August was without doubt one of the craziest months in the last few years. It started off with the normal “getting used to being a new Dad” type of stuff. Then as we were thinking about our upcoming trip to find a new house our car started acting funny. Long story short it was not good, and we made the decision to get a new one. We should have probably done that in the first place, hindsight is always a great thing…
So we had some fun and games as we picked out a new car, checked our already stretched summer finances and finally took delivery of a shiny Subaru Forester on Wednesday 5 August. It immediately produced some awful, loud static noise as we drove it home from the showroom. By Friday they had given us a courtesy car while they figured out what was wrong. Friday night they had it back to us with a new audio system installed.
Then we figured it would be great to catch up with Adam in Washington DC, and to iron out any further car bugs before our house hunting trip. So 8-9 August we stayed with Adam and checked out the Air and Space Museum. We also took William to the White House, and a few other touristy spots. He won't remember it, but he got to see the capital, along with lots of rockets, planes and satellites.
On Monday I went back into work, left a little early and William was making some strange noises. When we got home I felt his head, and it was really hot. As Louise was getting the thermometer William was sick for the first time ever - all over me. When I checked his temperature it was up at 39.8C, in excess of 103F (checked with two thermometers). This scared us so we rushed him to the children's hospital, as any nervous first time parent would.
As they were looking at him we started to realise that it might be quite serious. They ran a battery of tests, including urine and blood tests, cultures, X-rays, spinal fluid and constant vitals. They found a bacterial infection, I have never been so scared and stressed before. I found out that I am a very protective father, and was disheartened as more and more tests came in and we were admitted for an extended stay.
All of our friends were out of town at the time too, which made things more difficult. It turned out he had an E. Coli infection in his blood. We were lucky in some senses, the antibiotic they started him on as we were admitted was one of the best for the strain of E. Coli he had been infected with. His blood only showed bacteria in the first culture they took. Still, they were talking about 14 days on IV antibiotics using a central line as an inpatient.
Thankfully after talking with them they found an alternative oral antibiotic therapy that recent studies showed were just as effective. So he could come home on the Thursday evening. It was great to be home again, although very stressful to have William get so ill so quickly. I had never imagined he could get so ill so quickly, it reminded me off the waiting for them to tell us he was OK after he was born.
After that we tried to get back to life as normal. Until the end of the month when we had our big trip up to Clifton Park, NY to look for houses. Friday went very badly, we saw one house which was terrible and everything else we had lined up had been rented before we got into town. Saturday we saw another house before leaving for Boston - it was OK, but not really what we were looking for.
Saturday afternoon we drove over to Boston, MA to go to Jeff's wedding. It was great to have a break from looking at houses. We had a great time looking around Cambridge and Boston, the wedding was really nice and William managed to get lots of attention. Thanks for inviting us Jeff - it was a really nice day. William's first formal event. Before leaving on Sunday we visited the Harpoon brewery to sample some of their beers.
We found several new places listed on Sunday before leaving Boston, so we set up appointments for Monday. Monday was something of a three bears type of day. The first house we saw was close to work, but too small. The second house we saw was about the right size, good state of repair but a little expensive and too far from work. The third place we saw advertised as we were thinking about how to compromise, saw it at 6:30pm and it was just right.
So in the end we didn’t have to extend our stay, found a nice place that is close to where I will work and Louise really likes it. We just had a 500 mile drive back home. That was pretty much August, I did manage to squeeze some time in for hacking on code, taking care of the cluster at work, and general work stuff. September we just need to do our first 500 mile interstate move. It should be relatively simple after an intercontinental move surely 