My Cabbage of True Love

Gwen and Chloe!

2011-09-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

Well, my baby girls are a week old today.

Yep.

After being put on complete bed rest a week and a half ago, and switching to a stronger medication to stop contractions, I still ended up going into labor on Friday night (the 2nd). Long story short: We went to the hospital, I was dilated to a 5, they couldn't stop my contractions, my Dr. was out of town so the other Dr. from her office who was on call came over to the hospital, decided he didn't want to attempt a breach delivery of a twin that early due to very high risks (34 weeks 5 days along), so I agreed to a C-section. It was quick and felt very strange with all the tugging and pulling, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, other than the part where they were trying to push Baby A out by pressing really really hard on my upper abdomen/lower ribs. That part was quite painful. Spinal block took care of all the other pain. It was very weird not being able to move my legs and feet at all for several hours.

So, at 12:18am, Saturday the 3rd of September, Gwen Van Dusen was born, weighing in at 5lbs 5oz, and at 12:19am, Chloe Van Dusen was born, weighing in at 5lbs 6oz. They went straight to the NICU, of course. Gwen was on a CPAP for a few hours on Saturday, then was doing fine and was switched to room air. Chloe was on the CPAP for several days, then very suddenly apparently decided she desperately wanted to bottle feed, so they switched her to a nasal cannula delivering oxygen, which she was on for several days, and just got off of yesterday. Both girls are eating well now, though Gwen tends to be a little pickier and sometimes won't eat much, and Chloe is generally a little chow hound. They are both finally gaining weight again instead of losing weight. Gwen was on phototherapy for one day but has been fine since.

They let me stay at the hospital until Wednesday since the girls were in the NICU. It was very hard emotionally going home while leaving them there, but I've been trying hard to rest and recuperate and spend a bit of time loving on my boys since getting home, so that I will have lots of energy to take care of the girls once they're released. Recovering from a C-section has been drastically different than recovering from either of the boys' births. I am really looking forward to being able to twist, bend, and pick things up off the floor again at some point. My feet finally today just stopped being swollen. I spend most of my time sitting on my bed, a large portion of that time is spent pumping, which has been going surprisingly well. I am just barely managing to keep up with how much the girls are eating every day. I get my walking in on our trips to the hospital every day, twice a day. It wears me out, and I'm generally ready for a nap as soon as we get home from seeing the girls. Mike put reminders into the calendar on my phone for when to take my pain meds, which has been very helpful, and has kept most of the pain at bay.

Gwen and Chloe have both been doing really, really well, and might get to come home as soon as Tuesday, assuming they don't have any more episodes where they "de-sat" (significant drop in their oxygen levels in their blood). I am starting to feel a bit more confident about taking care of them. It's harder than taking care of a full-term baby. Despite being a really good size, especially for their gestational age at birth, especially for twins, they are still little itty-bitty girls who require extra-cautious care. I love getting to hold them and snuggle with them, and they are doing better for me at eating from their bottles. I'm still working on burping them, I'm not very confident with that yet. And swaddling...it is daunting trying to swaddle someone so little bitty. I think I need one of their nurses to talk me through it one of these times. They are currently allowed to try nursing up to a couple times a day, we've been doing it once a day in the mornings the past few days. It doesn't take more than a few minutes before they're completely exhausted from the effort, but they are doing marvelously well overall and have impressed all of the lactation consultants that have come in to help us.

They both have lots of dark hair, and look a lot like their brothers to me. Gwen is a bit more on the petite side, and Chloe has adorable chubby cheeks already. We still have no idea whether or not they are identical, and will probably just have to order a DNA home test kit (cheek swabs) sometime to find out for sure.

And now for the best part: pictures!

Gwen:

Chloe:

Together (Gwen on left, Chloe on right):

Starfish

2011-08-21T13:36:00.002-07:00

I've got a month left, hopefully, before the babies get here. We've got the third bedroom cleaned out ready to move them in there whenever I decide they need to be in there instead of in my room. We've got two cribs. We've got clothes, and blankets, and a twin nursing pillow and a nursing stool, and bottles, and baby soap, and washcloths and towels, and hangers, and wipes, and so so so many diapers. I've ordered a stroller that should be getting here in not too many days now, the Valco Baby Tri-Mode EX Twin. It's a very nice, very expensive stroller.

Let me talk about the stroller for a bit, because I'm pretty excited about it. It's a double, side-by-side stroller. Both seats can recline completely flat, and the reclines are independent of each other, as are the sun shades, which are nice and large. There are storage pockets on the backs of the seats that can zip off revealing a mesh peek-a-boo cooling window. There are two attachments we are planning on getting as soon as they're not backordered anymore: a toddler joey seat, and a hitchhiker board. The joey seat hooks onto the front of the stroller, higher up than the other two seats. The hitchhiker board hooks onto the back and provides a nice place for an older child to stand when they get tired of walking. So with both of those, all four children will be able to ride on the stroller! So, I'm psyched.

I'm particularly psyched about the stroller because I'm really, really looking forward to going on walks, out of the house. After a whole bunch of contractions a few weekends ago (and a trip to the hospital for monitoring when one bout wouldn't stop despite the terbutaline), I am now on a regular every-six-hours dosage of terbutaline. It's working really well, I haven't had any bouts of contractions since I started taking it regularly, but I do still have sporadic contractions, sometimes painful, particularly if I do, oh, pretty much anything other than sitting on the couch or in bed. I've read several great books, I've beaten quite a few iPhone games, I've done a bit of crocheting, but lately I've been feeling lazy and have mostly played a lot of solitaire. Oh, and basic child care like diaper changes and potty training, and the occasional load of laundry, and sometimes I get fed up and pick up all the toys off the floor, but that's pretty much it. I've had a cold the past week and a half, so I haven't gone to church, so the only time I've gotten out of the house in the past two weeks is to go to the doctor's.

Everything is looking good though. No signs of the babies coming excessively early (though I'm 33 weeks now so they'd do okay most likely if they were born soon). Baby A is still head down and likely to stay that way, which bodes well for birthing. She's 4lbs. 3oz. right now, based on my ultrasound on Thursday. Baby B is currently head up, and also likely to stay that way, though she sometimes flops over sideways I think. She's 4lbs. 14oz. right now, quite a bit chubbier than her will-probably-be-older sister. So, they're growing well, and will both hopefully be over 5lbs. when they're born, which is what I was aiming for. They gave me ridiculously bad heartburn for a couple of weeks, but that seems to have subsided a bit, so they must've shifted around. They kick and move around a fair bit. It's rather odd feeling one kick my pelvis while the other kicks my ribs, though that doesn't happen terribly often. Baby B gets hiccups sometimes, I haven't noticed Baby A having any yet.

Aiden likes telling me that he likes my belly. He comes up and puts his hand on it sometimes and says hi to them, and occasionally will play with his baby doll after, and put her down for a nap on a pillow. He's started preschool and seems to be enjoying it as far as I can tell. He gets to ride to and from with a girl he knows from nursery. He now knows what a lowercase letter "a" looks like, and has been particularly excited after having gotten to use glue (am I a bad mommy for never letting him use glue at home?) during one class, and getting to paint (on purple paper!) another day. He's doing reasonably well with potty training. He still has small accidents most every day, and occasionally big accidents when he gets caught up in what he's doing and doesn't want to stop to use the potty. Overall he's doing much better though. He has been growing, growing, growing, particularly his feet. We need to get him some new shoes, I think size 10's now. He likes running around the house with his church shoes on, and likes having socks on both his feet and his hands. He really likes playing with his foam "Thor" sword, and we have been trying to teach him to hold it with two hands so he has a little more control over it. He and Caleb will occasionally sword fight and whack each other's play swords repeatedly while making sounds effects and laughing. Aiden also loves pretending to fix things, and helping cook, and playing with PlayDoh, and all sorts of normal 3-year-old activities. He's particularly enjoyed watching Kung Fu Panda most every day lately, as well as InterStella 5555, and My Neighbors, the Yamadas, and Lion King.

Caleb has also been growing a lot. He's got three canines now, two of them just came through a couple days ago. He absolutely loves watching My Neighbor Totoro, and is starting to enjoy watching Baby Signing Time again after disliking it for a couple of months. There are some things things where he is exactly the same as Aiden was at this age (like the obsession with shoes, and hats), but I'm frequently amazed by how different they are from each other. Aiden has always been very independent. Caleb is a snuggler. He climbs up onto my lap all the time to give me a snuggle before running off to play again. Aiden has almost always been a very good eater. Caleb is sometimes picky and will refuse to eat half the food I offer him. Aiden never had any problems with nursery, he didn't ever suffer from separation anxiety when we left him there, but Caleb generally cries for at least 10 minutes at the beginning of nursery every week, and frequently breaks down again sometime before it's over. He also has a hard time with going over to other kids' houses to play without me there, and cries for 5-15 minutes before he'll get distracted and start playing. Aiden is a bit nervous about heights and falling, whereas Caleb has absolutely no fear, and absolutely loves getting tossed up into the air and falling back down. Aiden started talking on the early side, and Caleb is just starting to seem interested in talking. Speaking of talking, here's a lovely list of signs Caleb does regularly, followed by words he tries to say sometimes:

Signs:
Cracker
More
Wash hands
Brush teeth
Water
Hat
Sleep
Eat
Milk
All done
Banana
Bubble
Book

Words:
Shoes
Cracker (gager)
Water (wa)
Wash (awsh)
Baby (baybeh)
Hat (ha)
Reggie (my in-laws' dog, he says JiJi)
Milk (ilk)
Eat (ee)
Please (eeesss)
Up
Banana (nana)
Yay
Bubble (buhbuh)
Book (ook)
Me (memememememememe)
Daddy (da-eee)

That's all I can remember right now. He sometimes clasps his hands for a few seconds when we say prayers. He loves sitting and "reading" his books to himself, turning all the pages and looking at the pictures. He likes to dance, which consists of spinning around in circles until he falls over. He likes clapping and saying Yay. He's started noticing his reflection in shiny surfaces around the house and will put his face right up against it and say Baby and smile and touch it. He sometimes will try to give kisses, which consists of him pressing his whole lower face against your cheek and going "mmmm". His teeth have continued their trend of coming in ridiculously slowly, causing him weeks of suffering, crankiness, and runny noses (and the occasional fever). He loves stacking things, like stacking cups and stacking rings, and Duplos. He also really really likes throwing things all over the ground. He uses utensils quite well, and is probably better at it than Aiden was at this age. He loves playing with his brother, and absolutely adores his Grandpa and cries whenever anybody that isn't Grandpa comes to the door. He likes doing anything Aiden is doing, including coloring, painting, PlayDoh, sword-fighting, throwing balls, and sometimes throwing tantrums too.

Both kids love playing outside, and love playing in the water in their kiddie pool and making mud and digging holes in the dirt and driving their little play cars. They both love baths, and going for walks in the stroller, and playing in the sand at the playground. They like hitting things and drumming and playing one loud shrieky note on their recorder and whacking keys on the piano. Aiden sings sometimes, and Caleb sometimes tries to sing a little as well. They like pushing their tiny plastic kid chairs all over the house, which makes a very loud noise that they both love. They like chasing each other and playing hide-and-seek, and completely adore their daddy. When he comes home they both run up to him and jump at him until he picks them both up at once. They love it when he runs through the house holding both of them, and when he drops them out of his arms onto the couch, and they love rough-housing with him before bed. I have been the more "threatening" parent lately, which has its pros and cons.

Mike continues to be ridiculously busy all the time, running extra training sessions at work, attending lots of church meetings, and taking care of me, the kids, and the house whenever he's home. His grandfather (FarFar) passed away and Mike will be going to the funeral in California this weekend. I wish the kids and I could go with him, but I'm pretty sure my doctor would nix any ideas of me traveling anywhere, and I am not going to foist the kids on him by himself again. He took both of them on the Ward Campout last weekend by himself. They had a lot of fun and came home ridiculously dirty, and all three of them were completely exhausted from it.

We continue to be blessed extensively, receiving help from family and ward members without asking for it. People have brought us food, babysat the kids so I could rest, cleaned my house for me, and have been very generous with gifts for the babies. I am continually grateful for their service and kindness, even if I am really behind on writing thank you notes.

Knowing myself and the infrequency of my posting, the next post you read will probably be after the twins arrive. If you want any info before then on how my life is going (sitting on the couch, contractions, etc., absolutely riveting updates I tell you!) I update FaceBook regularly and just started using Google+ as well.

The End.

P.S. My belly is bigger than it has ever been before. Just in case you were wondering.

P.P.S. The title of this post has nothing to do with anything. It's just the first thing that popped into my head when I was looking at the text field. Now you can spend the rest of the day thinking about starfish and how they relate (or don't) to everything else.

Couch potato

2011-06-22T14:26:00.000-07:00

I've officially gained 30lbs. so far this pregnancy, and still have 3 months left to go (hopefully) before the babies arrive (and that will still technically be early). I've also been having contractions for the past month, with several bouts of regular, slightly painful ones, so after my visit to the doctor today, I've got a prescription for Terbutaline to take as needed, and orders to be a couch potato for the next week until I have another (extra) appointment. I'm honestly kind of looking forward to having such a great excuse to not do any housework or cooking or anything and just sit and read the pile of books I've got that I haven't read yet. My cervix still seems fine, so that eased my mind quite a bit, and I've got an ultrasound tomorrow which will hopefully show that everything (and everybody) is still doing fine in there with no signs of coming yet. Of course, if the contractions start getting really frequent and regular, then we'll switch to a consistent dosage of Terbutaline, and if things still don't calm down, then I'll start getting daily steroid shots to boost lung development of the babies. Hopefully things don't go there. My belly is huge already, so I think my uterus is a bit confused and thinking it's about time to get things started because it's almost as big as it was full-term with the other kids. Hey, uterus, take a chill pill, ok? Could be over-activity/dehydration/etc. too. It has been over 100 every day here for the past couple of weeks (107 right now), and I do tend to get more contractions if, say, I do the dishes, or pick up my kids, or whatever. Luckily, Mike is being fantastically helpful whenever he's home, and my in-laws have been wonderful about watching the kids and helping out around the house regularly. And my ward is full of really great and wonderful people who I'm sure would be very happy to help with whatever if we need them to. My hormones have been kind of crazy for the past week, too, and I've broken down crying at around dinner time almost every day since Sunday. My poor family. It's going to be a long, tough summer, I think.

This last weekend, we went with my in-laws to California to see Mike's FarFar and FarMor (grandparents), and visit with his brother and family as well. We stayed at the Lawrence Welk resort, which was very fun. I got to try putting on a real golf green for the first time ever (I'm terrible at it, but probably not as terrible as I am at all the other not-putting parts of golf). We went fishing, catch and release, in a pond, with hotdogs and American cheese for bait, and I caught three fish, which was very exciting. And I de-hooked two of them all by myself, another first for me. I haven't gone fishing in a long time, so I really enjoyed that. And we went swimming at the pool, which the kids loved. And we went to a family party, and Mike's grandparents got to see Caleb for the first time (and have all their great-grandkids there at once), so that was nice, and Aiden absolutely loved getting to play with his cousins again. All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip, except for the contractions in the middle of the night our last night there, and the contractions all the way home in the car, and Google Maps telling us to not take the freeway but to take a little mountainous (beautiful) curvy swervy hilly road instead, which led to me feeling very carsick for half the trip, and Aiden throwing up. Minor negatives though. It was most definitely the last trip of any sort that I'll be taking for probably the next six months at least.

My parents went in to the MTC today, and are off to Guatemala in a couple of days. I'm excited for them, and am sure they'll do wonderfully, but I already miss being able to call my mom whenever I want to talk. I will probably be a hormonal emotional crying wreck when the babies get here and she's not here (then again...I would probaby be a hormonal emotional crying wreck after the babies get here even if she was here...I don't do well on not enough sleep). I'm hopeful that we'll figure out some way to go down and visit sometime during their three years there, though I looked at airfare the other day, and holy cow, it's ridiculous. Maybe that'll be what we spend our tax return on in a couple years. Ooh, tax return should be extra big next year with four kids all of the sudden instead of two. I'm sure we'll need the extra, diapers are expensive enough, let alone buying all-new baby clothes for two babies at once, and all the other incidental expenses associated with having children.

Lets see, other things of note since my last update...Mike and I went on a date to the ballet, which was fun, and led to lots of kicking from the girls in my tummy (did I ever mention they are both most definitely girls?). I think they liked the music. We went to San Diego where Mike shot a wedding (I assisted), and that was fun, though I got sick for several nasty hours the day of the wedding, and missed some of the time when I normally would have been helping him take photos. At least I made it for the surfing, the wedding, and the reception. My computer unexpectedly stopped booting up while we were there too, which led to some interesting hijinks trying to offload the photos from the memory cards to free them up for more photos the rest of the day. Booting into safe mode ended up working eventually, and then I fixed all the broken file permissions, and then my computer decided to work again, yay. We also stopped by a baby stuff store while we were there that weekend and got to try out a bunch of different double strollers. Unfortunately, they didn't have the one stroller I'd really, really like to see in person, but they did have all the others I'd been considering. For now, I have decided to hold off on getting another stroller until I determine whether or not I'm ever actually going to go anywhere ever again by myself with my kids. We had our 5th wedding anniversary, my 28th birthday, and Mother's Day all within a week, which was fun (for me, at least...). I got lots of lovely presents, like a (complete surprise) shed to expand our storage space so we can finally turn our third bedroom into a bedroom rather than a storage room, a beautiful green KitchenAid stand mixer, which has already gotten lots of use, several books that I've been wanting to read (The Way of Kings (fantastic), Cooking for Geeks (also fantastic), and Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid (a bit difficult for me to understand various parts of, but very, very interesting so far)). I also acquired this week a copy of Alcatraz vs. The Evil Librarians, which I'm excited to read. For Father's Day, I decided we should replace our waffle iron, sandwich cooker, griddle, and mini George Foreman grill, and got Mike a combo CuisinArt Griddler (and the optional waffle plates), which so far seems pretty fantastic, and will free up a fair bit of room in my kitchen cupboards. Multi-purpose kitchen appliances are amazing and wonderful. I sorted through a bunch of our stored junk, and have a decent sized pile to sell, and a smaller pile of stuff to toss out, and some stuff to move into the shed, and some stuff to move into other parts of the house, to make room for babies. I wanted to sort through a bunch more stuff this week, but can't now, due to all the contraction stuff. I think that's likely what Mike and I will be doing on his days off for the next month or so.

Oh! I bought window crayons for the kids. They're pretty awesome and I love having colorful scribbles all over our sliding glass door. I can't believe I've never used them before.

To summarize (or not...very long)

2011-04-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

Easter was quite lovely, with some of the most delicious ham ever. My children both ate way too much candy, between three different Easter Egg hunts total, and two pinatas. They had a fantastic time. We watched one of our church-produced films about Christ twice, and tried repeatedly to explain both death and resurrection to Aiden, but I don't think he quite gets it yet.

We went to Virginia Beach for a family reunion with my family, which was fabulous, other than the traveling there and back, which was terrible. There were no direct flights, so we had scheduled a flight with a layover/plane-switch in Cleveland for the way there. But, after an hour or so of hanging out at our gate for our second plane, they announced that there were tornado warnings in Virginia. Eventually, our flight ended up being cancelled, and since it was due to weather, they only gave us a discount on a hotel for the night, and then there wasn't a direct flight from Cleveland to Norfolk with three open seats on it for the next day, so we got to fly to Newark, and from there to Norfolk. Since the storm the day before had apparently smashed the entire East coast, the Newark airport was dealing with the aftermath of loads of cancelled and rescheduled flights, and the flight we were supposed to be on ended up being delayed, and Mike got us switched to a different, earlier flight, which also ended up being delayed so we got to Virginia almost exactly 24 hours after we were originally supposed to be there. And our one checked bag didn't make it until later that night, and so we had to go pick it up from the airport the next day.

We went to Busch Gardens our first day there, which was nice, but I didn't get to hang out with my family as much as I would have liked, since everybody split up for most of the day to take their kids to all the different age-appropriate rides. Aiden got to meet Grover and Elmo and Abbie from Sesame Street though, which he loved. He gave Grover a flower that he had picked a few minutes before from a nearby planter. It was unbearably cute.

The next day we went to the aquarium, which would have been fantastic if my children had not been fairly grumpy due to extreme fatigue still from all the traveling and missed naps and hunger from a very delayed lunch-time. Aiden really liked it all until we got to the tunnel of fish, which seemed to terrify him for no apparent reason. He also thought the sharks were a little scary, but I think realistically he was just so tired by the time we got to them that he wouldn't have liked them no matter what. Watching the Harbor Seals out front was very fun, though, and I loved seeing all the different fish. That evening we did a family photo, since we won't all be together again for over three years. Mike was taking the photo, so he was busy all afternoon and evening getting all his gear ready and prepped and figuring out where to take what photos, etc.

The day after that was check-out and go-home day. We all helped clean up the beach house and packed up all our stuff, then the kids did a pinata and we said good-bye. I haven't let myself think too much about the good-bye part or how long it will be before I see any of my family again. Caleb threw up that morning right before we left the beach house, so that was fun. We had a plane change in the middle of our trip back, in Charlotte this time, and our first flight ended up being delayed so they switched us to an earlier flight so we could make our connection. We still only had half-an-hour to deplane, get all our gate-checked items (2 carseats, one stroller, one suitcase), and make a mad dash from one end of the airport to the complete opposite end. We ran about halfway, and then caught an electric cart for the second half, and ended up being pretty much the last people on the plane. Caleb threw up again partway through the last flight. My "Mommy reflexes" are getting pretty good when it comes to keeping vomit off of clothes. And, of course, to top it off, our two checked bags on the way back didn't make it home to Arizona until an hour or more after we did, so we had them deliver them to our house the next day.

I really did love getting to see and hang out with my family, though! But we have determined to not fly Continental or United or U.S. Airways again for as long as we can.

My Mom and younger brother came to visit us about a week before our trip, which was lovely. My mom came to my nuchal translucency screening ultrasound with me, where they informed me that both babies seem perfectly healthy, and that they are guessing they're both girls, although we won't know for sure until my next ultrasound in May. So, that was exciting. We also had a birthday party for Aiden's third birthday while they were here. He got way more presents than any 3-year-old needs, including nine different toy dinosaurs, a toy leaf-blower with goggles, a super-hero cape, some new clothes, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now. He loved all of it. I made him a cake that looked vaguely like a dinosaur. He likes to wear his goggles and cape and run around being a super-helper or Super Grover or a space ranger sometimes when it's just the goggles.

Caleb is learning to talk, and in addition to MaMa and DaDa now says "Iiiii" for both Hi and Bye, and Uh-oh whenever anything drops. He is almost walking, he loves holding onto our fingers and walking all over the place, and will take up to about six steps on his own without holding on to anything before he falls over generally, and has started crawling with all his limbs straight because it's more like walking. He got his first hair cut on Saturday, which didn't really make him look different at all because all his hair is still pretty much invisible, but we feel better that he doesn't have a mullet any more.

I got some new maternity clothes from Ross, which has been really nice. They're light and comfy and should last through the summer pretty well (I hope). And, they're cute too, so that's always a bonus. I felt one of the babies moving a little on Sunday during Relief Society. Still waiting to feel the other one some time.

That covers pretty much everything!

tl;dr: Things overall are great, kids are growing up, twins are doing well, airplane travel can suck.

This and that

2011-03-23T11:52:00.001-07:00

The kids have been sick (Aiden has had a stomach virus for the past week and a half, and Caleb's got ear infections in both ears), I have been sick (a cold and morning sickness), and I am tired of everybody being sick.

A couple of weekends ago we went to Disneyland with Mike's family. We drove there in our new (used) minivan (2007 Honda Odyssey, I love it so far, remote open doors are fantastic), which was quite nice. Aiden came down with his stomach virus in the middle of the night after our day at Disney, which was kind of terrible. I will spare you the details. But the kids really enjoyed the park, though Aiden thought the Nemo subs were a little scary. They were both entranced by It's a Small World. Aiden also really liked the Casey Jones train, and I think he enjoyed Autopia quite a bit as well. We probably won't be back to Disney for quite a while due to the logistics of so many small children.

My stomach is growing ridiculously large. I have already switched to my maternity pants and will soon need my maternity shirts. I want to buy a maternity swim suit, I never purchased one with the other two pregnancies, but I am waiting to buy anything baby-related until after my next appointment, as I must admit I'm still a bit nervous about how well things are going in there. Aiden is convinced that both babies are girls.

My mom gave me a really pretty bird feeder for Christmas. I've been filling it up with bird seed ever since, but only recently have we started to actually get birds using it. Mostly it's doves and sparrows that come to snack. We've also got a couple of little birds that I think are probably a type of flycatcher that stop by occasionally. And there's some big old black birds that come eat things off the patio and lawn, probably bugs. I've been enjoying watching the birds and trying to identify them. It would probably be easier to do if I cleaned my sliding glass door so that I could see all the little markings on the birds.

I've been letting the kids watch ridiculous amounts of movies and TV lately while I've been sick and they've been sick. I am really sick of all three Toy Story movies, as those are Aiden's favorites lately. I discovered there's Sesame Street episodes on Netflix, so we started watching that yesterday. Much more enjoyable. Also, we have been watching Shaun the Sheep which is hilarious.

My family is having a family reunion next month in Virginia. I'm really excited to see everybody again, I've been missing my family lately. And it is probably the last time I'll get to see my parents for the next three+ years. I find it somewhat funny that I will be pregnant again. I was pregnant at our last reunion, and very newly pregnant at the reunion before that. I also seem to be running into the problem of being pregnant every time we go to an amusement park and being unable to go on any of the rides.

Lots more cravings with this pregnancy than the previous ones. Mostly for protein, like steak. Yum. Occasionally chicken. I seem to have an aversion to fish at the moment, as well as milk. Cheese is good though, along with basic carbohydrates, especially if they're smothered with butter and, well, cheese.

It's been beautiful weather here lately. We would be spending a lot of time outside if we weren't all sick. Though we did go out last week and I pulled the weeds from our front yard and side yard (of which there were a lot, mostly very, very large). My cilantro, arugula, and basil plants are all flowering. The garden's quite pretty with all the little white flowers. I'm giving up on the garden for the summer, I just don't have the energy to take care of it properly this year.

We went to the zoo awhile ago. I got to see the face of one of the visiting koalas, and oh my goodness, they are freaking adorable in real life. Aiden really enjoyed trying to touch the stingrays in their pool, and absolutely loved brushing the goats. He was running from one to the other, touching their heads or ears with the rubber brush for a split second, then running away laughing. It was so cute.

Caleb just woke up from his nap, so that ends this post.

Surprise!

2011-03-01T16:11:00.001-07:00

Twins!

I'm due Oct. 9th. We're incredibly excited! There's no history of twins in my family, so we weren't really expecting two, though I had thought about the possibility several times. My life is going to be crazy, with four kids under the age of 4, plus my mom won't be able to come help because my parents are leaving this summer to go be mission presidents in Guatemala (which we're also very excited about), so, it will definitely be crazy. But, I'll survive. Everything is looking good so far with the pregnancy, it feels quite a lot different than my previous two pregnancies. Here's hoping it all continues to go well and without any complications. What a fabulous start to March!

1 year! LOTS of pictures

2011-01-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm really, really late posting up about Caleb's birthday. But! I'm going to include pictures! So, worth the wait, maybe?

We had a little birthday party for him. I made him a triple-layer small tall chocolate-frosted chocolate cake with colored frosting spots, just for him. Very much like Aiden's first birthday cake. Then I made a double-layer cake for the rest of us. It turned out pretty tasty. Caleb really liked it once he decided to try tasting it. Though, he didn't eat very much before he was done. Because, I made my family eat dinner before cake! Amazing parenting right there, I know. He got lots of lovely presents which he likes a lot and Aiden likes more and has stolen pretty much all of them from his little brother already.

At his one year check-up, Caleb weighed 22lbs, 10oz. and was 31" long. The doctor said that puts him in the 90th percentile for height, and 50th for weight. He's still fitting perfectly into the 12-18 month clothes that he's been wearing for quite a few months now. He still looks pretty bald. He's got hair on the sides and back of his head that's actually getting pretty long, but it's so fine and so light that it's pretty much invisible. He's not really chubby anymore, but he's still fatter than Aiden was at this age, so it's kind of fun seeing his little round belly poking out over his diaper when he's sitting up. He's still got just the seven teeth, number eight is taking its' sweet time.

Caleb got kind of sick after his immunizations, on and off for a couple of weeks. Light fever, not sleeping well, constantly cranky, not eating well. It wasn't terribly enjoyable. His next batch of shots shouldn't be so bad though. It made me glad we scheduled his appointment for after his birthday rather than before, so he could enjoy his little party.

He loves and adores Aiden still, and of course he still loves his Mommy, but lately he has started adoring on his Daddy. Whenever Mike gives him a kiss before he has to leave for work or church meetings, Caleb reaches out and grabs onto his shirt until Mike holds him for awhile. And he always has the sweetest smiles for when Daddy gives him goodnight kisses.

Caleb still isn't walking, though he's started standing up without holding on to anything for a second or two occasionally. He's still taking side steps while holding onto the couch cushions or our coffee table, and he's gotten pretty good at walking in his walker. He's very fast at crawling now, so I don't think he sees much point in walking. I need to start making a bigger deal out of it.

He loves drumming on things. He loves throwing things, and I've been trying hard to dissuade him from throwing food from his high chair. He likes trying to stack things and nest things in other things and other typical one-year-old activities. Aiden has continued to teach him how to spit, though Caleb mostly just says a long "ffffffffffff" noise when he tries. He likes trying to brush his non-existant hair with my extra hairbrush. He still loves baths, though he really doesn't like his head getting wet. He sticks his face in the water regularly trying to drink the water in the tub. He likes music with a beat, and tries singing along sometimes. He likes babbling, but does so a lot more often when we don't have movies or music on. He loves his sippy cup of milk, and that is the most reliable way of calming him down usually when he gets upset, although if he's full, or really tired or really really upset, he refuses to drink anything. He loves sugary foods and fruits, likes crackers and Cheerios (which he eats for breakfast every morning), doesn't like refried beans or avocados or things with similar textures, though he does really like bananas. He doesn't like spicy foods or peanut butter. It's been awhile since I tried giving him something sour, so I don't know about that. He likes a lot of savory things.

Aiden gets jealous of Caleb frequently, and usually doesn't like sharing with him, and says "No!" to him a lot when he thinks Caleb is trying to get whatever Aiden is playing with. Caleb loves trying to play with whatever Aiden is playing with, of course. We are still working on getting them to play together better. They do like to explore the house together, and pull all of the kids books out of the bookcase together, and frequently play games together full of silly noises and giggling. I'll need to write a post all about Aiden sometime soon.

That's about all I can think of to write about Caleb right now. So! Time for more pictures!

Newborn:

1 month:

2 months:

3 months:

4 months:

5 months:

6 months:

7 months:

8 months:

9 months:

10 months:

11 months:

1 year:

11 months

2010-12-14T10:12:00.001-07:00

Almost a year! Whoo!

Caleb now crawls with his stomach off the floor all the time, though he does tend to slide his knees rather than bothering to pick them up off the tile when he's wearing pants (which is most of the time, now that it's winter and the tile is quite cold). He loves standing up and is very good at sidling along the edge of the couch or coffee table. He particularly likes chasing down Aiden now as long as it doesn't take him too long to catch up. He loves doing whatever Aiden is doing, and is always trying to "share" with his big brother (i.e. take things from him). Aiden, of course, does the same thing back. Luckily, they are learning to actually share with each other, and Aiden is starting to enjoy teaching Caleb how to do things (mostly how to drum).

There were a couple days when Caleb refused to take a morning nap, but he's gone back to taking it again now, which I am ecstatic about, as not taking it made him quite grumpy. We started a couple days ago (again) with not nursing him to sleep. He's doing fine with falling asleep for naps and bedtime, but is not liking it so much when he wakes up in the middle of the night. Our poor neighbors are getting to listen to lots of crying in the middle of the night. It was slightly shorter last night than the night before though, so I think things are improving. Hopefully by the end of the week maybe he will be sleeping all night (or putting himself back to sleep at midnight or 3AM or whenever he happens to wake up). Since I'm not catering to Caleb's every whim as he tries to fall asleep anymore and am letting him cry it out, I've decided to do the same (again) for Aiden, who had gotten to a point of calling/crying for one or the other parent at least four times after we left his room post-bedtime-routine, asking for water or another song or his hat on or a random stuffed animal or, most often, nothing at all ("I need something." "What do you need?" "Um. Nothing."). So I am refusing to go back in his room now. He was very distraught about it last night, though it only took ten or fifteen minutes before he went to sleep. Hopefully tonight will be better.

Caleb adores eating anything sugary and will get quite distraught if it runs out once you start feeding it to him, even if he's overly full already. He goes through phases (undoubtedly related to teething) where he only wants food he can chew a lot, or where he's very picky about what he'll eat, or where he'll eat as much food as you give him, putting away ridiculously large amounts into his small little tummy, or where he doesn't particularly want to eat much of anything at all. Aiden was never quite so discerning with regards to food, and I am now realizing just how lucky I was when it came to feeding him. Not that Caleb is all that bad about eating either, he's usually a good eater and will usually eat what I give him. He has recently discovered, however, that throwing food on the floor is fun. Also, he is starting to want a utensil to play with while I'm feeding him (if it's something he can't eat with just his hands), and will grab at the one I'm using, which results in lots of spills, which he also finds quite interesting. He's finally figured out how to drink from a straw, which I'm a fan of, as our most spill-proof sippy cups (that I like to carry in my purse) have straws.

He has figured out how to put things in other things, and so I got out our ball-popper toy that shoots balls out the top via a fan, and he's been enjoying putting the balls back in after they fly all over the room. Now I just need to teach him how to press the button to make it go by himself, and convince Aiden to not steal the whole thing from him, and we'll be good to go. He also loves taking things out, which is not so fun for me with Aiden's wooden puzzles as Caleb loves tipping all the pieces out and carting them around the house with him as he crawls around. We are back to the stage of me lying on the floor multiple times a day trying to reach my hand under the couch to fetch whatever toys or pieces of toys have rolled/been pushed under there. At least we haven't entered the LEGO phase yet, my feet are not looking forward to that. The boys do quite like playing with their blocks though. Aiden has gotten rather good at building decent-sized towers before he knocks them over, and Caleb loves to knock the blocks over as soon as one is on top of another, and then picks them up and chews on them.

Caleb loves, loves, loves sticking things in his mouth that he's not supposed to eat. Particular favorites of his are paper (no Christmas presents waiting under the tree at our house this year, they're all up out of reach), sand (always fun times when we go to the playground, and several days after with his diapers), grass, leaves, paper, rocks, sticks, paper...and yet he spat out a delicious avocado I tried to feed him the other day. I am mystified as to how sand and leaves and paper are apparently delicious and yet an avocado is not. At least he ate the avocado eventually (once I mixed in some salt and lemon juice and mayonnaise and made it into a sort of guacamole).

He also loves playing with open appliances, like the fridge, freezer, and dishwasher. We make sure he is contained elsewhere whenever we have to open the oven, as he's quite speedy at crawling over to large open doors and reaching his little hands in before you even realize he's there. He likes pulling things out of the door of the fridge, and out of the utensil holder in the dishwasher. He also likes pulling things down off the pantry shelves whenever it's open. I'm amazed he hasn't broken his foot yet from pulling cans down on it (amazingly, they've all missed hitting him on the way down so far). Doing dishes is infinitely easier when he's napping. He also likes sticking his hand in any dripped water on the dishwasher door when it's open, and then licking it off his hand. Caleb insists now on having a wet paper towel of his own whenever I'm cleaning him off post-meals with one. He sticks his in his mouth and sucks the water out of it while I wipe off his hands and face. He also likes ripping the paper towels apart and then trying to eat the small pieces.

Once we've gotten several days of good sleeping under our belts, we're going to start cutting out daytime nursing sessions, which he is not going to like, but hopefully it won't be too bad now that he can drink from a variety of cups and can have juice or whole milk instead.

While Caleb is busy trying to figure out basic things like blocks and balls, Aiden has entered the active questioning phase, and is constantly asking me "What's that look like?" (which means he wants to know what it is), after which he asks, "What kind of _____?" and occasionally he sneaks a "Why?" in there too. He also really likes saying, "Look at me, Mommy!" when he's doing something he's proud about, like standing on top of the arm of the couch, or jumping on the cushions, or running around really fast. He calls letters "numbers" and is starting to ask me what things say. He's getting better at counting, and knows when there's two of something now. He's getting more social and likes going to our ward park day every week and sharing his sand toys with the other kids. He actually talks to them too, now. He's still nervous about high places, and won't go down the tallest slides, but he'll climb up to them and look over the edge before going back down the stairs. He likes climbing the ladder at the playground. As he's interacting more with other kids, he's also discovering that other kids don't always have as nice of manners as he does, and he's been getting pushed off of things regularly lately, which results in a flurry of tears. Luckily kisses from Mommy still seem to heal most of his hurts, both emotional and physical. He likes rehashing sad/scary things that have happened to him, and frequently mentions things that happened months and months ago.

Mike's been really busy lately with work, photography, and callings, and I've had a nasty cold or something for a little over a week now, and somehow Christmas has snuck up on us without me being terribly prepared. We got our tree up and decorated at the beginning of the month, but I think most of our presents for our little family will end up being Three Kings Day presents rather than Christmas presents.

I hope you're all having a fabulous holiday season.

10 months

2010-11-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

Better to post late than never!

I'm posting about how things currently are, rather than how they were ~2 weeks ago, because my brain is fried and I can't remember what may have been different a couple weeks ago anymore.

Caleb now has 6 teeth. He's still not sleeping through the night. He pulls himself up to a stand on everything and takes side steps occasionally. He finally is crawling with his belly off the ground most of the time. He no longer signs anything at all, but likes to scream at me occasionally and flaps his arms when he's excited about something.

He's eating all the same things we are now, in very small pieces, and is very happy about it for the most part. He loves sweet things, especially ice cream and lollipops (Aiden decided to share with him at Halloween). There are regularly things I make that he won't eat, whether it's because he doesn't like it or because it's too warm or because he's just not used to the flavors, I don't know. He eats quite a lot right now, whether it's because he's recovering from being ill (see below) or because he's having another growth spurt, I am unsure.

He had his first ear infection this past week. He had a fever for five days, and was terribly, terribly cranky, and didn't sleep well (understandably). We went through a lot of infant Tylenol and a course of amoxycillin and he seems to be doing much better now. He really liked the medicine, yay sugar?

Caleb is very adamant about when his naptimes are. If he doesn't get to nap when he wants to, he cries quite a lot. He normally goes down for naps at about 9 and then again between noon and one. Every once in a while, if he's really really tired, he will take a very short third nap in the late afternoon. His normal two naps average about two hours each.

He shows no signs of wanting to stop nursing, I think we may have a bit of a battle over that since we will be starting weaning soon.

He loves sticking everything and anything in his mouth still, including paper, rocks, dirt, sand, grass, sticks, flowers, plastic bags and wrappers, his clothes, my crochet hooks, etc. This results in me having to chase him down regularly to remove things from his mouth before he either chokes on them or swallows them.

Caleb will chase Aiden around the room to the best of his ability, crawling along after him as quick as he can. When Aiden notices, he runs away, which makes Caleb quite frustrated. He loves trying to play with his big brother and likes grabbing whatever Aiden is playing with, which Aiden of course doesn't like. Caleb sometimes will hand things to people to play with when he's done with them, and grins his head off when you actually play with it for a bit. He and Aiden like to spit at each other in the car, and both erupt in fits of giggles about it (blowing very, very wet raspberries).

He weighs almost 22 pounds now, and I am thinking I ought to break out the 18 month clothes. I need to get some winter clothes for both kids, since it's finally getting a bit cold outside (highs in the 60's!) Caleb doesn't mind the cold too much, he's still got a nice layer of baby fat to keep him fairly warm, but Aiden starts shivering pretty quick. They both like going on walks and playing outside. Caleb likes story time quite a bit now, and likes trying to grab/turn the pages of the board books. He also really likes trying to play with my yarn whenever I'm trying to make something (I took up knitting a couple weeks ago, and between that and my crocheting and Christmas coming up, there's been a lot of yarn out at our house).

9 months!

2010-10-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, so Caleb is 9 months old now. He is 75th % height (29") and 50th% weight (20lbs. 11oz.) now. His loss of baby fat and slower growing rate is undoubtedly due to the fact that he is incredibly mobile now. He army crawls very fast all over the place. He can switch from crawling to sitting and back again without any problems. And he pulls himself up to a stand or a kneel on just about anything he can reach. I'm sure he will try walking soon, though he's still very wobbly while he's standing up, so it might be a little while before he succeeds. He has managed to climb up onto the couch a couple of times now.

He's still just got the two bottom teeth, though his two front top teeth have been on their way in for about a week now (highly unpleasant, light fever yesterday, crazy drooling, not sleeping well, etc.)

Caleb is still a momma's boy, though he is liking his Daddy more and more. He gives him big smiles and lets him hold him when he gets home from work every day. He also still likes Aiden bunches, and will follow him as best he can crawling when Aiden runs from room to room. They occasionally try to play together, which Caleb loves, though Aiden still has a bit of a hard time sharing and being soft and not knocking Caleb over accidentally (or occasionally on purpose).

Still not sleeping through the night. I really need to re-train him so he can fall asleep without nursing. Maybe we will start on that next week (hoping, of course, that the teeth will have popped through by then and stop bugging him so much).

He's eating stage 3 baby foods (which only come in jars, so I have been collecting ideas for crafts with baby food jars). He likes them, but he absolutely loves eating small pieces of bread, cheerios, animal crackers, biter biscuits, crackers, and small pieces of real food. So, with the approving nod of the pediatrician, we are going to start sharing more "table food" with him, which I'm sure will make him extremely happy. He's quite fond of his transition bottle/cup currently, but only if it has juice in it. I need to start trying to get him to drink from a sippy cup.

He is "talking" a fair amount now. He knows how to sign "more" and recognizes the sign for "all done". We are working on "milk", "sleep", and other basic signs. He still is grabbing things with his whole palm rather than a nice pincer grasp. I'm sure he'll figure it out soon though.

Other than being cranky when he's sleepy or hungry, he's still a very pleasant happy boy almost all the time. He has his moments of freaking out because I walked out of the room or he got surprised by something or whatever, but not quite as often as he used to. He's got the most adorable grin. He still looks bald, because his hair that is slowly growing in is so fine and light that you can't see it.

Aiden has taken to pretending to be a baby himself. He crawls around and makes squeaky noises and waves his arms at me and asks me to hold him. I think he's a bit jealous of the amount of attention Caleb gets. Though he has started pretending to be a dog or a cat just as often now, so it's a nice change of pace (and a little less demanding than when he pretends to be a baby).

I've got pictures to post up soon.

8 months

2010-09-09T13:14:00.001-07:00

In 4 days, Caleb will be 8 months old. I have time right now, the boys are both napping, so I am writing this post now instead of later.

Currently, the teething situation stands at two front bottom teeth. The two top teeth were threatening to come through for a while but seem to have receded again.

In terms of mobility, Caleb has become an expert scootcher. He army crawls all over the place, and is getting quite speedy at it. It is a very cute wiggly little pulling himself forward with one hand while jiggling the rest of himself forward. He's getting his tummy up off the ground more and more often, though as soon as he tries to move forward, it lands back down on the ground. He seems quite happy to be mobile, and is already trying hard to get into trouble eating the extension cable that goes to my desk, any plastic crinkly thing he can find, dirty socks that have been left on the floor, and one of his very favorites is trying to eat my toes. The only one of those I'm actually worried about is the power cable, so we will have to get some sort of cover or something to attach it to the wall with so he can't pull it out to where he can bite it.

He's eating three meals of baby food a day, though the amount varies quite a bit from day to day. He quite likes Cheerios, and likes grabbing them and then trying to figure out how to get them from the middle of his fist into his mouth. He's finally figured out how to chew them, so I don't have to worry about him choking on them anymore. He doesn't much like any sort of green baby food (with the worst offender still being green beans, and peas being a close second), and surprisingly doesn't seem to like many of the orange ones either (like sweet potatoes and squash, both of which Aiden loved).

Caleb is still super-smiley most of the time, extremely attached to me still vs. anybody else, adores watching Aiden, is quite good at babbling, and tends to say "mamamamamamama" when he wants me to pick him up. He likes it when I dance or clap for him. He's getting slightly more ticklish. His very favorite show out of all the shows that we've been watching randomly with Aiden is (unsurprisingly) Baby Signing Time. I don't know what it is about it exactly, but it is absolutely magical with babies. I don't sign with him as often as I should, so I don't know how long it will be before he starts picking up a few signs of his own.

He is now sleeping in our third bedroom (after much rearranging on my part to get the crib to fit in there along with all our storage). He's down to waking up once a night now, between three and four, which is much nicer (though I've been having trouble falling asleep after getting him back down, so I am as tired as ever). I think it has helped a little bit that I've been trying to keep him up just a little bit later at night so that he's not in bed before 6:30. The last two days he has also slept in longer in the morning, though Aiden has made up for it by deciding to wake up at 6:15 every day. One of the big benefits of having Caleb out of our room is that my crafting space is now accessible again, which means I can finally work on a bunch of projects that have been put on standby for the past many months. Also, I can now take a shower during nap times when they overlap (which they do almost every day!). So that's fairly fabulous, and is precisely what I'm going to go do right now.

7 months, plus Utah

2010-08-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

Part 1:

Caleb is now about a week (and a half?) past 7 months old. Highlights include: stage 2 baby food, no teeth still, almost getting his tummy off the ground occasionally, advanced rolling and scooting skills, an intense love of chewing on things, an extreme attachment to his mommy, an intense hatred of having his nose messed with (wiped or de-snotted), improved skill of toy grabbing, a still bald-appearing head, and an adorable giant toothless grin. Oh, and he's still not sleeping through the night. And he adores Aiden.

The End.

Part 2:

We have been visiting my family in Utah. My mom flew down this past Sunday and helped me drive up with the boys on Monday. Mike stayed home to go to work as usual, in addition to partying and generally living it up while his family is away. Our drive was largely uneventful, save for the giant hail storm we drove through, Aiden throwing up while we drove through a mountain pass, Caleb having a giant blow-out while I was trying to get his jammies out of the trunk in the middle of nowhere necessitating a change of clothes for both him and me, two terribly runny little boy noses, a very long stop at a park in Panguitch so Aiden could run and Caleb could roll and both found sticks to play with, and lots and lots of other stops along the way as well. My mom was incredibly nice and did the majority of the driving, and had lots of presents that she used to entertain Aiden with (and he now has some very cool new toys). I had packed a preposterous plethora of snacks, most of which I have eaten in the days since we got here.

On Tuesday, we went in the morning to Wheeler Farm, where Aiden's favorite thing was climbing on the giant gutted tractor and pretending to drive it. His second favorite thing was running and falling down on the grass. I think he also liked getting splashed by the pig, and found watching the horse eat vaguely interesting, and all the ducks, geese, and swans were kind of fun to look at for a bit.

(I neglected to mention that before the farm, we went to Target, where my wonderful mother bought us all new shoes since I had forgotten my tennis shoes and my feet were hurting from my flip-flops (no arch support has finally caught up to me after years of wearing my flip-flops non-stop) and neither of my boys had closed-toe shoes that fit them.)

In the afternoon we went to Thanksgiving Point ($2 Tuesdays!) to their Farm Country. Aiden liked pushing some leftover corn that was on the ground through the fence for the goats and sheep to eat. He really enjoyed playing with the Fisher-Price Farm house that they had set up on a small table inside. He thought it was interesting watching them milk the cow, but was too scared to touch it himself. He thought the chickens were a little funny. For the "pony ride" (due to a 9-ish year old girl in the group in front of us deciding last second that she didn't want to go on a ride), he ended up on a full-size horse, which absolutely terrified him and he was crying that he wanted to get off most of the way (though later that night he proudly exclaimed that he rode a horse). Once again, though, his favorite thing was running around on the grass and falling down, and laying on his back in the grass looking up at the sky, with his limbs spread-eagled. He varied it up after a bit by jumping off the child-size picnic table they had outside, tumbling across the ground upon landing, and rolling onto his back for a moment of peaceful sky staring before repeating. His second favorite thing was probably the cow-shaped bench, which he quite enjoyed trying to climb onto the head of.

Wednesday my mother was quite busy for most of the day so we stayed home. We went and played in the backyard for a bit, where Aiden decided the trampoline was too big and scary to want to jump on (even when I held him while I jumped, and when I held his hands for him to jump, etc.) He had fun digging holes in the garden (no biting ants!), playing with the grass, looking at the tomatoes (which he has since learned to pick, but only if they are red), and running around throwing some balls. Caleb had a marvelous time grabbing at the grass, tasting it, grabbing it some more, staring it down, waving it in the air, and so on.

On Thursday, we went to the zoo with my cousin and her family. There, Aiden's favorite thing was the bulldozer that we saw sitting in one of the old exhibits waiting to renovate it. He also enjoyed the train ride, where he saw a goat and a buffalo and a cougar and some hairy pig things I've forgotten what they were. We also saw some bats and bugs, the giraffes, the elephants, the tigers, the snow leopard, the bird show, a variety of monkeys, the orangutans (my favorite that day, since one of them was playing), a gorilla, and oh, yes, a rainstorm of monsoon proportions (we sheltered by the monkeys where there is a roof). And my younger sister and her husband came over for dinner, which was a lot of fun.

Friday morning we went to the Discovery Gateway children's museum/activity-center/what-have-you. Aiden loved all the child-sized vehicles they had to ride around in (his favorite was the pick-up truck), and the larger pretend vehicles. After playing there for quite awhile, we went and had lunch with my dad at his office building, where I had a lovely lunch and Aiden ate practically nothing, but had lots of fun seeing Grandpa and running on the sidewalk and grass to get there and then back to the car.

This morning, we went to Kennecott Copper Mine so Aiden could see the giant dumptrucks. It was insanely windy, so he didn't watch them for as long as he would have otherwise. He liked looking at all the model construction equipment inside, and really enjoyed running around and around in circles, and then resting on the floor and the bench, alternately (flopped all over the place with no regard to other people there). It was quite entertaining. His comment about the bronze statue in the entrance of the visitor's center (of a miner and his family) was, "He don't have eyes!" Then we went and I got to see where my younger sister is living, and chat with her for awhile, and then it was home for lunch and naps. Tonight we are going to an extended family party for a cousin that is getting married in a few weeks, which should be fun, and then tomorrow is church and then dinner and games with my younger sister and her husband, which I am very much looking forward to, and then on Monday we drive back home to Arizona (and my mom flies back up to Utah on Tuesday morning).

Oh yes, and my amazingly talented brother-in-law, who happens to be a very skilled jeweler, re-set the stones in my wedding ring, which were on the verge of falling out, rounded out the band, replated it and polished it and now it looks like new and is absolutely beautiful.

It has been a wonderful trip so far, and so very much fun to see my parents, whom my kids both instantly adored. Aiden has gotten a bit mixed up the past few days and has started calling both my mom and I "Grammy" (a mix of Grandma and Mommy). He still is saying, "I'm a man" regularly. The most recent was, "I'm a man using my fork!" There has also been, "I'm a man running," "I'm a man eating food," and the most entertaining to me, "I'm a man changing his diaper!" He has also added the variant, "I'm a guy."

I'll post some pictures a few days after we get home.

The End.

Because kids are just like that

2010-07-07T18:41:00.002-07:00

As if, solely to prove me wrong, not ten minutes after I posted my last post, I looked over at Caleb on the blanket on the floor and he had rolled onto his tummy. He stayed there for a good three minutes, too, playing with his taggy blanket. And he has been rolling onto his tummy consistently and regularly to play with toys ever since. Currently he is on his stomach happily chewing on a Little People bus.

Maybe I should write in my blog about things he can't/won't do yet more often.

6 months

2010-07-05T10:16:00.001-07:00

I'm approximately a week early for the 6 months post, but I skipped 5 months completely, so, it all evens out.

At (almost) 6 months old, Caleb is a champion roller...from his tummy to his back. He will not spend any time on his tummy whatsoever, and instantly rolls onto his back whenever I try to have tummy time for him. He has fun rolling though, so I guess it's alright. He doesn't ever roll from his back to his tummy, I don't think he's interested in trying, though he does roll onto his side regularly.

He's sleeping in his crib alright now, although whether or not he is going to sleep for very long is a constant mystery. Sometimes he takes long naps, sometimes he sleeps for most of the night, and sometimes he wakes up frequently, and I have no idea what makes the difference.

He is still quite large for his age, fitting comfortably into 9-12 month clothes at the moment. He still looks completely bald, though he's got peach fuzz all over his head, it's fine and thin and pretty invisible unless you're really, really close. He's generally very smiley, and tends to grin with his mouth wide open and his tongue sticking out lately. He chews almost constantly on his fingers or his sleeves or my sleeves or anything he can get in his mouth. He drools a lot. No teeth yet, but I suspect they are well on their way.

He had a fever for a couple days a few weeks ago, and refused to eat any baby food for about a week and a half after that, but since then he has returned to being quite a good eater. The only thing he has tried so far that he obviously dislikes a lot is green beans.

Caleb has turned into a complete mama's boy. He cries after a couple minutes of anyone else holding him. He screams if someone else is holding him and he sees me (even if I'm right next to him). He dislikes it when I set him down unless I sit down right next to him and play with him. He's also fairly shy. He will smile giant smiles at other people, but usually buries his head in my shoulder after a few seconds of smiles.

He still adores watching Aiden, and for the most part they get along well. Aiden finds it hilarious when he makes him laugh, and tries to share with him regularly. He also screams, "Stop crying, Caleb!" when Caleb has been crying for awhile, particularly in the car. Occasionally he tries to play with him a little too roughly, but he's not hitting him with things nearly as often anymore. Watching Caleb chew on everything seems to have inspired Aiden to do the same, again, and he's been sticking all sorts of things in his mouth. Aiden particularly likes chewing for a few minutes on his old pacifiers.

I am hopeful that Caleb will learn how to sit up soon, so he can start riding in the cart at the store rather than me having to carry him in the baby carrier. And that he will consistently sleep longer. And that he will be willing to spend some time on his tummy soon.

Overall, he is a delight to have around (tiring, but delightful). Hooray for your half-birthday, kiddo!

4.5 months

2010-06-01T13:51:00.001-07:00

Ok, so, I missed posting about Caleb when he was 4 months old, so you get a 4.5 month post instead.

Caleb's favorite things currently:
Jumping
Rolling over
EATING
Watching Aiden

His least favorite things:
Baths
Sleeping longer than two hours
Baths
Baby oatmeal made with water
Not eating every 2 hours

Caleb is currently huge. He is at least 17lbs. and over 2 feet tall now. He fits quite comfortably into Aiden's old 6-9 month clothes. He is tall and chubby and still looks mostly bald, since most of his fringe of brown hair on the sides of his head has now fallen out and the peach fuzz that he has all over is pretty invisible from further away than about a foot. He likes cooing and blowing bubbles. He loves rolling over. He occasionally manages to roll onto his tummy from his back, but usually needs help. Once he's on his tummy though, he can almost instantly roll back onto his back, and smiles his giant happy smiles when I clap at his success. He loves standing on laps and being jumped up and down whenever he bends his knees. His grandma is the best at getting him to giggle. He despises baths.

He has been waking up every two hours or so every single night for weeks and weeks now. He almost always likes to fall asleep while eating, and it is the easiest way to get him to sleep, so he's been eating a lot, which I'm sure has contributed to his giant size. Unfortunately for him, we are going to start some sleep training, which is going to include not feeding him every single time he wakes up during the night, because ultimately we will all be happier if he sleeps a little longer at night. He's extremely good at grabbing toys and loves trying to shove things into his mouth the instant he's grabbed it. He is not very good at holding onto his toys for very long. He's taking two moderately-lengthed naps a day finally. I've started feeding him a little bit of baby oatmeal every day. He grimaces and spits it out when I make it with water. When I make it with apple juice, he likes it much better, though most of it still ends up on his bib. He likes trying to blow bubbles whenever the spoon is in his mouth.

He still has an absolutely adorable giant grin, and has developed an incredibly cute giggle to go along with it, though getting him to giggle is often fairly difficult. He hates baths. I don't know if it's the noise of the water filling the tub or the being naked or the wet head or what, but he screams and locks his legs straight out the entire time. Luckily he doesn't get terribly dirty, so we don't have to torture him with baths terribly often. He loves watching Aiden play. He gets upset when he can't see any of us nearby. He likes it when I sing to him. He generally doesn't like his car seat very much, and will sometimes scream the entire time he's in it. The rest of the time he falls asleep in it, though he wakes up within minutes of reaching our destination. He seems to either prefer laying down or standing up to sitting most of the time, though he does like sitting in his bouncy chair or his Bumbo chair or in the baby walker for extremely short periods of time (no more than 15 minutes generally). He's getting too big for his playpen bassinet that he's been sleeping in (and is much too large for the diaper changing station that hooks onto it), so we are going to move him into the crib as soon as we have somewhere else for Aiden to sleep.

He didn't like the ocean when we were in Hawaii.

I think that about covers it.

(In other news, Aiden is talking using complete sentences on a regular basis now, and sometimes comes up to me when I'm sitting on the floor with Caleb, and rests his head on my shoulder and puts his arm across my back and says, "I loooove you." And it is the most adorable thing ever. He has become addicted to his grampa. He fell in a koi pond while we were in Hawaii, as well as bonking his head on a water slide, being bitten by a sea turtle, and being terrified by some particularly loud fireworks. He mentions the fireworks every day still ("See fireworks, Grampa's house? Boom. Boom. Boom!") He knows his colors and could care less about numbers, and likes to read his books by himself (he has most of them reasonably memorized and will flip to random pages and summarize what it says on that page for me). He throws tantrums sometimes, is extremely cranky when he's tired or hungry, will eat most anything but is sometimes rather picky about what he actually wants to eat, and likes to sing.)

Pictures!

2010-04-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

Aiden's Easter Basket

Tiny Bunny

Easter Octopus

Whipped Cream

Cute, cute, cute

Aiden's Birthday Cake in the freezer

Blowing out the candles

Baby blessing day

Swimming

Teething

Birthday and Blessing Day (1.5 weeks late)

2010-04-22T11:25:00.001-07:00

I just realized I completely forgot to include anything about Aiden's birthday and Caleb's blessing day in my last post.

Because Caleb was being blessed the day after Aiden's birthday, my parents were able to drive down and be here for both, which was lovely and fabulous.

We had a little birthday party for Aiden in the morning on his birthday, with all his grandparents, and his aunt and uncle and cousins that live here still. My parents took both kids out on a little walk and to the park for a bit beforehand so that we could hang up streamers and balloons and I could decorate his cake, so he could be surprised by all the birthday stuff when he got home. We inadvertently had a red, green, blue, and yellow color scheme going on with the cake and streamers and balloons. For his cake, I did a two layer round cake, funfetti, with white buttercream frosting. Then I melted some white chocolate chips, added food coloring (which made the chocolate seize up so we had to add some vegetable oil), and Mike and I made chocolate circles in 3 different sizes to decorate the cake with. I also made a 2 and Aiden's name in chocolate. The circles got stacked on top of the cake with the 2 in the middle, Aiden's name was put on the front, and then half-circles were stacked on the sides. Aiden blew out both of his candles all by himself. He ate all the chocolate bits off of his piece of cake, but wasn't even vaguely interested in the cake itself (though he did eat a good bit of his ice-cream cup I got for the kids with chocolate or strawberry flavoring swirled throughout, the kind I used to eat as a kid with a wooden paddle spoon thing that came with it, these ones had no wooden thing, but the kids liked them anyway). Mike and I gave Aiden a little toddler bike with training wheels, and he also got a big toy bus with blocks inside, a bulldozer toy that makes noises, a Curious George story collection, the movie Up, a small gardening kit, and a toy doctor kit. He loves all his presents, though I think his favorite thing about his birthday was getting to play with his cousins and grandparents.

Caleb's baby blessing was really nice. He was tired and had a little cold and wanted to be walked to sleep, so he screamed during the entire blessing, just like Aiden did during his 2 years ago. Mike gave him a beautiful blessing anyway, with his grandfathers and a member of the bishopric standing in the circle. Aiden had a full-blown cold, so he got to go home with my parents after Sacrament Meeting (after a couple of pictures, of course), while we stayed at church. Then we all went over to Mike's parents' house for dinner that night, which was great, then came home and put Aiden to bed, and Mike watched Caleb so I could play Scrabble with my parents. My dad won the first game, then went to bed, and I won the second game against my mom, which I consider fairly amazing.

My parents left the next morning. I am trying to figure out how I can go up to visit them with the kids sometime, since I miss them. All in all it was a lovely weekend.

3 months, 2 years, 1 long post

2010-04-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

So, this post is almost two weeks after the fact, but I am now the mother of a 2 year old and a 3 month old. So, this post is about them! (Just like almost all my posts now.) And it is very, very long.

Caleb is still growing well. He is a little over 15 lbs. and is about 25" long now, which puts him in the 90th percentile for both height and weight. He is much chubbier than Aiden ever was. He is wearing shorts that are the same size as his shirts, whereas Aiden wore shorts and pants a size smaller. He is in his 3-6 month clothes now which are fitting him well. He likes practicing rolling over. He can roll from his back to his side by himself, and has rolled from his tummy onto his back a couple of times. He's very good at holding his head up when on his tummy, and also does a face-plant scoot forward during tummy time. He loves kicking, and standing. I think he is teething already as he is drooling all the time and constantly chewing on his hands and has been kind of fussy for a few weeks. I suspect he will be like Aiden and that his teeth will move up and down a lot and not come out for quite a while yet, unfortunately. He likes to be held and walked during his daytime naps. He usually sleeps well at night now, only waking up once most nights (though this past week he has been sleeping very poorly and waking up 3-5 times a night again). He's got a good set of lungs and can cry very, very loudly. He loves watching Aiden play, and gets upset if he is not within sight of either Mommy or Daddy at all times. He has very stinky gas. He also has the cutest happiest smile where his whole mouth opens up in the widest tallest gummiest grin. He is starting to figure out how to giggle a little bit, which is lots of fun. His eyes are most definitely blue, and his hair is going to be blonde, though he still has a bit of dark hair on the lower parts of his head like an old man. The hair on the top of his head if very short and fine and light and so is invisible unless you are very, very close.

Aiden is getting more fun to play with all the time. He currently weighs 27.5 lbs and is 34.5" tall, which puts him at the 50th percentile for both height and weight. He's bright and happy and cheerful usually. He gets cranky just like his mommy does whenever he is particularly tired or hungry or sick. He will start to cry with both hands crossed over his mouth, or he will lay his head down on whatever's nearby and cry, or he will throw tantrums and fall on the floor and cry. He has been sick a lot this winter, with pneumonia twice, and pink eye twice, and several ear infections, and endless colds. Hopefully with summer almost here he will start feeling better. He is also getting his 2-year molars in which I think has been making him extra cranky lately.

Aiden loves singing. He sings long low notes, dropping his voice as low as he can and he opens his mouth really big and sticks his lips out as he sings. His favorite song to sing is Happy Birthday, but he sometimes will try to sing other songs as well. He likes to march around while he sings, with one arm bent at the elbow swinging back and forth. Occasionally he will spin in circles while he sings until he gets dizzy and falls down. Sometimes he will play his little toy 4-note piano and sing, or hit the keys on our keyboard (even if it's not plugged in and doesn't make any noise). He sings to himself in the car regularly, and sometimes sings himself to sleep. A few weeks ago I heard him singing himself to sleep. At the end of his song, he said, "Yay, Aiden!" and then went to sleep.

He is turning into quite a good talker. He is making small sentences now, between 2 and 4 words. He is extremely good at repeating words and learning what new things are called. He knows his basic colors and we like to play the "name that color" game pointing to different things. We were playing Uno last Sunday with his grandparents. Grandpa Ron was holding him near the end of the game, with one card left in his hand, and Mike jokingly asked Aiden what number the card was (since he doesn't know his numbers yet). Aiden gleefully responded, "Yellow!" We went to the doctor's office twice last week, once for ear infections, and once for his two-year checkup. There is an elevator on the way to the office which Aiden likes quite a bit since it throws him off balance every time it starts and stops moving. After we got home from the doctor's, he kept telling me, "Doctor, alligator. Running, alligator." He said "alligator" quite perfectly, and so it took me a while to figure out that he was talking about the elevator (he had run down the hallway to the elevator).

He really enjoys watching movies now, and will pay attention to almost the whole movie. His favorites currently are Kiki's Delivery Service (which he calls "Jiji"), My Neighbor Totoro ("Totro"), Up ("baoon movie"), and lately, Ponyo. We watch a movie almost every single day, which I would like to get out of the habit of, but it's been hard with the kids both being sick and Caleb only sleeping during the day with me holding him. When we finish the movie of the day, Aiden generally starts his other favorite activity, playing pretend. He likes to pretend to fly on our broom, like Jiji. He likes to pretend to find acorns, like Mei does in Totoro (and any of his toys can be an acorn). He likes to pretend to make milk and honey tea like in Ponyo. He still likes pretending to cook with his pots and toy kitchen. He enjoys pretending to give his toy baby baths in the bathroom sink (which involves having me take the baby's "jamas" off (that's what he calls pajamas), then going and sticking the naked baby in the sink for a minute, then bringing it back to me to put the "jamas" back on).

Aiden loves helping around the house. He likes to help vacuum, cook, clean, do the laundry, yard work, pretty much anything his mommy or daddy are doing he wants to do too. He really likes storytime before bed, and particularly loves his collection of Curious George stories that Grandma and Grandpa Stay gave him for his birthday. I also finally fixed up two of his touch and feel books that he had started ripping apart months and months ago (yay for packing tape), and he has quite liked reading those the last couple of days. He adores rough-housing with his Daddy almost every night before bed. They do Superman, and jumping, and rolling over together (Mike makes a roll-cage out of his arms for Aiden), and Aiden will climb up and on and over Mike in every way imaginable. Aiden also likes it when I do airplane with him (holding him horizontally in my arms and spinning around and around and around). He likes playing outside and can go down slides at the playground all by himself now.

Aiden is a really good eater (except for when he's really sick). He loves all sorts of crazy foods like olives, pickles, and salsa. He will usually eat whatever we're eating. He loves juice, though not as much as he loves chocolate milk. He likes canned fruit a lot, and goes through phases of wanting yogurt all the time. We've been having snacks the last few weeks of mini marshmallows and graham crackers, which I, like him, think are delicious together.

He loves shoes. He will put on any pair of shoes that he can find, no matter whose they are or how big they are, and will clomp around the house in them. He particularly likes "Mommy's pretty shoes" or "church shoes", since those aren't out very often. He is surprisingly good at walking around in my flip-flops, and I can never find them anymore since he will wear them around and then take them off leaving them in random places.

Aiden now comes over to me whenever he gets an ouchy (real or pretend) for me to kiss it better. He answers questions with "No" or "Yeah" which is nice except for when he gets stuck on "No". He loves bikes, but since we got him one for his birthday he has kind of lost interest (I think he will regain his interest once he figures out how to pedal).

I can't wait for both boys to keep growing and learning and getting more fun to play with over the next year!

2 months

2010-03-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

Caleb is getting increasingly adorable every week. He is getting fairly chubby, the top of his head is covered in practically invisible peach fuzz hair, his eyelashes are slowly growing, and he has started smiling lots at us. His smiles are the most adorable thing ever. He opens his mouth really big with happy eyes, and then stretches into a smile. I love it.

He's sleeping for a 4.5 hour stretch most every night now, which is lovely. During the day he doesn't like to sleep for very long unless he's being held. He spends more time awake now, and likes to be played with. He gets upset almost instantly if you put him down and walk away, though if he's happy, he doesn't mind being put down as long as you stay right next to him. He doesn't generally like his car seat a lot, but he does like the baby carrier (with the insert), which has saved my arms on several occasions of his wanting to be held all day (although it does make my back hurt a bit).

He's moved into size 2 diapers, after a series of diaper leaks and blowouts with the size 1's. I have no idea if he is in the weight range they recommend for the size 2's (though he probably is, he's quite large at this point), but they fit him nicely. The size 1's just wouldn't fit over his chunky thighs anymore.

Aiden still adores him, and insists on giving him kisses repeatedly throughout the day. When Aiden accidentally hurts me, he will apologize to Caleb first instead of me, which is always more amusing in hindsight than it is at the moment.

I'm afraid I don't give him baths nearly often enough, I tend to forget because he smells so nice all the time. He sleeps with his hands tossed up above his head, and I'm sure he will be a happy tummy sleeper once he can roll over, just like Aiden.

We're going to be blessing him next month. I am going to have to wish Mike good luck holding him, as I think he will be quite heavy by then. He did a little better during church this past week, and actually let me sit through most of Relief Society, which was lovely. It's a bit hard, because when he's sleepy if he's not in whatever exact position he wants to be in to fall asleep, he starts to scream, and will continue to scream until you figure out some way to get him to fall asleep.

Life is getting more pleasant with him all the time, though, and should continue to improve as he gets older and can do more. He's very good at holding his head up. He shows no inclination yet to try rolling over.

Sick

2010-02-22T14:53:00.001-07:00

My throat feels like it's on fire. Aiden has had a fever since Friday to go along with his horrible cough and a nasty case of pink eye to top it off. Caleb decided all he wanted to do all weekend was eat. Mike has had to go to work every day (including a few hours last night) since last Monday. I am really, really looking forward to the end of cold and flu season. I would really like to be able to go to church regularly again rather than staying home almost every other week with a sick toddler.

I have started a new crochet project. Compared to what I have crocheted in the past, it is big and complicated. I'm having a lot of fun working on it, though I really only get to do so while the boys are napping (yes, I am crocheting instead of napping). I have learned, because of this project, how to wind center-pull balls of yarn using only my thumb. My yarn balls do not end up very round, but they work.

I have my six-week checkup on Thursday.

4 weeks

2010-02-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

Really quick post here, as I need to take a nap while both boys are asleep.

On the road to recovery after colds all around. I'd forgotten how miserable it is trying to use a bulb syringe on a baby. I've given him several bloody noses accidentally. He understandably hates the thing. Le Toddler Extraordinaire on the other hand, loves it, and wants to try to use it on himself every time he sees it. He has been throwing "collapse in a heap on the floor" tantrums a bit more often lately, which I am blaming on getting used to not as much mommy time as well as being sleepy from going to bed late a lot lately and on being sick as well. The Baby has not been sleeping in the mornings the past couple days, I think I need to start trying to have "oh, he's awake?" playtime on a blanket on the floor, if I can figure out how to keep Toddler from killing him in his efforts to play with him and help mommy take care of Baby. He needs a LOT of reminders right now to be soft, be nice, don't pick up the baby, don't throw things on the baby, don't touch the baby's eyeballs, don't put things in the baby's mouth, don't try to scalp the baby with your spoon or your fingers or anything else, etc. Don't get me wrong, he adores his little brother, he just doesn't know how to interact with him yet and is starting to lose patience with me telling him the baby is too small for this or that or any of the other things that he wants to do together. It is the cutest thing ever when he kisses the top of the Baby's head though. His brother gets better kisses than either I or Husband do.

I need new nicknames for everybody.

Taking care of two kids is really, really, really hard. I am utterly exhausted all the time, and they seem to manage to end up crying at the same time frequently, resulting in me having to pick which one can keep crying for awhile while I take care of the other. The lack of sleep is making me prone to grumpiness and intense frustration when Baby is crying and I can't do anything to get him to stop. Though, I have discovered he likes the noise of the dishwasher. The washing machine, unfortunately, doesn't work the same way, but the dishwasher noise often helps him fall asleep. So, I guess I ought to do dishes more often. I don't think I am going to be able to go shopping in the future without the baby carrier, it is impossible to fit the infant carseat with it's child-owner and the Toddler both in a shopping cart at once if I want to be able to put any actual food in there too. Plus, carseat = ridiculously heavy. So, we got an infant insert for our baby carrier and I will be using that for the grocery shopping until he's big enough to hold up his head on his own, at which time we can leave the infant insert at home.

Still having some feeding problems. Pain and discomfort. Working on it, hoping it will get better (it is a little better than it was a couple weeks ago), not using pronouns or subjects for the sentences, whatever.

We got the new Super Mario game for the Wii and have been playing it together. We just beat World 8 and unlocked the Star World. It's really fun, though I am ridiculously bad at it and the only reason we made it through is because Husband has played a lot of Mario and is good at it. I love being able to play at the same time rather than having to take turns.

The End. Time to sleep.

1 week and counting

2010-01-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

Caleb is officially one week old as of yesterday morning. My mom left yesterday morning. Mike went back to work yesterday morning. And I came down with what I suspect is mastitis yesterday morning, leaving me with horrible chills and an icky fever for most of the day. Aiden was grumpy already what with not having anybody around giving him their undivided attention anymore. Luckily, my in-laws came to the rescue and took him away to play at their house for the afternoon.

I still have a slight fever today but am overall feeling infinitely better than I did yesterday, so I may change my mind about calling the doctor to have them call in a prescription for some antibiotics. I think it is going away on its own. So, hooray for that. Aiden is grumpy again today. He loves the baby, but he wants me to play with him also, which is hard to find the time to do when le infant is wanting to eat every two hours, for at least half an hour each time, and frequently decides he doesn't want to go back to sleep unless I'm holding him afterwards. Hopefully he'll start sleeping for slightly longer stretches soon (I don't remember how long it takes before that happens). I am having a tough time figuring out how to balance the needs of both children along with my own needs.

Speaking of needs, both boys are asleep finally simultaneously. So, time for a nap!

New baby!

2010-01-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

Caleb was born this morning.

http://gallery.me.com/mdusey#100675

Photos there.

7lbs. 13oz., 21" long, born at 6:53am.

I woke up at about midnight with a couple of contractions, but thought it was another false alarm like the one that landed us in the hospital for 2.5 hours last Thursday night, so I drank some water and took a warm bath and the contractions stopped hurting (they might have stopped entirely, I wasn't paying attention) and I went back to sleep.

4am I woke up with fairly severe pain. I tried to go back to sleep. I used the restroom a bunch of times to see if that would help. I waited until I was sure I could tell the nurse when we got to the hospital that my contractions were 5 minutes apart (I hadn't been able to tell them last Thursday exactly how far apart they were). By the time I was sure that this was, in fact, not a false alarm, they were 4 minutes apart. I woke up Mike, had him call his parents to come over to take care of Aiden, and we got the last few things thrown into the car. And they were 3 minutes apart, so we went ahead and left for the hospital (Mike's parents got to our house about 5 minutes after we left, so no worries really about Aiden being alone, especially since it was 5:30 in the morning and he was sound asleep). We got to the hospital at about 5:45-ish, and holy cow, the contractions hurt a lot. By the time they got me checked at Triage, she said I was dilated to an 8 or 9 and 100% effaced, and whoosh into the delivery room we went, and they paged my doctor, who was not on call, so they paged her partner who was on call, and apparently my water had broken at some point without me noticing (I'm thinking probably in the tub at midnight), and they only had time to get one dose of antibiotics into me via the IV for the GBS. And out of nowhere the contractions went from lots of moaning and ouches to yelling and grunting and during one of them, it was very suddenly and obviously time to push, which I tried to communicate to the two triage nurses who were still attending me, while they were trying to make me remember to not hyperventilate. Finally they just grabbed the nearest doctor that was at the hospital to come catch the baby, and after maybe 10 pushes total (I don't really remember) he was out! I think my doctor's partner walked in right afterward, he finished up with the afterbirth and everything. A couple tiny superficial tears, no stitches needed.

Anyway, there was no time for any painkillers, which was NOT what I was planning on. The pain and sensations were fairly different than I was expecting. And I was not expecting before I went to bed last night that I'd have a baby before breakfast this morning. But I do, and he's a cutie-pie, and I think we're all doing pretty great at the moment, though we have to stay in the hospital for 2 days to make sure he didn't get the GBS (which they had to do some blood draws on him to test for this morning, which he did not like in the least). And since Aiden still has pneumonia, that means I don't get to see him and he doesn't get to see me or Caleb either until Thursday, which is not a very happy prospect for me, but I'm sure we'll manage just fine. Though I have to keep them apart for awhile even after we go home, until Aiden is better. But my mom will be here tomorrow, and Mike is taking a week off work, so he will have lots of love and snuggles.

And that's that. Happy Birth-Day, little guy. We love you.

Toodaloo, 2009.

2009-12-31T14:42:00.000-07:00

I have happily returned to eating spicy food. Surprisingly, I have not experienced any heartburn since I resumed eating it (which is, frankly, amazing after seemingly having it for a solid 3 months). I am trying, simultaneously, to remember to stay well-hydrated. It is difficult. Drinking lots of water throughout the day requires frequently getting up to refill my water cup or bottle, and getting up is difficult, therefore staying hydrated is difficult.

Every day now I am more pregnant than I have ever been before. Since I was induced with Aiden at 37 weeks, and I am now past 37 weeks pregnant with this child, I am learning just now what the end of your standard pregnancy is like. Unsurprisingly, it is fraught with discomforts. But there's some bright points as well, like my wonderful husband who has taken over the cooking almost entirely, and who has been doing the dishes, and the laundry, and changing the sheets on our bed, and doing pretty much everything. I am sure he is looking forward to after this kiddo is born, when I ought to be able to resume my normal household responsibilities.

He had yesterday off of work, so we finally got the infant carseat installed again in the car (and cleaned the whole car while we were at it, ridding it of approximately a pound of crackers and countless empty water bottles). We also got the play-yard set up with its bassinet attachment so that the baby will have somewhere to sleep. I need to clean up my craft table area in our room so that it will be neat and clean and baby won't be able to inadvertently grab anything off of it, since the bassinet is wedged between the table and our bed. I also need to pack a hospital bag, and we need to clean out the "storage" bedroom a bit so that my mom will have a place to sleep when she comes. After that, we will be all ready. I'm feeling much calmer and readier today, just having the carseat and bassinet ready. A bout of false labor a couple nights ago (in the middle of the night, of course, right after having watched "The Business of Being Born" which may have triggered it for all I know) had me all in a panic because it didn't feel like anything was ready yet. But now the most important things are done, so I am resting easy.

Christmas was fabulous. We got lovely, generous gifts from our families, which we have all been thoroughly enjoying. The weather was really nice, also, so Aiden got to go in the spa at his grandparents' house for a couple of hours, which he was ecstatic about. For New Years' Eve tonight, I think Mike is going to go deliver my belated neighbor treats for me that I made last night, and then perhaps we will watch a movie and go to bed early. It sounds like the perfect way to celebrate the end of the year to me. Mike is also going to cook us a tasty delicious dinner, which I am quite excited about. And we are going to have shrimp, which honestly I don't think I have ever purchased before (I know, we've been married almost four years, and I've never bought shrimp? It is a travesty).

Aiden got a little doll for Christmas, to help him get ready for the new baby. He likes to feed it from a toy bottle. He figured out that the bassinet in our room was a bed, and as soon as I told him it was a bed for the baby today, he ran into his room and got his doll and brought it back and threw it into the bassinet, saying, "Night-night! Night-night!" Thoroughly adorable. He still is spending most of the day every day pretending to cook. I think he's finally grasped the concept of giving kisses as well, which I adore.

I hope you all have a lovely, safe New Year's Eve tonight, and that the upcoming year is one of peace and joy.

I miss you, spice.

2009-12-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

I am not supposed to eat spicy food until I am at least 37 weeks pregnant, to try to avoid having the contractions happen again. I am starting to really miss it. Not that it would sit very well in my stomach right now, but not being able to eat it at all makes it sound really, really good.

Aiden has pneumonia. We got to take him to a Pediatric Urgent Care on Thursday night. They put him on amoxycillin and breathing treatments (as needed based on coughing and wheezing). So, I did the breathing treatments twice on Friday, and on Saturday he sounded almost completely better so I didn't do them, and Sunday he was still sounding pretty good, so I didn't do them, and today we had a follow-up at the Pediatrician's office, so of course, he was doing horribly this morning and was really congested and wheezing again a tiny bit. So now I get to give him significantly stronger antibiotics for the rest of the week (which I doubt taste good like the amoxycillin does), and have orders to do the breathing treatments every day until he's not coughing AT ALL, not even occasionally. Which is fine, except he is not feeling sick enough any more to sit still nicely for the ~15 minutes each one takes, and we've read through all his stories soooo many times in the past few weeks that he is not finding that much fun as a distraction anymore either, and the albuterol makes him fairly hyper.

I am getting to be one very tired mommy. Even with him generally feeling better than last week, he is still sick enough that he is prone to throwing tantrums much easier, and throwing food a lot more, and it is difficult to get him to eat enough food. I think he had a nightmare during the night Saturday night. He woke up crying loudly. I discovered I was too tired to roll over, let alone get up to take care of him, so I woke Mike up to go care for him instead. The first two or three times Mike got him calmed down and then tried to leave the room, as soon as the door was closed, Aiden started crying hysterically again. So, I suspect he was scared.

My cold is hanging on as well, which of course is not helping with the energy thing. We are up to weekly OBGYN visits now, so that's kind of exciting. I have no energy to cook for the past week. That is one thing I am really looking forward to about my mom coming to visit for the new baby, is she can make me delicious food (and perhaps we can get a few extra meals made and in the freezer, too).

My apologies to my friends, between being nine months pregnant and having a fairly sick toddler, my Christmas present giving list is getting whittled down to pretty much just family members (and half of those are going to be late getting there as is).

I am getting eager for it to be Christmas. Once the holiday is over, then I can focus entirely on getting ready for the new baby. I am feeling fairly unprepared. We need to set up the bassinet, and get the infant car seat installed in the car again, and the floors desperately need to be mopped, and the fan blades really ought to be dusted some time or other, etc, etc. I think I am feeling the nesting urges without any of the energy necessary to take care of any of it. I have given Mike a To-Do list as a result. I think he thinks some of the things on the list are a little silly, but I tried to keep it mostly to things that really do need to be done, preferably before the new baby arrives.

And now, naptime is over, and so, this post is also over.

This is my December

2009-12-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving was lovely. The turkey turned out pretty well. We did a rosemary, salt, pepper, and butter rub both under and over the skin, and made a standard bread stuffing to go inside, and made gravy from the drippings after the turkey was cooked. It ended up being done cooking early, it was nice and moist and flavorful, the skin wasn't quite as crispy as I think I would have liked and the salt wasn't perfectly distributed resulting in pockets of salty turkey and pockets of blander turkey, but overall we liked it.

The rest of that weekend wasn't as hot. We ended up in the hospital on Saturday night and again on Sunday afternoon because I was having regular contractions. They gave me terbutaline on Saturday which made me horribly shaky, and on Sunday I got an IV in case it was dehydration, but got to avoid getting another shot of terbutaline because the contractions stopped pretty much right after we got into triage. Long story short, there's absolutely no sign of the baby coming early, and the contractions were probably due to "gastrointestinal distress" combined with dehydration. I had a buffalo chicken salad with blue cheese dressing for dinner on Saturday night, which was pretty spicy, and had a fried onion rings appetizer as well, and was feeling pretty sick to my stomach several hours later, and ended up throwing up in the middle of the night (several hours after we got home from the hospital). So, the end result is, I am supposed to avoid spicy and fried foods for the next month, and am supposed to make sure I stay well-hydrated, and am supposed to generally take it easy. The doctor said, "No hikes, no long Christmas shopping excursions in large crowds" both of which I thought were pretty funny. There's 0% chance of me wanting to go on a hike in the next month. And I don't like really long Christmas shopping excursions either.

Oh yeah, add an icky cold on top of all of that, too. And waking up between 3:30 and 4:30 every single morning for over a week now and being unable most mornings to fall back asleep for at least 2 hours if at all. I'm feeling pretty wiped out at this point.

The few Christmas presents I am making are coming along well, though more slowly than I would like. Our tree is up, though not decorated yet since it will be making an appearance at the ward Christmas party on Friday so there's no point putting any ornaments on it now since they'd just have to come off again before then and then go back on again after. Aiden really likes looking at the lights on the tree, and the colored lights and tiny ornaments on my old dollar-store mini-tree that I've had since I was a freshman in college.

I had an ultrasound this past week, which was kind of fun (though long, again). Absolutely no signs of kidney reflux or excess amniotic fluid, which is great. Little baby Caleb boy is looking quite cute in there. When we were at the hospital for the conractions, the nurses both nights seemed a little surprised by just how active he was, rolling and kicking vigorously, which made their attempts at fetal monitoring a little difficult. He's got his head downwards like a good boy already, but I don't know if he's dropped yet (I kind of think not right now). So, things are good. I am getting tired of being pregnant, and six more weeks seems like an interminably long time to have left, but I am glad that he is not likely to come before Christmas at the least, and figure I shouldn't start feeling really impatient about it until after New Years at the earliest.

I have put together a long to-do list of things I would like to accomplish before the baby gets here. They're all things that ought to be done regardless, but some of them might not end up happening in the next month's time. Very few of them will end up happening, I suspect, unless Mike helps me a lot. I've discovered cleaning is really quite difficult when you can hardly bend over at all. And weeding and most other yardwork is practically impossible (and ill-advised considering my doctor's advice to take it easy). So we'll see what gets done, since I can't do most of it myself and he is busy with work and other obligations a lot of the time.

Aiden is getting very big. He has finally grown out of most of his 18-month clothes and is wearing the ~4 different 24-month outfits I have for him currently every day. He feels a lot heavier to me, too. Who knows, perhaps he is approaching the 30lb. mark. He's definitely quite adamant most of the time about what he wants (generally one of the following things: going outside, seeing grandma and grandpa, playing with his pots, marshmallows, cookies, crackers, milk, water, string cheese). He's doing pretty well at learning to say "please" although he is not doing so well at not throwing tantrums which involve him collapsing on the floor in a pitifully crying heap when he doesn't get what he wants. He is also not doing so well at not throwing his food when he's done eating, and at not kicking mommy during diaper changes. I rather suspect these are very typical toddler behaviors though, so while I do try to help him learn to be nice, I am not feeling like a failure when he is not. Though sometimes I do end up having little tantrums and meltdowns of my own.

It's been cold here lately, finally. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't, depending on whether or not I'm feeling overly warm or overly cold. The high today is supposed to be 56 and it is likely going to rain. It still doesn't feel very Christmasy to me without any snow, that is one aspect of Arizona that I am not used to still, though I do appreciate it. I don't even want to think about how many times I would end up falling down right now if there were snow and ice on the ground. I am not a very stable or well-balanced pregnant lady. The cool weather and rain should be nice, though it makes going outside to let Aiden run around a bit more complicated.

Overall life is still pretty good, despite all my end-of-pregnancy and mother-to-a-toddler complaints. We're getting by alright, and are all usually pretty happy, and there's not really much more I can want than that. Except for sweets. And those, those I can make any time. :)

He's singing in his crib

2009-11-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

So, last night I decided to try stuffing my tiny round pillow underneath my burgeoning belly instead of between my legs. And it helped! Much less pain during the night. So that was nice. According to my doctor, I ought to try one of those pregnant belly harness things (and to think I had once supposed them ridiculous and useless and pointless, etc, etc) to help with the round ligament pain during the day. You see, as somebody or other manages to point out at least once a week, my belly and growing baby are all straight out in front of me. And it is proving too much for my round ligaments to handle, and they are complaining a lot. The worst was on Friday, when we went to park day with several other ladies in the ward and their kids, and my particular child decided to go explore the street, and I had to run to catch him before he made it onto the asphalt. Note to self: No running with a big pregnant belly. I could not walk for most of the rest of the day. Serious pain.

ANYWAY...

Things are going well. A month and a half left for this whole pregnant thing to finish up in. I have another ultrasound next week just to make sure things are still going splendidly. The baby is getting big, and his heartbeat sounds good. My already-birthed son is growing quite big as well (compared only to himself, of course...he's still on the small side compared to other kids his age). He weighs somewhere in the 25 pound range now, and is getting hard to carry. And he's finally into his 24-month clothes. And he's wearing size 7 shoes, which are still too big on him, but he will get to wear them longer this way (and, they didn't have any size 6 shoes at the store on the day we decided to buy him new shoes because his toes were hanging over the edge of his size 5 sandals). The toddler boy loves mini-marshmallows and will say please and thank you for them, and will sit quietly in the car in order to get some, and will sit nicely at the doctor's office as long as he has some to munch on. He loves playing with pots and other kitchen things, and pretending to cook, and likes to sit in his chair and watch us cook, and loves watching Cooking With Dog on YouTube. He has also discovered our old stick vacuum in the past couple of days, and has been having lots of fun pushing that around the house pretending to vacuum. For the most part he's been transitioning to afternoon naps, though this morning he decided to take a morning nap instead, thus, I am posting.

We are doing the turkey for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I think I am going to do a rosemary butter rub under and over the skin, do a classic in-the-bird bread stuffing, and then roast it as per normal. No basting for me, thanks, and all the other options (brining, scalding, injecting, etc) are too much work for me to want to do this year. I just want a rosemary flavored turkey with crispy skin and moist meat, so, that's what we are going to attempt.

Our winter grass is beautiful. We still haven't mowed it yet. I don't know how long you're supposed to wait after it's started to grow before you mow, but I have been worried about doing it before it's strong enough to take it, so we have been holding off.

Lots of crocheting, trying to get some Christmas presents done, and I got to test a fun little pattern for a fun little whimsical tree for somebody the past couple days. I have been remembering that Caron Simply Soft is infinitely nicer on my fingers to work with (though more prone to splitting) than Red Heart Super Saver. But Red Heart is usually the cheapest, and most easily available in the colors I want, so I keep buying it. Oh well.

New month, new post

2009-11-02T10:32:00.001-07:00

So, we are in November now. Things I can tell you about my life:

I have approximately 11 weeks left of being pregnant.
I have no time to make all the Christmas presents I want to make, just like every year.
We still have ants in the yard.
Our winter grass is sprouting beautifully, despite the pigeons' attempts to eat it all.
I made Aiden an incredibly adorable Link costume for Halloween, complete with Master Sword and Hylian shield.
He quite liked wearing the hat.
He seems to be loving nursery, though he is still very happy to see us every week when we pick him up at the end of church.
There is little that is cuter than your toddler lighting up with huge smiles and running to you, calling out "Mama, mama, mama!" at the end of church.
A freshly bathed, dried, and pajamad toddler who is feeling cuddly may count as cuter.
The new baby is probably going to be named Caleb.
Aiden has been teething for the past month. All 4 canines decided to try to come out at once. That leaves just his 2-year molars.
Our trash can has been practically overflowing by trash day each week due to slowly getting rid of the bags of yard trash from making things look nice outside.
We went to a pumpkin patch for Halloween, and discovered our toddler adores pumpkins, especially ones small enough for him to pick up and throw. The hay bale maze was not as popular. The tractor was a hit. But mostly he just wanted to run around and throw things. And pick up everybody else's litter. He is an un-litterer. All trash must be properly thrown away.
It is entirely possible for it to be 88 degrees on Halloween here.
My glucose levels are fine, which is shocking considering the numbers of cupcakes I have consumed this month. However, I am slightly anemic. This makes me want to eat steak. The doctor recommended taking an iron supplement instead though. Bah.
I am getting the seasonal flu shot today. The H1N1 vaccine is still not available here anywhere.
My child's new favorite word is "pots".
Next time I'm pregnant, I'm going to invest in some expensive nice long enough won't-fall-off-all-the-time maternity jeans.
I beat World of Goo. Fun little game.

If you want to know more about daily boring details of my life, or see my photos from my "photo a day for a year" project, check FaceBook. I update it a lot more frequently than my blog.

Oh wow

2009-10-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in FOREVER. Sorry.

My life is fairly boring. I am trying to grow a new baby, keep my toddler growing, and see if my lemon tree will grow at all. I had to rip out my garden plants that survived all summer and were starting to grow a nice fall harvest for me, because we got our lawn sprayed to kill the biting ants and he wouldn't spray if we were going to eat any of the stuff in the garden. Of course, the spray did NOT end up killing the ants (possibly because it rained, possibly we overwatered the lawn, who knows...), so he had to come back this morning to try some different stuff. And now I cannot do yardwork where he sprayed for a couple days to allow the stuff to get down in and do its work or whatever. And of course, it is finally cool enough outside that I was, in fact, planning on making my whole yard beautiful this weekend (because it looks TERRIBLE right now because we have not been keeping up on picking up the detritus from our trees), and now I can't. And I am not going to be able to plant a winter garden due to the amount of time you have to wait after the pesticide before you plant anything you're going to be eating.

ANYWAY...enough about ants and growing things. Obviously, it is a small sore spot with me right now.

Speaking of sore spots, this pregnancy has been overall much more uncomfortable than the last one. Crazy round ligament pain / hip pain / etc. every morning when I wake up, or anytime I lie down on the floor, or after sitting for very long, or if I twist weird. Whatever. Need to exercise after this baby to get all my tummy muscles back in shape so that hopefully this extra painfulness from carrying around my belly baby never happens again. Or something. Additional achiness in my right leg every morning that I find fairly inexplicable and have not been able to solve with sleeping position or pillow placement. It was really bad this morning, to the point where I ended up crying while trying to walk to the bathroom. It has subsided now though, which is good. I really ought to ask the doctor about it at my next appointment.

And all my appointments are made for the rest of the pregnancy! Whoo! Next one is the nasty glucose one. So fun. Fast for three hours, chug the gross sugar drink within ten minutes time EXACTLY half an hour before your appointment, which you have to show up 5 minutes early for, so they can be sure to draw your blood EXACTLY one hour after you finish. Also, cervix check to make sure there's no signs of premature labor. Really looking forward to all that. It shall be the highlight of my right-before-Halloween visit.

I have stuff to try making Halloween costumes out of for Dusey and my Pickle Baby. Hopefully I get around to making them soon. I have been busy crocheting hundreds of tiny granny squares for a secret project of awesomeness that is taking forever. I am feeling an urgency to finish as many of my unfinished craft projects in the next three months as I can, as I know once the new baby is here they will all undoubtedly get put on hold again indefinitely. I have decided I don't like Red Heart Super Saver yarn very much, I am getting blisters on my finger from it running across it. The Caron Simply Soft is much better as far as an acrylic yarn goes. Someday perhaps I will have enough money to buy nice yarns made of natural fibers for my projects. Though, then again, acrylic is nice because of its washability.

Random factoid: I apparently have very good hemoglobin. Better than my doctor's. No need for iron supplements here! They'd probably be overdoing it! So, more snacks, and more water, and more sleep, are the only solutions to not feeling dizzy. Fall finally arriving has been helping immensely as well.

And by "fall" what I really mean is that we are currently having highs in the low 90's or high 80's every day, and it is no longer 105 outside all the time. It is beautiful weather. The child boy and I have been playing outside more this week, enjoying not overheating after 10 minutes. We are all out of bubble solution now though, so I need to make some more.

Aforementioned child boy has two new canines that popped through today, explaining his increased tantrums and snuggliness the past week with their emergence. He is also trying hard to imitate us and is learning loads of new words all the time and is quite talkative and very smart and has started using his imagination and pretend cooking things like blocks in his play-bowls in our (unplugged) toaster oven. He tells me they are hot when he takes them out and then pretends to drink them and says "Ahhhh" when done as if they were the most delicious refreshing thing ever. It is, perhaps, the cutest thing I have ever seen.

Some guy I grew up with messaged me on FaceBook today. During the course of our small talk, he revealed that back when he used to be afraid to talk to girls, he had a small crush on me. So, that was a little boost to my self esteem, knowing that years and years ago, when I used to think I wasn't cute and no boys liked me, that one at least did. Maybe more! Who knows! At any rate, it was a weird little conversation that never would have occurred were it not for FaceBook. The things people feel the need to confess to....weird.

I think that about wraps things up. I am currently finishing off the package of Fig Newtons I bought while thinking about Brian Regan's little bit about them and the listed serving size. "Two cookies? Who only eats two cookies? I eat Fig Newtons by the sleeve! Two sleeves is a serving size!"

It's a boy, it's a boy, it's a boy, boy, boy

2009-08-21T15:10:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the title, been watching a lot of Baby Signing Time the past few days and the repetitive songs are all stuck in my head.

Anyway, we are following the pattern thus far of both my older sisters, and having a second boy. While it would have been fun to go crazy on all the girly stuff had it been a girl, this will be good, as we don't have to buy any new clothes (we have LOTS of baby boy clothes), they can easily share a room for years and years (no cleaning out the storage room yet!), and I suspect they will absolutely adore playing with each other. Anyway, I am excited. Now I can start looking at baby names again. El Hijito was not at all shy in showing off, he likes being all curled up (surprise surprise for a fetus, I know), with his hands by his face and his legs crossed. This ultrasound, being a level 2 ultrasound, was much more detailed than the first one last time, so it was neat to see everything as the tech explained absolutely everything and what it was, etc, etc. And, so far so good, he looks to be a perfectly healthy little 11oz. fetus. I suspect I will have to have another ultrasound closer to my due date to make sure everything is still going well at that point.

Tonight is the ward campout. I need to get ready for it. Warm stuff to gather up, sandwiches to make, I don't know what else. I want to make some brownies first though. And my child is taking an afternoon nap for the first time in DAYS which I am very excited about, so I think I will go ahead and make the brownies while I have a chance. Supposedly, it's the best ever brownie recipe ever. I will report later on how they turned out.

Almost There

2009-08-19T10:59:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow is my other two fillings. Friday is my ultrasound (FINALLY), and then the ward campout.

I had weeeiiiirrrrrrd dreams last night, as has frequently been the case lately.

My child has been cranky and kind of sick. I am hoping it is a tooth coming through. He has not been napping well the past few days. This is highly unfortunate, as I have been incredibly sleepy ALL THE TIME the past few days and could really use a nap each day, but it doesn't happen because I just sit around listening to the baby monitor waiting and waiting and waiting for him to GO TO SLEEP until finally he starts crying and I go get him up again and then repeat the whole process 30 minutes later.

It is still entirely much much too hot outside. I have been having dizzy spells. The only thing the kiddo wanted to do yesterday (besides throw every piece of food I gave him onto the floor in a fit of anger because he's not feeling well) was go outside. And I kept saying, "No, it's too hot outside," and he would scream and cry at me and run from the front door to the back door and back to the front door looking at me over and over with tear-filled desperate eyes. But I did not give in, because I knew if I went outside in the middle of the day, I was going to get dizzy again, and I am tired of the dizziness and am trying to avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately, going grocery shopping seems to trigger it, and I have to go grocery shopping every week.

We had an absolutely wonderful reunion with my family in California last week. We went to Disneyland for two days, and the beach for one day. I went on all the kiddy rides at Disneyland (the circling rocket ride in Tomorrowland proved to be too much for me). Aiden loved It's a Small World, and liked the carousel, and Dumbo, but didn't much care for most of the little movie rides, as they all have dark parts and scary music bits and most have flashy light bits too and it's all a bit much for a sleepy 16-month old to handle. He loved playing with his cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, though, which was good, as I let them take care of him a lot of the time for me so I could focus on not being dizzy (I almost passed out, vision blacking out, ears ringing, the whole nine yards, while waiting in line to buy us some lunch the first day at Disneyland! Very exciting. My sister bought me a Powerade. It was blue, and delicious.) I loved seeing all my family, and wish I got to visit with them more often. I miss getting to spend time with them. I think maybe they should just all come visit me in November. The weather here should be lovely by then, and they can put up all my Christmas decorations for me. Not really on the decorations, but still, it would be fun if they could come visit. Maybe eventually I'll have the "pink room/storage room" cleaned out and they could actually have some place to stay if they came to visit. I ought to clean it out anyway in preparation for the new kiddo. And because it's a mess.

Our broken showerhead is fixed. And I have a new garage door opener remote for the car, so I don't have to get in and out to use the keypad every single time I go anywhere anymore, which should prove to be lovely and appreciated greatly by both myself and my child. Now I just need to find a repairman to call about quotes for fixing the microwave turntable, because if it ends up that it would be really expensive, then I suspect we should just buy a new microwave. The current microwave still works, true, but a working turntable makes food heat so much more evenly/quickly! I am so spoiled.

Anyway, I am not at all excited for tooth fillings tomorrow. It kind of hurt on the last batch and they had to give me extra Novocaine that resulted in me having a very numb (finally) right side of my face right after I got home, and my jaw ached all day. I suspect it will probably be just the same on the left side tomorrow. But I am very excited for Friday. Ultrasound! I need to remember to bring a blank DVD so they can make a copy of it for me so Mike can watch it. I am honestly feeling a wee bit ambivalent about the ward campout. I am not sure how well Aiden will do with falling asleep in a tent in the cold mountains, etc, etc. Who knows, maybe he will surprise me and we will end up having a fabulous lovely time. Honestly, I'm really looking forward to October when he gets to go to nursery. Fairly unrelated to the ward campout, but that is what popped into my head, so there you go.

By this time last time I was totally done with the morning sickness. This time around, though, it seems to keep cropping back up unexpectedly just when I think I'm finally all over with it. I am feeling better almost all of the time, but every once in a while I start feeling very suddenly and violently ill. This child, oh this child, this child is turning me into a picky eater and a tired sick constantly hormonal wreck. My apologies to my other child, you can blame your mother's several months of hardly playing with you and spending a lot of time lying on the couch on your new sibling. Cheese crackers are the worst. Though I made some Kraft Mac-N-Cheese a few weeks ago that I ate a few bites of and then couldn't even stand to look at anymore and ended up throwing away because it was making me feel ill every time I opened the fridge and saw it there. REAL CHEESE IS STILL DELICIOUS though. Just in case you were wondering.

Lazyhead and Sleepybones never could agree

2009-07-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

We had a return to the morning sickness today (just as I was starting to think it was over with). It seems as if it is not one thing, it is another. When I'm not morning sick, I have a cold, or I'm dizzy, or my sciatic (sp?) nerve goes off, or I have a grumpy child to deal with, or it is simply too darn hot outside to do anything.

I am really looking forward to when summer is over.

Here is a list of things I plan on doing once it is cooler outside again:
Go on walks with my Pickle Boy every day. We both like walks.
Cook dinner regularly.
Not be sick all the time.
Keep the house clean.
Play in the backyard.
Go to the playground that has the swings.
Have picnics.

You get the idea.

In the meantime, I am going to daydream about living in a temperate climate. And I'm going to daydream about rich, flavorful beef, and donuts. Not together. But the same meal (entree and dessert), sure. Yum.

Hi, hi, hi, hi, nananananana

2009-07-13T12:02:00.001-07:00

Here is Potato Bug's current list of words:
Nana (banana)
Reggie (his grandparents' dog)
Mamamamama (Mommy)
Dada (Daddy)
Dah (Dog)
Bye-Bye
WaDa (Water)
Uh-oh
Hi
Papa (Grandpa)
Wazzat (What's that)
Ba (ball)

Shju (shoe)
Che (cheese)

He occasionally mimics me when I say other words as well. Papa and Reggie and Wada he's only said a couple of times each, and doesn't generally seem inclined to repeat them. He signs "more" frequently now, and loves signing "dog" and "daddy" and does a half-sign for water when he's thirsty, and still sometimes does the sign for food though more often he walks over to the fridge and pounds on the door of it until I get him something to eat. He loves blowing raspberries, and blowing on hot food, and sometimes licks me when I ask him for kisses (which is the closest to actual kisses that I've gotten from him so far).

We just got back last night from a lovely vacation with Dusey's family in Oceanside, CA. We went to the beach lots, where Potato Bug adored playing in the sand and seeing his cousins and grandparents almost all day every day. We also went to San Diego Zoo, which I loved. I particularly liked watching the gorillas and the polar bears and the pandas (though I wish they let you stay to see the pandas longer). Oh, the hippo was fun to watch, too. Dusey took some really amazing photos while we were there, most especially of the gorillas and the lion. I forgot to put sunscreen on my back for the first few hours of our last day at the beach, and am now suffering the consequences. Potato Bug and I are both having a bit of a hard time being back home alone with each other. This will probably not be helped by his pediatrician appointment this afternoon, since it's time for shots again.

At thirteen weeks along, I am still feeling pretty sick most of the time. I managed to not throw up once during our vacation though, despite a couple close calls. It was a nice respite from two straight weeks of throwing up every single day. At first I had the hardest time dealing with dinner, but the past couple weeks it has switched to breakfast. Hopefully it will go away really soon so I can start feeling like actually making food for my family again. I have gained a lot more weight this far into this pregnancy than I did last time, because I just don't feel up to making food most of the time, so we've been eating out a lot, and eating a lot of microwave meals (like corndogs and burritos and things). I am frequently craving steak. I finally got some Flinstones vitamins to take, which might help with the cravings. They certainly taste infinitely better than the store-brand chewables I got last time around. Maybe I'll try the gummy ones once I run out of these.

Potato Bug loves running around everywhere now, and always wants to go outside to play and pull the last few tomatoes off their vines. My books are going to be moving from our front room into our bedroom in an effort to keep him from playing with them constantly. He is slightly more interested in coloring, though it still doesn't keep his attention for more than a few minutes. He tries sometimes to help me build the block towers, rather than just always knocking them over now, which is nice. We play lots of little games together during the day where he'll run around and I'll chase him, or he'll fall over on the floor and I'll tickle him, or he'll bring me a book to read to him, etc. He loves pretending to mix stuff, and had great fun on our vacation taking the whisk and the colander and mixing the air around with them. No trash can is safe from him, except for the one we got with a locking lid. He threw away his sippy cup while we were in California. Drawers and cabinets are a constant risk as well, and I need to finish putting the cabinet locks on the bathroom cabinets and games cabinet and Dusey's photography cabinet. He does actually listen to me most of the time now though when I tell him to not do something, or ask him to put something back. I have decided we will work on saying please and thank you after he has gotten to the point of actually asking for things better, rather than just whining and reaching for what he wants.

Overall, we're having a good time. I am looking forward more and more to the reunion with my family next month. I miss them.

I had forgotten

2009-06-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten what it's like for me, being pregnant. Of course, this time, all the symptoms seem to be coming on a little quicker, a little sooner, than they did last time, and possibly a little worse, too. Or maybe it just seems that way because I'm trying to take care of a very clever toddler who is now darting all around the house all day getting into absolutely everything, while I am at the same time trying not to throw up.

My house is a disaster zone, verging on a federal emergency. The only reason it hasn't gotten to that point yet is because Dusey cleans stuff up every night when he gets home.

I could clean it, I suppose. I tend to put it off, though, dreading that darting pain in the sciatic nerve, dreading feeling so tired that I suspect I may pass out at any moment, dreading hunching over the toilet again when something unexpected sets off the queasiness. Smells, sights, sounds, movement, most anything can set it off. Diaper changes are the worst.

My giggly little boy was happily watching me throw up a few days ago. He ran off to his room, and brought back one of his board books, which he determinedly tried to throw into the toilet. Thank goodness I got it out of his hand right before he let go of it. A couple days later, I forgot to close the bathroom door, and as soon as I realized, I ran in there just in time to see him swirling the toilet water with my hairbrush in between splashing around with his hands. That is now the first thing I check every day once he is awake, is making sure that door is closed. Hopefully it will be a long time yet before he learns how to turn the doorknob. I still don't know what to do with my hairbrush, I've left it sitting in the sink ever since (I have another that I've been using, no worries).

We left the kiddo home with his grandparents this last weekend, while we took an overnight trip to Fresno for a friend's wedding. It was an enjoyable trip, and I didn't miss my babykins quite as much as I was expecting too (though I did miss him). I never want to sit on the back row of a small airplane again though. Somewhat turbulent landings on both flights made me into one queasy lady.

I watched some Food Network yesterday. One of their chefs was cooking an aged steak. So, of course, then I started craving steak. With buttermilk biscuits. So we went out to eat last night at Texas Roadhouse, where I got my steak (but no biscuits, sadly). It was fairly tasty, and I actually managed to keep it all down once we got home, with the help of a cool wet washcloth and a husband who took care of our child's bedtime routine all by himself.

I got a laptop. 17" MacBook Pro, old floor model that was getting replaced at Dusey's store, so we got a really, really good deal on it. I love it. I also got Dusey's old iPhone, since he got the new 3GS one. I have been playing around a bit with both of them, and am perfectly satisfied on the technology front for the foreseeable future.

I've been doing lots of reading lately, as reading and watching TV/movies are about the only things I seem to be able to do lately without feeling really sick. I've read a couple more DiscWorld books. I also reread Ender's Game, and for the first time read Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide. Children of the Mind is next on my list, after which I'll probably read more DiscWorld books.

It is hard to believe that it is already almost the 4th of July, yet at the same time, it feels like time has been crawling, so slowly. I still have probably 4 to 10 more weeks of feeling sick. There is more than a month left before I get to go have "the ultrasound". I have to have four fillings, but can't get them until August. Hopefully July will go quickly. I want to set off fireworks. I don't recall if they're legal here or not.

Little Baby Bud

2009-06-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

My fears have been calmed. There is one little baby, with one head, four limb buds, and a beating heart, growing away inside of me. The newbie is due to arrive sometime around January 15th.

Potato Bug is going to need a new nick, I think. He is walking now. Still crawling, too, but he tries to walk most of the time, if he thinks he can make it to something close enough to grab onto before falling over. He is enjoying his swimming lessons, though he hates the part where we try to have him lay on his back, and he refuses thus far to try blowing bubbles. We will keep trying. He got a hair cut yesterday, which is a little short, meaning that I won't have to cut it again as soon as I would have to otherwise. His hair has settled into a very white blonde, and his little arms and legs are starting to get fairly tanned.

I am not feeling sick quite as often the last couple of days, perhaps because I've been eating practically non-stop and drinking a lot of liquids and getting a little more sleep. So, it's been nicer. I still have pretty much zero energy for cooking, poor Dusey has had to deal with eating out a lot lately, or making us both sandwiches. I have to go shopping tomorrow as we are now out of bread, as well as milk and bananas for Potato Bug, though the child has decided he loves pickles, so those have been a good treat lately in lieu of having bananas to eat.

To boldly go

2009-06-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

I've been watching the first season of the original Star Trek series on Netflix. I'm almost at the very end of the season, and they're just starting to get a few things nailed down that nowdays, "everybody" knows about the original series. Like, Bones' classic line "I'm a doctor, not a _______", and the death of the red shirts, and it being the United Federation of Planets, rather than the United Earth Colonies or whatever it was that they called it for most of the season. Anyway, it's fairly entertaining, but mostly it just makes me want to watch Next Generation. I need to see Picard and Data and Worf!

I signed Potato Bug up for Parent Tot swimming lessons at one of the local public pools. 8 classes, 30 minutes a class, all for $23. It's a good deal for a baby swim class. The purpose of the class ultimately, I guess, is just to help the kids get used to the water. I am hoping to learn how to teach my son to not drink the pool water. If nothing else, he will enjoy being in the pool so often over the next two weeks (Monday through Thursday, starting this week).

My first OBGYN appointment for this pregnancy is on Tuesday. I am secretly terrified that I will either miscarry before then, or that the doctor won't be able to find a heartbeat. I've been so achy and tired and sick that I really shouldn't be so worried, all signs point to my hormones doing their very best to support the pregnancy, but still, I worry. I did not worry this much last time. I also didn't ache so much last time, this early on. I am also worried that the doctor will tell me that I have a 100% chance of ending up with too much amniotic fluid again and that I will have to be induced early again, etc. I do not want that. It is not the birth scenario that I created in my head last time, and didn't get. I know, most women do not get the birth scenario they want, but still, if there is a possibility of things not turning out that way this time, I will hope for it. No matter what, this next child will also have to be tested for kidney reflux, since Potato Bug had it. And those tests are not fun, and I am not looking forward to having to go through them with any and all future children. Assuming the baby appears healthy at my appointment on Tuesday, I am hopeful that I will be able to get a prescription for prenantal vitamins that are very small. I do not know if such a thing exists, but I am much more likely to take them if they are tiny. I hate monstrously huge pills. Heh, I don't particularly like normal sized pills. Anyway...

Potato Bug slipped two days ago, and hit his face into our coffee table, resulting in one of his tiny sharp little teeth puncturing his bottom lip pretty good. It bled a lot at first, but stopped bleeding pretty quick. It remains swollen though. He has been extra grumpy and drooly the last two days, and I don't know whether to blame it on his injury, or possibly another teething episode (he's a bit sniffly and sleepy too). Whatever it is, I am hopeful that he will feel better soon. I have a difficult time dealing with a grumpy needy child when I am not feeling well.

Too much waiting

2009-05-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

I am no good at waiting to share news when it helps to explain immediately why I am behind on everything, why I am feeling horrible, why I am making my poor husband take care of so much stuff that I'd normally do myself. And June 9th is a long way off yet, so I am just going to go ahead and spill the beans.

I am pregnant again.

I am excited, but I am already tired of the morning sickness. At least it waited until we were home from our trip to New York to hit. If I do not snack on stuff all day long, I get feeling really awful, though I haven't thrown up yet (there've been a couple close calls though so I suspect that that stage of the being sick is not all that far off).

So, there you have it.
:)

Things I am excited about today

2009-05-20T15:56:00.001-07:00

I made an appointment to have an eye exam tomorrow morning. I have had this pair of glasses for approximately nine years with the same pair of lenses the entire time and one of the lenses is currently held in with a twisty-tie, and the glass is horribly scratched, and the nose-pieces always turn green, so I am endlessly excited at the prospect of new glasses (with a current prescription!).

I am making salsa-cream cheese chicken in the crockpot. Also, I have frozen waffles and real maple syrup to put on them (I know actual home-made waffles are much tastier, but I never feel like making them or cleaning the waffle iron after). Food is exciting.

My son has been offically totally completely weaned for 2.5 weeks now. I made it to my goal of nursing him for a year, and am quite happy to be done now.

I have a doctor's appointment in 3 weeks which I am looking forward to.

Fish fish fish fish fish

2009-05-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

I think I'm giving up on Xanga. Apologies to my Xanga friends, but it has been giving me nothing but problems lately, and I infinitely prefer LJ and Blogger.

My baby boy has finally reached the 20lb. milestone. He is officially big enough for his new forward-facing carseat, if I can ever figure out how the darn thing works and get it installed in the car.

My little sister came to visit a couple of weeks ago. It was so much fun having her here. We went shopping, and went swimming, and watched Lost, and went swimming, and watched more Lost, and went swimming. We both got burned while swimming her last day here. My shoulders are still red (and peeling now too, hooray), two weeks later.

On Mother's Day, we hopped a plane to New York and went to visit my oldest sister for a week. New York is a pretty cool city, full of an incredible diversity of people and things to do. Seeing as we took our 1 year old with us, we kept our "things to do" list to a minimum: the Empire State Building, making a cake with my sister for my birthday, the Bronx Zoo, seeing Wicked, the Met (and the Cloisters), the Natural History Museum, Central Park, and Chinatown. Everything was fabulously fun. While there we ate: pizza, cheesecake, Indian, sushi, Chinese, bagels with cream cheese (and we tried a lox spread which I thought was pretty gross, I will have to try the sliced stuff sometime as I think it will taste much better)...I can't think of anything else we ate. Oh, and my birthday cake, which was delicious. Everything was extremely tasty (other than the lox spread). We got back on Saturday morning, and have been trying to catch up on sleep and lazing about ever since (well, except for Dusey who has been diligently working). Though I did go shopping yesterday, and made dinner, so I haven't been totally lazy.

Endless thanks to my sister for letting us stay with her, and use her bedroom, and help us figure out what to do and how to get there and entertaining us whenever we weren't out doing things. It was a wonderful trip, and I'm so glad we got to go.

While we were gone, the grass seed that we spread over the back yard to help the dead patches recover absolutely exploded. There are still a couple bare patches, but the yard looks infinitely better than it has for the past year that we've lived here. The grass is a beautiful bright springy green color, and it desperately needs mowing. Some of it is verging on six inches tall, I think. But it is entirely too hot to mow during most of the day now, with temperatures approaching if not broaching 100. So perhaps Potato Bug and I will go swimming today instead.

My garden is also doing quite well. We are getting delicious ripe tomatoes, and I think the eggplant is ready for picking, and the cilantro is huge and the other herbs are hanging on which is amazing, considering the heat. The pepper plants are still fairly small, I'm hoping they continue their slow and steady growth and give us some fruit before the true heat of summer arrives and burns them all up.

Some day I will stop being lazy and post some of my pictures from my new camera. I certainly have enough to pick from now. I suppose you will all have to remain in suspense until I finally get around to it.

On a final note, we got an Ergo Sport baby carrier, and I love it. It was perfect for carrying the kiddo around New York. Also, I adore my new pajamas. They are comfy and light and cute and if it wasn't killer hot here right now, I'd be tempted to wear them all the time.

Hooray!

2009-04-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

The kidney reflux progress tests for my Potato Bug Boy are all over and done with (for now, at least). We had the VCUG this morning at the hospital, where he got to be immobilized on a board while they stuck a catheter all the way up into his bladder and pumped a lot of liquid into it and then tried to take pictures before he peed it all back out (they were not successful with the getting him to not pee part). They were very nice, and put on Finding Nemo for him to watch, and tried to help me distract him, and gave him a beach ball when we were all done so he could play with it while we waited to get the CD of images from them. He was fairly good, though as to be expected he cried from the moment I set him down to check his diaper to several minutes after I pciked him up after the test was over, and sporadically after that whenever he remembered that he was supposed to be traumatized. The doctor who did the test told me that he still had reflux, but that because he peed during the ENTIRE test, they weren't ever able to get his bladder completely full of their contrast dye and so he couldn't tell me what grade the reflux was.

Cue the sorrowing and worrying on my part.

Once we finally got the CD and got back to our house, it'd been just about three hours since we left, and I had half an hour before I wasn't supposed to feed the kiddo anything anymore, and approximately an hour before we had to leave for the second appointment of the day. What's a mommy to do? I stuffed him full of banana and milk and put him in his crib so my super-sleepy boy could take a short nap.

Then I had to wake him up to go to the next appointment. Still sleepy baby who's already been traumatized by tests once during the day = a bad patient. We got to drive right back to the hospital (actually, to a building next door), where I got to refill out all the exact same paperwork they had me fill out LAST TIME. Cue more frustrated mommy. At least the babykins enjoyed crawling around while we were waiting for them to call us back (they need to clean their carpets though, his knees were BLACK by the time we got to go back there). And then we had the ultrasound. Ultrasound = needing to hold still to get clear pictures. Grumpy baby who has to (gasp!) LAY DOWN on his BACK on a PAPER SHEET = wiggly. And crying. Lots and lots of crying. I think he remembers the paper sheet from the doctor's office when he got his shots last week. Traumatic. Even though the ultrasound was so totally painless, as far as physical pain goes. I cannot speak for his emotional pain (he was upset), nor for the pains of the technician, who was having a horrible time trying to get clear pictures of his bladder and kidneys (I got to hold him for the kidney ones, and he wanted to crawl all over me and was still being very wiggly, poor ultrasound tech). Of course, he had pooped right before the ultrasound, so we both got to deal with diaper stink the whole time. Once she was done, I got to lay him BACK DOWN ON THE PAPER SHEET (oh noes!), which of course, caused great amounts of crying, so that I could change his stinky diaper. And he, in retaliation, peed all over the paper sheet in the middle of the diaper change. And for once, I was not responsible for cleaning up his mid-diaper-change pee.

Poor, poor ultrasound technician. At least I had a plastic baggie for the stinky diaper to go in.

Then we got to sit and wait in a small room (not the lovely waiting room) for the nurse to come and tell me what was what and how he was doing. The room, of course, had an exam table in it, with a paper sheet. Potato Bug took one look at it and started wailing. I eventually managed to more or less distract him with the "I'll hand you something that you can throw on the floor for me to pick up while still trying to hold you" game. We played it with almost everything I had in the diaper bag and in my purse.

Finally, the nurse came in, only to let me know that she was getting errors from the disc from the VCUG and needed to go call the radiology department at the hospital to get the doctor's write-up or a new CD. So we got to sit and wait a couple more minutes. And then she came back in, with the doctor's write-up. And he had Grade 3 reflux at the last test, in his right kidney. And now he has a trace of Grade 1 in his left kidney, and she couldn't quite tell exactly for sure what the Grade was for his right kidney due to the CD problems, but she felt like classifying it probably as also Grade 1 (though it could feasibly be Grade 2, she said). Anyway, either way, this is a HUGE IMPROVEMENT. Cue happy mommy. Ultimately, we decided to call it Grade 1, and give him 2 more days of his antibiotics (due to the catheter that morning), and then, just, stop. No more daily medicine. Call it good. He's growing out of it.

Of course, I still have to watch, and if he gets a high fever (anything over 101.5) I have to go get him catheterized to get a urine test done to see if he's got a kidney infection, and if he does, then we will have to admit that he still has bad reflux.

But we're all hoping (of course) that that never happens. And in the meantime, we will be assuming that it is Grade 1 and that it will disappear completely as he continues to grow. (Grade 5, by the way, is the worst, and takes surgery to fix. Grade 3 gave him a 50% chance of outgrowing it on his own.)

So, I am no longer feeling like a bad mommy. And I am not carrying around that constant worry in the back of my head anymore that he will not outgrow it. And he's happy because we're staying home the rest of the day. And I am happy because I am incredibly relieved.

He got a banana in the car on the way home from the ultrasound and follow-up, because he was still extremely tired and kind of grumpy and undoubtedly hungry. And I learned an important lesson. Do not give your child fresh fruit (particularly not bananas) to eat in the car when they're prone to throwing their food to the side sporadically for absolutely no reason. I got to fish banana bits out from under the passenger chair of our truck once we were home and he was in bed. And the truck, I suspect, still probably smells like banana.

Which, by the way, is Potato Bug's first word (other than Uh-oh and mamamama and dadadada). He sees bananas, and he says "nana nana nana nana" and gets very excited. Oh, my funny little babykins. I love you so much.

1 year

2009-04-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

My little boy is still quite little. 19 lbs. which puts him in the 5th percentile for weight still, and 29 1/2" tall, which is 50th percentile for height. Since those percentages are pretty much the same as they were last appointment, the pedicatrician says it's probably just how he's going to keep growing, kinda skinny. She joked that maybe I should feed him a lot of cake to fatten him up. He ought to be big enough in about a month, she said, to move into his big-boy forward facing carseat, once he gains that vital last pound. All in all, he seems quite healthy. He didn't like lying on top of the paper on the table, and really didn't like the shots, but calmed down as soon as I gave him a cookie once I picked him back up after. The insurance we've got for him right now apparently requires some routine bloodwork done at a year old, so I decided to get it all over with in one day, and we headed over to the lab right after the pediatrician's this morning. He really didn't like the blood draw (of the normal sort, with the needle in the arm), and they didn't get very much blood (the phlebotomist said I should have him drink more water, but I personally don't think it was a very good poke in his arm). So, we might have to go back and do it again if they don't end up having enough. I fed him a banana as soon as we got home which cheered him right back up. He adores bananas.

I am feeling like a horrible mother because I have not been giving him his antibiotics for his kidney reflux for the past several months. I am waiting to hear back from the nurse at the pediatric urology office about it, since his appointments are next week. We went on vacation, and I didn't remember to give it to him while we were going all about and so busy, and then I kind of didn't remember once we were back home, and though he has seemed perfectly fine with no signs of any kidney infections I am still feeling like a failure of a mother for just totally spacing my child's medicine for not just a week or two, but months. Gah. I guess we will see if there were any infections for sure or not next week. I am a bad mom.

Potato Bug loves watching Baby Signing Time. When I put it on for him, he crawls over to me and tries to climb in my lap, and then cuddles with me while we watch it, which is pretty much the only time he does that. The rest of the time, he wants to be either crawling around the house, or if he's hungry, sitting in his booster seat and eating. He's become quite adept at throwing his food on the floor. I feed him pretty much the same stuff as we eat now, though he eats a lot more bananas and applesauce than we do. He likes Cheerios in milk for breakfast most days. His diapers smell worse and worse, it seems, with every diaper change. I guess that's pretty normal with the switch to real food.

He's very good at crawling very fast. He likes walking holding on to things and is getting better at it. He can hold his balance standing up without holding on to anything for longer each time he tries, which isn't very often honestly, as there's almost always something around to hold on to. He is extremely good at waving, and when he feels like it, will wave at everyone and everything. When he doesn't feel like it, he won't wave at all. He didn't feel like it at the doctor's office this morning.

His signs are getting better. He regularly signs food, and milk, and all-done. He frequently signs hat also though I don't think he associates it with hats yet as he doesn't like wearing hats, and therefore I have no idea what he's trying to tell me with that one. Maybe he just likes my hair. Who knows. He occasionally signs more. I think he recognizes several other signs also, though he hasn't attempted to do any others yet. He talks to himself and to me quite a lot, though still with no actual words yet of course. He likes to sing sometimes, especially into anything that reminds him of a kazoo. He's very good at putting balls back in his ball-popper, and also at throwing them (and other toys) across the room. He's started to enjoy getting down on his stomach to look at things when they roll under the couch or a chair, and sometimes puts his head down on the floor and looks like he's about to do a somersault with his bum up in the air. He just stays like that for a few seconds, looking at the world upside-down through his legs, and then goes back to his normal crawling around. Sometimes he tries to clap, but not very often. He's very good at feeding himself, though I am always worried he's going to choke on something (particularly bananas) as he likes to stuff as much food as he can into his mouth in one go if he likes it. He still likes going on walks and watching the cars and birds go past. Mostly we stay inside and play, though. Baths are fun, toothbrushing still doesn't work quite how it's supposed to (he just wants to suck the toothpaste off and then bite the toothbrush, but we're working on it), and he's taken to helping me pull his shirts down over his head when it's time to get dressed.

Sometimes he decides he doesn't want to have his diaper changed. He's really very strong and flips his whole body over while I'm trying to hold his legs and wipe his bum off. I let go of his legs to try to flip him back over and he sits up. I have started trying to put the new diapers on him as he's either standing or crawling sometimes, since when he decides he's not going to lay on his back, there is nothing I can do to get him to lay on his back without hurting him (and I don't want to hurt him).

He has started to make decisions about whether to be sad or not. When he bumps his head, or somebody he doesn't know touches him, or whatever other thing he doesn't like, he sits there and thinks about it for a minute, then frowns, then opens his mouth wide and silent, and then starts crying. He's very good at frowning when he's upset. He's also very good at laughing finally. He laughs at the silliest strangest things sometimes, so I end up doing weird stuff all the time trying to get him to laugh more.

I promise to add some pictures later tonight, after he's asleep for the night.

Yesterday

2009-03-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

After waking up briefly at 6am, the baby and I both went back to sleep until about 9. Oh, heaven.

Then we went to Walmart, where I did not find 3/4 of what I was looking for, but did find a whole lotta baby food on sale so I bought a bunch because I still can't feed the kiddo a lot of what we eat very easily and making my own baby food is cool and all and generally cheaper but it takes SO MUCH TIME and it's handy (particularly when sick, like now) to just have some mush on hand to shovel in his hungry, hungry little mouth. I also bought some Cheerios in a hard little purse-sized container so that I can have something to refill since the Cheerios in the diaper bag in a baggie always end up crushed and leaving little Cheerio dust all over everything leaking out of the baggie. And I bought a small carton of Goldfish.

I fed about half of the carton of Goldfish to the babekins as we drove to Ikea, which is a pretty good-distance drive. It was his brunch. Yes. That is all I fed him for both breakfast and lunch (though he did have a lot of milk that morning). Also, we went to Ikea right during what would have been his naptime. He was almost asleep when we finally got there, and then I got him out of his carseat and kept him awake for several more hours while we wandered all over Ikea looking for just-the-right-thing and some shelves. He lost my little paper where I wrote the location of some shelves I wanted, so we did not get those, but we did get some other shelves I wanted and a just-right-for-now thing for babyproofing game controllers (it's a roll-top small cabinet that was on sale, yay!).

It was past the start of his normal afternoon-naptime by the time we finally left. He fell asleep in the car home, hooray. Then he woke up as soon as we got home, so I fed him some more milk, and put him in his crib for enforced naptime. He cooed at himself and played with his playthings in his crib for about half an hour before falling asleep until 5pm. I, meanwhile, ate a bag of Cheetos for lunch, followed by some hummus on a pita (oh yes, yesterday was the day of HEALTHY EATING HABITS all around). And then I assembled the roll-top thingy. And it took about two hours to put together. And it's pretty cheaply made, but it turned out nice and I'm quite pleased with it.

So then the baby wakes up, right as I'm done transferring all the controllers into the new cabinet and locking it up, so I feed him two things of the newly purchased baby food because, as expected, he was CRAZY HUNGRY and cried whenever I tried to stop feeding him. Then he played for about five minutes, then came and made me pick him up, and then he barfed all over both of us. I am sorry you ate too much, little man, but purple-baby-food barf is Gross. He went straight in the tub while I wiped off my clothes, then peeled off both our clothes and put them in a tidy pile on the floor of the bathroom and washed us both off in the tub until his Daddy got home (with dinner) and could go dry him off and put a diaper on him while I finished cleaning up the nasty gunk and threw all the clothes in the laundry machine and got dressed once again.

After that, was dinner time, so I ate a little bit (not a lot, because hey, it was salad, and yesterday was HEALTHY EATING HABITS day, so I obviously couldn't eat very much of my Chipotle salad, also, you know, there was the whole just-finished-cleaning-up-barf thing). And then the baby-man went to bed. And then we watched last week's episode of Heroes and were both amazed when it didn't Totally Suck like we were expecting it to. And then I went to bed.

Today, in addition to more sneezing (I believe I did not mention that I have been sneezing, sniffling, and coughing for days along with the rest of my family), we are going to the grocery store, where I will buy some food to make some super-easy dinners (hello, Soup!) until we are all recovered. And after that, maybe I will go in search of a summer baby hat for the child (not a baseball cap, thanks, I want something to keep the sun off his face and neck when we go a-walking), and maybe some little shoes for him since he's learning to walk, and maybe some more clothes for him since he has hardly any that fit right now and I'm tired of having to do laundry so often. But maybe not. Maybe we will just come home with our groceries and have some cold juice and maybe I will try to beat the 8th level of Katamari Damacy which currently is terribly difficult for me.

Also, we need to water the garden.

Love You Madly

2009-03-06T15:14:00.002-07:00

I've been crocheting like a madwoman lately. I made a Wall*E, and a Dr. Horrible, and an octopus, and a tiny elephant,and some Valentine's Day stuff last month, and a soot sprite.

And I finished my painting and it is fabulous and is hanging on the wall in our front room.

And our yard is finally all ready for the garden, we need to mix the dirt in and go buy the plants and plant them and then it will be done. And we got some PESTICIDE so we can kill the biting ants and cockroaches and crickets and rolly-pollies, and earwigs, and slugs, and spiders, and EVERYTHING ELSE that was living where my garden is now going to live. Tomatoes and peppers and maybe beans and cucumbers and lots of herbs and a squash plant of some sort would be nice...we will have to see what I get when we go buy the plants tomorrow.

My Potato Bug Baby now has seven teeth. And he's been falling back asleep on his own when he wakes up in the middle of the night lately, which has been lovely.

Dusey has been dieting, by eating half as much as he used to eat. It makes me feel a little guiltier about all the food (specifically bottom-unfriendly desserts) that I am constantly wanting to make and eat all of because oh-my-gosh so delicious and sugary. I am a glutton. A glutton for sugar. Yummy.

I made chocolate covered brownie bites for Valentine's Day and they were DELICIOUS. Most especially the ones covered in dark chocolate.

The man-child has been standing up and taking steps along furniture and snarfing down incredibly huge amounts of food in a single sitting and exploring everything and testing me to see what my limits are ("No! Don't eat the garbage!" ---he grins at me--- "We don't eat paper!" ---he giggles--- "Stop rolling over until I have your new diaper on!" ---shrieks of laughter---). Aren't they supposed to wait to test your limits and your rules until they're at least officially toddlers? The little smarty-pants. At least he is listening to me when I tell him we don't bite mommy's leg, no matter how tasty and at-mouth-level it may be while I'm sitting in my computer chair.

I have been wanting to go to the zoo for the past month or so. I keep waking up, thinking, Today would be a lovely day to go to the zoo, and see the giraffes, and indeed it would as the whether has been nice and toasty warm, but Dusey always has work and so we don't go. We are planning on going to the Botanical Gardens soon (once we have our own garden all planted and beauteous), and then hopefully we will be able to make it to the zoo soon after that. I think the Wild Child will enjoy seeing the animals this time rather than sleeping the entire time we're there like he did the last time we went to the zoo during the day, even though he was almost assaulted by a squirrel in his stroller.

We got our plane tickets to New York. I need to get tickets for a show, and then plan out what we want to do while we're there and how much money it will take so we can set that aside and not spend it.

We got our tax refund. It is lovely.

I am going to get a G10 soon. That will also be lovely. You ought to expect me to actually post some adorable baby photos (I know I keep promising and then not following through) along with a rash of Macro texture shots, because, seriously, awesome.

I want to get out of the house and DO SOMETHING today. Maybe I will take le kiddo on a walk when he gets up from his nap-er-roo. Someday he will be a little bigger and will be able to actually play with me in ways other than laughing when I tell him no or knocking down the block towers I build or playing the "I throw it you fetch it, Mommy" game, or the "put the lid back on the blocks so I can pull it off over and over again" game. Though, I must admit, I do enjoy the building of the block towers, and the other little repetitive games convince me that he's really quite the little learning genius, and by the way, he knows the sign for food, and does it a lot, and recognizes the signs for More, and All Done, and Sleep (he doesn't like that one).

The play class we've been taking together has been fun. I don't socialize much there, and neither does the little guy, it's mostly him exploring and trying to eat EVERY SINGLE BALL THERE IS which then I have to throw them all in the "yucky bucket", which requires chasing him around pretty much the entire time. But it's out of the house, and there's toys we don't have, and he seems to like it, so it's all good. Next class I take there though maybe I kind of want to do a ME CLASS. Maybe I will get a weekly babysitter and I will go and PAINT or COOK or SEW or EXERCISE or something. Who knows? It depends on what they're offering, and if it's too expensive or not, and if I could get a babysitter.

I need to start wearing sunscreen again, and putting it on my baby guy as well. Hello, cute little man, you are going to have to learn to Not Eat the sunscreen bottle.

I want to go swimming.

I want to go on a date. With Dusey, of course. Let's do it, handsome man, go see a movie and get ice-cream, or go read books together at Border's, or ANYTHING.

Little-bitty-stir-crazy, you may think. Perhaps.

Tomorrow is going to be a lovely day.

About me for once

2009-02-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

I realize how infrequently I've been posting. And then the posts that I do write are mostly about my Potato Bug and tend to be long. So, for a nice change of pace, here is a short post about me.

I bought myself a Meyer Lemon Tree from Costco for $20. I love it. I hope it gives me lemons. I love lemons. The flowers smell divine. It is sitting in its pot in my backyard waiting for me to plant it.

I started on a new painting today. Well, to be more precise, I prepared to start on a new painting today. I took my freaky Little Red (EVIL) Riding Hood painting, and gesso'd (can you verbalize gesso?) over it. It had a good bit of black in it, so it will need another layer of gesso tomorrow. Then I will be ready to paint. I'm excited. I've claimed the kitchen table for my painting area for the week (Dusey doesn't know this yet). We will eat at the kitchen island instead.

After briefly wandering around JC Penny yesterday, I decided I like a lot of the clothes there.

I have decided, generally, what plants I want to plant in my vegetable garden that is going to be created in the backyard soon (because if it's not done and planted by the end of the month, it will be too late). I've thought a lot about various plants that I could plant in the front yard where the spiny bushes are right now. I dislike spiny bushes. I'd rather have some pretty flowering perennials in with all the gravel. I think the bouganvilla in the back will be coming out to make room for tomatoes. I'd thought about transplanting it to the front, because it at least has flowers (though it is also spiny), and is fairly pretty, but it takes a decent amount of maintenance and trimming every year to stay looking nice (just like the disliked spiny bushes). Maybe I will see if my inlaws would like the bouganvilla. I would just leave it where it is, but it is in the very sunniest part of our yard, the very best spot for tomatoes, and it grows over the lawn and gets in the way of mowing anyway.

I have been letting the Potato Bug eat stale English Muffin crumbs out of his walker for the past week. I figure they're still okay to eat, honestly, and if he wants to eat them, then there's no reason why I shouldn't let him. He has five teeth now instead of four. It has been a difficult week as a result.

I'm looking forward to Valentines Day.

We are going to New York for our anniversary this year. I'm looking forward to that as well.

The End.

9.5 months

2009-01-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

Our little baby bug is adorable. He loves crawling, he loves pulling up to a stand on everything he can reach, he loves throwing his toys, he loves chasing balls, he loves chewing on his toothbrush and pacifiers and everything else. He still has four teeth, but I suspect the fifth one is pretty close now to coming in. He increasingly likes to have someone playing with him, even if they're just sitting on the floor watching him crawl around. He gets jealous of the attention we pay to our computers, or to my crochet projects, and is very good at vying for our attention, usually by crawling over and pulling himself up to a stand by holding onto our pantlegs, and then staring at us and making noises until we pick him up. He's quite vocal now, and likes to talk while he's playing. We're trying to teach him some sign language, and I think he's started signing food occasionally. He definitely recognizes that sign, and the sign for more, and the one for finished. He plays with his crib toys every morning before I get him.

He's quite happy usually, except for around 4pm to bedtime when he gets kind of tired and a little cranky and needs extra love and attention, which is hard to give to him then because I'm usually trying to fix dinner or finish up things before Dusey gets home. He really likes playing with his Daddy, but Mommy is still his favorite when he's sad or tired. He loves bread, and loves eating while we're eating, and is quite adventurous with trying new flavors and textures, though he still doesn't like green vegetables very much. Potato Bug still wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes, and despite the pediatrician's advice, I still get up and nurse him back to sleep every time he does. She said he doesn't need to eat in the middle of the night, but she also said he's in the fifth percentile for weight and 75th for height, so I don't really mind giving him a little extra nourishment in the middle of the night. He's been doing better lately about sleeping until at least 5:30 in the morning before he wakes up, wants to eat, play a little bit, and then go back to sleep, but that going back to sleep bit always messes up his later usual morning naptime.

He loves watching older kids, and is pretty resilient when he accidentally gets sat on or stepped on or toys get grabbed away from him when he plays with them. Then again, he's pretty good at clawing other kids faces when he feels like it. We're working on teaching him to be gentle when playing with others, and that people are not the same as toys and you can't just grab them and try to chew them. He really likes his toy that shoots balls out with music, and also loves knocking down small block towers that I build for him. We discovered yesterday that he really likes the park, particularly the spinny pirate wheel. He's still a bit unsure about both slides and grass.

He's started regularly imitating the noises I make, laughing when I laugh, growling when I growl at him, and blowing raspberries is one of his favorites. He really enjoys it when we make weird noises or sound effects for him, and he tries hard to make them back. He laughs every time I yawn.

He likes trying to climb over things, which results in a regularly bonked head when he loses his balance and slides to the floor unexpectedly fast. He doesn't like going to sleep, and still cries almost every time I put him down in his crib until he finally falls asleep. He's started to understand when I tell him not to play with certain things, and will often leave them alone for awhile after I tell him no, although sometimes he just grins mischeviously at me and crawls over to it as fast as he can and starts to play with it anyway. He likes trying to dance to music sometimes, and will bob his head around, nodding and bouncing and looking at me to see if I like his cool moves.

Picture to be added later.

Holiday Recap

2009-01-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

Christmas in Utah was wonderful. It was snowy. We played lots of games with my family. Sorry to those we didn't get to go visit, we ended up being really busy with family stuff the whole time. Plus I was really sick. Coughing and hacking and no voice and occasional fevers. I was finally mostly able to talk again by the time we went home. We got lots of lovely presents (I got your package, Anacaeca, and I love it! Thanks!). Potato Bug got lots of new books and the first 3 Baby Signing Time DVDs, which we have been watching at least one of almost every day since we got home. I'm finally remembering a good number of the signs, and have started using them as often as I can, in hopes that he'll start recognizing them soon.

The day after we got home, Potato Bug got sick with a nasty stomach virus. He was throwing up and had diarhhea for several days. Dusey got it too a couple days after PB did. After 3 days of Potato Bug being quite sick and starting to look a little pale and be really sleepy all the time, I called the Pediatrician's Office to see if I could bring him in for a same-day appointment, and they told me to take him to the Emergency Room in case he was dehydrated. So, we got to go on a trip to the hospital, and he got a little IV for mild dehydration, and they confirmed that it was a virus and he'd probably start getting better within a day or two. He didn't like the IV at all, poor baby. I didn't like it much either. He kept trying to eat it, and wanted to use his hand but couldn't, and I had to come up with creative ways to hold him the whole time we were there so he wouldn't pull it out. He started crying a lot when we were still there at 1pm (his afternoon naptime) and he was really hungry and tired. They gave me a bottle of Pedialyte to try giving him, but he absolutely refused it after he tasted it. Finally they let me go nurse him in one of the treatment rooms, and while he was eating his IV came out (he also fell asleep and I was sad that I had to get up and go get the nurse because that woke him back up). They checked how much IV fluid he'd gotten and said it was enough and sent us back home finally.

For New Years Eve, since the males in the family were both sick, we went to bed early. It was nice.

My grandmother on my dad's side died a few days before Christmas, so I flew back to Utah on Monday night with Potato Bug so we could go to her funeral yesterday. It was a lovely service, and I'm so glad I got to go. There were only a few mishaps along the way. I lost one of the screws to my glasses in the airport on the way there, so the lens is now twisty-tied in until I can go to a glasses store and get it fixed. Our plane on the way home was delayed, and then there were mechanical problems, and then we had to switch planes (after PB was already asleep :( ), and then they had to de-ice the wings, so what was already a late flight for us turned into a really late flight, and I got to crawl into bed at 12:40 this morning, after being awake since 4:30am yesterday (PB decided to wake up then and wouldn't go back to sleep until 7 and then only slept until 7:50 or so before he woke up again for the day). I am going to have to take a nap sometime today. That's what I ought to be doing right now, since Potato Bug is asleep for his morning nap, but I decided to catch up online and blog first, and then I suppose I will nap during his afternoon nap, if possible.

Also, I have THE NICEST HUSBAND EVER. While we were gone for the funeral, he cleaned and organized the entire house! He moved all my sewing stuff into our room, and put away all our clothes, and put all of PB's stuff in his room, and did all the dishes, and got some more shelves for the storage room and cleaned it up, and our house looks AMAZING. And he left lovely notes all over about cleaning up various areas as reminders to help me out during the day so we can keep it looking this beautiful all the time. I love it. I still need to organize a couple things (like, PB's clothes, and all my craft stuff), but I think that will wait until the end of this week. I need to finish up a couple of Christmas presents still too. I think that will be tomorrow, and then the final house organizing will be Friday. Today is going to be a "recovery from no sleep" day, and a celebratory "thank DH for all his hard work" evening of lounging and eating yummy food and enjoying our beautifully clean house by maybe watching a movie. Oh, I need to clean up my computer desk sometime too. It's a wreck still (completely my responsibility to take care of my little space). Maybe I'll take a nice bath tonight too. I don't know. As long as it is all relaxing and restful, I'll be happy with today. And warm.

one week

2008-12-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

In a week's time from right now, we will hopefully be almost to my parents' house. Yep. We get to go to Utah for Christmas afterall (which means we won't be coming in January). We'll be there for a week. If you will be around Christmas week and won't be insanely busy with family stuff and want to hang out for a bit, let me know, so I can plan to sneak away for a bit to see you.

In case some of you are interested, Waterford is finally going to be beta testing their new product, a web-based educational game for pre-schoolers. I think they're aiming it at the 2-4 crowd. If you're interested in signing yourself (and your child) up for it, go to beta.waterford.org/. It should be good, just based on the tiny bit of it that I've seen, but you may run into some bugs which you would need to report I believe (as part of participating for free in the beta test). Anyway, go check it out.

I went to the dentist this past week. No cavities, but I do need one sealant to fill a hole. The dentist said my teeth look great, and the reason for the occasional oain I get in my jaw is that I clench my teeth hard fairly often, and possibly some other stuff, and he recommended that I get a jaw splint (aka bite splint, which sounds extremely similar to the bite plate I had when I had braces) as soon as possible before I cause any permanent damage to my teeth or jaw joint. He's willing to work something out in regards to financing, but the possible cost of it still stressed me out a bit (which causes me to clench my jaw more!).

I also discovered on Friday when I put in my contacts before our ward Christmas party (please note: I almost always wear my glasses), that I'd developed another large lump (probable: chalazion) in an eyelid just in time for the holidays. Last winter it was in my upper eyelid, this year it's in the lower eyelid of that same eye. I am being VERY diligent about putting warm compresses on it 3-4 times a day in hopes that it will go away. If it is still there in a couple days, I will have to go see an opthamologist again, who might have to perform a minor surgery to get it out (last year's lump, as a side note, never Completely went away).

So, to sum up: random health problems, a neat beta test opportunity, and a super-exciting Christmas trip to Utah! Hooray!

It's been awhile

2008-12-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving was really good. I made four pies (pumpkin, pecan, berry ribbon, and strawberry rhubarb) which all turned out great other than the crust on the pecan which got burned (it was also the only store bought crust). I also made Mother's Rolls, and cranberry jello salad. And I ate way too much food, but that's pretty normal for Thanksgiving.

Potato Bug has four teeth now. The second bout of teething (for the two top teeth) lasted a really long time and was really annoying, because he was extra cranky for a couple of weeks. After that, he got a cold, which I of course also caught. Dusey and I both got a little 24-hour mild stomach virus a couple of days ago (no way to tell if Potato Bug got it too), following which my cold returned. I'm ready to be done with the cranky baby / cranky mommy scenario for awhile.

I've been doing lots of crafting to get ready for Christmas. I will hopefully be sending out presents to a few people soon. It hasn't been going as quickly as I would like due to the aforementioned cranky baby.

It's finally nice outside.

Due to feeling quite ill today, my mother-in-law came and picked up Potato Bug and took him with her to her house. I have had several hours to myself, which has been nice. I've gotten several things done, and the house is a little cleaner, and I did some reading. I just finished reading The Prydain Chronicles, which I still thoroughly enjoy. A couple weeks ago I read the Twilight series to see what all the fuss was about. I thought it was alright. I can see why people enjoy it so much. I would probably describe it as a mix of Harry Potter and Titanic. Next up on my reading list is the first Discworld book. I think it will probably be awhile before I get around to it though, as I need to finish up Christmas presents, and who knows how long le bebe will continue his "Hold me NOW mommy" phase that he's in right now.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. He is standing up now. He pulls himself up to a stand frequently throughout the day, and has finally figured out how to get back down to crawling without injuring himself (usually) by falling. He maintains his unearthly ability to figure out precisely what things we do not want him to play with, and goes straight for them whenever I'm not looking. I really need to find a good way to keep him from pulling on the cords plugged into the outlets. Currently, I tell him No, and explain we don't play with cords so we don't get hurt, and move him away to something else he CAN play with, but he is not getting the message. That could have something to do with the fact that he's still not quite 8 months old.

I think I'm the only child in my family now who does not have a guitar. I took a guitar class during college. I remember absolutely none of it. I didn't ever practice. This is probably why I do not have a guitar currently.

I'm busily playing Pirates on Facebook. I'm also quite fond of Scramble. If anybody ever wants to play against me, you'll probably win. :) I manage to get easily distracted in the middle of the games I try to play by the child who is in need of almost constant attention lately. Oh, the woes of mobility.

Also, he bites really hard now. Well, he bit hard before, but now he has incredibly sharp teeth to use also, which leave lovely indentations whenever he manages to bite me, which he luckily doesn't do terribly frequently, but still, it's highly unpleasant when it happens.

7 months

2008-11-15T14:25:00.004-07:00

Potato Bug is 7 months old now, therefore it is time for an update!

He has 2 teeth now (he got the second one the day after he got his first one, and each tooth was discovered by one of his grandmas). They are very, very, very sharp, and he likes to bite things with them. He's eating baby food (Stage 2 now) at least twice a day, and has started eating Cheerios also occasionally, which he really likes. And every once in a while he gets a teething biscuit. He doesn't particularlylike green beans or peas, but likes all the other foods we've tried pretty well, and loves applesauce, bananas, and pears.

We got things organized finally so that he's in his own room, which I think we all like better. He's only waking up once a night now, which means both he and I are generally a bit happier and more energetic during the day. He likes to play with the toys in his crib when he wakes up in the mornings for a while, which I love as it gets me an extra half an hour of sleep. In his crib right now, he has Bearkie (half teddy bear, half blankie), the dragon his Aunt Jeanna made for him, a tiger stuffie, and a zebra that has magnets in it's hooves so we clip it on the side of the railing every night and he has fun pulling it off every morning.

His most very favorite toys are plastic spoons and bendy straws. He loves chewing on them, and sticking them in his mouth like a dog with a bone as he crawls around, and banging them on the floor when he's sitting up. He's finally really crawling properly, and is getting very good at transitioning from crawling to sitting and back, and sometimes kneeling when he wants to look inside his toybox. He's beginning to try and pull himself up sometimes, so we are going to have to move his crib mattress down to its lower setting really soon. He also really likes looking in mirrors, playing with boxes, and trying to eat cords and cables he finds on the floor (I haven't figured out how to babyproof them yet, so I just watch him very carefully while he's playing and when he gets close to them I go move him away again).

Potato Bug has decided that I am his most very favoritest person ever. He loves and adores playing with his daddy, and has lots of fun with his grandparents, but when he gets tired, cranky, fussy, or sad, he wants me and only me to hold him. In some ways it's really nice (I'm needed! He likes me!) and in other ways it's not (he's heavy! I'm tired!). He hates waking up anywhere that's not his room and not being able to see me.

I'm really enjoying him being able to entertain himself for longer periods of time now that he's mobile, as it lets me get a bit more done during the day. I'm cooking a little more often now, and the dishes are getting done more regularly, and I have my sights set on the laundry (one day I will get it ALL done and put away and there will be no laundry anywhere and it will be miraculous, even if it only lasts for a few hours). With the little bit of extra sleep and energy, my desire to craft has returned, though it's been extremely hampered by the fact that all my craft stuff is in PB's room, so I can't work on it while he's napping until I get it moved into our bedroom.

His favorite books at the moment are Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, and My Many Colored Days, both of which are absolutely awesome books that I do not mind at all reading over and over and over. He still likes most of his board books too, and I think he will really enjoy the ones he's getting for Christmas. He always loves storytime unless he's really ridiculously over-tired.

He still has the little red mark on his forehead (which I am assured by many different people will eventually disappear), and now he has a little hard lump/bump on his leg from one of his vaccination shots, which I am hoping will eventually go away (it's been over a month). I have not been a good mommy at giving him his medicine every day to prevent UTI's, but we've been blessed and he hasn't gotten any despite the lack of medicine. I am going to try a different flavor next time I get a refill and maybe he won't spit it out immediately and then I will be much more likely to give it to him (it stains everything highlighter yellow so it gets really frustrating when he just spits it out everywhere).

Potato Bug talks a lot while he's playing, and particularly enjoys squealing with delight (which sometimes sounds like screaming), and blowing bubbles with his tongue. He's very, very good at curling his tongue, and will curl the tip of it up against his top lip to make an "m" sound and say "mamamamama" when he's tired. He likes watching people clap their hands and say "Yay!", and he likes The Itsy Bitsy Spider song with its actions, so I think he would really like learning some baby signs and am thinking of asking for some Signing Time DVDs for Christmas.

Halloween food

2008-11-15T13:59:00.005-07:00

So, I know Halloween is long past, but I made some cool food for it in the week before Halloween and wanted to show it off. I know, I'm amazing. You can shower me with praises now. (Just kidding. Really.)

Rats on top of Mash O' Nine Sorts (you can't see it, but the rat has a spaghetti tail):

Eyeball Soup:

Bloody Punch:

Spiderweb Eggs:

And a whole lot of mini cupcakes:

There were monsters:

A ghost:

Mummies:

Brains:

A tentacle thing:

And worms:

The cupcakes were all Red Velvet cake, so they were nice and bloody red when you bit into them. If you bit into them. I discovered it was really hard to not just pop a whole one into your mouth at once. I tell you what, mini cupcakes are awesome.

Halloween (photo heavy)

2008-11-07T15:07:00.005-07:00

Here's some pictures from our Halloween activities (one ward party, one trip to Disneyland, both with us dressed as 2 Waldos and a Wenda from the Where's Waldo books):

I crocheted the hats, painted the red stripes on the shirts, and hemmed my skirt to the right length.

Chipotle hummus is delicious

2008-11-04T11:19:00.001-07:00

I voted today. For the first time. I know, I know, I'm 25, I should have voted before now. But I didn't. Until today. Go me.

Enough short sentences now.

I packed Potato Bug into his stroller, handed him a straw to play with (he adores straws), and we stepped outside into the beautifully still cool morning air. I decided to walk along the canal trail, since it ends right at the community Activity Center that was my polling location. It's a funny thing, the canal...there's never ever any water in it. Perhaps they haven't filled it yet, perhaps they drained it years ago, I do not know why it's empty. It's a decently nice trail (sidewalk) alongside it either way, nicely landscaped. As we walked, I could hear the big power lines on the other side of the canal buzzing. It was a soothing sound.

Potato Bug loves walks in his stroller. There is a constant stream of new things to see. He looks and looks and looks, while chewing on whatever toy I've given him, and drinks up the world. He studies and observes, and I'm sure in his head he's putting together pieces of information and learning things, constantly, unconsciously. Or maybe he's just zoning out, watching everything move past too quickly for understanding. Still, he loves it, and so when we've had enough of each other and of being cooped up inside, we go for walks. Yesterday we went to the new market half a mile away and bought thin pork chops for a dollar, chipotle hummus, pita bread, tortillas, and some cold medicine for Dusey who has a miserable cough right now. The pork chops got rolled around some apple stuffing I made, and were browned, then baked, then eaten atop mashed potatoes. They turned out really well for being a mish-mash of recipes and imagination. I'd never made pork chops before yesterday. The hummus will probably be gone by lunchtime, as I replenish the energy spent on our walk today.

The Activity Center is really nice. It's surrounded by tennis courts, volleyball courts, playgrounds, and an elementary school where a couple of classes were enjoying gym outside. We walked around to the far entrance, walked in, got the ballot (filed under D for Dusen because the man at the DMV listed the first half of my last name as a middle name so the space would show up), and voted. I realized after a minute that I'd forgotten to research the candidates for county positions. Other than that, everything went smoothly. The voting stations were set up in a dance room, along the wall of mirrors and the ballet bar. Potato Bug loves mirrors, and seeing that adorable baby that's always there in them. I parked him facing the mirror while I connected the arrows for my candidates of choice, and he admired that baby in the mirror, and smiled at that baby in the mirror, until I was done. We walked over to the machine that sucked up my ballot, and both got our first "I voted today" stickers.

On our way out, I stopped by the front desk of the Activity Center and picked up a pamphlet about their winter classes, to read on our walk home. Potato Bug happily chewed his straw and sat observing things as I pushed the stroller and read. I'm contemplating a baby signing class, but it's fairly expensive. I'm also contemplating a Pilates class, an infant massage class, and a CPR class. I think I'll pick one to take by the end of the week.

Potato Bug gasped when I opened our front door to go inside. I smiled, and in we went, one successful voting experience under my belt, with hopefully many more to come.

4th photo meme

2008-11-02T22:15:00.002-07:00

Ok, so, as promised, here's the 4th photo in the 4th folder of my pictures folder that I was tagged for. It's from when we went out photographing wildflowers.

She'll just have another perfect day

2008-10-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it wasn't entirely perfect whilst we were in Utah, but it was a lovely, lovely trip, and I was sad to leave, though I am quite happy to be seeing my lovely husband again in about an hour or so now. And I like my house. I'm happy to be home. But I miss my other home, where my parents live. It is difficult having two homes. You will always be missing one of them. I am excited that I get to go back in January.

First, the not-entirely-perfect (but still possibly quite exciting in the long run) things that happened/were in Utah:

It was cold. Very, very cold. Well, not all the time. Sometimes it was warm. Sometimes I didn't even need to wear my sweatshirt! But for the most part, it was cold, and it was always more cold than it is and has been here in Arizona (90's). It was a nice change of pace from hot. It would have been better if my husband had been there to snuggle with at night and keep me warm. My mother was nice and turned up the heat for me instead, keeping me and The Potato Bug from freezing in the downstairs bedroom even though it meant they were all a little overly warm upstairs.

The Potato Bug did not sleep well mostly while we were there. He had one night where he only woke up twice (and I only saved him from his despair one of those times). The other nights were not as nice. He missed lots of his naps also. He was a bit grumpy all week, and a bit shy at first, and got nervous when I wasn't holding him (or after he had warmed up to everyone, he got nervous when he couldn't see me). He got more congenial as the week went on, despite the lack of sleep. Last night, he got a runny nose. It was worse this morning. I was despairing that he had caught a cold just as we were coming home, when my mother informed me that he had a tooth.

Let me reiterate.

My little Potato Bug baby boy who is so cute and snuggly and wiggly and smart (and I could go on) got his first tooth this morning.

A tooth.

Hooray!

Just the very tip of it is poking through his gums right now, and he will likely continue in his grumpiness as it pops the rest of the way out, but it is there, and oh-so-cutely-tiny, and now I know how he acts when he is getting a tooth and there will be no more confusion hopefully. Plus, I suspect his smile will quickly become even more adorable (should that be humanely possible).

My mother taught me how to make pies. And cranberry jello salad. And scones (the fried kind, not the English tea-time treat kind). "But!", you may exclaim, "that is wonderful! What could possibly be not-perfect about learning to make such delicious foodstuffs as pies?!" Other than my highly imperfectly shaped crust, and the jello that didn't quite set up all the way, and the slightly overly-cooked scones, the imperfectness of it comes not from its deliciousness (and delicious they were in all their imperfectness) but in the fact that now that I know how to make them, it will be hard to not make them frequently which would result in eating them frequently which I'm afraid would make us very fat.

I made passable pie crusts. I'm very happy.

I have now made three from-scratch pies this month: pumpkin (except for the crust, because that was prior to my highly educational trip home to my parents' home), banana cream, and strawberry ribbon (which is just like raspberry ribbon but with strawberries instead which in my humble anti-raspberry opinion, makes it even more delicious).

Scones are good with honey.

And cranberry jello salad is really easy! And delicious! And it has a lot of fruit in it, so there could be some argument for its nutritive values. Even when it's not entirely set up properly.

I think I'm completely into wonderfulness now (why dwell on the imperfect when the dwelling just decays into musings on how wonderful it actually was?). So, to continue:

We went shopping. I am all prepared now to set up our keyboard on a table where it can live, along with a set of speakers, and my little easel/bookstand. This will make it very easy to plug the laptop up, and play the piano. I have books I can play out of (our nice spiral-bound hymnbook, my new spiral-bound Primary Childrens' Songbook, some easy piano books, some vocal pieces that have accompaniment). I will need something to keep my music in, so that it will stay organized and accessible, yet out of Potato Bug's hands (and more importantly, out of his mouth).

I also now have a brown skirt which will be fabulous and lovely as soon as I seam it up so it is a little smaller. It was very cheap and just what I wanted, other than being three sizes too big. It will be an easy fix, as soon as I can get to my sewing machine again (it is buried at the back of the craft room that is supposed to be the baby's room and will be his as soon as we get rid of some junk and figure out how to store and organize all the junk we're keeping).

My rolly-polly boy also has some Christmas presents from his grandparents, ready and waiting (and wrapped even!) for Christmas.

I also closed two old bank accounts that I never ever use anymore. Not only will this result in less mail that I never look at arriving not only at my home but at my parents' home as well, but I also have $50 more in my wallet! For a grand total of $50 in my wallet! It will get deposited soon into the bank account that I use all the time.

My 403B continues to earn me money while I do nothing with it. I really ought to call them up and have them send me the forms I need to change my address they have on file as well as my name.

I won a game of Scrabble against my mother and brother, which is positively amazing. They are Scrabble geniuses, compared to how I normally do. I got lucky and got lots of high-point letters in combination with good vowels and spots to play. Also, they let me cheat and look up words in the Scrabble Players' Dictionary repeatedly throughout the game (even when it was my turn to go) to see if the word I was hoping existed did in fact exist. I confess to browsing around some of the letter sections to see if other words existed that I could play upon discovering that the word I had invented in my head was not there in the codified definitive 3rd Edition list.

I got to watch my dad play World of Warcraft, and help my mom make a blog.

I got to take a shower almost every single day! (I opted for just pulling my hair back on one morning when I was very very tired and we wanted to be out and about quickly.) Unless you are a mother of a small child who wants you to play with him/her approximatley every five minutes and wakes up from naps when he/she hears the water running through the pipes, then you may not appreciate this nearly as much as I appreciated it. Daily bathing is a luxury, I tell you, a luxury! I look forward to when Potato Bug can crawl around our room and entertain himself by getting into everything long enough for me to bathe uninterrupted on a daily basis.

Have I mentioned the pies yet? That was really exciting. And delicious.

I got to see all of my wonderful siblings save for my oldest sister who is far away on the East Coast. I have now gotten to see all of my neices and nephews and know what they look like. Next time I see them, they will probably all look different and grown up and incredibly smart, but for the next couple months at least, I know what they all look like. They are all cute. My extended family is full of adorable babies and children.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I will post the fourth picture in the fourth folder of our Pictures folder! I am waiting for the return of the laptop, since that is where pretty much all our pictures live.

Woo-hoo! Vacation week!

2008-10-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

So, we found out today that Dusey is going to California next week (leaving on Sunday) for training for work all week. I was sad at this prospect, because I did not want to spend all week alone. And then my in-laws said, "Why don't you go visit your family in Utah for the week? Wouldn't that be fun?" And I said, "Why, yes! I love and miss my family, and it would be fabulous to spend a week with them!" So we took some of our little bit of savings in our bank account and I now have a plane ticket to go visit my family next week from Monday to Friday and it will be fabulous and Potato Bug will get to see his grandparents and show off his crawling for them and I am sooooo excited.

Also, this may be the most spontaneous thing I have ever done.

We will be spending all week with my family. All of you lovely friends of mine that are in Utah will have to wait until January for hanging out and seeing our adorable kiddo. Sorry.

The next couple of days are going to be very hectic getting everything ready for us to all be gone for a week (plus I'm still not done with our Halloween costumes, and the ward Halloween party is next Saturday...dum dum dum...) It will be busy. But then I won't have to cook for a week! Hooray!

I will still be lonely without my husband, though.

My first foray into YouTube

2008-10-14T08:48:00.002-07:00

As a little distraction from all the crankiness in our house yesterday (which continued through the night and into today...maybe there's a tooth coming?), I decided to record a video of my Potato Bug and enter it into the Sandisk Youtube contest. I've never uploaded a video to YouTube before, so it was kind of adventuresome.

So! Here it is for all of your enjoyment!

I hope that works!

Oh, there's also this related contest:

http://www.5minutesformom.com/4282/sandisk-contest

Today

2008-10-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those days.

It got very suddenly quite cool here. Fall has finally arrived. Our thermostat is still set to the air-conditioner, though, so our home was freezing last night and all morning. PB doesn't really have warm pajamas so his hands and feet were little icicles this morning. I'm staying in my pajamas until Dusey gets home.

Whether due to the cold or his lack of naps yesterday, the Potato Bug woke up four times last night. We are both tired and cranky today as a result.

My backyard is full of weeds, biting ants, spiders, and the birds who eat it all. The birds are kind of fun to watch through the sliding glass door, but the yard is pretty unuseable. The gravel that is our front yard is full of jumping spiders (gyeah), more biting ants, seed pods from the increasingly droopy tree (I think it's an acacia), thorny bushes that love growing as well as poking me when I trim them, prickly sticklers from a giant creeping weed I pulled out last week, and sticks from our other tree which has decided to die.

I have been drooling over cakes and cupcakes and pies and cake plates and all the autumn decor for sale at Target. I am also trying to decide between a KitchenAid or a CuisinArt for the food processor listing on my Christmas list. This list in my head is full of hopes and daydreams and signs of the sort of woman I want to be.

6 months

2008-10-10T11:15:00.001-07:00

Potato Bug is six months old today. He had his check-up this morning. He's 27" long now (75th%) and weighs 16lb 7oz (50th%). The doctor said he looks great (I agree). He had to have all his vaccinations again (4 shots and an oral) plus a flu shot, but he stopped crying as soon as I picked him up afterward and has been fairly happy (though sleepy...the appointment was during naptime) since (he just fell asleep finally).

He still loves rolling over. He's starting to be able to get his tummy and head off the ground at the same time for a second or two now, so crawling is on the horizon (I need to babyproof!) He likes storytime, but not his ABC bedtime routine book when he's really sleepy (he sees it and starts screaming). He's waking up twice a night still. His hair is turning blond, and his eyes are still very blue. His thighs are very chubby, which I think helps him sit up, which he can do for a couple of minutes at a time now assuming he doesn't decide to fold himself in half and eat his toes. He adores eating his toes.

He sticks everything he can grab in his mouth to chew on. I found a fairly long string in his diaper this morning and am still not sure whether or not he'd eaten it. It's a mystery. He likes baby food much better than he liked rice cereal. He's tried sweet potatoes and pears so far (we just started foods this week). He likes his pacifiers and sippy cups, but only as chew toys, and doesn't ever suck on them. It's lots of fun to play games with him. He squeals and screams when he's very happy and excited, rather than laughing. He's fairly shy around strangers and just stares at them until he gets used to them. Other children tend to scare him a lot when they're being loud (which his cousins here are most of the time). He doesn't like going to bed usually and almost always screams when I put him in his crib.

To sum up, he's doing perfectly normally and we love him lots and we're looking forward to the next six months.

Also, I made a pumpkin pie yesterday completely from scratch using pumpkin I pureed myself and it turned out delicious (except for the crust which was the only thing I didn't make...slightly too salty).

photos of the Potato Bug

2008-10-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a ~~few~~ lot of my favorites:

For more, see here.

The week (+) of disasters continues...

2008-09-22T12:13:00.002-07:00

So...

We survived last Saturday (9 days ago) and the thumb slicing and the long urgent care visit. We survived my Potato Bug and I both having colds (look! new nickname!). We survived several days of Dusey/The Daddy being gone at work all day. Then came Wednesday.

Wednesday was Dusey's birthday. I wanted to get some stuff (presents, treats, food, etc) from the store that day, so I asked him if I could use the car the night before. He forgot (no big deal) and took it to work like normal. I cut down on my shopping plans and limited them to two stores, and was Very Brave and called and made a doctor's appointment to get my thumb checked out. I loaded the Potato Bug into the truck after his morning nap and we took off to the Asian market (rather far from our house) so that I could get candied ginger and some Japanese candies.

I found (after much searching) everything I was looking for right as PB started getting fussy and hungry again. No problem, I thought, We'll just hop back in the truck and drive home and eat/nap and then go out shopping for The Birthday Present before going to the doctor's. Once again all loaded into the truck, I got in, buckled up, and tried to turn it on.

Nothing.

Needless to say, I tried a bunch more times. Then, I panicked. I called Dusey's phone over and over, because his parents and brother were all out of town and I didn't know who to call or what to do and I get scared asking strangers for help, etc. Finally I wised up (he can't answer his phone at work) and sent him a text. I tried calling some other people, none of whom picked up their phones. Then I fed the screaming Potato Bug while sitting in the driver's seat and trying not to cry. And then I was Very Brave again and asked a stranger to help me try to jump the truck with his car.

He hooked everything up and we gave it a shot. Nothing. He was Very Nice and asked if I had any soda (I had, in fact, just bought the Best Rootbeer Ever (Weinhard's) as a birthday treat for Dusey). We sacrificed a bottle of The Best Rootbeer Ever, and he poured it over the highly corroded positive battery terminal, then wiped it off with some napkins that were in the car. We tried again. Nothing. He was Very Nice and kept trying, until we both decided it was useless and I thanked him and let him go home. I called a couple of people again, and finally got ahold of one of our friends who had some time and could come and take the Potato Bug and I home.

Then we got to sit outside for about an hour waiting for him to show up.

I'm glad I hadn't bought any perishables.

Arizona is still very, very hot outside during the day.

Anyway, lots of people were nice and saw us and offered to try and help but it was all useless. Finally, the friend showed up and was very nice and drove us home. I let Dusey know what had happened, and then sat at home trying not to cry for most of the rest of the afternoon.

Dusey managed to get off work an hour early. He hopped in the car and started rushing home, focused on going and trying to save the truck from its lonely spot in the parking lot Far Away. He was on the freeway. The people in front of him stopped fast. He stopped fast. The person behind him didn't stop quite fast enough, and he got rear-ended. On his birthday. On his way home early to try to save the Abandoned Truck. His mind was elsewhere (I think he knew I was still highly emotionally distraught at home) and he forgot to get The Rear-Ender's phone number or liscense plate number, though he did write down everything off her insurance card (the pertinent information was acquired after much searching to find a phone number for the address yesterday and a somewhat lengthy phonecall). Luckily, the car was only slightly damaged, a few scratches and a loose bit of decorative molding below the bumper.

So he came home. And we packed up the Potato Bug yet again, and drove back to the Asian Market that was Very Far Away to try and save the Abandoned Truck from its loneliness. Dusey tried cleaning the battery contacts. We tried jumping it with our car. We went to a nearby Walmart and bought a new battery and tried that. Nothing. There was not even enough power getting from the battery to be able to pop the truck into neutral. He called his dad (on vacation) who called around and got a tow service to come and get the truck and take it back to our home for us. It was going to be awhile before the tow man could get there, so we went over to the McDonalds in the parking lot and ate dinner there (on my husband's birthday) and then just sat and waited and waited until the Tow Man came. The Tow Man was Very Nice and tried to see if HE could get the truck to start so we wouldn't have to pay the tow fees to get it home. It was no good. So, towing it was. He discovered that the truck could not go into neutral, so the job was rather more complicated for him and more expensive for us (I got to see plastic tire skis, and got to watch how the tow truck can not only move the back part up and down and slanty and back and forth, but how it can also pull its own cab backwards as everything is getting into place, which was actually pretty cool to watch). Finally, the truck was loaded, and we got to go home.

We got home at 8pm, and the Potato Bug was very sleepy (his bedtime is 7pm) so we put him to bed, and then we talked for a little while, and then we went to bed.

It was a crappy birthday for Dusey.

Also, I was left without a vehicle for the rest of the week. Just in time for us to run out of laundry soap and food. Also, I had to call and cancel my doctor's appointment for Wednesday because there was no way for me to get there that afternoon, and then they couldn't fit me back in until Saturday.

So, Saturday rolls around. It's the day of the rescheduled doctor's appointment, one week after the thumb slicing has occurred. I am, by this point, completely sick of the giant wad of gauze that is on my thumb (though it kept falling off), and am highly frustrated by not being able to get it wet. Anyway. I decide to walk to the doctor's office because I don't want to impose on anybody and make them drive me and wait for us to be all done and then drive us back home (it was my first visit to that office so there was lots of paperwork to fill out). I got the Potato Bug loaded into the stroller, along with the diaper bag, and a bottle of water, and I was smart enough to wear a big sunhat so I wouldn't get burned. My only mistake was that I wore flipflops. That was highly stupid of me. Other than that, everything was fine. I gave myself lots of time so I could walk slowly and be able to find it without stressing out. It took an hour to get there, which ended up with me there half an hour early. Luckily the doctor was able to see me early (right after all the paperwork was done). He looked at it for a few minutes, and told me to soak it in warm soapy water and then let it air dry and it would be fine. So we got all loaded up back in the stroller and walked the hour back home.

The walk honestly wasn't too bad. Potato Bug slept the whole way there and back. My feet survived with only a few minor blisters. And I walked five miles total in two hours time, which for me, with the stroller and in the heat, is quite good. I'm still really tired from it though.

So we survived Sunday and the Primary Program Practice (with ALL the kids in my class overly full of energy and one breakdown when one particular shy child didn't want to get up and practice her part). Last night, PB slept for a fairly long time before waking up at 2am to eat. He went right back to sleep afterward. I did not. For some reason, I couldn't fall back asleep, but was too tired to get up and do anything, so I just stayed in bed trying to sleep. PB woke up again at 4:30am (sooner than he normally does) and I fed him and he went right back to sleep again. A couple minutes later, as I was trying to fall asleep hopefully finally, I heard an odd popping noise. I wanted to dismiss it as nothing and roll over and sleep, but I decided to wake Dusey up and have him check it out. He very kindly got up and out of bed and opened our bedroom door and went out to see what it was. At this point, I thought I heard water running, as if he'd started a load of laundry or dishes (which would have been ridiculous for 5 in the morning). Eventually, he came back in our room and informed me that the fridge had malfunctioned somehow and there was water all over the kitchen floor.

So I got out of bed, and we got almost all of our towels (we luckily have quite a few) and Dusey turned off the water hose that leads to the fridge (and the filter for the door water, and the ice-maker, which are my two favorite things about our fridge, other than that it otherwise keeps our food cold okay), and we mopped up the floor. We were very lucky, and it hadn't gotten to my computer yet (though it was very close), or to another power strip that was lying turned on on the floor on the other side of the room. There was about an inch of water puddled on the side of the kitchen opposite the fridge. It made me very glad we have tile. Also, we were lucky that our rug that we have in front of our couch in the family room (which is really one giant room with the kitchen) soaked up a lot of water, which kept it I think from flowing to either of the two power strips, which would have caused a lot of damage had they gotten wet. And we're very lucky that Potato Bug woke up again so soon in the middle of the night, and that I hadn't been able to sleep, and that there was a strange noise, and that I made Dusey go check it out, or else we would have awoken later to much worse conditions. Also, I was very glad that we didn't have a large bag of flour on the floor of the pantry like we often do. And the problem ended up being the water filter in the fridge, which we replaced for under $100 which isn't too horribly horrible, and now everything's all fixed.

So we went to the Waffle House for breakfast this morning (not very impressed, never going back), and we're going to go start a savings account today, and go swimming, and pay our tithing when we see the Bishop on Wednesday, and hopefully our efforts will make the continued small disasters cease and desist.

I think I will lighten things up a bit in my next post by just posting loads of pictures of my Potato Bug. You have been forewarned.

Arrrrr!

2008-09-19T09:01:00.005-07:00

It be Talk Like A Pirate Day once again, mateys!

So here's my wee pirate lad sportin' his Piratey attire.

5 months

2008-09-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

2 posts in a day!

At 5 months old, my son whom I need a new nickname for, has made some significant developmental progress.

Size-wise: 16.4lbs, 25" long, 16" head circumference, by my measurements.

Mobility: He can roll everywhichway and scoot about in circles and futilely kick his legs above the ground while on his tummy in a hilariously unsuccessful attempt at moving anywhere at all.

Socially: He's kinda shy. If you amuse him, he'll smile and squeal for you, but if you do too much, he'll present you with the biggest frown of babyland, followed a minute later by large amounts of crying until he's back in a safety zone (i.e. mommy or daddy holding him against our shoulders while walking around). Most likely he'll just stare at you though.

Vocally: No talking yet (ha ha ha), lots of noises, and his favorite word to listen to is Banana so his mommy sings it to him to various tunes throughout the day. You should try it sometime. "Banana banana baaanaaanaaaa."

He still loves standing up (with us helping hold him up). He can sit up for several seconds unassisted (he made it to 20 seconds the other day!). He loves it when people applaud his efforts. He likes to sleep with his bum in the air occasionally. He caught his first serious cold and is very snuffly right now. He's back down to usually only waking up twice a night. He's getting quite good at eating rice cereal, though it still gets EVERYWHERE because he wants to feed himself and is constantly trying to grab the spoon. He's discovered that if he kicks in the bathtub it splashes, which has made bathtime more exciting (am I a bad mom for not bathing him daily? He doesn't honestly seem to need it every day, a couple times a week keeps him smelling nice and looking clean and healthy).

Next up on the milestone list: Sitting for several minutes unassisted. Holding himself up in a standing position. Eating baby food (I want a food processor). Crawling. Sleeping through the night?

True confessions

2008-09-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

1. I like BIG towels (and I cannot lie). I am also having a love affair with long socks which I never get to wear because I do not have the right clothes or shoes with which to wear them (and nobody here wears long socks which may have something to do with the fact that it's still consistently 95 degrees outside every single day and who knew it would happen but I'm missing fall and cool weather).

2. We tried making brownies last night substituting a mix of mayo and flaxseed and water for the eggs. It was a disaster. May you never witness a pan of brownies in the oven with a quarter inch of oil bubbling on top of them.

3. I often wish my personality was not my own. I become envious of other peoples' personalities. Especially those of my favorite bloggers. I read their blogs, wishing I could be them. And then I realize that it's not so much that their personalities are any better than mine, or their lives, as it is that they have a talent for writing about their lives in ways that make me laugh and cry and wish I were them. But really, I'm happy I'm me.

4. I hate fingernail polish. It chips! It always, always chips. Which looks horrible. And then I pick it all off the finger which got chipped. And then I have to make the other fingers match. Of course, I never have fingernail polish remover, so it becomes a long tedious process of chipping off the polish with my other nails. A-hah, you say, there is a solution! Simply buy fingernail polish remover and remove the polish before it chips! However, my friends, the manner in which I live my life creates a mysterious physical phenomenon wherein my fingernail polish, on the rare occasions I try it, chips within 10 minutes of it drying. So my nails are constantly a lovely au naturale color.

5. I bought an electric toothbrush. It recharges itself wirelessly (by which I mean there are no contact points between the toothbrush bottom and the charging base). This is a pretty cool thing which Tessla (played by David Bowie in The Prestige, which I honestly thought was a better movie than The Illusionist even though it disturbed me) experimented with.

6. Seeing my husband clean the house is not a turn-on for me. However, spying on him via the baby monitor and listening as he reads our son stories makes me feel incredibly romantic and tender-hearted. This is usually disrupted by the child's screaming as soon as he is put in his crib to sleep, which is a crying shame.

7. I adore kissing my baby's cheeks. They are round and pudgy and it makes him smile when I kiss them. Also, he has entered the realm of tubby baby thighs, which are incredibly cute, and don't touch the floor when he's lying on his back. I probably kiss the kid at least 100x every day. This is why I've caught his cold from him. That, and he likes to sneeze and cough on my face while I'm holding him.

8. I don't really like taking showers. Baths, on the other hand, are lovely. I sometimes sit and daydream about the perfect bathtub which I will someday have in my perfect house which will be located somewhere with moisture in the air. I'll take 80% humidity over this dry heat any day, as long as there's a mild winter.

9. I can survive hard days. This has been hard to convince myself of, but I'm going to prove it to myself once and for all today, as husband is at work, baby and I both have colds, Mother Nature is visiting in all her wrathful hormonal glory, the helpful in-laws are out of town for the week, and the thumb on my prominent hand is incapacitated and can't get wet (try explaining that to the drooly 5-month old who's favorite thing currently seems to be biting down hard on my thumbs whenever they're anywhere close to his mouth).

10. I now can brag of two somewhat deformed thumbs, due to the fact that both hammers and eggplants can be slippery. My left thumb has a nice linear scar and is slightly flatter than it used to be due to my whacking it hard with a hammer a few years ago during sculpture class. My right thumb is currently sporting the nickname "Mummy thumb" (which has less to do with my status as a mother and more to do with the 1/2" of gauze wrapped around it). You see, the eggplant for the ratatouille on Saturday night had a thick slippery skin, and it was too fat for the mandoline, which was a cheap slicing instrument of death purchased from Walmart a couple years ago. Things got ugly when the eggplant slipped and my thumb got a chunk sliced off. Then we got acquainted with our local Urgent Care clinic for three hours sans diaper bag (thank goodness the husband was home and could take care of both me and the child) for a 5 minute treatment involving a gel thing to stop the bleeding and a piece of foam and endless amounts of gauze and an injunction to not get it wet and follow up with your nonexistent primary care practitioner in three days and how can you not remember when your last tetanus shot was and please take these antibiotics twice a day. According to the doctor, I might have a slight divet in my thumb there once it's healed over, but who knows, perhaps it will eventually all fill back in, and nobody would ever notice the difference anyway. I am slightly proud of my dual deformed thumbs though, despite the fact that neither of them are as awesome as my spoon-shaped scar on my pinkie finger.

2008-09-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

A now sleeps solely on his tummy. He rolls over as soon as I put him down on his back, if he's already asleep. Otherwise, he cries until he manages to calm down enough to roll over and get his arm out from underneath himself and fall asleep. He's been doing better at falling asleep on his own at night (partially I think because we started putting him to bed at 7:30, which is when he starts getting quite fussy at night and I figured it was because he was tired). Naps are still a struggle. He gets tired every morning at about 9 so I try to put him down, but on the mornings when he does fall asleep, he only stays asleep for around 30 minutes and then wakes back up. He usually takes a longer afternoon nap, and a couple really short naps after nursing throughout the day. Slow progress is still progress though.

Unfortunately, I think he's got a tooth coming in now. He woke up 4 times last night, refused to nap this morning, and has been wanting to chew hard on everything and anything. And he's got a lump in his gums on the top which I figure is the tooth. And he's been rather fussy and demanding of my attention and has refused to entertain himself by rolling over or kicking or sitting in his bouncy chair or chewing on his keys or anything at all for more than 5 minutes at a time.

In short, I am tired. Very, very, very tired.

I am also feeling today like I am not doing such a great job. I have not been exercising because I'm constantly exhausted and sore just from holding the kiddo all day long. We don't go on long walks together because it's too hot outside all the time. I don't take him to any playgroups. When I do manage to get him to nap, I'm usually so tired myself that I don't do laundry, or dishes, or cook, or craft, or anything.

I am very much looking forward to the day when I am finally successful at getting him on a regular, scheduled routine, with good long naps, and not waking me up at least three times every single night. I suspect I will be much more cheerful and productive once I'm getting vaguely close to enough sleep again. He was doing really well and only waking up once or twice a night, but then we went on vacation, in a different time zone, and then I started trying to sleep train him, and he learned to roll over, and he's trying so hard to learn to sit by himself, and is getting pretty good at scooting himself forward with his face planted in his blanket, and he's teething, and learning to eat from a spoon. I guess there's just simply entirely too much going on in his little life for him to be a really good sleeper right now.

It has been a long, long day. I almost cried earlier when I looked at the clock and it was only 12:30. It's 2:30 now, though it feels more like 6pm to me.

I really don't do well when I don't get enough sleep. I fall apart. Can somebody else just take care of the rest of life for me for awhile, please? I need a nap.

Rolling, rolling, rolling

2008-08-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Last night went much better than the night before. A fell asleep after only a couple hours of crying, without me picking him up (though I did have to go over and rub his belly and make shushing noises to get him from the low moan phase into the asleep phase). He woke up once at about midnight to eat, then woke up again at 3:30 due to an extremely loud thunderstorm that was very close by. I understand the phrase "roll of thunder" now, as I could hear the waves of crashing sound move over my house, from north to south, roaring over and over after each brilliant flash of light through the windows. I think A didn't quite know what to do with all the noise, as when I got up to get him, I discovered he'd wiggled and rolled himself into the corner/side of his crib where he was kicking and grabbing the bars. I calmed him back down and put him back in his crib, laying him down on his back as always, when he promptly surprised me by rolling immediately onto his side. He wiggled around a bit until he got comfy, with his arms and head to the side, and his tummy against his crib, bum facing up, a half-twist position. And then he was asleep.

I guess he figured out during the night that he doesn't like sleeping on his back, but sleeping on his side and/or tummy is fine (much like me). And he figured out how to get himself there. He's been rolling onto his side for weeks now without help, but now has finally figured out how to make it all the way onto his tummy by himself on a regular basis. Way to go, A! Now you just need to figure out how to untrap your arm from under your torso after you've rolled, and then how to roll back onto your back, and you'll have it made, little guy.

Naps yesterday went fairly well also. Here's hoping today will go even better.

On sleep and the lack thereof

2008-08-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

Just about a week and a half ago, I'd had enough. I'd read several books about it, and I felt the time was right. A seemed in desperate need of it, and I knew I was in desperate need of it. I wanted to start "sleep training." But I didn't, because we were about to leave on vacation. So I started last night instead.

Vacation was great. First we had the ward campout. It was fun, there were a lot of people there, and A slept fabulously, going to bed early and only waking up once. We didn't sleep so well, since I was paranoid about A being too cold (and then after sticking a blanket on top of him in his carseat, I was paranoid about him suffocating himself with it). M had a slowly deflating air mattress that kept him from sleeping well. The next day we went to Hawaii, which with the long flight, 3-hour time difference, resort guests I didn't want to offend, and in-laws that hate listening to babies cry (not that I blame them), A's sleep schedule got all messed up and I resorted to feeding him to sleep for every single nap and bedtime and middle of the night waking. The first night we were there, A woke up at 3:30 in the morning and decided it was morning time and he ought to be awake and playing with me. I laid him down in our bed between us so he could kick a bunch and get some energy out. He surprised me by rolling over onto his tummy, for the first time, all by himself. He hasn't done it since, but it was exciting. He's doing really well at rolling onto his side, though.

Back to the main story: we got home late, late, late, and A was extremely over-tired after a series of short interrupted naps on the plane and being unable to fall asleep in the car and having the time change back and getting home at 1:30 in the morning. So we slept in the next day after a distressing night of him waking up three times. And getting him to sleep that night sucked. And things haven't yet improved.

So now we're to last night. I decide it's finally time that A learned how to fall asleep on his own, and how to sleep in his crib, and maybe after all that, how to stay asleep (a.k.a. put himself back to sleep after waking) all night long. We did the bedtime routine. We put him down drowsy, in his crib. He cried for about 40 minutes, then slept for 15, then cried with intermittent nodding off for another two hours. So I picked him up, and he was out like a light the instant I had him in my arms. I'd had enough, so I put him in his carseat so he could actually get some solid sleep. He woke up twice more during the night.

I do not know what to do. Should I focus on him learning to fall asleep on his own in his carseat, then move him to the crib once he's mastered that? He's got some reflux, and I've got a little crib wedge in the crib so he can be on an angle, but he slides around a lot (even with rolled up towels around him under the sheet). But he's been doing okay sleeping on his back on my lap during a couple of naps lately, so maybe he'll be fine laying down? Should I just do everything all at once? What about naptime? Should I just let him cry himself to sleep? Should I try the reassure him every 15 minutes approach? I refuse to pick him up until he's calm and then put him back down over and over and over, my arms can't take that. Should we move his crib into a separate room rather than being in ours?

Help!

4 months

2008-08-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

A is four months old as of yesterday. Today he had his 4-month checkup and immunizations. The appointment unfortunately occurred right during his normal morning nap-time (on the schedule he started himself oh, say, last week), so he was a little grumpy (which isn't really too bad, the pediatrician kept talking about how mellow he is). He screamed and screamed during the shots though, stopping as soon as I picked him up again afterwards, and then starting again as soon as he was in his car seat until I managed to distract him by bouncing it up and down (the carseat screaming was because he was very, very sleepy though, not because of the shots). He fell asleep on the way home and is still asleep now.

He's 25" long, and weighs 15lbs. and 4oz. Solidly in the 75th percentile for everything. The pediatrician said there's pretty much nothing we can do about his throwing up or his stuffy nose, and that he'll probably grow out of them as he gets bigger. We're going to start trying rice cereal, and after he gets used to the taste of it, then we can start mixing it with different kinds of juice and stuff, and once he gets used to eating from a spoon and isn't spitting everything out, we can start giving him baby food, which I suspect will be very fun (and messy).

During the last several days, A has discovered not only that he can grab his own toes, but that he can, if he tries really hard, sometimes get them into his mouth. They never stay there for more than a split-second, but it's really funny to watch him trying so hard to put his foot in his mouth. He still strongly favors his left hand and foot. He likes being really loud when he talks now and has begun that little baby energetic yelling/cooing noise. It's pretty cute normally, but sometimes gets a little loud for me. He still blows bubbles occasionally, and constantly drools over everything.

He loves grabbing things and trying to put them in his mouth. If I try to put the same things in his mouth, he gets this disgusted look on his face as if he's trying to inform me that the object is disgusting and please never do that again. And then I put it in his hand, and he puts it in his mouth and gnaws on it. He particularly likes chewing on fabric, and doesn't like plastic very much. His tongue is long and pointy (he got that from me) and he sticks it out a lot.

When he's in his Bumbo seat, sometimes he will lean forward or to the side and try to eat the seat. He likes going for walks with me carrying him in the baby sling, and usually falls asleep during them. He likes being held when we're standing more than when we're sitting. He loves trying to stand up, with a little weight on his legs as we hold him under his arms.

His favorite board books right now are Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and A Color Of His Own. I sing him Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the ABC song when it's bedtime. He's fairly good at entertaining himself for 30 minute stretches of time in his bouncy seat. He loves kicking, and has very strong legs (something the nurses always comment on).

We're excited to watch him learn new things this upcoming month which I will indubitably post about. He's a cute, cute boy. I'll add a picture here later as a nice closing note to the post.

bleargh

2008-08-08T08:45:00.001-07:00

I. Am. Exhausted. The periods there of course do not indicate complete sentences, but rather the length of the pause you should take between each word in order to see how, if I were saying that out loud to you, it would be very slowly and with great effort due to my extreme fatigue.

Yep.

Last night was not a sleep-all-night night for A. After it taking a very long time to get him asleep in the first place (M was very nice and paced our room with him), I had a huge headache and had a hard time falling asleep. He woke up, of course. a few hours later, and after taking care of him and getting him back to sleep, it took me at least another hour to fall back asleep. And then, the magical morning hour of 6:30 rolled around and he woke up for the day. I ignored him until 7, when I got up, headache still intact.

Since then he has thrown up on two outfits and his little lovey bear-blankie that I decided to try giving him yesterday. I normally just feel sorry for him when he throws up, but this morning I am frustrated, because he gagged himself by cramming his hand in his mouth. Twice. I don't know why he insists on gnawing on his hands instead of sucking his thumb.

I really hope any and all future children of mine do not end up with such sensitive gag reflexes. Me and my washing machine need a break.

Rollin' rollin' rollin', keep those wagons rollin'...Rawhide!

2008-08-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

Based on the massive amounts of drool my son has started to produce, and the fact that he's constantly trying to chew on any handy bit of fabric, I have come to the conclusion that he's begun the long slow process of teething. My mom said the teeth have probably slowly started to move, but they probably won't pop out for another few months yet. He's trying really hard to learn to roll over and to stay sitting up by himself. So far he can make it onto his side from his back, but then he rolls back after a few seconds. He can also sit for a couple seconds unassisted by overbalancing forwards. We got him a Bumbo seat, and let him sit in it on the table while we eat, which he loves. I also got him a bunch of cute (on sale) clothes for our trip to Hawaii in a couple of weeks. He's got a hat for almost every day and he is insanely adorable in them.

I ordered a swimsuit online for Hawaii. I really hope it fits.

I'm loving PaperBack Swap, though nobody seems to want my Shakespeare plays. I have a couple more books to list. It's so much fun trading books I don't really want for ones I do want. I recommend checking it out if you have books you'd like to trade (you just pay postage to send your books). If you sign up, list kadusey as your referrer, and I'll get a credit (which would be lovely).

I think A is sleeping through the night. Now we just need to teach him to sleep in his crib, and to fall asleep without nursing. And to fall asleep earlier. He's not falling asleep (despite my best efforts) until 10pm or so every night, but he does sleep until 6:30 without waking me up after that. And he's taking better naps during the day, which is nice. Slow and steady progress.

M and I have decided that we don't really like Bulgur (Bulgher?). I bought a bag, and I keep trying to use it in different recipes, but I don't really like the texture (I'm not sure if it's the texture or taste that M dislikes). I'd much rather use, say, barley. Healthy it may be, but if we don't like it, then there's no point in cooking with it. And despite what my chili recipe said, the texture is NOT a nice substitute for ground meat. There is no comparison between the two. Totally different textures.

A really likes being able to see everything when we're out and about. I think I need to get an umbrella stroller for cheaps so we can take little walks and he can look at everything (our stroller is amazingly beautifully nice, but he's a bit little for just the stroller part, and the carseat when in it makes him sit backwards which he doesn't mind but he doesn't like staring at just me nearly as much as being able to see everything whiz by). I also need to make the other Mei Tai that I've got a pattern for (possibly modifying it a bit) so that I can wear him facing outwards. And sometime or other I need to learn to do back carries in the mei tais. I need to learn some different carries for the sling too, he's not nearly as big a fan of the cradle carry any more.

I'm so excited for our vacation. Humidity! Oh, how I've missed thee. And any weather that's not over 100 every day. It will be lovely.

I bought a basil plant for my windowsill. It's looking a little droopy and not too perky. Perhaps it needs a bigger pot. I've also decided I want a dwarf Meyer Lemon Tree. And a food processor. And we may not eat much meat, but I don't think we will ever be vegetarians. Or horror movie fans. Not that any of that is at all related.

I need to research what kills crickets. All the cockroaches I find in our house (they seem to come in waves, and we're in an off phase right now) are dead for the most part. Not so with the crickets (which do not come in waves, but are always just constantly there, chirping and humming and buzzing all out of synch with each other outside our bedroom window. I find them, one at a time, hopping around my house. I don't like them. They've got strangely long antennae and they jump in unexpected direction, and they're not as cute as grasshoppers. Though I do occasionally find them dead in the house, too, like the one I found in the biggest mixing bowl in a stack of mixing bowls in an upper cupboard last week. Gyah. Disgusting little dead buggies should not be anywhere near my mixing bowls.

I bought a set of mini loaf pans and a mini muffin tin (and a microplane grater, but that's beside the point). I'm so excited to make little tiny food! I already made some small loaves of zucchini bread. They were cute, but the tiny cupcakes I'm planning on making at some point will be much cuter.

I reached my first weight goal for Wii Fit, though I've been pretty lax about doing it every day lately. I need to start doing it consistently again or I will gain it all back, I'm sure. It wants me to lose a few more pounds, but I kind of want to keep them on, because, after all, I'm a nursing mother, and I need to have a little bitty bit of fat on me for good milk production. All the weight I've lost has been mostly from my tummy and bottom. There's still some tummy fat left, and quite a bit of hip fat left. But I've stopped eating desserts mostly (other than fresh fruit) and haven't been eating nearly as much processed sugar (just a bit of honey). Other than the zucchini bread, that had a lot of sugar in it. I only had a few slices though. The cupcakes will also have lots of sugar in them, but they will be tiny, which makes it all okay, right? Tiny food has fewer calories! No matter that I will probably eat a dozen of them. I am trying overall to reduce my sugar consumption though. And I've cut out dairy, which due to not eating cheese anymore, has greatly reduced my consumption of fats and oils. I miss it. I also need to start taking my vitamins so I'm still getting calcium. But holy cow, I miss cheese. It doesn't help that I've discovered several stores that sell all sorts of fancy cheeses for relatively affordable prices, close to my house. Once I stop nursing, I am going to go on a giant cheese binge (and all other sorts of dairy, and I will probably get fat for awhile, but who cares, it will be a delicious, delicious process...and I can lose the weight again).

3 months +

2008-07-22T13:10:00.001-07:00

I am tired of calling my son Spider. I think I'll just refer to him as A.

A is about 3.5 months old now. He remains generally delightful, though taking care of him is still a lot of work for me. He's gotten very good at basic head control and lifting his head up during tummy time. He likes to look around while we're holding him. He's started trying to roll over and enjoys playing the game where he'll shift his weight to one side and then we help him get the rest of the way over. He likes grabbing things for a few seconds when they contact his palms, and has started reaching his left arm up and out repeatedly throughout the day while opening and closing his hand as if he's trying to grab the air. He's gotten quite good at grabbing his clothes and blankets. He likes his bouncy seat and storytime and is showing a growing interest in the mirror on his baby gym toy. He dislikes being alone in a room or being ignored (like when we're trying to eat dinner).

He's sleeping all night much more often now, which is nice. He still hates his medicine (for his kidney reflux) and tries (and often succeeds in) spitting it out every day. Sometimes it makes him throw up. He throws up rather easily anyway, sometimes quite forcefully. We generally end up changing both our clothes at least once a day due to throw up. I'm unsure if it's due to reflux, a milk protein problem (I've been eating dairy again), or an over-active milk supply. There's a couple things I'm going to try in the next few weeks to see if it improves.

A loves trying to talk to us. He's started drooling a lot. He often sounds like his sinuses are stuffed up. He smiles when he sees me when he wakes up and starts talking to me. He still likes to kick a lot, and has very strong legs. He weighs about 15 pounds now and is a bit over 24 inches long. He coughs and sneezes often during the day.

So, there's a few things we need to ask the doctor about at his next appointment, but overall, I think he's growing and developing great, right on track with everything, and we love him lots.

On a non-baby note, we got Wii Fit a couple weeks ago, and I've been doing it almost every day, and have lost a couple pounds (as has M (aka Mike)), and am below the weight that I was when I got pregnant (which admittedly was a couple pounds heavier than it should have been). So. That's exciting. I can fit into some of my pre-pregnancy pants now (some are still quite tight and won't zip though). It's lots of fun, too. Great way of getting our daily exercise.

summation

2008-07-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

Well, yeah, hmmm, I've been a bit AWOL lately, eh? Let's see if I can recap the past few weeks. The trip to California was quite good. Aiden was fabulous and slept the entire plane ride both to and from. He got a little overwhelmed while we were there a few times, everything seemed to happen right during his normal naptimes, so he was a bit grumpy, but overall he was a very good baby during the trip. My grandpa's funeral was really nice, I'm so glad I got to go and see so many family members, etc. We went to the beach on both Friday and Saturday, since it was my grandpa's favorite place. Aiden got his feet dipped in the Pacific, which I think was a little too cold for him to enjoy much, but he liked the noise of the waves a lot. If we go to a California beach again with a small child, I am going to have to remember that the ocean spray gets clothes damp after several hours, which leads to very cold little bodies if you don't have a dry change of clothes tucked away somewhere that they'll stay dry.

The next Sunday, Mike and I both gave talks in church, which went pretty well. I talked about my grandpa, mostly. I managed to get Aiden to go to sleep during our talks. He woke up just as Mike was finishing his. Once again, he was a very good baby the whole time he was on the stand (a couple people didn't even realize he was up there with us).

Then, last Sunday, Aiden got his baby blessing. My parents and brother came down for it, and it was really nice to have them here, and they indulged me and went wherever I wanted to go on Saturday. Mike did a really nice job with the blessing. I need to type it up and print it out and put it in a scrapbook or something (really ought to start a scrapbook for the kiddo sometime soon). Aiden wore a cute little outfit that was a white polo shirt onesie and some khaki shorts and the absolutely cutest little shoes over some white socks. He was adorable. He screamed during the entire blessing (with good reason, he was incredibly hungry).

Mike and I got callings in church too. Once again, I get to teach the CTR8 class. This will be my third time with this calling. I guess I need more practice at it. :) I'm teaching tomorrow so I'll get to meet all the kids. Mike's on the Activities Committee, which should work out great, since he'll get to take lots of photos of stuff for it, I'm sure.

Aiden is three months old now, which I'll sum up in my next post. Oh, and we finally painted our front room orange and green. I love the green, it's a nice apple green, but I'm still not sure about the orange. I also organized and rearranged and unpacked some more stuff, so now there's only a few things left to do (most of which are in our bedroom) before we'll be completely moved into this house.

Ok, got to go, Aiden needs a diaper change. Adios.

2008-06-17T18:40:00.000-07:00

My grandpa died this morning. I found out he was dying on Sunday morning. It made for a somewhat difficult Father's Day, and I'm afraid I didn't manage to do anything nice for Mike for his first Father's Day. We're going to drive to California for the funeral this weekend. I'm glad I get to go to it. Today has been a bit of a hard day too, not helped by the fact that my son woke up last night every hour or two, so I got almost no sleep, and then today he's been spitting up all over the both of us every time he eats, a couple of times almost everything he ate, making a lot of laundry that I don't feel like washing today. I'll have to write a nice post about my grandpa sometime--he was a wonderful man and a fabulous grandfather--I just can't do it right now, typing one-handed with a fussy baby when both of us reek of milk despite our baths this morning. Hopefully we will all survive the six-hour car ride on Friday.

2 Months Old

2008-06-11T13:11:00.002-07:00

This is for Spider's journal, so is full of lots of details that most people probably won't find interesting. You might like the photos though.

Spider had his 2-month checkup today (2 months old as of yesterday). He's 23" long now, and weighs 12lbs. 8oz, so he's gained exactly five pounds since he was born. He's in the 75th% now for both height and weight. The doctor said he looks healthy, though he has a little patch of cradle cap that she said ought to go away sometime between 6 and 9 months (longer than I was expecting). They gave him 5 shots for vaccinations (it should've been 4 but supplies were low on one so they didn't have the normal combination shot), and one oral vaccine. He screamed during the shots, and then cried for a couple minutes while I held him, but he calmed down pretty quick. He has 5 little bandaids on his thighs, and is sleeping peacefully now (snoring a bit again though, he's been quite stuffy the last couple of days).

After his appointment with the pediatrician, we went next door to the hospital, and picked up the film from his VCUG to take to the urologist on Friday. It's really quite a nice hospital, they have a free valet service at every entrance, and there's a medical center right next to it in the same complex which is where our pediatrician's office is (and where the pediatric urologist's office is), so everything is quite convenient.

At 2 months old, Spider is doing a great job with holding his head up and tracking things by turning his eyes and head. He's started to notice bright colors, and will turn his head to look at sounds more now. He's making lots of noises during play time, and likes trying to talk back to me. He imitated his grandma making pirate noises (Arrr!) a few days ago, which was absolutely hilarious. We, of course, have not been able to get him to do it for us. He smiles a lot, which is absolutely adorable. He doesn't cry very often, just fusses mostly, which consists of grunting and displeased noises, whenever his diaper's dirty or he's hungry or gassy or just wants to be held. He's a very calm baby overall, though he sometimes is very gassy which makes him quite uncomfortable. He still makes lots of different facial expressions all the time, which I love watching.

Spider won't sleep on his back right now. We think he has a little bit of reflux that makes him uncomfortable on his back. He spits up occasionally, but usually not very forcefully or very much (though once I swear he spit up absolutely everything that he'd just eaten--maybe he ate too much). So he sleeps every night for now in his carseat, and alternates between his carseat and my arms for naps during the day. He's started sleeping for slightly longer stretches occasionally, and got to 5 hours of sleeping the other day, and is hitting the 4 hour mark more frequently. Sometimes he has quite a hard time falling asleep, and fusses and fusses while we walk with him, and rock him, and bounce him, and sing to him, and play his noisemaker for him (thunder or the loud running water are his favorites), and take him under lights, and spin around, and swing him about in his carseat, and try putting him in the swing that his grandparents are letting us borrow. Eventually he ends up distracted and calms down and falls asleep. He cries most often when he's either very hungry or very tired. He also cries a lot when I try to suck the snot out of his nose (he absolutely hates that).

His fingernails grow quickly, and I have to trim them every couple of days to keep him from scratching himself. I have to keep my nails trimmed quite short as well so that I don't accidentally scratch him when he moves suddenly while I'm holding him. He's still not very interested in toys, so play time every day is mostly me talking or singing to him and making faces and funny noises for him. Sometimes we play while I hold him, and sometimes we play while he lays on a blanket on the floor. We've started trying to do some tummy time every day. He's very good at pushing off the ground with his legs while on his tummy, and lifts his head a tiny bit for very short spurts, but hasn't yet figured out how to push his chest up with his arms. His legs are very strong, and he moves them a lot, so we think he's going to be a very good crawler, once he figures out how to hoist his chest up with his arms. I think he's finally to the point where he might be interested by some of the baby books we have, so we're going to start having storytime every day. His favorite song to listen to is a folk song, John O'Dreams, sung by Jim Albertson. He often falls asleep while listening to it. I'm including the lyrics at the bottom of the post.

Spider gets a bath every couple of days. He doesn't seem quite sure what to make of the water yet, other than that it makes him cold quickly. He poops in the tub every single time he gets a bath, even if just a little bit, so we have an interesting time with changing the water out frequently. He gets lotion on his forehead every day to help with his dry skin that he always gets there. He eats at least 8 times a day, I think, and gets his diaper changed slightly more often than that. He really enjoys diaper changes, cooing and talking and wiggling and smiling during them. I think his other favorite thing right now is sitting up. He always likes it when we hold him so he's sitting upright.

We took him to the zoo on Monday. He was quite fussy at first until we figured out that he was hungry, so he ate and then slept in his carseat in the stroller the rest of the time we were there. It was over a hundred degrees outside, so we concocted a shade contraption over him with a parasol and a solarveil nursing cover. I think he still got a bit overheated though, thus why he slept for such a very long time (5 hours before I made him wake up and eat). He wore his monkey shirt in honor of being at the zoo. He's also been to the butterfly exhibit at the Botanical Gardens, and swimming at his granparents', so he's been pretty busy the past two months. We go on walks sometimes in his stroller which he likes, and I carry him with me to get the mail every couple of days. The bright sunlight usually makes him sneeze. He usually sleeps during car rides, unless he's hungry.

John O'Dreams

When midnight comes, the people homeward tread,
Seek out your blankets and your feather beds,
Home is the rover, his journey's over,
Yield up the darkness to Old John of Dreams,
Yield up the darkness to Old John of Dreams.

Across the hills, the sun has gone astray,
Tomorrow's cares are many dreams away.
Home is the rover, his journey's over.
Yield up the nighttime to Old John of Dreams,
Yield up the nighttime to Old John of Dreams.

Both man and master in the night are one.
All things are equal when the day is done.
The prince and plowman, the slave and freeman,
All find their comfort in Old John of Dreams,
All find their comfort in Old John of Dreams.

Now as you sleep, the dreams come winging clear,
The hawks of morning cannot harm you here.
Sleep is a river, it flows on forever,
And for your boatman, choose old John of Dreams,
And for your boatman, choose old John of Dreams.

He's my itsy-bitsy spider

2008-05-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

So, I'm going to call my baby Spider on here, because he likes wiggling and squirming and scooting and trying to climb on top of me when I burp him.

My 6 week appointment went great. Everything is where it should be. I don't have to go back until 2009. Hooray.

Spider's VCUG (bladder x-ray) was this morning. He didn't like it very much. He wasn't very cooperative when being catheterized (cathed?), and was exceedingly unhappy about being strapped down all stretched out and naked to a board. He got over it quickly once released, but I'm still a bit traumatized and so have resolved to hold him and cuddle him and love him all day long. The verdict is that he has urinary reflux. The pediatrician will call to discuss it with us in a couple of days.

Oh, frabjous day

2008-05-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

Anniversary, Mother's Day, and Birthday all went well. Very enjoyable overall, though baby was rather fussy and didn't sleep much on any of the days, making me rather tired, so not terribly energetic during any of the celebrations. Still good though. Dusey got me the 2 volumes of the Marmalade Boy manga that I'd been missing, so now my collection of that is complete. He also got me a Cyclo DS which means now I can play lots of DS Roms, which should be particularly fun for multiplayer (I've been excluded from DS multiplayer quite a few times before due to my friends playing games I don't have cartridges for). And my in-laws gave me a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel, so now I can watch it with my hubby, which should be fun. And I got some money from my family, which I used just this morning...

...to go to the Lactation Center. And everything went swimmingly well, no problems, he latched on great, and the Lactation Consultant was equally amazed at him latching on so well after 5 weeks of exclusive bottle feeding, and at my milk supply keeping up so well for those 5 weeks of using a hand pump. Also, we discovered that he weighs over 11 pounds now. No wonder my arms have been getting so tired. I call him munchmouth all the time at home, because he really likes eating, and eats a lot, and frequently...maybe I should make that his online nick, and call him Mm. Possibly. Maybe I'll come up with something a lot better than that to call him. He fell asleep more soundly when done at the LC than he has in several days, so it's been quite nice to have him sleeping for the last hour and a half.

My 6-week appointment is on Thursday. It's a little hard to believe it's been that long already since he was born. Then again, he's a lot bigger now (almost four pounds in 6 weeks!) so it's not that hard to believe. Then, next Tuesday is his little X-ray to check out his kidneys and see if he's got reflux or not. That won't be a very fun appointment for either of us. But that should be the end of the testing, at least, so that's nice.

I'm incredibly exhausted (lack of sleep is catching up to me hardcore), so I think I will try to take a nap today. Maybe I'll play some FFXII, which we picked up from BestBuy with a giftcard last week. Maybe I'll just sit and be lazy and zombie-fied like normal in between feedings and any nap that I may or may not take. I'm really thinking today is going to be a nap day though. Especially if he falls back asleep so soundly again after the next time he eats (which hopefully will go as well as it did at the Center).

Time to eat a brownie, and something else as well for lunch. As a side note, cutting out dairy seems to be working well at helping his watery diapers not be so watery. I need to make sure to take my vitamins now to make sure we're both still getting enough calcium, since I think I'll keep up with the no dairy. So, lunch for me, then lunch for him probably, then naps for us both if all goes well. Oh man, that sounds so nice. So very, very nice.

My baby is snoring

2008-05-09T16:40:00.000-07:00

He unfortunately has two parents who are highly prone to constant stuffiness, which he seems to have inherited. So, he's snoring little tiny faint snores right now, and it is extremely cute. I'll post up some more pictures of him soon, I haven't gotten to take a bunch that I want to take yet.

My mom and younger brother and sister came down to visit for a week. It was fabulous having them here. I got more sleep while my mom held the baby, and I got out of the house pretty much every day, and they painted my family room and kitchen for me (a beautiful cheerful blue, which I will post pictures of later). They also mowed my lawn and moved boxes and were all sorts of helpful while they were here, and they took me shopping for some new clothes, so I have clothes that fit again now! It was really nice. I took a break from the internet while they were visiting though, thus why I haven't updated.

Still need to go see a lactation consultant, and possibly the pediatrician (I think baby guy might possibly have thrush, though I think it's getting a bit better, and I wouldn't worry about it at all except he's also had some diarrhea the past couple days that I want to at least call and ask a nurse about). I also need to go shopping. So tomorrow's going to be an out-and-about day (we would've gone out several days ago to take care of all this but our truck keys ended up hitching a ride to Utah in my family's car, and they just arrived back here in the mail today).

We had our 2-year anniversary on Tuesday. My mom watched Aiden for us on Monday night and we went out and got frozen yogurt to celebrate, which was nice. Then on Tuesday, Mike's parents brought us some sushi that we had for dinner, and then we went to sleep early which was quite nice. I'm still trying to decide what I want Mike to get for me for an anniversary present.

Mother's Day is this Sunday. I'm excited for my first Mother's Day as a mom. It should be fun. They're having a brunch in Relief Society which I think is a fabulous idea. I really like our ward so far, they seem really nice, and I think it'll be a lot of fun to go to Enrichment activities. They had a cool one on Tuesday that I didn't go to what with it being our anniversary and all. I think I'll have to recreate it with Mike at home though because it really did sound really fun. It was the book club meeting, and they were going to briefly discuss The Scarlet Pimpernel, and then watch the movie, and make smores in the host's fireplace (we don't have a fireplace, but my in-laws do, so maybe we'll go borrow theirs when we recreate it). I've been dying to re-watch that movie for ages (Sink me! Mike's never seen it!)

Monday is my birthday. I'm turning the ripe old age of 25. I'm pretty excited about it, I love birthdays, and I'm going to be a quarter of a century old, which seems like a pretty significant birthday. I think we'll have a combination birthday/housewarming party next weekend to celebrate. Oh, I'll finally be old enough to rent cars, too, so that's cool, and insurance rates for me should go down a bit. I'm trying to decide what kind of cake to make for myself. I've been eating entirely too much dessert lately, but I honestly don't see much reason to eat very much less dessert for the next week or so. Celebrations call for desserts. Delicious, delicious desserts.

To make up for all the dessert I've been eating, I went on a walk around one of the blocks in our neighborhood today. It really is a very nice neighborhood, and there's a nice sidewalk walking trail that runs along the currently-dry canal that's about half-a-block away. I need to walk earlier in the day though I think. We went out at about noon, and it was crazy hot. It's currently 93 degrees F which I think is rather too hot for walking. If I can get up and ready and dressed early enough though, walking in the mornings should be really nice.

Aiden's been sleeping a little longer at night the past couple of days. Now we just need to figure out how to get him to go back to sleep quickly the couple times a night that he does wake up, and then we should be sitting (or sleeping) pretty. He's getting quite large, and my shoulders are protesting holding him and carrying him around. I got some fabric to make a mei tai (cloth baby carrier) out of, so we'll see if that helps once I get it all done (I have yet to start on it...maybe I'll work on it on Monday as a birthday celebration).

I suppose I should update again

2008-04-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

Aiden is still adorable. The last couple of weeks have been great, I love him so much and he is constantly really really cute, but they've also been really hard.

If you don't want to read about a couple breastfeeding issues and baby's ear infection, skip the next paragraph.

I guess I never really got a good latch for breastfeeding and so was dealing with cracking and bleeding and pain, and then last week, after several days of him being really congested, he got really fussy one night and stopped eating on one side, so I took him to the pediatrician. Poor baby has an ear infection. A week old, and he got his first ear infection. So we started him on some antibiotics, and I stuck to feeding him on the other side, but that made the whole pain and bleeding thing much, much worse. And the other side was getting pretty engorged, which is also really, really uncomfortable. So Saturday I went and got a little hand-pump, and started using it, and we tried cup-feeding him once, but it didn't really work, so I gave in and he's been eating from a bottle for the past several days while I wait for me to heal up and for him to get over his ear infection. The guilt of giving him a bottle is really hard to deal with, even though it was really the best option for him still eating for the last several days. I'm planning on going to see a lactation consultant once the scabs have gone away, and hopefully he'll be able to transition back to the breast without too many difficulties. Pumping is a pain with the handpump, I think the breastshield it came with is the wrong size so it gets pretty uncomfortable pretty quickly. Lanolin is fabulous, but it gunks up the pump and makes it hard to clean, so I haven't been using it much.

I feel so bad for him, he's still horribly congested and has a hard time breathing a lot of the time. He's doing better yesterday and today, but he still wants to be held most of the time, which I'm inclined to do, because it obviously helps him feel better. I really wish I could make his stuffy nose go away somehow and make him feel all better. I guess that's part of being a parent.

The lack of sleep is also really hard. It's getting a little better, I'm getting maybe six hours of sleep a night now, rather than three or four. I spend most of the day every day in somewhat of a zombie mode. We've been watching a lot of the Discovery Channel, and I've spent lots of time just staring at baby guy. I need to come up with a nick for him. One of these days soon I will have to take pictures of all his different facial expressions he makes during the day. I love his little smiles, even if they are just from gas, and I can't get over how cute he is when his eyes are open and he's staring at me. He's pretty strong and wiggly and sometimes manages to roll over completely onto his side. He eats every couple of hours, and has been packing the weight back on. He's got a pediatrician's appointment tomorrow so we'll see if he weighs more than his birth weight (I'm betting he does, he was an ounce short when I took him in for the ear infection).

We took him in for a renal ultrasound yesterday. Hopefully we'll find out the results from that soon.

I'm recovering pretty well, other than being constantly tired. :) Today I managed to unpack all my clothes (finally) and finish unpacking the bathroom, and take care of baby guy by myself all day (first day pumping with Dusey gone at work), and pick up the family room, and wash all the bottles and the pump, and make dinner, and research mei tais because I want to get one to carry him around in. Our bedroom is almost all put away and organized now, and the garage needs some rearranging but is pretty close to done. The living room needs to be arranged and the other two bedrooms are still full of boxes that need to be unpacked and organized, and we need to paint almost everything still. But we're making good progress and our house feels more and more like home every day (I can get dressed now without searching through suitcases!).

Dusey has been an awesome daddy so far. He's been really great about helping feed Aiden and change his diapers and put him back to sleep at night so I can pump the next bottle. And he's been spending time almost every day putting a few things away, and exercising, and making food for us to eat, and getting me whatever medicine (for me or baby) I'm in need of at any given moment, and still working full-time too. I love it whenever it is time for his days off each week. He's been dealing well with all my little baby blues emotional breakdowns too every couple of days.

I love my family.

I'll respond to all your lovely comments soon, I promise.

Feature Presentation

2008-04-11T10:43:00.001-07:00

Aiden Van Dusen
7 lbs. 8 oz.
20.1" long
born at 7:01pm, April 10th

He is adorable, and I adore him. I did not so much adore the fifteen hours of labor, and two hours of pushing, and the not being able to eat anything for pretty much all day, but he's worth it.

We got to the hospital at 3am yesterday, after maybe four hours of sleep. I was dilated to 3cm. They started me on the Pitocin (which creates contractions) at about 4am. I had lovely little regular painless contractions until about noon (we watched 50 First Dates to pass the time), at which time my OBGYN showed up and broke the bag of waters. I flooded. There really was a LOT of fluid in there. After that, the contractions started to actually work right, and therefore, started to hurt. I stuck it out for about two and a half hours, but after going from 5cm to 6cm dilated in fifteen minutes, and not being able to get up out of the bed and move around at all (hardly being able to move in the bed at all, with all the stuff I was hooked up to), I decided to go ahead and get the epidural. So the anesthisiologist came in at 3pm and did a great job of getting me all hooked up and the right amount of meds flowing in, and I got lovely and numb. The contractions continued doing their job, with me blissfully unable to feel the pain (or the catheter they stuck in me) for another two hours (went from 8cm to 10cm dilated in half an hour, which made me very glad I couldn't feel what was happening down there). And then it was time to push. They turned down the amount of pitocin, and I think they turned off the epidural completely, so I could feel the pressure from the contractions and know when to push for. And the pushing part, I discovered, is really hard work. Two hours and one episiotomy later, baby finally came out. I got to hold him for a little while before they took him to get all cleaned up and weighed and measured and everything.

He's a good little munch-mouth of an eater already, and has peed several times, and pooped earlier today, and has passed all his little tests they've given him so far, so he's doing great and is nice and healthy. He makes little noises while he's sleeping that I am going to have to learn to ignore if I'm going to ever sleep soundly again. We'll get discharged from the hospital tomorrow evening, I think, so I will miss all of the moving involving the moving van entirely, and will take him home to a new house all full of boxes.

So, that's our little baby guy!

Last day

2008-04-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day of not being a mommy.

It's my last day of living in this house.

It's my last day of being pregnant (for a while).

Today is my last day without an HOA (for a while).

It's kind of scary.

Almost here

2008-04-08T16:32:00.001-07:00

I had my last doctor's appointment (for me, at least) today, until 6 weeks from now. Still 2-3cm dilated, 80% effaced. Looking good to go for Thursday. They'll start the pitocin, and break the bag of waters, and get things going.

I'm feeling pretty ready. I've got my hospital bag packed up, and my purse packed up. I have to stay in the hospital for 48 hours after baby's born, so they can check him for the Strep B stuff or whatever, so I'll get to go home sometime on Saturday. Baby will get the standard tests and stuff while we're there. He also gets to have an ultrasound of his very own, because I guess one of his kidneys (based on my last ultrasound) is a bit bigger than the other one, which very well may be in normal ranges, but they want to check it out anyway. I'm a bit nervous about that, of course. We're naming him Aiden, no middle name unless some random inspiration suddenly and unexpectedly strikes us while we're in the hospital. I've got a movie we're taking to watch while we're there, and some music to listen to, and Mike's bringing the laptop so he'll be able to entertain himself while I'm sleeping and stuff (the hospital has internet connections in all the recovery rooms). I've got an outfit to bring baby home in, and a receiving blanket packed up, and some diapers and wipes just in case and some burp rags and the papers from the hospital and stuff. And clothes for me, of course. Hopefully Mike will get some clothes for him to change into packed up tonight (there's a fold-out couch/futon thing in the recovery room that he can sleep on). The carseat is installed in the car, and we discovered it takes up a lot of space in the backseat and the front seats have to be moved pretty far forward for it to fit. Other than that, it's really nice. The stroller's all put together, and the baby stuff is all packed up.

Most of the rest of our house is all packed up too. I still have to pack up all my bathroom stuff, and all our food, and the linen closet, and a couple other little random things here and there. But it's mostly done. Mike needs to pack his clothes still, and disassemble his computer desk. His parents are going to get the moving van on Friday night and move a couple of our things over to the new house. Then Saturday is the big move day. So far, my mom and younger siblings are coming down for Saturday, so they'll be able to help, and Mike's parents can help, and his brother can help. A couple of our friends might be able to come help (we're hoping it will work out so they can) for part of the day at least. And hopefully our home teachers will come help. It's the ward campout this weekend so I doubt anybody else from the ward will come. I am going to squirrel myself away in our new bedroom and try to sleep for most of the day, I think, once I get out of the hospital. The U-Haul has to be returned by late-afternoon/early-evening on Saturday, so hopefully all the big stuff will be moved by then. We can move smaller stuff in the Tacoma and in my in-laws' trailer if necessary.

It's all pretty crazy right now. Mike's parents have been really nice and have come over several times to help us pack stuff. It's been especially useful the last several days because Mike caught a nasty cold that is sucking away his energy, and as of today, I have it too. It is icky. Yesterday we went and sat in his parents' hot tub for awhile, they'd warmed it up to lukewarm for us, and it was really nice and relaxing (and I finally got to experience having the water support all that belly weight instead of my hips and legs having to). It was a good break from packing. It's too bad I was pregnant mostly during the winter, when the pools were entirely too cold to go swimming. It would've been really nice.

We did final new-house walkthrough today. Everything looks good. I used our new camcorder to tape a couple things to show Mike when he gets home from work. Good practice for videoing baby guy in a couple of days.

I'm tired. I think I'll take a nap, and then go finish packing the bathrooms and the linen closet (and those last couple random things laying about). Then Mike's parents can help pack up the food when they come over to help again tonight, and Mike can do his clothes and desk. And then tomorrow I can clean or rest or remember a couple more last things to pack or something.

Final plan

2008-04-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

3am next Thursday.

I guess the hospital is pretty full-up on scheduled inductions right now, so 3am was the only option. That'll be loads of fun. Better than 11pm though, I guess. At least this way I'll get to get some sleep beforehand.

Note to Self on Insanity

2008-04-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

Never, ever, ever again plan to move to a new house during your last month of pregnancy. It just begs for complications.

The ultrasound yesterday was pretty fun. Baby was moving a lot and not being very cooperative, but the nurse got all the measurements she needed. She said his measurements indicate he's probably about 7lbs, 12oz right now, which is significantly larger than the OBGYN had estimated. Also, she said he has a very nicely shaped foot, he likes to show off his boy parts, and he has a chubby face and a good bit of hair, apparently. It's pretty cool knowing my baby has hair before I even get to see him in person.

So, I was pretty happy all night last night, and we got pizza to celebrate the good doctor's appointments, and it was a good day.

This morning I woke up at 3am and couldn't fall back asleep. Rather energetic and restless. So, I got up and finished sewing the top of my t-shirt quilt. I still haven't taken a nap. I can tell, somewhere in the back of my head, that I'm tired, but there's this restless energy that isn't going away. I'm kind of hoping I'll crash and be able to take a nap soon.

My OBGYN called me about an hour ago. She got the results of the ultrasound, and was quite surprised by how big the baby is. Also, she said that I have a lot of amniotic fluid. Like, 15 to 20 is normal, and I'm measuring at 25. Extra amniotic fluid can apparently cause some complications during labor, like baby can unexpectedly turn around, or the umbilical cord can come out when the waters break (which can cut off blood flow to baby which is bad). So, she said considering the extra fluid and the unexpected bigness of baby, they'd like to induce me next week.

Yeah.

Next week.

My due date is the 28th.

Our closing date on our house is next week, on the 10th (that's Thursday).

We were planning on moving on the 14th, and having a lovely one or two weeks of living in the new house before baby guy got here.

But they want to induce me.

Next week.

So, I still need to schedule the actual induction, but our current plan of action, I guess, is for me to be induced next Thursday (yes, that's our closing date on the house), and then move in to the new house I guess on Saturday and Monday, because Mike will be taking work off anyway. And I will make them move my bed first, into our new bedroom, and then I will go hide in there with baby and sleep and rest while Mike and various family members and friends and maybe some people from the ward move all our stuff into the rest of the house.

I think it's not a bad plan. It's insane, yes. But not a bad plan, I don't think. I really wasn't expecting to get the new baby and the new house all in the same weekend, but there doesn't appear to be much I can do about it. I'm a wee bit stressed out about everything. Hopefully baby guy will cooperate and wait until next Thursday to come. If he comes before then while my house is still in a state of unpackedness, I may just start laughing maniacally, and turn my entire life over to other people to take care of for me.

I guess this will be a good lesson for me in letting other people help out.

Oh. My brother's birthday is the 10th. Maybe baby will share a birthday with his uncle.

I love my doctor's office

2008-04-01T12:44:00.001-07:00

Despite the fact that it was 55 minutes after I arrived (and 50 minutes after my scheduled appointment time) before I saw the doctor, approximately 10 minutes of which I was sitting covered up by a large piece of paper in an extremely cold exam room with nothing to do (they were adjusting the air conditioning in the office), with quite swollen feet and ankles that were not enjoying my not being able to put them up at all...despite all that, I really do love my OBGYN's office.

First off, they gave me overall good news today. True, I may have tested positive for Strep B, and therefore will have to be on antibiotics throughout my labor to avoid making little baby guy horribly sick, which isn't the greatest of news, but I am also approximately 75% effaced and 2cm dilated and baby's head has dropped so things are moving along nicely towards baby coming. Which makes me happy, because I decided this morning that I'm done with this whole pregnancy thing. I'm offically tired of it, and am ready to move on, which is a pretty normal emotion at the end of pregnancy and from what I've read is helpful since it makes you welcome the onset of labor. And the doctor gave me advice on the swollen ankles and feet, all of which I already knew, but still, good to hear from an official source (cut down on salt, soak your feet in the tub or (she called it hydrotherapy), and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate).

Secondly, they're very nice. My doctor wants me to have another ultrasound before baby gets here to judge his size, and the nurse in charge of doing all the referrals and other-office-paperwork-faxing stuff was out last week, but today she was there. So, she not only gave me the paper for the ultrasound office, but also called and let them know I needed to schedule an appointment, so they called me rather than me having to call them to schedule it, which was nice. And I've had this lump on my eyelid for, like, a month and a half, and with my insurance, all referrals have to come from my OBGYN right now, and it's been a complicated hassle trying to get it taken care of, so today after finding out I still didn't have an appointment with an eye doctor, the nice doctor talked with the nice nurse and the nurse called me about 45 minutes after my appointment ended to let me know that not only did she have the referral paperwork all over to the eye center, but that she'd scheduled an appointment for me so I wouldn't have to worry about it.

So, after my lovely good-news appointment this morning, I have an ultrasound appointment this afternoon (yes, they had an opening today, which is great, because I have the car), and an appointment to get my eyelid lump looked at on Thursday. Life is good.

And we packed a bunch more yesterday. Our downstairs is pretty much all packed up and ready to be moved. I need to get my craft room upstairs all packed up this week, and then next week I can get a couple of people to come help me pack up the breakable dishes and things I think (because wrapping dishes takes a long time and is tedious and boring and it will be nice to have some company). So everything on the moving front is going well, too.

Now I just need to be patient and deal with all the discomforts of pregnancy for the next couple of weeks. :)

Fill 'er up

2008-03-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

So apparently my insurance is all weird and I can only have one doctor at a time, and since I'm currently pregnant and seeing the OBGYN, she becomes my primary care physician for right now and if I need to see any other doctor for anything at all it has to go through her first or something. Which is a little odd, and makes getting the still-there lump on my eyelid taken care of very complicated. Luckily, my OBGYN is nice and she is going to see if she can get me a referral to an eye doctor or something possibly. If her office can't get the whole shenanigans figured out, then I am going to call the insurance company to see what I ought to do about it, because I really don't want to have to wait until six weeks after the baby is born in order to get this crazy blocked duct or whatever taken care of (which is how long the OBGYN will remain my primary caregiver for on our current insurance plan).

The doctor's visit yesterday went well. My cervix is starting to soften which is good. They want me to get another ultrasound because she thinks the baby is a bit small, probably in the 6 pound range (I was 6 lbs, 7 oz when I was born), and I guess she wants to be able to check things out before he gets here to make sure everything's doing okay or something, I don't really know. Anyway, it will give me another chance to see my baby before he comes out, so I don't mind. I asked her about trying the unmedicated childbirth, and she seemed perfectly fine with it, so that was nice. I didn't ask her about the baby's position because she was running a bit late and the other discussions had taken a little while and I figured if she didn't mention anything about it, that I was just going to stop worrying about it (although, on my sister's advice, I am going to try drinking lots and lots of fluids, which I really ought to be doing anyway). So, I'm not worrying about it anymore. Which is also nice.

We started packing on Monday. I got almost all of our books packed up. I'm going to work on some more packing today (and hopefully do some tomorrow, and some more the next day, etc, etc, because if I don't do some every day I really don't know how it's all going to get done). It makes it seem a lot more like we're actually moving, to have stuff sitting on the floor in boxes. It's pretty exciting.

Epic Quests

2008-03-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

So, a year and a half ago or so, Mike lent out his bag of many dice, and his D&D minis, and his D&D mappy thing to some friends who were doing a campaign of some sort that he ended up not being able to participate in for some reason or other. Then, over a year ago, he graduated and we moved. We remembered the map, and got it back just barely before we came to Arizona. But it was many months before we remembered the dice and the minis. And then started my quest to get them back.

The preliminary attempts at getting them back thus far have resulted in no results, other than me being slightly annoying, I'm sure. So I've decided to up my level of annoyingness, and am actively questing for their return now. It's a lot of money's worth of dice that we can't really afford to replace, and without dice, it's very hard for us to participate in any tabletop gaming we might be interested in starting up here. I'm willing to pay for them to be shipped to us, or arrange for somebody in my family to pick them up from wherever they might be if they're still in either the Utah or Salt Lake valleys, and then they can mail them to us (or my mom could bring them down with her or something).

So! If you're aware of the whereabouts of a bag full of mismatched dice, including some really tiny glittery ones, and some really big oversized black ones, that might be living in a small cardboard box along with some random D&D minis of various sorts, please let me know. Even better, if you are willing to assist in the return of them in some way, then that would be fabulous. I no longer have the phone numbers of the people that I know who last had them, so am currently unable to coordinate their return via phone (though that would be a good way of coordinating it, I'm sure). Email is good, messages via blogging systems are good, writing on my wall over at Facebook would be good too.

Happy First Day of Spring!

2008-03-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

So, I finally gave in and made a FaceBook account. I haven't added very many people as friends yet because, I dunno, I'm shy, or I get bored easily, or I'm taking it slow, or something like that.

After stressing out all day yesterday and getting nothing done, today I made Mike take the truck to work instead of the car, so now I have absolutely no excuse to not go do some errands. Like, buy some food. And finish the baby registry. Oh, I need to renew a library book too, but I can do that online. I'm going to do a load of laundry today too. I feel so productive, and I haven't even started on any of it yet!

I'm still stressing about sideways baby though. And I will probably continue to do so until I can talk to the doctor about it, and possibly will continue to do so after that, too. My next appointment isn't until Tuesday so I have several days in which I can stress about it and try methods of getting him to turn around at home (taking brisk walks, lying with my feet and hips elevated, kneeling with my butt in the air, making Mike talk to the base of my belly, eating lots of potassium...oh wait...that one's for the edema, gotta remember the bananas when I go shopping). I am hoping the slight swelling in my hands will go away in the next several days but it will probably just stay there until baby's born, based on what I remember of my sisters' pregnancies.

I'm going to buy some Easter stuff at the store today. I do not know when we will have time to dye Easter eggs, but we are going to do it, because it's fun, and I want to. And I am going to buy Peeps. And jelly beans. And I'm going to fantasize about the Easter dress that has lived only in my imagination for years now. Maybe I'll go to the mall and look at the maternity clothes store just for fun. And then tomorrow, if I complete all my errands today, I can start packing! Whoo! Or at least finish the top of my t-shirt quilt, which is kind of like packing, since I can stuff it away in a bin to store again once it's done. Or something. Maybe I'll take a trip to the dump tomorrow and get rid of some stuff. That can be pretty fun.

Oh, we went to the Easter Pageant at the temple a couple of nights ago. It was nice, although a little more road-show-ish than I expected (random music and dance numbers throughout the show, which I found a bit distracting honestly). But it was nice. And yesterday night, we started watching Escaflowne with some friends who haven't ever seen it before, and I got to be quite amazed by how much of it I didn't remember from the one other time I've watched it. And we're watching some Cowboy Bebop tonight with another friend who hasn't seen it ever, so that should be fun. And then maybe we'll do the Easter eggs on Friday night or Saturday night or something. Mike started his new schedule today so he'll be getting home an hour earlier every night (though he leaves an hour earlier in the mornings), so that'll be really nice for allowing for dinner time and then time to do stuff together.

Okay, time to go get started on the whole being productive thing! Gotta do it now while I can still move without massive amounts of pain and difficulty (only minor amounts right now, I expect it will only get worse as baby guy keeps growing).

Stresses today

2008-03-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

Sideways baby
Forgetting to take my vitamins
Slight edema and not being able to wear my wedding ring for the first time since we got married
Intense pain upon waking up in that space where I used to be able to see the fronts of my hipbones (round ligament pain?)
Random leg cramps in my calves
Lack of maternity shirts that still fit over my belly
Not having packed anything yet in preparation for our move
Not having finished registering for baby stuff yet
Not wanting to cook dinner

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2008-03-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not wearing any green today, but that is because I am still in my grungy comfy clothes that I wore to bed last night. If I get around to actually getting dressed today, I will put on a green shirt.

I think I have the bestest husband ever. He was getting ready for work this morning, and I told him that I wanted doughnuts (I often mention wanting random foodstuffs that we don't have, not really cravings, just this or that sounds good). He kissed me goodbye and left, and after a bit I wandered to the kitchen, resigned to eating cereal, only to remember that we didn't have any milk. So I pulled out the cottage cheese and an apple to start munching away at something, when the doorbell rang. There, on the doorstep, was a bag of doughnuts and a gallon of milk, that my most darling husband had run to the store and picked up and dropped off before actually leaving for work. And this is after he took care of me all day yesterday because I was feeling really icky all day and stayed home from church. He is adorable.

The Ides of March went well. I went to my first ever NBA game with Dusey's family. The Suns played very well, they won by about 30 points or so, and I got to see Shaquille O'Neal make several dunks, and Steve Nash make several 3-pointers, and I got to see The Gorilla do lots of cool stuff 'cause it was his birthday game. I ate pizza and breadsticks and a red Icee which is probably why I ended up feeling sick all day yesterday. And I managed to not get horribly uncomfortable during the game because I thought ahead and stuffed one of our throw pillows into my big purse and put it behind my back for most of the game (the pillow, not the purse).

Pi Day was lots of fun too. I played the Cowboy Bebop song for Dusey when he got home, and we had homemade pizza pie for dinner (tomato and green pepper), with cherry and blueberry cup pies for dessert. The cup pies were very tasty, though they looked funny and ended up way liquidy. I think the recipes for the fillings I used would work better in a full-sized pie, cooked for a long time.

I have been looking at paint colors for the new house. We are thinking of painting the kitchen and attached room (is it the living room or the family room? I don't know) a nice blue color, probably kind of cornflower-ish. And the front room (it's whichever the other one isn't) I think we'll paint a nice soft green color, with maybe a little bit an of orange accent wall. A soft, light orange. I figure if we paint the walls nice soft colors we'll be able to achieve more punch with our decorations. Have the walls compliment everything else, rather than being the center of attention themselves. Also, soft colors will match the floor better. The travertine's got a whole lot of beigy brown in it that would look rather odd next to really bright paint colors. I think it will end up being nice and cheerful yet peaceful at the same time. I haven't contemplated colors for the bedrooms or what to do about the hallway yet at all. I think I'm only going to worry about getting the main rooms painted before baby gets here.

Speaking of baby, there's only six weeks left until my due date. I am excited. I really ought to start worrying about having everything ready for him, and about getting all packed up before I get even bigger and more uncomfortable (my belly is starting to balloon out, and quite a few of my maternity shirts no longer fit over it). He still hasn't turned around yet, he seems quite comfortable lying sideways in my tummy. I guess I'll ask at my appointment next week when I ought to start worrying about him turning head down. I'm also planning on letting the doctor know that I want to try the no epidural thing. I've finally read all the really highly recommended books about it, and am feeling pretty confident (though my favorite book is still the random one I found that nobody recommended to me, The Big Book of Birth, all the other three I read did not provide nearly as balanced of perspectives). As long as baby cooperates, I think I can handle it.

I've been having lots of bizarre dreams lately. At least I'm still sleeping through the night, which I know is pretty rare, and I'm grateful for it.

Happy Pi Day!

2008-03-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

3.14

best celebrated at 1:59 with the consumption of what else but pie? I also recommend listening to 3.14 from Cowboy Bebop if you've got the soundtrack. Good song for Pi Day. It might also be a good day for watching the movie Pi, but I haven't seen it and therefore can't recommend it (and it's rated R for some stuff that I think might freak me out a little bit).

I think I'm going to make some cup pies today. I have just enough of several different kinds of fruit for it to work well, I think. We'll have to see how they turn out. I'm excited about it. If I hadn't already seen all the episodes that are out, I think I'd watch one of the more pie-centric episodes of Pushing Daisies today.

Moving, jobs, libraries, natural birth, circumcision, Easter, hikes, and power blinks

2008-03-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

I've gotten used to my haircut now. I am going to get it cut again to a different cut after baby comes, though. New baby, new haircut, I think they'll go well together.

Speaking of new things, I think we are going to be moving next month. We found a lovely house in a lovely neighborhood in Gilbert, with a commute that won't be much longer for Dusey, that I think is financially feasible. There's some more paperwork to be signed and such before it's 100% for sure, but I think we've got the house, with a closing date of April 10th, which means hopefully baby will not come extremely early. If we plan it right we should be able to get all moved in and have some semblance of organization before he gets here. Once the paperwork is all done and it's 100% for sure I will post more information about what a lovely house it is. I am already planning on painting the inside different colors, and re-doing a little bit of the landscaping so I can have a few veggies and herbs around the backyard, and I am full of ideas of wanting to upgrade this or that eventually and it's such a pretty little house in such a great location. I'm really excited.

Also new, Dusey's job stuff finally got all sorted out, so now he's only working one job, full-time. Yay! We are both super-excited about that (no more substituting, regular hours every day, a set dependable income that doesn't change because he's always working the same number of days, less driving overall, etc). We're hoping to get the insurance information soon so we can get that all figured out, as well as whether he'll get time off for when baby comes, etc.

Another new thing is that I finally went and got myself a library card. I even checked out several books with it. I've been interested in trying out natural birth (though I'm willing to change my mind depending on circumstances once I'm in the thick of it). So, I decided (helped a lot by the advice of my oldest sister) that I better start reading up on it and getting all informed so I know what to expect. The library branch I went to didn't have the three books I really wanted to read (Birthing From Within, the Bradley method book, and Ina May Gaskin's book), so I checked out a book called "The Big Book of Birth" instead, along with some cookbooks to look through for fun. I absolutely loved the book. It was very informative about what happens during a birth, as well as what all the options are and pros and cons of all of them, without being horribly biased toward any single birthing option. Plus, it was entertaining. I'm going to make Dusey read it before I take it back, I think. I've got the other books on hold, so as soon as they're available, I'm going to read them as well. And with the news about the house, I looked up online and discovered my new library card will still be valid and useable even after we move to a different city, plus there's a library branch not too far away from the house.

I am having a baby shower in a couple weeks. I am suddenly a bit conflicted as to who to invite from the ward, now that we'll probably be moving so soon after. There's less than 8 weeks left, and I am excited to meet my baby guy. People keep telling me lately that my belly is little and that I don't look like I'm 7 months pregnant, so that's been a nice little boost to my self-confidence. Baby guy is still definitely sideways in my belly. I'm hoping he decides to turn around head-down soon. The doctor hasn't said anything about it yet, and there's still plenty of time for him to turn, but now is supposedly the normal time for baby to turn, and being a first-time pregnant lady, I am of course worried that he won't turn in time and they'll have to do the supposedly uncomfortable manual turn attempt or something. Regarding circumcision, I don't think I want to have him circumcised, because I don't see any reason to do so. The likelihood of infection is quite small, and easily preventable through cleaning. I don't much care about the "like father like son" thing (and neither does Dusey), so that's not an issue. Nobody has given me any other reasons for doing it, other than those two, so I don't really want to.

Now that things are finally happening and I'm no longer stuck in a constant state of limbo, I am no longer waking up longing for Easter every single morning like I was a few weeks ago. I would wake up, and see the dim light coming through the tree and blinds through my window, and hear the birds chirping, and it reminded me of an Easter morning when I was younger. And I got this urge to put on a pretty Easter dress, and go to the kitchen to discover an Easter basket (with peeps, and jelly beans, and some little chocolate malt eggs, and maybe a Cadbury egg, and gumdrops, and possibly some other little candies varying each year), not necessarily in a basket (it was often an Easter cereal bowl), but always with Easter grass. And I wanted to eat a peep and some jelly beans, and then eat breakfast, and then go to church and have a lovely quiet meeting, and then come home and dye eggs, and go on an Easter Egg hunt (with lots of plastic eggs full of jelly beans and m&m's cleverly hidden by either parents or older siblings), and eat more candy, and then have a nice dinner with a honey-baked ham (with Dijon mustard) and some potatoes of some sort, and peas, and juice, and other foods varying each year. So, for about two weeks, I had this longing to have an Easter just like the ones I had growing up, to have that sense of happiness and security and that joy upon waking up and seeing that light and hearing the birds and knowing that it was going to be a lovely day full of lovely happy activities and family time and good food. And I was wanting to not be in charge of any of it, just have it all be taken care of and there, ready for me to enjoy. Now that we're not in a state of supreme limbo though, I'm not waking up longing for it anymore, and I probably won't do anything special for Easter with just me and Dusey (though I'm sure we'll have a nice dinner with his family). I was going to write a big long pretty post all about Easter and those longings, but I'm not having them anymore, because I'm happy and excited about all these other things, so all you're getting is this rather longish paragraph.

I think that about covers everything I've been wanting to talk about lately. Ooh, I've also been on several hikes lately, out to the desert to see the gorgeous wildflowers and the pretty sunsets and have a picnic, and then another trip to A Mountain (the mountain that the ASU stadium is built into the side of, that sticks up out of nowhere in the middle of the valley, that has the letter A on the side). A Mountain is really little, the whole thing is barely taller than the Y that's on the mountain in Provo (yes, the whole mountain is barely bigger than the letter Y), so we hiked all the way up to the top. Short hike, but very steep, so we took it nice and slow. I've been feeling a bit better and more energetic with all the hiking and walks I've been going on even though I was extremely sore in some weird spots for a couple of days after. It's been fun though, and the energy boost and added optimism and excitement about life has been great, so I need to keep up the exercising. It's beautiful spring weather here, in the 70's or 80's most every day, often with a nice cool breeze. By April it will probably be solidly summer-time and hot. So I'm enjoying the weather now, and all the sunshine.

The power blinked twice last night for absolutely no apparent reason. That was exciting. I lit a candle, and was contemplating how I could cook dinner on the grill outside if the power went out completely, but it didn't.

And that definitely covers everything I've been wanting to blog about lately. :)