It started as distractions while on the TTC rollercoaster... we tried to cross off "I've always wanted to do"s...
Next up, after our son arrived in July 2013, were the items to cross off while baby was, well - a baby! After a brief foray back on the TTCAL-train, we welcomed our daughter December 2015!
Not that we're actually protesting the pacifier...
In fact, I was all Anti-Pacifier for a total of 2 minutes once we'd gotten home from the hospital... and then was all, GIVE HIM THE PACIFIER!!!!
But one recommendation the pediatrician had on Wednesday was to start the Great 2015 Pacifier Wean... and I honestly thought that's how it would go - a big headline event of this year, with big wails and protests from Button for his pacifier...
Wednesday evening before bedtime, I visited Button's nursery and removed all pacifiers (we kept 2-3 in the crib, he'd grab one if he stirred during the night). When we went in to read his bedtime stories, he found one on the floor - I was like, ack! Was able to distract him with teeth-brushing (this he loves! my little future dentist...) and hid that pacifier.
And down he went - without a peep!
I was anxious to see how the next morning went, if he - once waking and finding no pacifier - would whine and wake us early... Nope - I checked the video monitor and he was babbling away, chatting with his stuffed animals!
So we're two nights into the great pacifier wean (yup, doesn't even need the Caps!) - and it's going AMAZING. (apparently so too at daycare! day two of naptime sans Paci! for the whole class!!!)
Also apparently at daycare - I learned this morning that Button can say "purple" (sounds more like puh-puh) but still!
I should probably get THEM to make the list of words Button can say! Maybe he is on "the scale!"
Men have to be the biggest babies when it comes to being sick. SERIOUSLY.
My husband when he's sick:
uttering a feeble, "honneeeeeee - can you get me some juuuuuuuuuice pleeeeeeease? *hack cough*"
And I don't DARE expect any help with Button - baths, meals, entertaining, etc - Daddy's too sick to move!
Me?
Monday night (the start of this miserable 4-day head-turned-chest cold) I did 2 loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen table, cut Button's nails, and I still get a Stink Eye from E when he comes back from tending to a baby (WHO WASN'T EVEN FUSSING, was just FALLING ASLEEP!) because I hadn't also cut the dog's toenails...
And even though I was sick enough to call out of work, guess who still had to drop off and pick-up Button from daycare... (I'll give my husband this much, he offered to drop him off in the morning. In the whole, "If you really need me to take him I will, but *LARGE SIGH* I'll be late to work..." way of offering...)
(BTDubs - the commercial so appropriately came on yesterday - TOTALLY LOVE IT!)
a Sick Mom?!
Tell me that doesn't just DEFINE "oxy moron"
(actual definition: "A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.")
Oh and also? On my second sick day (Wednesday) - after attempting to go into work for all of 2 hours, I had got to bring Button to his 18m checkup...
Speaking of Capitalized Appointments...
He's almost 34" (Wiggle worm barely gave the nurse time to get the paper marked correctly!)
which, according to BabyCenter, is 90th percentile for length! (we always knew he was a tall boy, in 2T pants now!)
He's 26lb4(ish)oz (again, wouldn't stand still on the scale to get a steady weight... lol)
which, according to BabyCenter again, is 50-75th percentile (which is a huge range, but we'll take it!)
He got two shots (boy did he LOVE THOSE!) and had his ears checked (even with me at his feet holding his hands down as he laid on the table, another nurse had to come in and hold his head still! and continued to comment, "oh GOOD LORD he is STRONG!")
So, fluid in one ear. NOT infected.
Yet.
And the Doc was "disappointed" to hear he was only saying 8-10 words, with 10 REAALLY being the minimum they like to hear at an 18m apppointment...
(hence The Capitalized Appointment...)
I will admit, I did NOT immediately freak (nor did I freak minutes or hours later...)
his "receptive speech" (understanding all we say) is so so so "advanced" - my term - the kid understands EVERYTHING we say or ask of him.
He signs (daycare teaches ASL!) about 10 more words...
so his communication is fabulous. I guess it's just his vocalization.
And so - the plan going forward is to check his ears again in a few weeks, as fluid - even if uninfected - can affect his hearing (which can in turn affect his speech.)
1 - if he develops an ear infection before the scheduled ear check, we'll be heading over to an ENT.
2 - if he doesn't develop an infection but still has fluid, we'll be referred to an ENT for possible tubes to help prevent fluid build-up. (After his last ear infection, we had decided with the next one, we would be going to an ENT anyways - as we didn't want ear infections to get in the way of his speech development...)
2 - if he has no fluid, we'll be scheduling a hearing test...
So, no - no freak out (yet?)
The poor kid still only has 8 teeth (as of two days ago! his second molar broke through!) so he was a little slow on the chompers - and a little slow on his growth the first few weeks of life, but here he is in 2T pants!
No freak out (yet) because - last night, I got him to say "tea" when prompted about my cup of tea (and honey, oh loads of honey for my sick, sore throat...) and then got something that resembled "cookie" an hour or so later!
I'm cruising on the "Don't borrow trouble" line, relaxing under the "We will see" umbrellas...
we spent the weekend in Central MA visiting my sister and her family (3 hour drive - made easy by leaving right at Button's bedtime Friday night!)
We all had one last ChristmasGift exchange (seriously, it's silly to spend $$$ to ship gifts to them - this way we have a nice excuse to get together!)
I waxed nostalgic as I drove through the streets where I learned to drive, where I went to highschool, where the "slackers" smoked before heading into school... lol
Button had a blast with his two cousins:
We continued the nostalgia with our original Nintendo!!
We snacked on pickles:
And took full advantage of our two little babysitters to enjoy a beer at the local pub:
All this to say, the drive back yesterday afternoon was not fun... while Button did awesome (again, we timed it for his nap and he took a GREAT one, over 2 hours!) it was pouring down rain the entire drive...
So my knuckles are slightly sore this morning, and I can't tell if the neck/head-ache is from getting sick (yay! dreamt I was eating legos last night, my throat hurts that bad...) or if it's from the tense 3-hour drive...
Of course, these guys helped keep the stress level low by basically opening a butcher shop at the beginning of the second half...
"We're onto Seattle!!!"
(and my "should have stayed home" wasn't helped by finding 95% of the roads blocked off while trying to get to work this morning.... BLUGH)
I've spent the past few days (at work, when I was supposed to be working!) perusing through old blog entries and discovered two things...
1- I can be pretty funny!
2 - I SUCK SUCK SUCK at follow-through:
hi Tour Tuesdays - sorry you took MONTHS to come to fruition, and then never made it past the first room...
hi Glorified-To-Do-List... sorry that I followed up for one month (with half of the items still not done) and then let you die a quiet death that most well-intended ToDoLists die...
and the biggest, hi BUGGY LIST! You helped me out so much during a hard TTA time post-mmc, and again during a TTC period when every BFN made me fly to uncork a bottle of wine... I abandoned the whole original point of this blog after I was done needing it. (wow, really existential and heavy all of a sudden huh? lol)
And here we are - CD19(ish) having just O'd on CD17.
Yup. The TTC acronyms are back... starting next cycle, we're in it.
But only casually.
As casual as you can be shoving fingers up your hoo-ha every day and checking on ye olde cervixe... Yup - I'm going to by-pass the BBT and OPKs for now, and go with checking CP and CM...
I've loosely tracked it the past few months, mostly to nail down when I need to start wearing black underwear and carrying tampons around, and found it to be a pretty reliable method with O coming on average CD17.
So.
TFAS. ****GULP*****
Time for BuggyList reruns:
I am still going to hot yoga every Wednesday night (except I haven't been since before Christmas, what with traveling to Texas and then having a physical for life insurance policies last Wednesday. Which, derrrrrr - E had tobacco (lip-dip YUCK) the DAY OF and of course nicotine showed up in his test results so now we have to wait a year to re-apply so we don't have to pay "smoker's premiums" which are like, quadruple! C'MON E!)
So I finally made it back to yoga last night, slightly nervous that it would be like my first ever hot yoga class (10 minutes in, sweating like a stuck pig, face shockingly bright red, getting dizzy at every sun salutation...)
NOPE - rocked that bitch.
and speaking of Glorified To-Do Lists and accountability - that whole weight loss goal?
I'd mentally settled on being "X" pounds, about 6 lbs short of my goal...
Without meaning to, I somehow, over the last few months, dropped the final few pounds and then some..
(total of 13 lbs lost from the starting point!)
SUCK THAT, ACCOUNTABILITY!!!
(and let's just ignore the fact that I still haven't had that root canal I've been needing....)
And boo - how boring, a post with no pictures....
In honor Hank's NY Rangers being HOT HOT HOT - let's get to the Cup boys!!!
And in honor of my boy Brady and his Pats on the road to the Super Bowl:
Sheesh - each Tuesday I get to work and think, man this week is dragging.. it's only Tuesday?!
And then I blink and it's Friday...
Anyways - So Monday night I finished My Next Book from The Really Big Book List (aka the 2015 Reading Challenge)
as a reminder:
Last week, I'd finished A Book Set in the Future : The People of Sparks (by Jeanne DuPrau).
This week's Check Mark belongs to A Book from an Author You Love but Haven't Read Yet : Lone Wolf (by Jodi Picoult).
(and I'm sorry to any English majors - or just OCD sticklers - I've probably mis-Bolded/Underlined book titles...)
Jodi Picoult is probably one of my favorite authors - almost all of her novels (that I've read, which now includes Lone Wolf! and I think there's only 1-2 more of hers that I've yet to read) - they all have this plot twist, or big reveal at the end...
((SPOILER ALERT for any Jodi Picoult books!) lol)
For example, in My Sister's Keeper, which is now a movie with Cameron Diaz, a young girl is basically conceived and born to be a donator (bone marrow, stem cell, etc) for her sick older sister... after years of donating, she begins a legal case to be medically emancipated from her parents so she can discontinue the exhausting procedures and donations.
As her family falls apart - her mother declares she's murdering her sister, her parents begin to fight, and her sister falls more sick - the book's end reveals that it's the ill sister who pushed and forced her sister to begin the medical emancipation process... It was the sick older sister who was just tired of fighting a battle for her mother, who wouldn't, couldn't let her go...
((Another beef with the whole book-to-movie thing is that in the book, minutes after winning the medical emancipation case, the younger sister gets in the car with her lawyer and is in a fatal car accident... In the movie? The donations stop, and the older ill sister spends her last days at home with her family before she passes away... BOO. I loved the ironic hot-debate ending of the book!))
OMG ok, back to Lone Wolf...
In this book, there is a man who has spent his life studying wolves - a man who spent two years in the Canadian wilderness sleeping, hunting and living with a pack of wolves. After a car accident with his daughter, whom he has custody of after the wolves came between him and his ex-wife, he's in a vegetative state.
When his son Edward, self-exiled in Thailand and teaching ESL, receives the phone call, he rushes home state-side and becomes embroiled in a battle against his own sister. She wants to hang on, keeping their father on life-support because, despite the doctors' very poor prognoses, her father, the might wolf man, might return! And he wants to pull the plug.
The first chapter is the occurrence of the car accident and so the rest of the book is alternated between the brother, sister and an assigned Public Guardian narrating chapters, interspersed with the father, Luke's words about his wolf studies - the first time he lost a pup, the first time he was accepted by a wild pack, etc. I am somewhat a light reader, and so I didn't realize until a few chapters in that the Wolf Chapters were always tying back into the story going on - the tug & pull of his daughter and son on whether to continue life-sustaining support... Chapters about the alpha wolf in a pack, and how when he/she is gone, a member within the current pack will most likely step up...
I liked the parallelisms drawn by these Wolf Chapters, although a few times my brain just didn't want to have to work extra to make the connection (I read late at night!)
Overall, excellent book! (And of course, there is a "WHOA!" moment at the end that helps explain why the daughter and son each held their position of Life Support or Pull The Plug.)
Next up (and what I fell asleep reading last night, so the Nook and I shared a pillow!) is: A Funny Book : What Alife Forgot (by Liane Moriarty)
Because no day of the week starts with "R" for Reading, we now have "Weading Wednesdays" - as a little kid would say.
And I'm totally stealing the idea for the awesome 2015 Reading Challenge from this crazy Canadian Housewife! (And I mean crazy in an awesome We-Make-Our-Own-BEATIFUL-Furniture and Cook-Some-freaking-AMAZING-Food way!!)
What's the challenge?
The challenge is to read. A LOT. Particularly, the 50 books from this list.
And the best part? You can totally pick your own books to fulfill this list!
(I've already chosen and pre-selected books for 26 of the 50 book categories!)
And my goal is to review (on Weading Wednesdays!) the recently read "Check That One Off!" book (maybe not every Wednesday, although I'm frequently reading via .pdf doc when I should be working... ssssh!)
So I'm proud to say I've already knocked one off the list:
A Book Set in the Future:
The People of Sparks, by Jeanne DuPrau
The People of Sparks is a sequel to a novel called The City of Ember, set in an unspecified future.
from Amazon.com: The city of Ember was built as a last refuge for the human race. Two
hundred years later, the great lamps that light the city are beginning
to flicker. When Lina finds part of an ancient message, she’s sure it
holds a secret that will save the city.
I really liked the first book in the Ember series - I think it was originally intended to be for YA (but God knows I love me some Twilight and Hunger Games, other books I'm pretty sure also intended to be somewhat YA!) but it was very creatively written, and so I began the sequel, The People of Sparks.
Spoiler Alerts!
The novel begins with Lina, and her friend Doon, emerging from the underground city of Ember into the glaring sun. It follows them as they welcome a number of their fellow Ember-ites as they also emerge, and the former underground citizens learn of the world above, things they'd never experienced in the dark cave of Ember: rain, the sun (and it's rotations around the earth!), natural streams - they are children learning of the world around them for the first time!
The people of Ember, in their interactions with The People of Sparks, begin to learn of things like war, and how it could begin with just a tiny wrong:
"Say one group of people does something bad to another group, like steal their chickens.
Then the first group does something bad back in revenge.
That could start a war. The two groups would try to kill each other, and the ones who killed the most would win.”
The simplicity the novel is written with enables the author to uncomplicate the how's and why's:
"...[war] can be stopped at the beginning,” Maddy said. “If someone sees what’s happening and is brave enough to reverse the direction.”
[...]
“You’d do something good,” said Maddy. “Or at least you’d keep yourself from doing something bad.” “But how could you?” said Lina. “When people have been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?” “You wouldn’t want to,” Maddy said. “That’s what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”
Don't be fooled by the "YA" label (that may or not be officially given - I'm gonna be an "ASS" and assume it is YA. lol)
The People of Sparks carries some simple lessons of life... I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and look forward to checking out the next two novels of The Ember Series (The Prophet of Yonwood, and The Diamond of Darkhold)
We survived 9 days in TX with my family for the holidays (I use the term "survived" mostly because of my INSANE SIL who:
... carries around an epi-pen for her 15-m.o. daughter. Who isn't allergic to anything, but she carries it "Just In Case..."
... scrapes the poop out of her daughter's DISPOSABLE DIAPER into the toilet before throwing it away
... threw out barbs such as, "oh well we try not to give her too many [food] pouches, there's just SO much sugar in those things" after we gave Button one
... scrubbed out my mom's tub (Bathtime Central for both babies while in Texas) after Button's bath for her daughter's hygiene. (No, Button wasn't covered in shit going into the bath. Yes, we used soap and baby wash so you'd think the tub would be just fine?)
And that's just scratching the surface. On top of it all, she speaks (unnaturally) in the highest, softest "Babyiest" voice ever. Even after her daughter's in bed for the night...
But I'll admit it was kind of fun (yet still awkward enough to make one squirm) to witness E poke and poke at her: (scene background: BabyGirl developed dry skin and eczema (me thinks because of the fact that my SIL wouldn't put ANY. LOTION. on the poor girl after any of her baths as an infant... no joke). The skin got so bad recently that BabyGirl developed a staff infection! And so is seeing a dermatologist (dude I didn't start to see my derm until I was almost 30 years old!) and is now using these heavy, fancy expensive creams (again, which SIL only dabbles on little spots as "needed.")) Scene: Crazy SIL: We don't really give Babygirl bubble baths - we only use soap every 4 baths. E: Why don't you give her bubbles? Button loves it! Crazy SIL: Oh we just don't, she has to have special shampoos and lotions. E: ..... and why does that mean you can't give her bubbles? BIL interjects: Oh, the shampoo is like, $20/bottle-expensive... E: ....soooo why not use just a drop or two? even the smallest amount will make a good amount of bubbles... Crazy SIL: [squirms and fidgets] WE JUST DON'T DO BUBBLES!
So she didn't really scream that last part, but yea - it was fun to watch E twist and jab at her and her neuroses...
Anyways - outside of surviving, we celebrated Christmas and New Year's there (and sadly, I celebrated E.T. midnight which was 11pm local time, and then went to bed. wahoo)
Ben got a BigBoy haircut (to go with his first day - today - in the Toddler room at daycare, I cried a little bit - They have these little tables and chairs they sit at for snack time.. BAGELS this morning!)
(BTW - if you can't tell, Button LOVES getting haircuts... /sarcasm)
We flew back on New Year's Day (hence why I went to bed "early" the night before!)
Ben slept on the flight and loved exploring the airports!
After we picked up my car from the long-term lot, we slowly pieced our family back together, picking up this dog there and that dog here from their respective sitters...
*****
Oh and it's MONDAY!
Some things I've made (not-so) recently:
Cheap chargers from Michaels (prob about a buck a piece...)
some good 'ole chalk board paint...
Finished Product: "Tis the Season" written on the red one
interchangeable once the season is over with "Bon Appetit" on the gold one
And my other Christmas Craft this year:
(Thanks P!nterest, for sucking up all of my free time and money...)
