Sickling

The boy has been sick and did not sleep well Sunday, Monday or Tuesday night and last night he refused his evening nap (usually at around 5 for 45 mins) so he crashed at 7:20, he normally goes to bed at 8pm. I thought he was out/done but he woke at 8:40 but by this time I was in the middle of putting LG to bed and I didn't feel like barricading his crib (his crib is sidecarred to our bed which is great for middle of the night feedings but lousy for when he is falling asleep) so I just let him out, I sat with them both during her book and then since I was so tired from the 3 nights of no sleep I got comfy in my bed to watch TV early at 9pm. I just let him lay there with me, offered for him to nurse but he wasn't interested. I was trying to snuggle him to get him back to sleep, finally at 9:40 there was nothing on so I gave up and turned the TV off. He snuggled for a little while and then fought with me to release him reluctantly I did and he rolled into his crib and went to sleep!! Haha he has never done that btw he either goes to bed asleep after nursing or awake and crying. It was so cute There were also times during the sleepless nights that he would wake and cry and crawls two "steps" toward me and then just collapse on his face and fall back to sleep.

Updates

LG lost a tooth, her lower left front tooth to be precise, The boy got his lower teeth right around the same time lol she is loosing and he is gaining. Speaking of his rottenness, The boy is officially on the move. Not really crawling but definitely army scooting himself across a room in no time. Halloween is almost here, LG had asked to be Sam from Icarly but I couldn't find the costume anywhere so she settled on a witch costume and we managed to pick up a vampire costume for The boy. I have managed to knit each of them and myself a hat. It's such a great feeling to see them wearing something I made :) it almost makes me want to hand make their costumes next year or something....hey I did say ALMOST. I am in awe of all the things LG is learning at school, there is a song that goes with almost every color to help them learn spelling. She has vocab homework and has learned words like glide and linger. At this rate she will be smarter than me by the end of 2nd grade.

Firsts: Sunday her first trip to the ER

I was cooking a skillet meal "shrimp lo mien" for dinner and LG decided that she doesn't like shrimp so I told her to go down in the freezer and get a kids meal for dinner. She told me that she was running behind the couch but slowed down when she got to the stairs, she has no idea how she fell but I heard her crying and I removed the now finished skillet meal from the burner and went down to see what happened. Hubby had her and was cuddling her so I went back upstairs to start her kids meal and serve out our dinner. Then I heard Hubby say "pack up The Boy we have to go to the hospital"....The next 10 minutes are a blur of packing and checking and double checking and car loading. I managed to throw some dinner into a bowl for Hubby to eat at the red lights and I wasn't hungry I sat in the back between two very sad children (The Boy was hungry) holding an ice pack to LG's chin and telling her any story I could think of to get her mind off of her wound. Hubby dropped us at the emergency door and went to park the car. We were already being seen by the triage staff when he walked in. He surprised us both by telling us he already called MomMom and she arrived shortly. I estimate that the fall occurred at 7:00pm and we arrived at the hospital by 7:20pm. At 9:30pm we decided that Hubby and The Boy needed to get home to get to bed so I quickly gave The Boy a snack and sent them on their way, my mother would bring us home. We were finally called back at 10:30pm. A nurse came in and checked her out and then a PA came in, she examined the wound in declared the LG needed sutures. LG was very upset, she wanted glue the man in triage promised her glue but no the wound was too deep and to make sure her chin was closed up and as beautiful as it was before she needs stitches.(the PA's words almost literally) Shortly thereafter the nurse returned with some numbing cream which she just took out of the fridge. LG was still very upset and started screaming, unfortunately my mother and I had to hold her down so the nurse could apply the cream :( Half an hour later LG was a very sleepy girl who still had not eaten dinner when 2 nurses and the PA came into the room for her procedure. They swaddled her up, arms tied down just like we would do to The Boy when he was a newbie. I rubbed her up and down like she would do to The Boy and MomMom rested her hands on LG's legs. The PA injected the would with some unknown substance(I didn't ask because I didn't want to upset LG) She was being brave but every time the PA would pull away LG asked if she was finished. So we decided we would let the PA tell us when she was done. She ended up getting 5 stitches. Honestly she just lay there and let the PA work, no fussing at all. I am so proud of how brave she was. She finally ate some Burger Kind and was in bed by 12:30 am, she insisted on going to school today. So we will have to see how she feels when I pick her up

Firsts: Saturday her first camping trip

My parents took LG to Fredrick for a camping trip. I wasn't there but I know they slept in a tent her on a cot and my parents on the "floor." Their campsite was 2-5. They had to walk through the woods to get to the bathroom. They went go carting and she got to play in a bounce house. She spent a little time eating and was very bored on Saturday evening until the sun went down at 8 and the campsite played Bugs life for the kids to watch. She didn't get to see "the bottom"(the end) of the movie because it was too late. She came home around 3 pm on Sunday.

Firsts: Friday first day of school

LG has had quite the week!
Friday was her very first day of school.
They did staggered entrance so it was only her and 7 only children to give them a chance to adjust. We woke up at 7:15, ate breakfast packed her lunch, and tried not to be too excited and not rush too much as we waited for MomMom to arrive so she could walk with us to school. When MomMom arrived we loaded The Boy and Baby CCC into the wagon and headed off. When we got there LG found her teacher and stood in-line. I had emailed her teacher early in the week asking permission to walk her to the classroom to take a picture of her at her desk but when it became time to enter the school I didnt know what to do with the wagon so I stayed outside with the babies and let my mom walk her in. I stood there breathing slowly and trying to be very brave until my mom reappeared, I was ready to leave at this point but she said LG was waiting for me so I walked to her classroom where I found the teacher asking the children to grab their lunches and backpacks so they could put them in their lockers. LG was so cute, running to the teacher to tell her she was buying lunch today. Everyone marched into the hallway where they got a lesson on how to place their belongings in their locker and LG got to demonstrate! I snapped a picture and she came to me, I told her I was going to leave now and she gave me a kiss and said ok bye. I made it around the corner where I knew she couldn't see me before I broke down into tears. But hey lets face it I've always been a crier. We left and I took the babies home and tried to move on with my day. We were way too early picking her up lol but better early than late! She didn't have much to say : They went on a tour of the school guided by teddy bears wearing different colored shirts in the essence of "Brown bear, Brown bear what do you see?" , she didn't have to pay for her lunch (they have accounts now and just need to enter a number) and someone ate her oranges when she was in the bathroom!, 10 minutes is not long enough to eat snack and that she got a green face but her friend almost got a yellow face. Soon she was picked up by my Stepdad for a camping trip.

Finger Knitting!

We recently had Baby CCC's big brother and sister come visit. Sister is 9 and brought along a skein of yarn of her first day of care...Imagine how stoked I was! She proceeded to spend most of her first week here littering my home with finger knit chains. LG was super excited "You can knit? My mommy loves to knit. She is teaching me" LG then ran to get her needles but set them aside when she saw her new friend didn't need them. That was that until the last day (bro and sis were only here for 2 weeks) when I encouraged LG to ask Sister to teach her the art before she left. It was slow going at first since the "casting on" is a little complicated but after that LG had row after row just flowing off her fingers. She sat there and made a necklace for her dad in one day! She still needs my help casting on or when she drops a stitch but other then that she is an excellent finger knitter

The adventures of Super Mom

Last night my childcare baby left at 5:50pm. Then I went outside and pulled the clothes off the line, went down the road to buy Milk and Mayo (and tuna and cereal cuz it was also on the WIC check), came home to where I had left SuperDad with the kids, fed the boy, got pooped on by the boy, changed the boy, hand washed his soiled onesie, scrubbed my hands clean, went to the kitchen to simultaneously cook dinner, wash dishes and scrub down the counters. THEN I ate dinner and washed more dishes, started the dishwasher; fold,sorted and put away the clothes; got the boy dressed for bed, fed him again cuz he wouldn't settle and gave LG a bath all by 9:00 pm. Woo!

Burp cloths!

When I was pregnant with both my children I attempted to knit them a blanket. LG's didn't get very far and it was the first and last thing I knit for 4 years. I began knitting hardcore for a while before I even became pregnant with the boy so I was convinced that I would be able to knit my son a blanket, I chose a beautiful pattern full of lovely cables but no I couldn't do it...why you ask? Because blankets are just too darn big! I'm an impatient person and I enjoy having a finished project in my hand 2 weeks after starting it, a month max.
So my adorable son has been spitting up all day and everywhere and I decided I would use some scrap yarn I had to make him a burp cloth..it was a simple pattern just plain stockinette stitch with a garter trim. boring! then I found a basket weave pattern and I LOVE it! it was so simple since it was the same stitch pattern whether I was working the back or the front (well it was that way for 6 rows and then 6 rows of it reversed) And now I want to make so many more for the boy and for anyone else I know who will ever have a baby! I used Sirdar Baby Bamboo for this just because I had it laying around, this is the yarn I got to actually make his blanket with!

Being a mommy can be a lot of work

I just realized that being a mommy means you have to wash the walls...there are handprints everywhere some of which I know are mine, from swinging myself around the kitchen corner. The boy has been grumpy and whining when I put him down, its been 10 days that he has had an elevated temperature of 99.whatever. I finally broke down and bought generic Tylenol from Amazon since I can't find it anywhere. But it's not here yet. I need to cover his face when he needs to sleep otherwise he will just stare all day. He is so nosy. LG had a nice weekend, she wanted to walk down the street to her friends house and I told her she could stay here or ride her bike there and she finally broke down and rode her bike without the training wheels. She does pretty well, just has a little trouble getting started but she almost never falls down. But now she has a fever and a bellyache. She is finding it very difficult to stay on the couch but that's the rule.

Attitude much?

Wow does my LG have an attitude! A few weeks ago she locked her bedroom door so I took the knob off, she was so upset but I told her I would if she locked it again so I had to follow through and yesterday she attempted to barricade me out of her room and she got a spanking for that one. She stomps her feet and yells and tells me that she hates me. She is getting so big and such a mind of her own. On Mothers day we took her training wheels off, She was riding her bike everyday but now she hasn't touched it lol. Not that the weather has been very amicable to bike riding anyway. So her misbehavior has gotten out of hand and I have had to bite my cheek and be firm with her or else end up very sad at the end of the day.

This blog is about knitting? really?

I am so excited about this mystery knit along I got involved it. LOL it's silly. Once a week they give you a small part of the pattern but that's it they don't tell you what you are making. I'm on the third week and I have a guess at what it is, I hope I'm not right cuz I will have no use for it if I am but I am learning new skills and having a great time! I told hubby he should just go find a pattern in one of my books, one that I want to make but am intimated by and just give me a few steps a week to do so I can practice at making something awesome. That would be too much fun.

I am so excited

The boy started swatting his toys today. I have been waiting for this but he was more interested in talking, which is fine of course. But today he was sitting in the bouncer and hubby noticed he was interacting with his toys dangling there and said something. Sure enough he was smacking away at the little fabric soup pot as happy as could be. I have been worried about him getting enough sleep. I feel as tho he is always getting woken up my his sister or the infant I have in my childcare. When the boy gets over tired he cries so hard and is so angry. Poor thing

yep, we're crazy like that

So last week I was down in the laundry room and the kids were upstairs. The boy was in the swing and LG was watching TV, when she yells to tell me the boy was drooling. He has been sucking on his fingers a lot lately so I tell her to go to her room and get him a bib out of his drawer. A minute later I remember to ask her to get him an orange bib to match his orange outfit but I don't want to yell across the house again so I just let it go. After I finish folding the clothes I carry them upstairs and check on the peoplings and he had an orange bib on! When I ask her about it she tells me that she dug through his bibs for an orange one so he can match and be pretty! LOL I think I am rubbing off on her :) On Tuesday she got a few cuts from walking between some trees and later stepped on an ant hill, then the ants climbed all over her and she started saying "I'm having a bad day" she sounded just like me that I called her 'little Jessica'

The rabbit

This morning I was messing around on facebook when LG comes running "mom what do rabbits eat?" "Rabbits are herbivores, they eat vegetables" "oh like carrots" "yes like carrots" "I need a carrot, there is a rabbit in our yard" "we don't have any carrots but we do have lettuce, you can give the rabbit lettuce" So she goes upstairs and gets a small piece of lettuce out of the fridge, takes it outside and lays it on the driveway. Then she comes back in and gets her chair and places it practically on top of the lettuce and waits.

The rabbit never returned...I went out there with her and we moved to the front steps but after about 30 mins she said "I'm bored, I don't think the rabbit is coming back" She had wanted to catch it and keep it. The whole thing was just too cute.

Cooking

It seems like everyone on my "blogs I'm following" list posted a recipe yesterday so I figured I would join in on the fun. Last nights dinner was......drum roll please:

DiGiorno's Frozen Pizza with bread sticks

Step 1: remove pizza box from freezer
Step 2: preheat oven to 400 degrees
Step 3: take the pizza out of the box
Step 4: dispose of all plastic and cardboard (seems simple right? well don't forget
this step cuz if you skip it your pizza will be ruined. Believe me I know.)
Step 5: put pizza on pizza pan and bread sticks on a cookie sheet
Step 6: Add frozen pepperoni if desired, place both the pizza and the bread sticks in
the oven
Step 7: set timer for 13 minutes and heat up some water in the microwave and use to
thaw the marinara sauce
Step 8: remove bread sticks from oven and check on the pizza
Step 9: add 5 minutes to the timer if needed
Step 10:remove pizza from oven, cut and serve

Enjoy

My little family

The boy has such quiet little cries. Like a lamb bleating. He made that noise when he was born and the nurse said he was just clearing out his chest but no those are his cries. He only gets loud when he is hurt or if you don't answer to him after 5 minutes. He is so happy, so social I cannot believe a baby this small can be so social! He just loves to look at people or himself in the mirror and smile. I can't get a picture of it though because he can't see me with a camera in my face :) Hubby adores the boy...a few weeks ago he started saying "Hello" to the boy and the boy made a cooing sound that rose and fell just like the word "hello" does, it's crazy. LG just can't get enough of her brother, she always wants to hold him and be next to him. She needs to know where he is and what he is doing at all times. She makes up games to get him to smile. When he was new she made up songs and sang off-key and he would stop crying every time. As he grew the songs stopped working and for a while she found that she could cry at him to hush his cries. Now she just touches his noses and says "one brother, two brothers, three brothers and a kiss" it's just priceless. She also thinks she knows exactly how to take care of him and that I am completely clueless. She is always giving me tips on what do to.

I just made a post but who cares?

Man do I ever love google. Have I mentioned to you how bad my memory is? I don't remember. If I stop doing something for a while like adding for instance...my brain gets rusty and I have to resort to counting on my fingers again. Which is probably why I messed up my purl stitches. But if I forget something like how to spell a simple word like...through(because texting has made me lazy and I normally type thru) I can just google it. The other day I had a funeral to go to and I couldn't find the paper where I wrote down the specifics so I googled my beloved deceased's name and found the address right there online. I was making the envelopes to send out the boy's announcements and I googled whether you write The Smiths or The Smith's. (it's the first one btw) I have no idea what I would do without google or the internet for that matter.

Dude I totally forgot how to purl

Blame it on the new mommy brain if you want but I did knit the boy a hat shortly after he was born. I think I did my purl stitches correctly on that. Yesterday I was bored so I decided to start knitting a practice intarsia swatch and my purl stitches are twisted or something because when I went to knit the next row I couldn't get the needle to go through the front! I ripped it out (no biggie because it was only a 20 st wide swatch) but it happened again. I'm gonna Youtube it later. I really have no idea what I am doing wrong.

That's right folks we are talking about poop.

The boy is EBF (that's exclusively breastfeed for those of you not down with the lingo) He is an excellent nurser and all is going well. He was pooing at every feeding when he first got home which made my heart smile because it made me remember that LG would only poo if she was nursing when she was a baby. But then around week 4 or so he just stopped and went 5 whole days without a single BM! I was so stressed out but I kept reading online that it was ok and low and behold on the 5th day he went and boy did he ever! It was a massive blowout and we rushed him straight to the bathtub to be hosed off. He didn't poo again for 7 whole days. And he choose the first time mom and dad took him out to dinner as the perfect place to let it all loose. We were at a Japanese Steak House, ya know where they cook the food in front of you and then throw shrimp at you at the end....and they didn't have a changing table. So I changed him on the sink counter, it was a mess you know I had to change his outfit and everything, their fault for not having a table. I then learned to put a size 4 diaper over his size 1 every Saturday. He's 10 weeks old now and still doesn't poo everyday, maybe 3 days in a row and then skip 1 or 2. And I am very proud to say that he has messed on 3 separate outfits and I have managed to clean everything except for the onesie from the restaurant.

Revelation

So I realized something today. Something that I forgot and really wish I would have remembered months ago. I'm writing this blog for me. For my own personal memories. I forgot that. I have been trying really hard to make my posts perfect just to impress you the reader. Yea so I'm gonna try to let go of that.

Ok who missed me?

The boy is here. I kinda made a birth story.
I was due on Monday Feb 1 but the boy decided he wasn't ready and held on tight! I couldn't believe that I had made it to full term when LG was a full two weeks early. So we scheduled an induction for 12:15 am on Wednesday. (just in case you didn't see the "am" yes folks that's midnight) I couldn't sleep at all on Tuesday night, my bags had been packed for weeks so I just sat there and watched the clock until it was 11:20pm and time to leave. Hubby and I were hungry by then and we didn't know when we would be able to eat next so we got some taco bell on the way. LOL. I was only 1cm when we arrived, they put me on pitocin at 6ml for an hour. I don’t like pain (at all) so they also gave me some Stadol which made me very loopy and very sleepy. It was snowing outside, we got about 2 inches. After 4 hours or so I was still only 1 cm so I got really discouraged, I'm talking super discouraged I felt stuck like this baby would never come out! He was late and I made no progress and had 3 previous episodes of false labor. I knew that if I didn't progress they would send me home I just couldn't stand the thought of going home without my baby in my arms. Face it dude I have no patience. My hubby and mom had to remind me that it was a process, and together they calmed me down. The nurse kept increasing my pitocin intake by 6ml every hour. And finally around 9am I think...ok you caught me I wasn't watching the clock but I was 3 cm. Finally! I don't think I have ever been more relieved.Right after that they came in and broke my water. I considered waiting until I was 5cm before asking for the epidural but my L&D nurse said that wasn’t necessary and that the Stadol would gradually lose effect if I kept taking it. So I gave in and asked for the epidural. I was in so much pain by then that I was sobbing. You are only allowed one support person during a spinal procedure so hubby left (sissy!) and my mom helped me thru the insertion. The epidural was amazing! Best thing ever! Soon I was sound asleep. My progress continued very slowly, much slower than I had expected but I finally 1pm I was 6 cm and then 8cm by 2pm. Whew two centimeters in one hour! Yes! We were almost there, but no it slowed down again. I was so ready to push by 3pm but the doctor said I had to wait until I was FULLY dilated. Then at 4pm I was 9cm still wanting to push. Those were the longest hours of my life. I cannot explain the agony I felt just sitting there fighting the urge. I honestly think the waiting caused me to swell because at 4:30 I was 9.5 cm and swollen. The urge to push was unbearable and I insisted on being checked every half hour finally at around 5:30 or so they let me do a trial push and declared that we were ready!!! Then about 10 people came into the room....(there is a side story to this I will have to make another post about it) I don’t remember much about the pushing, they wouldn't let my mom tape it or even take photos despite that fact that we have LG's birth on video. We were even at the same hospital. Hubby thinks I pushed for about a half hour. I do remember that the batches of pushing were spread out a lot more than I had expected I’m talking 4 or 5 minutes between the urges. Everyone said I was a fantastic pusher but unfortunately at one point I ran out of energy when he was an inch or two out, like right before his ears. That was the worst part that I remember. I got quite upset and was yelling at everyone in the room to leave. I turned into the crazy laboring lady you see on TV who loses her mind and tells everyone she hates them all. Finally a new urge came and I was able to get him past his shoulders. Then all of a sudden the doctor asked me to stop pushing. And I sat there like a movie paused right before the climax. Hubby tells me that the boy had his cord around his neck and it was so tight that the Dr. couldn’t pry it over his chin so she took what felt like an hour to me to clamp the cord right there and cut it free from his neck. Finally it was off and I was free to push again. and of course he came right out. I saw him lifted from me and carried over to the table. It was 6:17 pm. I wanted him in my arms immediately, I had waited so long for him and I needed them to give him back. The doctors checked him and he was perfect measuring 20 inches and weighing 8 lbs and 8 oz. No one thought he would be that big because LG had only weighed 5 lbs 8oz when she was born.But I knew, I could feel how big he was every time he moved! And just like that it was over everyone left. My mom and Stepdad took LG home with them and it was just the 3 of us Mommy, Daddy and boy. I learned something right then: when giving birth try not to do it so close to shift change! The labor nurses work from 7 to 7 and we didn't see a new one until 9pm or so, good thing I had done this before cuz if I was a new mom I think I would have been flipping out. We stayed at the hospital for a little over 24 hours. As you may know it was predicted to snow immensely on Friday so we wanted to get home before it happened. And boy did it snow! Starting on Friday the 5th into Saturday it snowed 31 inches! and then it snowed again on Tuesday. We were lucky enough to be induced before the storm, can you imagine me going into labor and having to go to the hospital with over 2ft of snow on the ground, and to never have lost electricity. Well there it is people the story of my son’s birth