thoughts and experiences are out there for the whole world to see.

This is a fair concern, so I yanked the blog for a while to give the issue some thought. I even gave some serious thought to yanking the Flickr site and the You Tube site with photos/videos of Zach.

I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong with having a life and writing about it. The blog will continue, and Flickr and You Tube will continue to chronicle our lives with Zachary.

Sorry for the hiatus. I hate it when I doubt myself.

I promised myself I could have a week to mope and pout about the move. I'm done with that and now it's time to look forward. So, without further ado, here's a list of good things about moving to San Fran:

• I can see the Golden Gate Bridge whenever I want (especially since Bryan's station will be at the base of the north end of the bridge)
  
• We can see the Wild play at HP Pavilion and add the Shark Tank to our list of NHL arenas we've visited for a Wild game
  
• We're less likely to be evacuated for wildfires
  
• Our current 2 bedroom house is too small and we'd need to look for another house anyway
  
• The government will provide the movers who will not only have to move our stuff, but pack it, too!
  
• Maybe I can finally find a decent place to get my hair done
  
• Better access to concerts (everything here goes to LA). Teri, start planning for the next BNL tour!
  
• I won't have to get an Audiology or Hearing Aid license for yet another state
  
• I won't have to change my drivers' license or car registration
  

I'm sure I'll think of more things as we go, but that's a start.

So yesterday was Zach's first day at daycare, his trial day. I had planned to do some shopping for work clothes and try to get my hair cut - things that are easier without a baby in tow. When I saw my boss on Wednesday, she had mentioned that my favorite hearing aid company was having a seminar on Thursday, and it occurred to me it would be a great way to rack up some continuing ed credits and Zach would be in daycare anyway...

I made a few calls and got myself into the seminar, and who do I run into but my old grad school roommate Bernie! Bernie was a great roommate. During my first year of grad school, we had an apartment in Bellingham while his wife and son were living in Tacoma because of his wife's job. He was hardly ever around on the weekends, and we got along well. He'd drag me out to do social things with the other grad students, which I kind of needed since I had done my undergrad at UW and that sort of made me odd man out at WWU, where almost everyone else had done undergrad there, too. My favorite Bernie story involves us watching X-Files in the dark on Sunday nights and Bernie jumping every time there was a noise during the particularly creepy ones.

We swapped war stories and photos of the kids, and updated each other on what our classmates are up to these days. Bernie's son is appallingly grown up (and I don't know how since neither of us could possibly be that old), which I guess is what happens when it's been 10 years (gah!) since I started grad school.

I also saw Annie, who was one of my students when I was a TA during grad school, and who is now in charge of training in the West for the hearing aid company. I told her about my upcoming move and she sent me over to talk to the outside sales rep for the Bay Area.

(Info about how helpful the outside sales rep was has been removed. If you're searching for an audiology job and you have any contacts like this, trust me, they will be very, very, very helpful in terms of information about potential employers and salaries.)

So it was an incredibly productive day. I learned the new product, saw Bernie and Annie and met the rep from the Bay Area and got her contact info so I can touch base with her when it gets closer to our move.

Zach did well at daycare. He's a difficult napper, and proved to be the same for them. He was pleased to see me when I picked him up, but it was more like "Oh good, it's you," not the absolutely thrilled response I get when I get him out of his crib in the morning. I guess that's a good sign, too. He racked out at 7, a little earlier than usual and (drumroll please) slept until 5 am! He's done that (or similar) a couple of times now. The first two or three times, I woke up at 5, realized he hadn't been up and went racing into his room to make sure he was still breathing. Still breathing and still sleeping each time.

He'll start daycare for real on the 11th, so we have one more week. I still need to shop for work clothes and get a haircut, but Bryan should be home on Saturday, so that'll be my chance. The underway schedule is pretty gnarly right now, so after several days Bryan comes home, does laundry, goes to bed and is back underway the next morning. Lather, rinse and repeat for the next couple of weeks. Bryan passed his MK1 test, so he just needs to pass his EPME to qualify for the servicewide exam next November. Once those are passed, he can get on the list to advance. Oh, and he found out that Station Golden Gate does over 600 SAR (search and rescue) cases each year...and is responsible for responding for the jumpers from the bridge (i.e., body recovery) {shudder}. We still need to get a lot of info about things like the duty schedule and whether we'll have to live in government housing, but Bryan actually has to be in port on a weekday for him to contact the station.

Government housing would (obviously) make for very cheap rent, but it may not be in a convenient place for me in terms of work and we could be stuffed into something as small as a 2 bedroom apartment - not my idea of paradise with a dog and knowing that our 2 bedroom house feels too small for us and our stuff right now! Just another thing we'll have to wait and see about, I guess. Have I ever mentioned that patience is not a virtue I possess?