'Tis The Season

The cold and flu season that is! Today marked our first (of hopefully not many) visits to the doctors for a viral bug that Joaquin and Sage are both fighting. Sage has nothing to show for it except his snotty nose - which isn't too snotty. Unfortunately Joaquin doesn't usually escape so easily from colds and flus. He usually ends up with a fever but luckily at this point in the game we don't have to rush to an emergency room. Nowadays we make sure he stays well-hydrated. Right now we're doing 1.5 liters of water, or about 1500 ml's. Yes, we have had to increase it since the last time we went down from 2 liters to 1.3 liters.

On our last visit to Stanford, which was October 13th, his creatinine was up just a tad so they decided to increase water intake. It really isn't too bad having to add that extra 200ml's. There are some days that are harder to get the required amount of water into him but those days aren't that many thankfully. They said that his creatinine was expected to increase as he grows bigger and that will also means he needs to drink more fluids. When I say that he needs to drink 1.5 liters that is not exclusive to just water that can also be other fluids like juices (or the occasional pop -not a whole pop!) We prefer water just because juice tends to be mostly sugar.

We didn't see any of the regular doctors that we usually deal with, we had a couple of doctors who I have never met in person but I have spoken with one of them on the phone. He was actually the doctor that I spoke with back in January when we were out of town and Joaquin was running a fever back in Reno. He was the one who told us that they aren't so worried about fevers anymore as being indicative of rejection. More or less, fevers now just means staying extra hydrated.

Beyond that a few other minor details we really don't have anything major to report from our visit to Stanford. Joaquin is still a wee man at 31.5 pounds and little bro is catching up at 21.9 pounds (yes, we weighed him on their scale at the doctors'.)

We made a little mini vacation out of our trip to the Bay area. We visited some family on Chris's side in Antioch, CA. Keith and Alene have been major supporters throughout Chris and I's life together starting mainly with Joaquin's birth yet we had not met them in person until that weekend. We stayed with them Saturday afternoon, got up on Sunday morning, had pancakes and hit the road.

We drove down to the Santa Cruz area and met up with our friend Kim at a park right outside of Santa Cruz. From there we went to a redwoods tree park and went for a walk. After that we went to the beach. It was a good trip.

I would like to write more but my computer is running so slow so I'm going to end it here. Hope all is well with everyone!