An Eventful Week

It's been an eventful week for us. Not in a good way though.... but we've survived it all and managed to squeeze in some family time in the end.

The Bad Bits!

(1) Wed - the school calls to inform me that Isabelle had 1 round of vomitting & diarhoea and a mild fever. They suspect it may be stomach flu since there had been several cases in the school lately. It's the first time Isabelle has ever had vomitting (previous times when she was a baby was more of a reflux reaction) and diarhoea, and so I kinda panicked. I rushed home from work a bit earlier to pick her up, survived the journey home before she vomitted in the lift and all the way along the corridor leading to our unit! I had to sneak outside to quickly clean up the corridor after washing her up. After a light dinner, we headed to the paed....as it turns out, it wasnt really stomach flu but the paed could not really diagnose what it was either since she only vomitted twice.

Not knowing what to expect, I activated D to come home on Thurs night if possible. On hindsight, I should not have panicked and monitored Isabelle's condition a bit more. Asking him to come home was where all the trouble starts (which I will talk about later)...but really it was my fault. D has a very stressful job...and you can imagine how stressful it is when your client is Apple! As expected of Apple & Steve Job's culture, all they expect is results & perfection, in the most unreasonable timeline. D has been working round the clock, taking conference calls at 2am, and sleeping 2 hours per day for a consecutive 2 weeks!

(2) Thurs - Isabelle looked well and went back to school. Well, partly I sent her to school cos I had to work. Bad bad mummy me! The school calls again in the afternoon, this time she had a high fever of 38.2 degrees and red patches on her face, something which looked like an allergy, but they could not figure out what! I am grateful though that the teachers understood that I could not get away from work immediately, and reassured me that everything was still under control, and they would take good care of her and asked me not to worry. Back home later that night, I checked the internet and realised that perhaps Isabelle may be allergic to the anti diarhoea and stomach cramps medication (known side effects are rash & hives!) and stopped the medication immediately.

D is now waiting at the airport for his flight back; and the flight gets delayed. He boards..and they announce a technical problem...and unboard, board back again half an hour later....and another technical problem ...and unboard....and finally get to fly back on the 3rd time. During this time that he is not at the factory, some guys amend the test script of the machines, and guess what? they could not restate it back to the original condition to run the production line...how brilliant! When D arrives back and calls back to the factory for an update, he is upset and stressed that production has not started and they have a committed delivery to Apple on Sat!

Fri - The red patches on Isabelle's face disappears confirming she may indeed be allergic to the medication, and she goes to school as D is working from home as standby. D tries to help run all the errands after his conference calls, and on his way home, meets with an accident. Yes, this is when our weekend just went downhill. I think, and D admits too that he was very very stressed and probably not concentrating hard on the road, plus it was raining quite heavily. Our car front bumper was badly dented and is at the workshop for repair now. At this point, I know i really ought to be thankful that no one was hurt or injured, and that the accident happened before he picked Isabelle up from school.

The production line continues to fail and fail, causing more stress to D. Imagine the factory guys had to call him at 3am, 4am and 5am asking what to do next? The 3am call gave Isabelle a bad fright, sending her wailing for a good 10-15 minutes inconsolable. All 3 times, I was the only one who really heard the phone ring and had to rush to pick it up, cos D has hardly slept the last couple of days and was knocked out.

In summary, we spent most of the weekend sorting out the car repairs & insurance claims stuff, getting a rented car delivered over, clearing the junk out of our car, transferring the car seat over to the rented car, me getting myself familiarised with driving a different car! It's been hard driving the rented car cos the steering wheel is super heavy giving me arm aches, and there is no remote to open the car doors and I keep forgetting to lock the car. Seriously annoying, but then I guess its better than not having a car at all.

The Good Bits!

Thanks & gratefulness for living in our new home. Having a pool downstairs and a park at our door step meant we could still squeeze in some family time amidst all that chaos (the car issues and D's crazy work demands). We headed to the pool on sat afternoon for a cool dip before heading to church. And on sunday morning, we went to the park as usual, this time exploring a different part and discovering a really nice playground with a huge sand pit. Unfortunately Isabelle kept moaning dirty dirty as the sand got into her sandals. And so we headed back to the grass patches instead.

More thanks as Isabelle's vomitting & diarhoea turned out to be one-off, and she was back to her normal self again by Friday. Seeing her happy & healthy is the most important thing to us, and something we try not to take for granted especially since has a week immune system at this moment.

It;s been helluva week indeed. But we've survived it all, with God's blessings. Things could have turned out worst, and I'm really thankful that 2 of the most important people in my life are well & safe!