What Happens When I Run Out of Time To Blog

Wow, it has been a whole week since I last posted. Life is just plain busy. That's all there is to it. There simply aren't enough hours in the day. I have been thinking about my blog, and wanting to get to you all to post, but just haven't been able to swing it. So I am going to do a random updating post since I can't seem to find the time to do a proper one.

• August was a re-grouping month for me. As I posted about previously I have been financially stressed (to say the least) and I needed to spend a month and work my little arse off and see if it was enough to allow me to stay in my house. The good news is that it seems to be feasible. The bad news is that I literally have to bill 9 hours every work day and not spend a cent on anything that isn't in my budget. Not the most exciting way to live, but for now, if it keeps me in my house, I'll take it. But working over 9 hours a day (I don't bill for driving time) doesn't allow much "fun" time to update the ole blog. So here I am at 9:30 at night trying to throw this together before I go to bed for the night.
• I am getting pudgy. I'm not happy about it. There is no doubt why this is happening as I have been using the breast feeding excuse as a reason to eat like a little piggy. I have been indulging in carmel delight ice cream with semi sweet chocolate chips on top several nights a week. I have been enjoying See's Candies on the other nights. And in between those, I have been eating the dark chocolate mints and peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's. Add that to the Cheetos that I made part of my daily lunch routine and it all seems to make sense... SO! No more. I am now on a very healthy daily diet (I actually eat really healthy, but when I throw in the above sweets it negates my healthy diet) and have cut out the sweets. I am also "working out" again. I put that in quotes because what I really mean is that I am doing about 60 crunches, about 30 leg lifts, and several different arm exercises with 8 pound weights on a nightly basis. I have no time for a gym, or even a brisk walk around the block on a daily basis. Maybe in the future, but for right now, it is all I can handle. I only need to lose like 5 pounds so hopefully I can knock it out soon.
• I never posted about The Girl's 4 month well baby check. That is mostly because we spent almost the entire appointment talking about The Boy and his thumb issue and his speech issues, but we did actually have an appointment. Here are her stats: 14.7 pounds, 75th percentile, 23 1/4 inches tall, 50th percentile and her head was 42 cm and that is also the 50th percentile. The doctor joked that I have never experienced having a child that is right down the middle of those charts before. He's right. I haven't. And I am afraid to jinx it. But basically she is doing great. Keep on keeping on with her. Don't change a thing at this point.
• Speaking of The Boy, he does indeed need to have surgery. Of course, right? We met with a fabulous pediatric orthopedist on Friday and that is really our only option. He is starting to write and right now he switches back and forth between his two hands, but it is clear that he wants to use his right hand more. But I think he isn't because his poor little thumb doesn't work correctly. So surgery is scheduled for Monday September 14th. The surgery itself only takes about 10 minutes but he does need to be knocked out for it. He will also have to have a cast for about a week afterwards basically to make sure that the incision heals properly. Looking forward to that (insert eye roll and sarcasm here).
• Finally, an update on potty training. We seem to have mastered the pee thing. He is a rock star where that is concerned. However we aren't so fabulous on the poop. He has done it in the toilet about 3 times but the rest of the time he either does it in his diaper in the morning before he tells me he is awake, in his pull up during nap time, or (my personal favorite) in his big boy pants. And yes, unlike my mother, I blatantly throw those suckers away when that happens. There is just no cleaning them out. Plus they are only like $3.00 for a pack of three at Tar.get. Simply not worth it.
• And if you stuck around reading this boring and long post I will reward you with some pictures of The Boy. We have had many pics of The Girl lately but not to many of older brother. So here he is, in all his weirdness...Behold the goggle boy!

And just because it happens to be my very favorite perk of potty training, here is a shot of a cute little boy butt in big boy undies. These happen to be his Spider Man undies, which are among his very faves...
Seriously...how cute is that flat little butt?

Another Day, Another Specialist

I think we are up to 8 now...

That is 8 different specialists we have been to for The Boy.

Sigh...

This one isn't particularly scary, although it has the potential to equal surgery, which is SUPER scary but still... I should mention that I am left handed. Not that any of you care, but I am. And the reason that I am left handed is because when I was about three years old I had to have surgery on my right hand. My right thumb to be exact. I had what is called "trigger finger," which for me meant that I could not completely straighten out my thumb. It stayed bent at the knuckle. Forever. My parents found this out when I went to do a "Fonzie" and stuck out my thumb with the accompanying "Hey..." and they realized that my thumb was all crooked. It wouldn't straighten out. So I had to have surgery and I think that was around when I was learning how to write so I ended up using my left hand...and you see how it all ended.

About a week ago The Boy called me when he was supposed to be sleeping and told me his thumb hurt. I looked at it and it seemed fine so I assumed he was trying to avoid sleeping and I told him to go to sleep. Great mother, right? Well a couple of days later he said it again. And this time it wasn't during nap time so I gave it more validity.

When he tried to bend it, it sort of clicked into place. It almost looked like someone who is double jointed. It would "click" straight," and then "click" again when he bent it. I asked him if it hurt and he said yes, but wasn't crying or anything so I figured I would keep an eye on it. Since then I have checked in with him and his thumb randomly and sometimes he can bend it (and if he can, it always does the "clicking") and sometimes it is "stuck" (his word). For the last couple of days it is stuck just like my thumb was when I was little. He can't straighten it.

So today was The Girl's 4 month well baby check. I decided to bring The Boy along and have their pediatrician take a look at it during the appointment. Of course as soon as he walked in the room The Boy shoved his thumb at the doctor and told him it was "stuck." He looked it over and told me we needed to see an orthopedist (is that right?). Then he smiled at me and said, "I know you are foreign to the concept of my referring you out to specialists so let me explain how this works..." He does amuse himself... I told him about my thumb when I was little and asked if this could be something that was hereditary and he said absolutely.

So now we get to go see a pediatric orthopedist...

Sigh...

One Year Ago Today...

On August 23rd 2008 my life changed forever...

And on August 23rd 2009 my life could not be better...

Happy 4 Months Peanut!

Dear Peanut,

I can't believe you are four months old today. Time moves so fast... I have to say that I think 4 months may be my very favorite age of your babyhood so far. You are so much fun right now. You are such a happy little girl. You will smile at anyone who looks even the slightest bit fun, and the way you smile, with your eyes and your entire face, can literally light up a dark room. Here is evidence of that smile with your monthly photo in your bean bag chair:

Notice your feet in the above picture. You always seem to have your feet in that "praying" position. They were like that when you came out of the womb and haven't entirely changed yet. There is very little of you that is like you were when you first were born so I treasure getting to still see your little feet like that. As you can see by your pictures, you are quite...ummm...healthy. You have rolls within your rolls. And I LOVE IT! One day it will upset you to have rolls in your thighs, but right now it is a sign that things are fantastic.

You are starting to notice things around you more now. And your favorite thing to notice is your brother. You two are developing quite the little relationship. It makes my heart sing to see it happen. He LOVES that he can always make you smile, and you will pretty much light up at the mere sight of him. You especially love it when he joins you in your special places like your crib...
And it makes you even happier when he lets YOU join HIM in one of his special places:
But your very favorite thing in the world is when he gives you a hug. And he does this a lot. He is always hugging and kissing on you and I imagine someday that will irritate you, but for right now, you think it is wonderful! I love seeing you look up at him with wonder in your little eyes and can't wait for all the things he is going to teach you.
Your daily habits have changed a lot in the past month as well. The biggest change is that you are now going to daycare three days a week. Besides the first week when you weren't sure what happened to your Mommy, or those things she carries around with her that feed you, you have decided it is great. Of course your brother is there, so that makes it cool. You go to "school" Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and work from home with Mommy on Wednesday. I pump for you so that you can continue to have only Mommy's milk even when I am not there. I am told right now you drink about 8 to 10 ounces in an 8 hour period of time. The ladies who take care of you constantly tell me how "easy" you are and that you are just a joy to be around.

I couldn't agree more.

In addition to school, you have changed your sleeping pattern quite a bit this last month. You are finally acting like a normal little baby. You go to sleep every night around 8:30pm and you sleep straight through in your crib until around 5:00am. At that time you wake up and nurse with Mommy in Mommy's bed and then go right back to sleep next to me. I love when you wake up in the morning next to me because you don't make a peep. All of a sudden I will look over at you and your eyes will be open and bright and you will give me the biggest smile. It is such a wonderful way to start my day. You still haven't really mastered the long nap thing, but you are getting better. In fact yesterday when I had you home with me you took two proper naps. The first was for 2 hours! And the second was for about an hour and a half. You no longer sleep in your swing and have transitioned into your crib like the big girl you are. You also are still trying to refuse to take a pacifier and instead prefer to stick your pudgy thumb into your mouth. If you are tired I can sometimes convince you to take the pacifier instead, but for the most part you prefer your thumb, your fingers or your fist.

You truly are an amazing little girl. I can't believe how lucky I am to have you. I call you my little ray of sunshine and you truly are. You bring nothing but smiles and joy to every part of our lives. You very rarely cry, and people are always saying to me, "Is she always this good?" "Is she always this happy?" And yes; yes you are. You are getting much stronger and LOVE to stand on my lap looking into my eyes. We spend a lot of time "talking" like that. I just looked over at you while I was typing this and noticed your entire shirt is wet. You have started that annoying baby drooling thing, but I highly doubt we are getting any teeth anytime soon.

Your brother was such an easy baby that I had prepared myself that you were going to be a little tyrant (one can't get so lucky as to have two easy babies, can they?) But you aren't. So far you have been a complete joy. I am sure you will torture me in later years (like your brother is doing now), but right now, you are nothing but pure sunshine. I love you more than words can possibly express. Thank you for the last four months my little Peanut. I love being your Mommy and I love you!

Why My Mother Deserves A Medal

The Boy didn't have such a good potty training day at school today. He had one pee pee accident and one poop accident. As a result when my child was delivered to me, so were many plastic bags. One plastic bag contained The Girl's clothes (the people at her daycare enjoy "playing dress up" with her and therefore change her clothes just for the hell of it at least once a day), one bag contained two pairs of shorts; one wet and one dry, and one wet pair of undies. Then there was a third bag.

I smelled it before I opened it. I glanced over at my mom..."They must have rinsed it out before they sent it home, right?" She just smirked. I knew the answer to that question before the bag was even full open. No. No they did not rinse anything out.

This might be a good place to point out that my son is still taking Miralax (a mild laxative) and therefore he doesn't have a very...ummm...shall we say "formed," poop. So his little Lightening McQueen big boy pants had an entire poop just mushed all around inside of them. It only took one glance to understand that there was no dropping the contents into the toilet and cleaning the pants. One would have to physically take their hands and actually scrape the poop out of these undies and then somehow rinse them while in the water...I don't even know.

I looked over at my mother in HORROR, "What the hell am I supposed to do with these?" I asked. She just started laughing. "I mean, I am not rinsing them out in the kitchen sink!!" For some reason she found the entire thing amusing. I, however, was mortified.

I answered my own question. "I'll tell you what the hell I am going to do with these. I am throwing them out! Goodbye undies! May you rest in peace..." I said as I headed towards the outside garbage can.

"Don't throw out my undies Mommy!!!" comes this little voice. Um, yeah dude. You lost your vote in that equation when you blatantly CRAPPED in your pants!!!

And this is where my mother deserves her medal. She took the underwear from me, put on a pair of rubber gloves and headed toward the bathroom. I followed mostly because I honestly had no friggin idea of how she was going to handle these toxic things. She squatted down in front of the toilet and plunged them in. Then she took her hands and manually squeezed all the poop off the undies themselves into the toilet. Then she lifted the undies out of the toilet and flushed. Once it was done she plunged and did the same thing again.

She cleaned out his underwear.

She is a better woman than I.

Bullet Point Updates

• The Boy is still doing pretty good with the potty training. He had two accidents at school yesterday and three successes (he isn't home yet today). I think the accidents are more because they aren't checking with him often to see if he has to go and he isn't at the point of telling people yet.
• We still seem to be boycotting the pooping in the potty. He didn't poop at all yesterday and I think if it happened today it probably happened in his pull up during nap time. Hopefully we can work on this and make it happen soon.
• My clogged milk duct seems to FINALLY be healed. Thankfully it never turned into mastitis but it was horribly painful and a royal pain in the ass. I had to get up and pump every couple of hours for several days in a row and always heat the boob prior to feeding and pumping and also massage the hell out of it before and after each feeding. My boob is still really sore and I don't think the supply has returned to what it was before but the mass is gone and so is most of the pain.
• When I went to the doctor for my clogged milk duct my blood pressure was really high again. Something about that office, I swear. It was so high that my doctor called me at home later and told me she was personally making me an appointment at a specialist and all I had to do was show up.
• I showed up at said appointment with the specialist this morning to go in and have my blood pressure taken. It was 113/82. Ummm yeah...why are we here again?
• Specialist proceeded to treat me anyway and wants me to take my pressure at home and make an average and also sent me to the lab for all sorts of blood tests. I have to go back in three weeks.
• Specialist appointment and lab time totaled over three hours. Three hours where I really needed to be billing clients instead of "wasting time" at a doctors office. Now I have to find sometime to make that up. No clue when or where that's going to happen.
• Baby girl is pretty consistently sleeping 8 to 8 1/2 hours at night. Usually from around 8:30pm until around 5:00am. When she wakes up at 5:00 she nurses and goes right back to sleep until at least 8:00. She is a rock star.
• I am so unbelievably tired that I am not sure how I manage to stay upright all day long.
• I am happy. Very, very happy. Life is good.

Adventures In Potty Training Day 3

I am simply exhausted so I am going to keep this short.

Overall I would call the weekend a big, fat success. My boy did great. He peed all day long on the potty today. The second half of the day I even put him in big boy undies (instead of letting him walk around naked from the waist down like the two previous days) and he only had one accident late in the day. He was playing with his new Spiderman and was so engrossed in his play that he had a little slip. But other than that we had no accidents all day long.

The highlight (seriously? Is this what my life has come to?) of the day was when he managed to squeeze out a poop the size of a small golf ball in the potty. I had been worrying all day long about "the poop" when it would come and how we would handle it. It is crazy the anxiety that goes along with potty training. The longer he goes without a success my anxiety level rises and rises and rises. Then once he peed successfully in the potty I relax...for about 45 minutes when I start worrying again.

I don't know if I can truly explain what it felt like to spend three long days not leaving the house ever, with a timer going off every single half an hour. And each time that godforsaken timer went off it meant it was time to address pee and poop. I have never been so sick of bodily fluids in my entire life. I am SO over it. Thank God tomorrow is Monday!

By the time 8:00pm came I was SO ready to be done. I got The Boy to bed and was seriously thrilled to not have to deal with potty training anymore (for the day). I nursed The Girl and was rocking her when The Boy started calling me over his monitor. Over and over again. Mommy. Mommy. MOMMY. MOMMY. MOMMY!!!! I swear he would not stop. I couldn't yell at him because The Girl was just on the verge of finally falling asleep and thus cementing my desired "no child awake" status that I had been craving all evening long. I got up and turned off his monitor and continued to rock her until she was close enough to sleep that I could put her down. I put her down and went into his room with an exasperated, "WHAT!!?!?!?!"

"I have poop poop."

The little shit waited until he had his diaper on and unleashed the largest poop you have ever seen. Of course his diapers are also in The Girl's room. So I tip toe in there and the diaper basket is empty. Of course it is. So I try and silently go under the bookshelf where spare diapers are kept and sneak out the new package, grab the wipes and go into his room to find that I actually grabbed the package of new pull ups and not the diapers. FUCK!! So I go back in and successfully wake The Girl up all the way, get the diapers and go into his room and start changing him. Needless to say it was EVERYWHERE. I asked him why he waited and went poop poop in his diaper when I had been begging him to go on the potty all day long and he said to me in a snotty baby voice, "because I a baby Mommy," and then grinned at me.

Straw that broke the camel's back.

I said, "Fine. Then you're a baby. And tomorrow you only get to play with things that baby's get to play with. No TV, no planets, no Spiderman, no big boy bed..."

"NO Mommy...I wanta my toys. I a big boy. I wanta my big boy tings!"

"Well then you are going to need to use the potty like a big boy!"

And I literally pulled up his pants, turned off the lights and walked out the door. And in case you think that I was too harsh on him, it really was the straw that broke the camel's back. I had spent all weekend long being proud and non threatening and when I put him to bed the first time I had told him how proud I was of him and how when he went to school tomorrow he was going to get to wear his big boy undies like all his friends and all that good stuff. I praised the shit out of him. And honestly I really just needed to get those kids to sleep and not deal with anything potty related anymore for the night. I needed that to happen. Keep in mind that I am a single mother and I have been home, alone, ALL WEEKEND LONG dealing with potty related stuff. I needed it to be over. And just when I thought I was done. Poop explosion. Dear God!

So overall the weekend was a fabulous success. I am truly proud of my little dude and can't believe how well it actually went. It isn't his fault that Mommy was done. And of course I am not going to punish him when he gets up tomorrow. Because it will be a new day. And more importantly? I get to send him to school!! Hooray!

I am taking my potty-ed out self and going to bed. Hope you all had a nice weekend.