The Smoke Detector

One week in October, the firemen came to Alli's school to talk about fire safety.  They taught them how to 'Stop, Drop, and Roll', told them about smoke detectors, even told them to go home and talk to the family about planning evacuation and meeting places.  When I asked Alli about it that night, she didn't say much.  She did say something about smoke being in her room and I told her that it wasn't, and that the firemen were just saying "if" there were smoke, this is what you would need to do.  Well, so much for the fire lesson.

Then 3 nights later, I woke up in the middle of the night to a fire detector chirping that the battery needed to be replaced.  (Why does that always happen in the middle of the night?)  Anyway, I thought if Alli could sleep through it, wherever it was, maybe we could just deal with it in the morning.  Well, that didn't happen cause about 30 seconds later she woke up crying.  I went into her room and realized why.  The smoke detector that was mad was the one in her room.  So, I just picked her up and told her she could sleep in our room until we fixed it in the morning.  All seemed fine.....until the next morning.

We fixed the battery, but Alli was scared of it.  She was scared of the smoke detector, scared of her room, scared to go anywhere in the house by herself.  We've had several conversations with her about the smoke detector and how it was our friend, how it protected us, and how it was happy and there was no smoke.  Didn't help.  For the last week, we've had a horrible time at bedtime.  She's scared in her room, so she stays awake.  And if we do get her to fall asleep by rubbing her back, she inevitably wakes up about 5 minutes after we've left and starts screaming.  Our next step was to try to set her up in our spare bedroom, but that wound up failing as well.  I finally relented and we started putting her to bed in our bedroom and that did the trick.  Ugh.  So, crowded once again in our bed, but at least we were getting a fairly good night sleep.  Until this weekend.  For some reason, she started wetting the bed and not waking up!  I woke up both times to find *myself* a little wet and realizing it was from her.  Yuck!!!!  And changing a King size bed in the middle of the night take much longer than changing a twin!!!  That was it - I told her last night at 3:30am that she was no longer allowed to sleep in our room.

So, now we had to figure out how to get her to make peace with the smoke detector (or smoke protector as she calls it, even though she's scared of it).  We decided to cover it with paper.  So Alli drew a smiley face on a sheet of blue paper, and I climbed up a ladder and fastened it to the ceiling around the smoke detector.  I made sure the paper did not actually touch the smoke detector, nor blocked smoke from being able to reach it.  Then Alli said we needed more paper.  Uh oh.  So she got another sheet and I just hung it from one side so it just dangled down.  Then another sheet the same way, and then finally one more.  She said that it was good and it made her happy.  Well, okay.  Time to give it a whirl!

Tonight we put her in her bed and didn't say a word about the smoke detector.  She didn't either.  Kim rubbed her back until she fell asleep, and now suddenly, we think we have a normal night!  Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Moved to a new site

As much as I would love to keep this blog going, anyone that checks in periodically has probably realized that I'm not doing a very good job. And Kim, being the computer geek that he is, decided he wanted to try a new blog service and now is contributing to posts. (Not sure why a new blog service changes why/how you blog, but apparently it does.)

Anyway, he has posted a few pics of Alli on this new blog, so I recommend going to our new site: http://http://www.guerrettefamily.us/

We'll see you there!

Alli getting a trim

Alli is so cute every time she gets a haircut that I have to take a few photos with whatever camera I have with me. For her first haircut, I brought the big boy (Nikon D700). This time I only had my iPhone 4, but it was good enough.

New doctor, new dentist

 

We're having bad luck with most of our family's chosen medical professionals lately.

Our dentist retired and passed his business off to another dentist. The new dentist seems very nice and knowledgeable. And, our dental hygienist, Mary, who is wonderful, now works for the new dentist. That said, there are three reasons we're leaving: 

1. Proximity While the new dentist is no farther from work, he's still west of work.  We live northeast of work.

2. Insurance The old dentist took my dental insurance.  Surprisingly, the new dentist does not.

3. Security Our old dentist was old school; he kept paper records. The new dentist keeps electronic records. The one time I did go to the new dentist, I was impressed by the fact that there was a computer in every examination room. Each computer has access to a central server with patient data on it. After the cleaning and examination, I asked Mary to click on the red shield with 'x' on it in the Windows XP system tray. (*Hint*: a red sheild with the 'x' indicates that Windows thinks something is wrong with you computer's security.) When she clicked on it, a security status window popped up indicating that Automatic Updates were disabled, the Firewall was turned off, and no Anti-virus program was found. WTF! I then asked if the computer had access to the internet.  (*Note*: even without internet access, having an unprotected computer access patient records is very bad.) Mary wasn't entirely sure, so we clicked on Internet Explorer and the default msn.com webpage loaded with the day's recent news headlines.  Holy ---- Batman!  I won't go on with the details of me warning them about this and their assurance that their hired IT help said it was ok (can you say HIPPA violation?).  Let's just say, we will be asking that they share our records with our new dentist, once we get one, and that they promptly delete our records. I'll also be grilling the new dentist about his or her computer security fairly thoroughly.

Our family doctor and pediatrician, on the other hand, has excellent computer security practices.  Each doctor and nurse practitioner has a laptop the carry to the examination rooms that is locked down.  And, like the dentist, we really like the people in the doctor's office.  The problem we have with them can be summed up in one word: availability.  They seem to have taken on more patients then they can handle, and their methods of communication are limited to one: phone.  When we call the office, we always get voicemail.  Callbacks take a long time, and often feel rushed, probably because they have so many callbacks in their queue.  Recently, we had an experience that was the final straw that broke the camel's back.  Jenny called on a Tuesday during business hours to schedule an appointment for a chickenpox vaccination for Alli (the school requires it now).  She left a message, as usual.  After two days of not hearing anything, I called back on that Thursday after hours and left another message.  That was a couple of weeks ago.  We still haven't heard back.