Second E.R. visit in as many weeks

For fifteen months we avoided the dreaded new parent visit to the Emergency Room and counted ourselves as among the lucky as all our fellow parents endured the experience for one reason or another.  Then last week with the Gastroenteritis it was visit number one for us and we no longer had the perfect record.  This morning was to be a Daddy-Daughter day out and about an hour into the outing Arianna decided it would be fun to swing from Daddy's arm while flinging herself at the ground simultaneously.  Daddy holding on to her hand so she wouldn't run off, as she is wont to do, didn't let go fast enough.  As a result, she managed to dislocate her elbow (something called nursemaids elbow we later learned) with the force of her movement.  At first I wasn't sure she was hurt or just frustrated but after 20 minutes of crying and her clearly favoring her left elbow we picked up Mommy and headed to the hospital.  We were lucky that it was a very slow day and they got us in almost immediately to see a Doctor and get x-rays.  Fortunately, the x-rays showed no fractures and the Doctor was able to pop her elbow back into place.  Once he did that the crying stopped and she pretty quickly got back full range of motion.  It was a frightening morning though apparently not that unusual event as Doctor told us that young children have loose ligaments making them more susceptible to this.  We told Arianna after that she has used up her quota of visits for the year and would appreciate not having any more.  She was fine rest of day even if her parents were a little frazzled.  Oh well, if this is worst she does to herself we will continue to count ourselves amongst the lucky.

Valentine's Day

Arianna is finally getting over her stomach bug and so things are a lot better around the house without that worry weighing on us.  Yesterday was Valentine's Day so Arianna and I got Katie a fruit mug gift from a local company.

Gastroenteritis and a Memorial Walk

The Cayman Islands are currently undergoing a pretty massive outbreak of gastroenteritis and both Kathleen and Arianna have been down with it this week.  The Health Services Authority actually released a special bulletin saying that at this time of the year they normally get 15 case a week but that in each of the past two weeks they have had over 60 cases a week reported.  We spent a good deal of Thursday in the Emergency Room to get Arianna checked for possible dehydration as she had been throwing up and suffering from diarrhea.  She has been good about drinking which has probably kept her from being in as bad a shape as the many toddlers they have actually admitted to the hospital instead of just examining, prescribing some anti nausea medicine and releasing like the they did with her.  Katie had come down with the stomach bug Tuesday and been under the weather for a couple of days before Arianna also caught it.  My father was on island for the memorial walk that we hold every year in February to raise money for the scholarship fund at the college and the college board of trustees meeting and even being very careful with contact he has come down with it too.  So far I have avoided it and with Katie and Arianna getting better and John headed home I am hopeful that this one will pass me by (knock on wood).

The Memorial walk chose as its theme this year a traditional Caymanian saying "Try come so walk wid me nah" which translates to lets take a walk together.  We had about 50 walkers and everyone wanted to know where Arianna and Katie were.  We did get a special t-shirt for the memorial walk made for Arianna when we planned to have her walk with us and here she is in it.

USS Kittiwake

This afternoon we hired our regular sitter who watches Arianna while Katie teaches for some weekend work so we could do a snorkel together of the USS Kittiwake.  The Kittiwake is an American naval ship that was in operation from 1945 to 1994.  It is a Chanticleer Class Submarine Rescue Ship and its most famous duty was the recovery of the black box after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.  After it was retired, it was donated to the the Cayman Islands by the United States Government and was refitted over a fifteen year period to become a man made reef.  It arrived in late 2010 and was sunk off of Seven Mile Beach in January 2011.  It sits in 65 feet of water but because it is four stories high, it is a fantastic snorkel (as well as a world class scuba dive).  We rode a catamaran out to it and spent a good thirty minutes swimming over, around and when we free dove almost in the upper parts of it.  The trip also included a second snorkel out to a site off West Bay that we hadn't been to before called Boggy Sands.  Katie and I realized as we were riding the boat out that it had been several months at least since we had last snorkeled together so this was a great early Valentine present to ourselves.