Fun In The Sink

I had a great time shooting these photos!

Katrina suddenly realized there was a baby beside her and tried to reach out!

She's not real talkative, Mom, but she's friendly!

I think we're gonna be friends!  What fun!

Christmas/New Years Celebration

A few weeks ago our tribal church celebrated Christmas/New Years together.  Normally a lot if not most of the people that attend our church go interior to spend Christmas with family so they're not around over the actual Christmas/New Years time.  That's why we have this celebration a few weeks into the new year.  

Here are some photos we took of the service as well as people hanging out between the service and the meal.  With juggling getting food for the 3 kids and Katrina needing to be fed, the photos of the meal time didn't turn out well - maybe next time!

The front porch serves as a nursery - but doesn't keep the church from hearing the child's noises and the mom can't really hear the sermon! This was taken after the service. The lady beside me is a coworker who also had her baby here just a few weeks after I had Katrina.

As you can see, dress for church is a range from jeans and t-shirts 

to skirts and heels and of course the traditional batik on men and women alike.

Motorcycles continue to be the main form of transportation!

Thrush!

2 weeks ago we had some indications that Katrina had thrush.  We were glad to find out that one of the western doctors from a mission hospital near here would be in town and arranged for him to stop by and check things out.  

He did so and prescribed medicine for both of us.  Katrina's (Nystatin) was easy to get - I just went to a store and picked it up, no problem.  Mine was a bit more complicated and involved this doctor having his hospital's pharmacist contact their supplier who then came to our home to drop off the medicine that I needed.  Unfortunately he only had 13 days worth of meds for me, not the 14 days I needed.  

They arrived in these 14 boxes: 

And this was the sum total of the contents of the boxes:

Part of the routine of having a baby with thrush is making sure she doesn't get reinfected from the things she's chewed on.  It's been a bit of a pain to boil anything that has made it into Katrina's mouth - toys, pacifiers, medicine droppers, spoons from her cereal, sippy cup lids, you name it.  After this (toy-wrecking) round of boiling for 20 minutes, I put away a lot of the surviving toys and now she's chewing on the hardiest of the lot!

Katrina responded quickly to her medicine and was thrush-free in just a couple of days.  Pray with us that we'd be able to get more of the medicine I need - I didn't respond as quickly to my medicine (fluconazole) and now need another 3-4 days worth minimum!

Life is never dull here!  And God is faithful to heal us, provide the medical help, medicine, etc.  We're so thankful!

Some Katrina Milestones

Last weekend - trying to figure out sippy cups!

First 2 teeth - early January

No specific milestone but we're always glad when she's happy!

She LOVES chewing on watermelon rinds!

First tub bath

Sitting Up late Dec/early Jan

When you need medical care...

I often gather my meds and stuff onto one tray so it's not scattered everywhere.

Today is day 4 of Spencer's fevers.  He started Friday afternoon with a temp of over 103 degrees. I've been keeping a journal of all of the times I've taken his temperature, all of the medications I've given him in the amounts he received.  This is helpful when we need to talk to a doctor OR to see if his fevers are cyclical (which could indicate malaria or worse).  Last night I emailed 3 docs back home but none of them are probably at work since it's the weekend.  Tabs that are up on my browser this morning include how to effectively do the saline nasal spray, one on fevers, one on Ibuprofen dosages, and one google page on which antibiotics are used for sinus infections in children.  (Just doing the research...) This morning his fever was still going at just under 103 which has been normal for the past 4 days so I decided to call a doctor.  There are 2 western doctors and a nurse with a ton of experience in our region so I tried all 3.  I could reach NONE of them, so I called my mom.  

As I was Skyping with her, one of the docs I'd tried to call called me back!  I gave her the history and she said we should try antibiotics - not that there were any guarantees and in fact there were indications that it WOULDN'T work, but there isn't really anything else left to try.  SO - I gave her Spencer's weight (in KG and in LBS- info I try to keep current so that I don't have to weigh them in the middle of the night when they're feeling awful) and she told me which medicine I needed to get and the range of mg of meds he needed per kilo per day - divided by 2 dosages.  

Armed with that information, I headed off to the drugstore.  I approached the counter and told the lady what medicine I needed.  She looked like she understood and headed to the back.  She returned with a box, inside was a sealed bottle with white powder in it.  She showed me on the label where it said how to reconstitute it to the correct strength.  It didn't look like it would make a lot of medicine - so I used her calculator to figure out that if he needs 500 mg of the medicine 2 times a day, he needs 7000 mg in a week.  She and I did a number of different "figurings" on her calculator, then I paid the 67,000 Rupiah (just over $6), took the bottle and went home.  

When I got home, I started the calculations again - and realized that the bottle she sold me would only give Spencer 3 doses - a day and a half of medicine - and that I am going to have to go back and get FOUR more bottles - if she will sell it to me - since I don't have a prescription, only directions from my doctor friend that I scribbled while we were on the phone.  The saga continues...