While I was out...

Last night I took my daughter to a holiday craft night / bake sale / book sale at her school. My husband stayed home with the baby. When we got home at 8:15 I was surprised to see the baby still up. When I asked my husband why Ben was still up he said "I'll tell you later" in the way he does when he doesn't want my daughter to hear. I could tell something was wrong and started thinking that some family member was ill or had been in a car accident. Turns out that while changing Ben's diaper my husband turned away for a second to shoo one of the cats away from playing with the crib bumper. In that second and that small amount of space in between the dresser and my husband, Ben fell. Onto the hardwood floor. Apparently he made quite a thud. And then my husband freaked. He called the pediatrician's office and even though Ben was alert and with no visible injuries he begged them to let him bring Ben in. So they went and the doctor found nothing wrong. They told him we shouldn't let him sleep for more than 20 to 30 minutes for 4 hours just to be sure. Throughout this little trauma my daughter and I were blissfully enjoying ourselves because my cell phone battery had died. My husband was so upset that between repeated calls to my cell phone, he called my mom (a former nurse) and asked if she could drive up today to watch Ben and called his own mother. He told me later that he cried at the doctor's office, twice. He asked the pediatrician how many times a year they see things like this and her response was "a year? how about a month?". He told me that he said to the doctor "my wife is going to kill me!" (I didn't, by the way.) The doctor was so nice she actually called the house a little after I got home to check in on Ben and my husband.

I'm not sure who I feel sorrier for Ben or my husband. Ben is(was) clearly fine. Even last night when he was obviously very tired from being kept up he was in a great mood laughing at and playing with his sister. He was fine this morning and in a good mood as usual when I dropped him off at daycare. My husband however is still upset. He's called me three times already today for no other reason than he's still upset and worried.

Last night after my husband told me that he'd called my mom I realized I'd better call her back to let her know everything was ok. Good thing I did, she was clearly waiting and was obviously upset. This morning I finally turned my phone on after charging it overnight and there was a message from my mother yelling at me to turn my phone on and call her back.

Ben is fine, but I think it might take my husband and my mom a little while to get over this one.

My baby is trying to kill me.

While we're so lucky that no one in our house has been felled by any type of flu so far, Ben has had a cold for what seems like forever. It's gotten worse in the past few days. My hopes were lifted after two pretty good nights of sleep on Friday and Saturday, but the past 4 nights have been just horrific. The little guy is so congested - our nights have been spent in a semi awake haze of crying and coughing. He can barely nurse because he can't breathe through his nose and every morning his little nose is crusted over. My baby is not a great sleeper to begin with. We've been letting him cry himself back to sleep for 2 months now and, even before the cold got bad, he was still waking up quite often during the night. When we started letting the Ladybug cry when she was a baby she caught on right away, and within a couple of weeks she was sleeping through the night. Ben is clearly more stubborn that his sister - no amount of letting him cry (which, by the way, KILLS me but I KNOW he does not need to be fed every 2 to 3 hours) has convinced him to just give in, roll over and go back to sleep when he wakes up. And now with the cold I feel even more guilty letting him cry, so I've been going in to him more often. So not only am I'm trying to get by with about 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night, but once this cold is over (soon please!) we'll be back to square one with him on the sleep issues. BUT, I am grateful that he just has a cold. No fever and he's still happy and smiling when he gets up in the morning. The caregivers at his daycare tell me his is just as happy and easy as ever.

I know that I am lucky, lucky, lucky in the grand scheme. But is a little more sleep too much to ask? Good thing he's so cute... if I do say so myself. ;)
Since I'm such a shitty blogger I'll share a little cuteness to show you how the little guy is growing.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

It's off to work... blah, blah, blah.

Yesterday was my first day back at work. Being back wasn't too bad. Ben is always happy and smiling when I drop him at daycare, but having to leave him there for 11 full hours just plain sucks.

Show and Tell

My sweet girl has such a big heart. Here's my girl with the letter she wrote to the President and addressing the envelope. I've included a "translation" under the photo of the letter.





"Dear President Obama

I have an idea. Why don't you tell people who have room in their garage to make a wall and put it in the middle to make a room for poor people.

Lucy, age 7"




Click here to see what the rest of the class is showing.

Odds and Ends

So my boy isn't quite 6 months old and he's got his second ear infection. He woke up screaming at about 4am the other night and I knew it was more than a cold and teething. My normally easy-to-soothe little guy was just inconsolable. Less than 24 hours after starting the antibiotic and he's clearly feeling much better.

We'll be back at the pediatrician's office in a week for his 6-month appointment, but they weighed him yesterday to make sure we are giving him the right doses of pain reliever. He is just 2 ounces shy of 21 pounds! Not that I'm surprised by that. My back and arms are victims of the boy's heft. I think I'll be a hunchback by the time he's walking.

Ben started daycare part-time last week and seems to be doing pretty well there. He cried the first day when I handed him to his teacher. It's so unlike him I couldn't help but think that somehow he KNEW that I was leaving soon. ;) But the next three days went without a hitch, so it's been a pretty stress free transition.

I go back to work in 4 weeks and that makes me want to weep. I'm just not ready for life to get that crazy again. It's not really the work or leaving the baby at daycare that stresses me out. It's the coordination of school drop off and pick up around 2 full-time schedules with 2+ hours of commuting for each of us, and then having to rush through everything in the evenings.


My girl is so excited for Halloween that she actually spent her own birthday money on Halloween decorations for the house. She also convinced my mother-in-law to part with a few dollars too. So, as I sit here at the dining room table, I am enjoying the lovely Halloween centerpiece they picked out and the front yard is decorated with 2 sparkly purple cats, a small scarecrow and various other decorations.


On Thursday I'll be making the 2 hour drive to my hometown to attend the memorial service for my friend's son. I still can't believe it. I can't imagine anything worse than losing one of my kids.

I'm stunned right now. I don't know what to think or who to talk to so I'm coming back here. I know I've neglected this place for too long. But right now I need a safe place.

I just found out that earlier today the 9 year old son of a very old friend of mine died. He contracted H1N1. It went to his heart, his heart stopped beating and he was put into an induced coma. I don't know much more than that. I do know that he had underlying health problems, nevertheless, it's got me scared to death.

I haven't been in touch with this friend much over the past several years. We exchange Christmas cards and that's been about it. We exchanged a few emails this summer when she finally got on Facebook, but that's been the most direct contact we've had in ages. In fact I'd been sort of peeved that I never got even a card or an email after Ben was born. God, who cares.

Her little boy and my daughter share a birthday. He was born via emergency c-section after her placenta abrupted at 30 weeks. Exactly 2 years later my daughter was born via emergency c-section after my placenta abrupted at 32 weeks. I remember after my daughter was born thinking that until then I had no appreciation for what she and her husband had gone through after the birth of their son. This will sound horrible, but I can't help but think I never ever want to be able to appreciate what they are going through right now. I can't hardly believe it. It's just wrong. I keep thinking about what I can send or write or say and there isn't anything that makes sense. Flowers, food, words just seem so stupid and useless - they lost their son.

I just went to check on the baby in the next room, again. He's sleeping peacefully in his crib. My daughter is racing around the house like a banshee. A week ago my friend would have been juggling the demands of her 3 sons. Now she has two. I just can't wrap my mind around this at all.

5 Months and 7 years.

Yesterday, Ben was 5 months old -- I can hardly believe it. But an even more shocking reality is that my daughter turns 7 on Friday!

The funny thing is that right now all the things Ben learns to do are cause for celebration -- hooray, another milestone reached. But with my daughter it is so bittersweet watching her grow up now. It is so obvious in the language she uses and the attitudes she adopts that she is growing up, but so often it just seems like a little kid mimicking the big kids she's around all day. It's the little things that make me catch my breath and want to hold her and wish everything would slow down. The other day we were getting ready to go somewhere and she wanted her hair in a ponytail. Instead of asking me to do it, I saw her get a hair band, put it around her wrist, pull up her hair and then pull the band off her wrist and onto her hair. Okay, it's not the first time she's put her own hair into a ponytail and it's not like she's just learned to drive, but there was something so familiar and so grown up about the way she moved her hands and did this one small act that made me pause and really look at her. She is still such a little girl in so many ways. She still snuggles with the stuffed giraffe that has been her favorite since she was about a year old. She still wants me to lay down with her at bedtime every night. She still has tantrums when she's overtired and she still loves to watch DVDs that she's been watching since she was 4. But she is also growing so independent and sure of herself in so many ways. I'm just not ready to have such a big girl. Honestly, it is hard to really remember her babyhood. But it is not at all hard to remember what it was like when she was 4 or 5, and suddenly here we are at 7!

My reading ballerina


As for Ben, well we've been working very hard on the sleep thing. I was about to lose my sanity, so I re-read Dr. Weiss.bluth's book and made my husband read the relevant section. I confess we are letting him cry a bit, which hurts my soul to hear, but fortunately he never cries for very long and we are making progress. He now naps 3 times a day at pretty regular times and bedtime has been moved up to between 6:30 and 7. Last night he slept 7 straight hours for the first time in almost a month!

He is rolling over from back to front quite regularly now. Though he first rolled from front to back he seems to have forgotten how now. He'll often get himself onto his belly and then whine once he's there. Though he's been teething for at least a month, his first tooth finally made it's appearance a week ago. We've tried Tylenol, ibuprofen, and ambesol, but nothing seems to give him much relief. He's a bit of a drool machine these days and he's always got his hands jammed into his mouth. That's no big deal, except when he does it during meal time!
We started rice cereal a couple of weeks ago and now feeding time is like a sport. Even when he eats it up well, he makes such a mess. After most bites of food he jams him hands into his mouth, and then rubs his hands all over the place, so we end up with one sticky mess of a baby. The other day after a meal he had cereal all over his hands, arms, legs, clothes, his face, and even in his ears! He also like to grab the spool and try to feed himself; he hasn't had much luck with that, but he keeps trying. His had made some progress with holding onto his toys and he is finally managing to get things other than cloth into his mouth.

I can do it myself!


Oops!


Future Opera Singer


Got her!


Almost there


In My Big Boy Clothes


I love my jumperoo


He'll hate me for this later