This is to remind me that I only get a few more Halloweens with the kids where it’s new and exciting and fun.
Owen has been begging to wear his monkey costume around the house. Today I think I decided we should let him if he wants – he won’t ever get a chance again to be this monkey. Nor will I get that chance back.
Also, I need to remember to be thankful for the family we have. This is Owen’s third Thanksgiving and Lily’s first – we only get a guaranteed handful together, so I need to try to make them count.
This may sound melancholy, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s happy – just remembering to experience things versus trying to capture them all.
I need to start using this thing again. Google+ has been neat, but it’s not for everybody, and Anna doesn’t really have a way to share facespace pictures. I don’t think. And I’m still steadfastly refusing to join facespace given things like this.
Mostly I need to capture things I’m thinking. I was really good about that in the before times. Now I keep forgetting stuff that I’m pretty sure I don’t want to forget.
Right now I want to remember Owen’s rocket jammies and how excited he is about them. They have stars on them that glow in the dark.
The evening routine is the same, but now when I turn out the light he lifts up his blankets and excitedly exclaims “HERE THEY COME!” as the stars start to glow. He’s actually somewhat excited for lights out! This is the kind of magic I want to remember. Glow in the dark stars on his jammies are currently the coolest thing in the entire world to him right now.
Lots of stuff has happened since the beach. Namely, family life.
Some milestones we may have missed:
8 months old!
Lily has been nothing short of amazing. She’s doing all the things she’s supposed to do and is very close to rearing up on her hands and knees and starting to crawl. She’s kind of crawling right now, only backwards. She has no difficulty getting to where she wants to be, it’s just … unorthodox. For adults and toddlers, anyway.
She likes to eat.
Owen is learning to play the digiridoo:
Halloween went well. Owen wanted to go trick or treating every night from 1 November to about 7 November until he finally realized it was really more of a “once a year” thing. One day I look forward to telling him stories of how entertained he was by two of his favorite things – doorbells and candy.
I never get tired of this picture.
And Lily also was seven months:
OK, all the photos I’ve taken from the beach are here for consumption:
If you’re on the googlebook, you’ve probably seen a few of these already.
We took the three month picture yesterday, when Anna reminded me I never posted the two month picture.
And
And, just so that Kenny isn’t totally wrong that my blog has become nothing but pictures of Owen – it’s hard to play games on my phone these days:
It appears to be getting better. Lily has slept through a couple of nights – and by “slept through” I mean we’ve gotten a window between 20:15 and 03:15. You don’t realize how much you need that contiguous sleep until you’ve gone without it for a few months. Yesterday was probably her most “talky” day – she was sassing and talking at me, smiling, making faces. Good times.
Owen must be growing or something, because he’s been taking four plus hour naps, in addition to playing at full speed whenever he’s awake. We were at a birthday party the other day, and he played so hard that when I went to pick him up and tell him it was time to go, I expected an epic meltdown. Instead, he was too tired to fuss.
It was a nice three day weekend, even if I can’t really remember what it is that we did.
I have a ton of pictures to post and things to say, but haven’t really had time to devote to the old interblag.
It’s been a busy few weeks. First, you all know about Lily, and that takes up quite a bit of time. What you may not have heard yet is that for the first week of her life she didn’t sleep a lot and was extremely fussy all the time. One of the biggest user complaints against babies is that whenever something is wrong, the only have one way to convey the message – crying.
So she was crying a bit. About one week after she was born, her skin started to pick up a yellow tinge, and she hadn’t pooped in about 36 hours. We figured maybe it was jaundice, considering both Anna and I were born with it.
Turns out she wasn’t getting enough to eat. Anna thought everything was going swimmingly with feeding. Unfortunately there’s no good way to know until your baby starts turning yellow, since the cries are hard to differentiate. When they weighed her, she had lost another six ounces on top of the first, initial quick post-birth weight loss of six ounces.
That was hard news to take. Essentially, we were starving her. She was fussy all the time, and not sleeping, because she was so hungry.
Unfortunately, because we missed the cues, Anna’s supply had started to dwindle as well. Lily wasn’t taking much, so Anna stopped producing as much. This was also hard news to take, considering that with Owen and early with Lily, Anna was a prize cow in terms of milk production. This means we had to do the following things:
This had to be done every two and a half hours. And it was important, because of the dramatic weight loss, to wake her up and feed her in order to fatten her up. And it was super effective – in forty-eight hours, she put on six ounces. Yesterday she had an informal checkup when we brought Owen in for his two year, and had put on a full pound in a week. Anna’s milk supply is back up, and we’ve stopped using formula, which is mostly symbolic, but matter of pride and importance to Anna.
And, Lily isn’t as fussy anymore, and is a joy to be around when she bothers to be awake!
So things are getting better. We don’t have to wake Lily up to feed her anymore, though she’s doing enough of that on her own as she’s continuing to grow. Eventually when she gets a bit bigger we should be able to lessen the frequency of bottle feedings, which is important to me because it means I can sleep some more! Anna is ambivalent about that particular milestone.
Note that I haven’t even mentioned Owen, and how he’s been doing or acting. Just assume that through all the above visuals you’ve created for my words, that there’s a two year old toddler running around doing toddler things, which I will address later.
Friday morning, Anna had her thirty-nine week appointment. Not much happening in the dilation department, but some effacement. She had her membranes stripped. I promise you I don’t know anything about what any of that means, other than that the doctor said she could give birth today, or that she could give birth in two weeks. I guess you know what happened.
She had some contractions on Friday, but nothing for us to be really alarmed about. There was no pattern or consistency to them. We had dinner with friends, and went to bed.
Around 11pm, Anna had more contractions, this time with a bit more frequency, but not a lot going on otherwise. She noted that when she stood up, the contractions were pretty close together. But when she laid down, they spread out considerably.
After about 12:30 on Saturday morning, we decided to go ahead and time the contractions. One minute, forty five seconds. Um, we better go!
And go we do. With a quickness. In short, we got to the hospital around 1:35 in the morning. The funny thing about planning is that – even though we had packed and had a plan and everything, it still took us a considerable amount of time to get out of the house. We had to wait for someone to come watch Owen. We had to make sure we had everything, and of course we didn’t.
Anyway, we got there at 1:35 in the morning. Last time, the process required us to go to triage and be checked for dilation and such. This time, we got to triage … and there was nobody there despite repeated cries of pain from Anna and me testing the constructed limits of the bell you ring for help. I’d guess we waited for about ten minutes, but it’s hard to gauge that kind of time passage given the situation we were in. The nurse at triage just gave one look at Anna and said “oh yeah, we need to get you up there pronto.”
She was admitted at about 1:59 AM and was dilated at seven cm. Everybody on any surrounding floor within a 100 yard radius knew that Anna wanted an epidural. By about 2:05 AM they had her strapped in and hooked to monitoring equipment while Anna howled in pain and crushed my hand. At about 2:00 AM, she was at eight cm. Still no epidural. At about 2:10 AM she felt like she had to push, and the nurse said “OK, go ahead and push!” and also “it’s too late for an epidural.” Anna responded something loudly with a paraphrased “Gee, that’s too bad” and then almost bit my hand off. At 2:15 AM and with only four pushes, Lily bloomed.
As the husband and father, time kind of stopped for me at that moment. I had an exhausted, hurting, and excited wife. I had a healthy, shrieking baby girl. And there was a lot, lot, lot of blood. The adrenaline kind of disappeared, or possibly peaked past what I could take at that point, and I almost passed out. The last thing you want to be doing when you have a new tiny baby that you’re excited to meet, and a wife who needs counseling, reassurance and praise, is to be sitting down because you’re trying not to faint.
Anna never felt her water break, but apparently it had broken at some point. Our best theory is that it happened when she sat down to pee and had one of those timing issues that you read about in medical dramas but never actually seems to happen to real people. Also, it apparently ruptured in such a way that some of the amniotic sac adhered to the inside of her uterus. I am told that during normal delivery, the uterus shrinks after birth to minimize the risk of bleeding. Something about the quickness of the labor and the remnants of the amniotic sac kept Anna’s uterus from shrinking, and also from properly expelling the placenta. This means, in short, that there was a lot of blood.
The fix required them to scrape the offending matter from the inside of her uterus with an unceremonious tool that looked like a peeler. This, according to Anna, hurt much worse than the actual delivery – and is even more horrible when you’ve got a screaming, brand new baby newborn who needs her mama.
Factor on top of that – passing out aside – there is literally nothing I can do, to help my wife or daughter.
Once the bleeding got under control a bit, things streamlined into something I would say is more normal for the delivery process. Anna is fine, Lily is fine.
The post-game report included the instruction from our doctor that we’d probably have to stay in the hospital for forty-eight hours, because they didn’t have a chance to apply the necessary antibiotics to Anna before delivery. They didn’t have time to do a lot of things!
I’m biased, but because Lily is probably the perfect baby and Anna was designed for baby making, we got discharged early and have been home since about four o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, and are desperately trying to find a new “normal”.
Owen has finally acknowledged Lily. I think he’s slowly starting to realize that the baby is here to stay, and not just visiting. He’s getting more curious and assertive with her, and now really wants to touch her. This normally wouldn’t be a problem except that he’s got a cold, and we’d really like to avoid Lily getting this cold. As many of you are aware, it is a delicate dance.
My girls.
This is the best family photo we have right now:
Anna found out she has a new superpower.
Trouble is, it can only be activated at very certain times.
See, when Owen starts to scream or cry or fuss, her boobs leak. TAKE THAT, CRIME.
So we decided on the 2011 Toyota Sienna. Check out this link for an idea of how it is to drive.
We opened up an equity line of credit with our credit union in order to buy the van. This gives us price negotiation flexibility, and the rate was actually lower than the car loan rates we had available to us. Plus, we can write off the interest!
On Wednesday I e-mailed a few dealers in the area to ask a few questions and let them know we were interested, thus opening up the negotiation process. I e-mailed three different internet sales reps at three different dealerships. I have received zero replies. I guess they don’t want to make the sale?
I was reading this post on a food blog – this gal bought a seven pound chicken roasted it, and stretched the leftovers for seventeen meals.
The meal total included leftovers for lunch, which is neat to consider. Leftovers are very important in our house. Twenty-six dollars for a work week’s worth of food is not too shabby, and makes my … thrifty … heart grow three sizes.
But, we could never do that, other than for the express purpose of saving cash – and even then, it wouldn’t be very fun. I love me some lean-protein chicken, but I don’t think I could eat chicken five days in a row. It wouldn’t be enjoyable, especially because around day four I’d start actively wondering if I was going to die if I ate the chicken. I know I probably wouldn’t die? But I would think that I could die, and that seems to be enough to give my intestines the go-ahead to speed up the process of expelling used food.
What I have been trying to do lately is to eat more vegetables, and we have been going vegetarian once or thrice a week. It’s a bit less expensive, and honestly, a lot more healthy so long as we get some sort of protein, giggity.
Tofu gets a bad rap, but if you prepare it correctly, it’s great. Owen loves it!
Doesn’t that look delicious? There are two reasons I like tofu, and Anna tolerates it. On normal weekday evenings, quickly put together dinners are the best. A tofu stir fry takes approximately ten minutes to prepare, if you don’t count the arduous process of cooking rice in the active preparation, and the pre-prep time of pressing the tofu. Bonus – it is flavorful, healthy, and inexpensive! One pound of extra-firm tofu costs us a single George Washington.
Normally we use a store bought stir-fry sauce. We used to use the Iron Chef sauces for ironic and tastiness purposes, but apparently those are difficult to find at our local grocer these days.
The only thing you would need to know is that, ahead of time, you need to press the tofu. After that, it’s a simple stir fry. Cut up a veggie or two, heat up some oil, and stir fry everything. Then, add some sauce. Add to rice. Win.
On tofu nights, we’re happily fed and on to watching Lost or Chuck. Or more correctly, Anna is watching it, and I’m bitching about it. Or, even more correctly, Anna is watching it, and I’m half watching it while playing Final Fantasy (again) on my iPod Touch, yet still bitching about it.
