Rushton Hall

A frantic call from Tracie said it all. Sydney felt a little warm when I left for the airport last Tuesday. By Wednesday night, Tracie reported that Sydney was running a fever and had three nosebleeds that did not want to stop. Tracie was in a panic. She was about the take the baby to the emergency room to see if they can do something about the fever and bloody nose. The Children's Motrin did not seem to be effective to keep the fever down. As it turned out, Sydney had yet another ear infection in her right ear and upper respiratory infection. Something is going around. A lot of kids and adults had been getting URI during the last several weeks. I blame the freakin' terrorists. They must have dumped something in the water supply.

I have spent the last few days in jolly ol' England on business. It was my first trip to the UK ever. I landed in London Gatwick Airport and took a long 3-hour drive from London to a town called Corby. The company had booked rooms at a gorgeous hotel called Rushton Hall for us.


The place was simply unbelievable. All of the hotel rooms are named, not numbered. Its history is rich, and each room is elegant and almost magical. We lounged around in the Great Hall, admiring the gorgeous architecture, stained glass windows, paintings, and great fireplace. After a long day of meetings, it was so nice to get lost for a few hours in English history.

It was rumored that the Hope Diamond was kept in Rushton Hall. I stayed in a room called Hope Bedchamber. I never made the connection until I was told about it. Of course, the owner of the Hope Diamond was also the owner of this place in the 1800s.
How cool was that? What was even cooler was to learn that Charles Dickens had visited Rushton many times and conceived the idea of Haversham Hall for his novel "Great Expectations" while staying at Rushton Hall.

Despite my momentary giddiness for having walked some of the same halls that the great Charles Dickens had walked, my thoughts were always on my stressed out wife and sick little girl. I need to get home. I hate it that I was not there to help my beautiful wife out with the sick baby and to hold and comfort Sydney when she was so sick. When I got back to the hotel in London tonight to wait to fly home tomorrow morning, I saw some pictures that my niece had taken during Christmas. She is a professional photographer and shared a nice black and white photo of Tracie and Sydney with the family. It made me miss them even more.

For everyone who has ever complained that I never post a picture of Tracie, now you should be satisfied. The picture just showed mother and daughter bonding for a moment while the rest of the family milled about waiting for the moment to open our presents. Sydney was napping on her mother's chest while Tracie was contemplating whatever it was a woman of her enormous intellect was contemplating. Hopefully, it wasn't the 50 different ways to kill me and making it look like an accident for nagging the entire vacation about how much we NEEDED a portable GPS navigation system.

One of the funnier pictures was of me huffing and puffing in an attempt to cool Sydney down while Tracie was frantically fanning her with a Christmas card. The house was getting pretty warm with about 20 fairly hyper people waiting for Santa Claus to screw up and actually leave us presents instead of flipping us off while flying by our house again. Sydney was soaked with sweat. So I huffed and I puffed and blew blasts of air her way. Unfortunately, she couldn't take my bad breath and turned away. Oh well, I tried.

It's a new year!

2007 is starting off with a bang. Before I knew what hit me, I'm already on the 17th day of the new year. Where had the days gone? Sydney is chugging along just fine. A few updates to report. She weighed in at 17.5 lbs and measured 27.5 inches during her 9-mo check up during the first week of 2007. Her first upper tooth is starting to show...FINALLY; she has had the bottom two teeth since October. I gave her her first black eye last week when I wasn't watching her very closely, and she banged her face against the corner of the coffee table. It's time to childproof everything. I have procrastinated long enough. Her forehead seems to always have a bruise from trying to stand up on the bed to play with the headboard but not having a very good grasp of the headboard for support. But she's tough and doesn't cry much from the pain. She is still sleeping in our bed, smack dab between the wife and I. We tried to put her in the crib a few times but always ended up letting her sleep in the bed the next night because we missed her. Sydney, on the other hand, could care less where she sleeps. She is sleeping through the night just fine but she does have a problem with tossing and turning a lot.

Sydney is eating a lot of solid food now. And she is quite proficient with finger foods. She enjoys....correction, she LOVES....those yeast rolls from a restaurant called Roadhouse Grill. We have been giving her the soft inner portion of the rolls in small morsels. We couldn't put them down fast enough for her to snatch them off the table and shove them into her mouth. She also loves minestrone soup and bread from the Olive Garden restaurant. Slowly but surely, my baby is growing up. Can't wait until she's ready to share a BBQ Chicken sandwich with her old man.

Holiday Pics

Just so Shirley will stop nagging me, here are some holiday pictures of Sydney. As Christmas Eve approaches, everyone was excited. This was especially true for Sydney who was one of the designated Santa's helpers.It was her first Christmas, and, boy, what an honor!! Sydney has been a good girl, for the most part. She loved my brothers, laughing hysterically with them at times. She enjoyed the Christmas spirit so much that she didn't mind wearing the silly, oversize hat.

She crawled on the carpet from one place to another, making sure all was ready for the big moment of handing out and opening presents. Sydney just knew that she would be getting a lot of presents. Boy, oh, boy. She loved my dad who, despite his failing health, spent a lot of energy entertaining her. And so, the moment came when we all gathered around the table, and Santa's little helpers were handing out presents one by one. Sydney accepted her presents with glee. She also did her job well, such that she was hoisted onto my sister-in-law's shoulders in celebration.

Sydney stayed up until 2:00 am to celebrate Christmas with the rest of us, which totally destroyed her sleep pattern for the next several days. But I guess she only gets to celebrate her first Christmas once so it was worth the price.

Overall, Sydney got along with everyone but taking more time to get used to some family members than others. But she didn't want to have anything to do with my mom. :-( What a giant disappointment for me and for her. She had been waiting for 9 months to hold Sydney in her arms. Sydney would starting crying and squirming immediately whenever my mom tried to hold her or even touch her. After 7 full days of trying to ease her into letting my mom hold her for a few minutes, I gave up and told my mom just to do it. Out of desperation, Mom grabbed Sydney and held the squirming little terror for a couple of minutes before giving her back to me to console the sobbing baby. Poor Mom, though. I tried a few times to sit with Sydney near my mom to get them acquainted. It brought tears to my eyes to watch Mom reach out to stroke the baby's hand since she couldn't hold her only to see Sydney pull her hand away. I felt so sad for my mom as I know how much she loved the baby. Hopefully when Sydney is a little older, her reaction would be much different.

We decided to spend the day after Christmas at my brother's house where it was relatively quiet to give ourselves as well as Sydney as chance to recuperate. She had a great time playing in the playpen with her cousin, Sabrina. Sydney adored her, always jumping up and down excitedly when Sabrina came into the room. They were inseparable; Sabrina would insist on sitting next to Sydney everywhere we went. It was really nice to see them bonding like sisters.