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Lauren’s getting big and her first fever

So I brought Lauren to her pediatrician on Thursday.

She’s now 15 lbs 12 oz, in 75 percentile. Her head circumference and length are in the 50 percentile.

She also got her second set of shots: Hib, DTaP, and PCV. This time we got the good nurse, she was real quick with the shots, and Lauren only cries for couple of seconds during the whole process.

After she got home, she fell asleep and slept for quite awhile. When she woke up at around 4pm though, I noticed she had a slight fever. The fever got worse after dinner. I measured her temperature (under-arm), and it was about 99.5 F. According to our medical books, it’s slightly higher than the normal range. I got a bit worried, and called her doctor’s office. A nurse called back about an hour later, asking a bunch of questions. She assured me it’s normal reaction to the shots, and told me to give her Infant Tylenol if she becomes too fussy. I didn’t give her the Tylenol because she was able to sleep through the night.

I called the doctor’s office again today, and got hold of another doctor in the office. The doctor basically told me the same thing: make sure no rash develops, no swelling around the injection sites, and bring her in if her temperature got above 102F.

Lauren spent today in peace and quiet, she was given one dose of Tylenol today, and has not had a favor since 10am.

I still need to learn how to use the rectal thermometer which seems like a daunting task but offers more accurate temperature measurement.

Please pray for us, for Lauren to get better, and for her to continue her healthy growth.

Have a good long weekend.

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Lauren update 05/15/2006

It’s been a hectic month.

I went to Microsoft National Architect Forum on April 18th, came back two days later with a cold.

I then spent a week trying to recover from the cold. In the meantime, my father-in-law went back to China and we had a hard time adjusting to his absence.

In the meantime, my group at work re-organized while I was gone, there were quite a few changes.

Lauren’s nasal congestion got worse over the days, and I spent quite some time everyday trying to clear her nose. She still spit up milk and then she started crying during the evenings.

I went to the Food Marketing Institute Show 2006 in Chicago, and just came back on May 9th.

We brought Lauren’s to the post-office to get her own passport on Friday.

Hopefully, I’m done with business traveling the whole year, and I can spend more time with Lauren and my family.

Lauren’s doing alright. I brought her to her pediatrician on Wednesday. Our Ped answered all my questions, and could not find anything wrong with Lauren. We were both glad but also not so sure about the advice given because they sounded remarkably like the ones given before. We’ll just have to run with it.

To summarize, Lauren’s doing well, she’s gaining weight, and now spend quite a few hours of the day giggling and interacting with people.

We are looking for recommendation for good nannies in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in the East Bay. If you know any good ones, please email me.

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Back from USNAF

I spent last Tuesday to Thursday at the Microsoft US National Architect Forum.

The USNAF has recently been broadened from a regional event to a national event. Basically, Microsoft brings out a group of IT architects from various companies, mostly from their clients, and provide them a place to network and share architectural thoughts.

My company only got one ticket to the event, so I was a bit surprised I was the one to attend. It was hosted in Vail Colorado, a great skiing destination. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any skiing done because the schedule was really packed with sessions and the ski season was almost over at this time of the year.

There was also a problem with my flight. I originally booked a flight on Tuesday that leaves OAK at 11:10am, and I already printed out the boarding pass from home. On Tuesday morning, before I left for the airport, I had the foresight of checking on the flight status, and found out the flight was cancelled! I wasn’t even contacted about this, and I learned from my travel agent that I was bumped to a later flight, which leaves OAK at 5pm. I was a bit disappointed, someone could have at least let me know that my flight was cancelled. Anyway, the 5pm flight introduced a new problem. There was a reception scheduled on Tuesday night, however, since the flight takes 2 hours, there is 1 hour timezone difference between Vail and Oakland, and the Vail hotel I’m staying in is 140 miles away from the airport. I only got to the hotel at around 11:30pm, well past the reception time. So I missed the reception, which was definitely a good opportunity to network.

Another thing I found out was I was feeling dizzy because of 8000 feet above sea-level of Vail. I didn’t sleep well at all the first night, only for about 5 hours.

I woke a bit groggy the next morning, and I had a full day ahead of me, so I got up and started the day.

There was a bus waiting in front of the hotel taking us from our hotel to the Marriott for the morning session. I got on the bus, and arrived at Mar riot within 5 minutes. It was a nice day, the sky was blue and mountain-side was covered by snow.

I mainly went there to find out what people are doing in Enterprise Architecture, and how far down the road they are with Service Oriented Architecture. Thus most of the sessions I signed up for are either panel discussions or round-table on EA and SOA topics.

Most of the sessions were well organized and well presented. However, most weren’t presented at the level of detail that I’m interested in.

Overall, it was a fine experience. I was able to talk to people in the same line of work. The only regret I had was that I wasn’t able to finish the last keynote session by Paul Glen, the author of the bestseller Leading Geeks. I stayed for the first 30 minutes, and it was the most fun I had during the whole NAF. However, I had to leave to catch my plane. I did get a free copy of the book, and I’ll review it once I’m done reading it.

Until next time.