Flanagan Clan

When we first moved into our apartment I discovered a little plate (like a switch plate or outlet plate) that looked like it had some sort of speaker or microphone behind it, and we joked that the apt. complex was spying on us. Well, last night at 2:45 AM we found out what it was. A FIRE ALARM! We have some roudy young neighbors that live two floors above us, and they often have loud parties or have loud domestic disputes, and pretty much everyone in our building can hear them because they didn’t do a great job soundproofing everything. Well, last night we woke up suddenly to the shrill sound of a fire alarm and, in a dazed state, fumbled around the apartment trying to figure out what had turned it on. Then I realized that the sound was coming from the plate in the wall…. and it was REALLY LOUD. The alarm was going off in every apartment in our unit. We put some scotch tape over the holes in the plate to try to lessen the insanely loud and shrill sound, which helped only a very little bit, and proceeded to get ready to leave the building. After waking up Patrick, who is still sick (and didn’t even wake up when he heard the sound!), and trudging several feet out our door, the neighbors came to us and told us that it was a false alarm, that they had accidentally set it off, and that the fire department was on their way to turn it off. We went back inside, I changed Patrick’s diaper and gave him a bottle of electrolytes, and he went immediately back to bed. We, however, could not go back to bed because the alarm was still on. So we cleaned up our house from our little Irish dinner. I got through most of the dishes before the alarm went off. During that time you could hear angry neighbors outside upset that it was taking so long to get the alarm off. It took 40 whole minutes! After the alarm was off I tried to get back to sleep and got to hear, instead, the roudy neighbors (they’re a boyfriend and girlfriend) have a big fight and there was a bit of banging going on. Not too long after that, we saw flashing lights through our bedroom window. One peep showed two fire trucks parked out in front of our apartment, though we’re not exactly sure why they had come, now that the alarm was off. It was a long time before we were able to get back to sleep.

We really need to get our own place…

This week has been quite crazy. On Tuesday I took Patrick to Women’s Bible Study at the church, and I think he caught a little bug. Some of the other moms had mentioned that their families were getting over a flu bug that was going around. Well, Patrick managed to catch it. On Wednesday when I went to give Patrick his morning bottle, his crib was a mess from throwing up, and he was not feeling too well. He had a 99.9 degree temp all day yesterday, very loose stools, and wasn’t his active little self. Today I woke up to find another crib mess and a still very unhappy little boy. It’s so hard to see your little one suffering from any kind of sickness, but this has been the first big flu that Patrick has ever had, so it’s been especially difficult for us. We have him on clear liquids, jello and advil right now. I really hope this sickness clears up soon because Friday is his special little holiday, St. Patrick’s Day, and we are planning to have a special dinner with Oma and Opa that night, and it would be sad if our own little St. Patrick wasn’t able to enjoy his party.

We’d appreciate prayers for our little guy, and more prayers that Andrew and I won’t catch Patrick’s flu. Thanks!

Hey, we just finished upgrading from Blogger to WordPress. We’ve kept all the old posts so except for a slightly different look, everything should look mostly the same. Let us know if you see anything askew!

Here are some pictures of little Patrick from the past few days!

Patrick loves his nana

Patrick likes his Curious George sticker on his forehead!

Patrick has banana all over himself!

Patrick wears his very first tie on Sunday!

The tie lasted for about 5 minutes, before he pulled it off!

One of the things that many expectant mothers like to do is try to guess the gender of their baby before it is born or before they find out via ultrasound. When I was pregnant with Patrick I remember, just for the fun of it, taking several online quizzes that could determine the gender of your baby. Most of them were using old wives’ tales, such as if the maternal grandmother’s hair is gray, the baby is a boy and so on. The other popular method for determining gender was through an ancient Chinese gender chart. Well, according to all those old wives’ tales, Patrick should have been a girl! The only thing that pointed to him being a boy was the Chinese gender chart. According to an online survey, many people try to pick the gender of their baby using this ancient Chinese chart, though according to another survey, it only had a 60% accuracy! I’m not a superstitious person and I don’t believe any of the old wives’ tales. Almost all of them have been proven false! Even things like determining gender of the baby by the way you carry (high or low) has been scientifically proven to be inaccurate. I don’t know why people even bother to remember these silly tales anymore… What’s even more funny is that people can’t even agree on what certain “signs” are suppose to tell you. If you look up info on taking the draino test to find the gender of your baby, you will read conflicting reports on which color indicates what gender. Some sites said blue shows you’re having a girl, but others said blue shows you’re having a boy. Some didn’t even mention the color blue! Likewise, if you dangle a string over your stomach, it can either swing in a circle or swing back and forth. One way should tell you you’re having a girl, and the other way a boy. However, some sites said for a boy it would swing in a circle, and others said it would go back and forth. Which is it? The reality is that it’s neither! Does anyone honestly think that a needle on a thread can really tell you what the gender of your baby is?

In case you’re wondering, not that it really gives any meaningful insight, I did take the same quizzes again with this pregnancy. One site that determined gender using old wives tales told me that I’m 100% likely to have a girl. The Chinese gender selection chart also said I would be having a girl, based solely on my age and the month of conception. I’m almost inclined to think the baby might be a boy, just to prove all these crazy methods of figuring out the gender wrong! I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!