Updates

Just a general update post:

Sedona: She was feeling better the day after we started antibiotics with her. Her temp dropped to 97.5 and stayed there for several days. She was much happier, but still fussier than normal and really clingy. Her culture came back negative. Since the in-office u/a was positive for both nitrites AND white blood cells (not one or the other), it's not likely that was a false positive. That means the negative culture probably indicates either a viral UTI, or a bacterial source that isn't screened for in the standard urine culture (both pretty uncommon). We're finishing out the antibiotic and seeing what happens. In the past few days, her temp has been creeping up and she's around 99.5 all day now. I'm worried it's the infection coming back (or perhaps antibiotic killing off weaker bacteria and stronger ones starting to proliferate), but we'll continue waiting it out unless she gets a true fever.

Sierra: Sierra is getting all sorts of grown up. She is doing 1st grade math and 1st-2nd grade reading. Our latest "problem" is getting a book from the library and her reading the whole thing by herself before we even get home. She still only reads out loud, but she no longer says the sounds of the letters (i.e. cuh-ah-tuh), just says the word. She is fast enough now to read signs as we're driving past. She does want to be even faster and tends to guess at the word based on the first sound (i.e. saying "brook" instead of "breaking"), but when you tell her to go back and sound it out, she has no problem getting it right. She is an amazing big sister. She and Sedona play together all the time and get along really well. Most of the time, Sierra even handles the toddler tantrums better than many grown-ups I know.

Garden: The garden is growing by leaps and bounds. We've had LOTS of rain recently---too much, really. Since we have raised beds, the garden's loving it though. There are plenty of peas ready to pick. If you pull off a pod and open it, Sedona grabs all the peas and pops them in her mouth, then screams for more. She LOVES them. Planning to make a chicken/potato/pea dish tomorrow. We are getting about 1/2 pound of strawberries every day now. The berries are bigger than they were at first and the plants are still blooming like crazy. Tomato plants are blooming, but I haven't seen fruit yet. Bean and southern pea plants along with squash and melons have noticeable growth everyday, but no blooms yet. The peaches are starting to ripen on one tree, and the tree that bloomed later has set fruit (too much...I will have to pick a lot off this weekend). The egg laying chickens are back up to full production and we're eating plenty of angel food cake (12 egg whites per recipe) to "keep up"

Swine flu: I still think there's not reason to panic about swine flu right now, but totally unfair to call all the news "hype". We aren't locking ourselves in the house, but we are watching what the CDC and WHO have to say and washing our hands. Being in Texas and all, there are quite a few school closures in our area, but no one at Sierra's little school is sick and there hasn't been any talk of the university shutting down. Saw an interesting story today about the model runs for the "worst case scenario"----keep in mind, anything you read about worst case scenario assumes no interventions. These school closures and stockpiles of anti-virals and all that are enacted precisely to avoid the worst case scenario. Also interesting that I'm only seeing reports of what the model says 4 weeks from now, what about after that? It would be reasonable to expect it to peter out for the summer and possibly come back with a vengeance next flu season; or, it could keep going, and it would be reasonable to expect the number to increase exponentially. Of course, this model is looking only at the movement of people as far as I can tell, which means you're ignoring the scientific side of things---mutating viruses getting more or less virulent makes a big difference in the actual impact. At any rate, they showed Texas, California and Florida as being the hardest hit (which makes sense). Since that includes us, I figure it's only prudent to take "common sense measures". Like I said in my earlier post, I would be avoiding indoor playgrounds during cold and flu season when I'm hearing of a lot of sick people, and unless something changes, I view this in the same regard.