Yesterday when I was at the hospital I ran into the head of pediatrics while I was in the cafe and he told me that Alex was up to 2300 grams (5 lbs., 1 oz.) and that they were moving him to Intermediate Care in the evening.

So imagine my surprise (shock? dismay?...not sure how best to describe this) when I stopped by the NICU today to drop off the locker key (each baby gets a locker where parents can keep diapers, lock up our purses when we visit, things like that) and saw that Alex was still there. The nurse said he is fine, but I should talk to the doctor. The doctor came in about 30 minutes later and told me that Alex had abdominal distention again last night. They had switched him over to preemie formula last time this problem happened, but it still is about 20% cow's milk and they think that is what he is allergic to. So they have him back on an IV drip of dextrose today because they want to clear out his digestive system before they start him tomorrow on a different formula (called Neocate) that has no cow's milk at all, and hopefully that will fix it, but if it doesn't, then this weekend they are going to transfer him to Miami Children's Hospital.

Alex, of course, was not a happy camper today, because he was hungry. He cried more than I've ever seen him cry, and the only time he would sleep was while I was holding him. I could set him down, but as soon as he woke up he started crying again.

The good news is that he soiled two diapers today, so it's not an issue of his bowels not working...it's just a lot of gas, which is why they think it's an allergy.

I really hope he doesn't have to go to Miami. It would mean a lot of time that Bill and I will have to be apart, and of course during that time Bill won't be with Alex, either. We won't be able to return to Bogota until Alex gets a passport, which could take a couple months, and I'd have to live in a hotel (ugh) that entire time. And also, we've gotten used to the staff and the rules here at Fundación Santa Fe - Miami would be an entirely different system to get used to.

The other disappointing news (though not as bad as Alex still being in the NICU) is that the doctor tells me that I have to go on a lactose-free diet unless they figure out for sure that it's something else that is causing the gas. In addition to all dairy products, I also have to cut out eggs, berries, peanuts and chocolate. I think dairy, eggs and chocolate probably constitute 50% of my calories at this point. I really don't know what I am going to eat - basically I am allowed meat (but not sausages), vegetables, fruits, and breads that don't have eggs or dairy as an ingredient (which is not that many of them). It's almost like a paleo diet or something. I need to find out if soy and other types of nuts are allowed (although, honestly, the only soy products here are soy milk, and sometimes I can find tofu...but no soy yogurt or soy desserts or anything like that, unfortunately).

*****

The entire time I was waiting to talk to the doctor, talking to him and then even after talking with him, I was trying not to cry. It's not that Alex's condition is all that serious, it's just that I was so excited about him moving to Intermediate Care because it was one step closer to him coming home. I'd even packed up a bunch of clothes for him to wear in "Intermedios" and some blankets as well. (In NICU he is in an isolette, and the babies can't wear clothes because they're all on heart rate and breathing monitors, which the nurses need easy access to.) I might even have started imagining how nice it will be to be able to cuddle with him on the couch while Bill is surfing the internet... Anyway, our doctor understood - he asked if I was scared, or worried, or just upset, and said he understands it feels like a step back, but he pointed out that Alex is doing just fine and he is gaining weight and he still looks great (nice healthy pink color), and told me his own kids had a lactose allergy as well and his wife didn't eat any dairy until the kids' first birthdays.

I decided to take a walk to clear my head and calm down a little bit, so I went across the street to the McDonald's and got a bottled water and an orange juice, and then walked around the park a bit. When I felt calmer, I went back to the NICU to hold Alex for a while before coming home.

One of the nurses calls Alex "mi mono." I thought she was calling him "little monkey," but then she said she calls him that because of his blond hair ("Porque es rubio"), which just confused me even more. "Maybe Colombian monkeys are yellow?" I was thinking to myself. So I asked her, "¿Como el animal?" And she laughed and said, "No, porque es bonito."

So, "mono" in the sense of "cute." It's a sense of the word I've always known (I named my cat Mono Mono, or M&M for short, when I was 12 years old), but I've never actually heard a native speaker use it, so I thought it was just an obscure usage or something. Maybe it's a regional thing (Spain and the Andes)?

One of the nurses let Bill take some pictures of me with Alex last weekend.



Cameras aren't technically allowed in the NICU, but Alex has now been in the NICU longer than all the other babies, save one, who has been in since February, and I think the nurses are starting to feel more comfortable with us. She actually suggested that Bill take a couple of quick pictures "for the grandparents," most likely because there weren't any other parents in there who could see she was letting us slide on the rules.

The nurses all assure me that Alex is quite consentido (spoiled, indulged). Apparently this is because he loves to be held so much - even if it's just for the couple of minutes while they are changing his sheets - and the second you put him down he starts crying and is inconsolable for a good 10 or 15 minutes. But, on the other hand, if he's spoiled...well, who's spoiling him? :)

The other word used to describe him most often is bravo - which, yes, can mean "brave," but I'm pretty sure they're using it in the sense of "rough, wild, ill-tempered." Now, does this look liked an ill-tempered baby to you?



But in all fairness, we caught him in a quiet moment (while he's being held!). The truth is that he is quite punchy. He pumps his arms and legs a lot, and it turns out he's quite strong - if you're trying to move his arm so you can reach something under him (to adjust his bedsheets, for example) he starts punching the air and there's really not a way to gently move his arm out of the way. You just have to wait for him to stop punching. Several of the nurses have asked us who he gets this from, and Bill always says, "Oh, from his mother, of course." And they smile knowingly and laugh.

Thursday when Alex was weighed he was up to 2175 grams (about 4 lbs., 9 oz.). He gained 100 grams of that in the previous 24 hours. Every time I leave the NICU I tell him he needs to keep gaining weight...I guess he's listening to me!

So, it's been like a million years since I've posted anything. (Okay, only three and a half months.) But a lot has happened in that time. Primarily, my little (and I do mean little) son Alex was born a week and a half ago. He was five weeks premature. I had preeclampsia (aka, pregnancy-induced hypertension), which was starting to cause intrauterine growth restriction (the high blood pressure was causing the umbilical cord to constrict, so Baby T wasn't getting all the food he needed to grow properly). The doctor said we should cut him out before the PIH started to constrict the oxygen as well, which could cause brain damage.

So, on the morning of April 1st, I had a C-section, and little Alexander Torrance entered the world, kicking and screaming, and weighing an even 1800 grams (3.95 pounds, for those of us who measure in American).

Here he is, looking quite irritated at being forced to leave his warm little womb:


Despite the low birth weight, his health is basically fine. He's just little. He doesn't look as much like a grumpy little old man now - he's getting his baby cheeks and round little belly. They're not going to release him from the hospital until his weight is closer to average (average for what, I don't know). He's been in the NICU this whole time, but will be moving to Intermediate Care within the next couple of days. Hopefully once he's there I'll be allowed to take pictures and can post one of how cute he looks now.

Until then, here's a completely unrelated picture of some latte art from our local Pan Pa' Ya:

So, I always knew my husband was smart, but I didn't realize just how smart until this morning. I gave him a little bite of the tvorog to try, and he said, "Hmmm...that would go good with crepes." (He didn't even know it's Maslenitsa, or that bliny are the ultimate Maslenitsa food, or that tvorog really is perfect with bliny...he just has great food instincts.)

So tonight for dinner I made bliny.



We ate some of them with shredded cheese, some with sour cream, and some with tvorog and jam. (That's the homemade tvorog on the left in the first picture.)





I was a little low on butter, so I used some olive oil. I thought it changed the flavor somewhat, and I REALLY like butter, so I prefer the all-butter originals, but Bill still thought they were wonderful. (Just wait till I make him some all-butter ones next time!)

As always, I used the recipe from A Year of Russian Feasts.



I love the yeasty flavor and they always turn out perfectly when I use this recipe.

I had a craving for tvorog the other day, and when I was posting to Facebook about it, I ran across a recipe for making it at home. So, tonight, my homemade tvorog will be ready.



I can hardly wait!

Mom and I were in a craft store last year (while I was living in Owasso) and I saw a book on tatting. I asked her what is is, and she told me it's a way to make lace, and her grandmother used to do it. I bought a couple books - one on shuttle tatting and one on needle tatting - and a couple tatting shuttles, but didn't really have the focus last year to get started on it. Plus, last year I was focusing more on spinning.

A couple weeks ago, I reached a crisis point with a sweater I'm knitting for Bill and needed some distraction, so I decided to try out tatting. It took me a bit to get the hang of it, but the basic stitches have turned out to be pretty easy. So far I've just done some practice bits, some mini-butterflies and half of a bookmark.

The lighting wasn't good so you can't see the stitches on the white butterfly at all. They're lined up left to right, first to last. You can see I'm getting better at the joins between the rings because the first butterfly has big gaps between the wings, but by the third they almost meet in the middle (like they're supposed to).


The bookmark is also progressing well. I took this picture right after I had to join new thread - a somewhat stressful experience learning the technique, but ultimately successful.


You can see how the bookmark sort of curls a bit, like a tail...it should lie flat, but I'm still learning to control my tension. I'm hoping that when I wash the finished product, it will lie a little flatter. I feel like my tension is already improving, and I'm definitely able to tat faster than I used to be able to, and with fewer mistakes. It used to take an hour for me to make each one of those little blue rings. Now I can do one in about five minutes.

I'm learning from this book, which includes a DVD, and the DVD is immensely helpful. It's hard to envision what the writer means by certain directions when you're learning a craft from a book. This is not a criticism of the book, which I feel is actually an excellent book, but rather just the reality of describing simple hand motions. I had the same problem when I was learning knitting. I usually would read several different explanations of each stitch or technique from different sources, and then look for videos online as well.

Unfortunately, with tatting, there are not nearly as many resources as for knitting. It's just not as popular. In our modern times, tatting to most people is a time-consuming thing that produces only frilly, decorative objects, which are sort of out of place in our more casual world, unlike knitting, which can make very practical, plain, functional items, like sweaters and caps and mittens, or crochet, which lends itself easily to those things as well as to cute little amigurumi toys. In the late 19th and early 20th century, women made a lot of tatted tablecloths, lace edgings for linens and clothing, doilies - all the sorts of decorative items that are no longer in vogue. Modern tatters still make these things, of course, but also tend to do more things like (very beautiful) jewelry or masks.

I also bought this adorable, handmade ceramic shuttle.



I've been mostly using plastic Clover tatting shuttes, and the metal Boye shuttle a bit, too. The Clovers are light in my hand and I really like the curved tip, and it's easy to unwind more thread. Sometimes the thread gets caught in the slot, but it's not a big deal. The Boye feels a little heavy, and I don't like that the bobbin keeps the thread from unspooling easily, so I've mostly gone back to the Clovers. But I want to try some different types of shuttles. Apparently one of the reasons shuttle tatting was always more popular than needle tatting was that the shuttles can be so fun and collectible and decorative - unlike tatting needles, which look like vicious surgical instruments. Ladies of earlier time periods also felt that hand motions of shuttle tatting were more elegant, and at parties it was a way to show off your delicate hands and lovely manicure. :)

The ceramic shuttle was a completely unnecessary and frivolous purchase, and therefore quite a treat. :) It was a steal (the artist really could have charged much more), and I feel quite in the historical spirit of fancy ladies and their shuttle collections.

Today's Google Doodle honors a Colombian artist, Omar Rayo.

Absolutely incredible!


British Aide Admits Russian Spy Claims
By ALAN COWELL
Published: January 19, 2012
LONDON — For the first time, a former senior official has confirmed Russian accusations that the British spy service was caught trying to use a fake rock in Moscow to hide electronic communication equipment six years ago...

I know this sounds nutty, but anyone who's visited Medellín can see why this is necessary. The older parts of the city, the historical districts, the shopping centers, the nice neighborhoods, and the places where people work are along a river valley, which is the town's central axis. The city has grown up the sides of the mountains, so getting home from work or shopping for the people who live in the newer, poorer neighborhoods (and don't own cars) involves a nearly vertical hike. Up near the top of the mountains are small farms with cows...that far up the roads turn to dirt, and then disappear altogether. It's exhausting just to watch the residents climb the mountainside to go home.

Our Medellín trip report (from when we visited in the fall) will be forthcoming.

Colombian city gets giant outdoor escalator, cutting 35 minutes walk to six minutes hike



...
For generations, the 12,000 residents of Medellin's tough Comuna 13, which clings to the side of a steep hillside, have had to climb hundreds of large steps authorities say is the same as going up a 28-story building.

Now they can ride an escalator Medellin's mayor says is the first massive, outdoor public escalator for use by residents of a poor area...