Big wheel keep on turnin’ … kind of.

Pampers diapers have a rewards system, where each package of diapers has a code. You enter the code at their website, and they credit your account. We just recently hit the upper ceiling of what you can carry as a balance. In two years of diapers, we received enough points to get a $80 big wheel for “free” – or if you’re keeping score at home … two boxes of diapers.

What sucks is that OVL is very far away from being able to ride this bad boy. The box says three to seven years of age – but I figured as a tall two-year old, he’d be able to make it work. Instead, it appears you have to be a giant three-year old to make it work. His legs are still a good 8″ from the pedals, but this doesn’t stop him from kicking it around the room.

It was a good long weekend. It makes me appreciate the upcoming two-week vacation just that much more.

This doesn’t happen often enough:

I think yesterday was a pretty nice mother’s day, other than Anna wasn’t feeling particularly well.

We had nice weather so we spent a lot of time outside in the afternoon on the back deck watching Owen play on the big rocks, in the dirt, in his water table, in the dirt again, in the mud, back on the rocks, digging for worms, etcetera. Lily fussed the entire time. She may not like the outdoors yet.

Garden planning started this past weekend, too. This year’s garden was brought to us almost exclusively by Groupon. The nursery we go to for plants had a $25 for $50 Groupon, and our local Ace Hardware had a $10 for $20 Groupon. I was able to get plants, some heavy-duty tomato cages, and some soil from the nursery, and then all compost and other stuff from Ace. Was kind of neat. With the “extra” money I was able to buy a ton more compost and fertilizer. The past few years I’ve kind of skimped on those things – and while I can’t say that’s the reason our garden hasn’t been as successful the past two years, I’m sure it contributed.

This year we are planting two varieties of cherry tomatoes. Our cherry tomatoes always do very well, but starting last year we seem to have developed a serious pest problem. Somebody seems to be toddling around in the garden pulling off all the cherry tomatoes and eating them. I cut back on bigger variety tomatoes because Colorado has a hard time staying warm enough long enough for bigger tomatoes. We also have squash, zucchini, broccoli, basil, lavender (Anna’s), mint, carrots, beets, and spinach.

Everything is about eggs the past few days. More eggs. Eggs, please. Find eggs.

And Lily? Here she is with Auntie Jen. She didn’t like the hat either. For reference:

Well… almost.

For the record, this is the face she makes when pooping:

Everybody’s gone. No grandparents, no aunts, no uncles. That gives me some time to catch up on the interblog.

She’s filling out nicely.

We’ll see how he does with no distraction and an actual deficit of attention. He puts on these glasses and runs around yelling “COOL DUDE”.

Chop-chop is smitten.

Owen and Uncle Matt got along swimmingly. Owen was very sad to see him go.

Initially, I didn’t want this stupid lamb swing. I guess you can say it’s paid off.

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:

• Nurse Lily for ten minutes on each boob, and afterwards pump until supply was exhausted.
• Supplement any pumped milk with formula to make up 2oz total of fluid, and serve to Miss Lily in a bottle.

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.