Question of the day

You may know that we have a dog. Not a very smart dog, but we have a dog. During the summer we are semi good at cleaning up the back yard once a week or so. However, in the winter, not so much. There are several reasons behind this

1. It is cold out there, I don't want to go out there to do it.

2. It is cold out there, I don't want to be out there anyway so why does it matter if there is poop all over.

3. It snows and it covers up the poop.

4. It is cold out there, and the poop freezes to the ground

Anyway, I went out to pick up the yard because even the dog was giving me looks like, "Um, this is gross I have no where to walk." So out I go with a shopping bag and a garden shovel. I'm out there and I make a realization and one of my wonderful questions pops into my head. The realization: Rabbits poop A LOT!!!! Question: If rabbits eat so much then why couldn't they poop like dogs? They need bigger poops instead of the little things they create. I also found in the back yard:

Lots of dog poop

2 pieces of rabbit poop for every piece of dog poop

A dead pigeon

snow

And the dog. Who knew she was out there.

Another thing I realized today, My mom reads about 50 different blogs. Never knew.

Sleep deprived

I feel that I need to get this down before I forget it completely. As I look back at how far our little family has come in the last 7 months I realize there were things, that if I was blogging at the time, needed to be blogged about.

About 6 months ago or maybe a little bit more, there were many nights that I was very sleep deprived. I spent most of my time trying to figure out when I fed Elijah last, how long have been feeding him, and when would be the next time he needed to be fed. Even when I was trying to sleep. However, one night I got stuck between being awake and being asleep, I started going through the motions in my head of when I was feeding Elijah, but I was still sleeping. I then started having a vivid delusion of Rescue sleeping in Elijah's bassinet.

This is when I started talking in my sleep. I felt that I was holding Elijah and I needed to put him back in his bassinet, but the dog was there. I woke up BJ and told him that he needed to get Rescue out of the bassinet. He questioned me about what I wanted him to do and i told him again, "get Rescue out of the bassinet." He actually got up, walked over to the bassinet, passing the dog at the end of the bed, looked in and said, Elijah's in the bassinet. That's when it hit him that I was talking in my sleep. At first he was angry that I woke him up and got him out of bed, but then he thought it was funny.

Ah, wonderful sleep deprived moments in life. Very glad the majority of those days are gone and if I get up now in the middle of the night it is only for 15 min. However, over the past two weeks I have only gotten up 4 or 5 nights out of 14. Looks like I'm getting closer to getting a full nights sleep.

How being an SLP saved my parenting butt today.

I have been working as an SLP for the past 3 and a half years. In those years I have used fractions of what I learned in school and most of what I do has been acquired over the last few years by trial and error. However, since being a parent I have begun to apply more of my schooling to my child than any one of my clients. Today was one of those days and it really saved me from having a really, really crabby baby.

Today I went to visit an old collage friend, who recently had a baby. Since I still feel as though I am a new mom and I still feel it would be so helpful to have someone who was recently in my shoes to answer all my questions, I wanted to be that person for someone else. So I packed up the little man, picked up lunch and headed over to give adult interaction to a new mommy. While we were there Elijah had lunch, a nap and was ready for his afternoon bottle. That's when I realized we were going to have a problem. In the container that we had Elijah's formula there was some oatmeal left over from sometime previously. Well Oatmeal makes things thicker, no matter how much liquid you add to it. After Elijah sat and sucked on the bottle for about 15 minutes with nothing coming out I knew the nipple was to small for the thickness of the liquid. Well I was in big trouble. I didn't have more formula, and I didn't have bigger nipples for the bottle so I had to make a choice. Do I pack up the kid and race home to get new formula with no oatmeal in it, or do I have him drink out of an open cup.

**DUN DU DA** SLP to the rescue! I took some of Keri's engineering abilities, and made my Subway cup into a nosie cup with a nice pair of scissors. That's when my SLP instincts took over. I poured in the formula on ounce at a time, gave moderate level support to his lower lip, and my little boy drank 6 or 7 ounces out of an open cup. Overall he probably only lost about .5 oz due to me getting carried a way and dumping it all down his face.

I feel so proud, one as a mom and two as an SLP that taught another child how to drink from an open cup. I rock!

Outpatient surgery for the little guy

Today was Elijah's surgery, I will give you a run down of how our day went from the time we woke up until now. I woke up at 4:30 to get ready for the day, I knew it was going to be a long one and I wanted to make sure I wasn't late. I always hated those people who were late for their scheduled appointments when I worked at the hospital. So BJ and I were both ready by about 5:15 and then got the dog ready as well as packed everything that we thought we would need for the day at the hospital. We got Elijah up around 5:30 and put him right into his car seat. He was very confused with us and still very sleepy. We used our new Gamin to get us to the hospital even though I could have probably gotten us there half asleep and with my eyes closed. After a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee and Breakfast we made it to the hospital with plenty of time to spare. We checked in and by this time Elijah had woken back up from his nap in the car and was very fascinated with where we were. We were called back for the Pre-Op stuff around 7:00 and that is when the fun began.

Elijah had to put on the hospital pajamas which were just the cutest things ever and we met with all the nurses, doctors that would be in the operating room with Elijah. Then we got to sit and wait for a while while everything got ready.

I do have to say that Little E looked even littler in the giant bed they had.

We eventually went through all the toys I brought for Elijah and we passed our time by watching all of the nurses, doctors and registration people walking around outside our door. That was much more interesting. Plus we were now getting close to 7:30 and Elijah usually takes a nap about 2 hours after he wakes up so he was getting sleepy.

Around 7:30 they came and got Elijah and took him back to surgery and BJ and I went back out to the waiting area. I have to say that that was the hardest part of the whole day, not being with him. I knew BJ and I would have a hard time passing the time so I had brought a deck of cards to play WAR with. Mindless game that could take a very long time to play. After about 45-60 minutes they came to take us back to meet with the surgeon and have him tell us how the surgery went and how to take care of our little man when he went home. Then they put us in a recovery room to wait for him. This was the second hardest part of the day. I knew he was out of surgery but I could not yet see him. Then they finally brought him back in a giant metal crib with little wires and tubes everywhere.

Right when he got to the room he got very confused and really got mad at all the people and started to cry, but they told us we could get him and hold him. That made everything better.

We then gave Elijah his first food of the day around 8:30-9 with his last feeding at 7:30 the night before. He had the tightest death grip on the bottle that I have ever seen. He did not want to let that thing go. He was also really sleepy so he basically slept through his entire feeding.

Then he slowly started to wake up more and more and become himself. But all day I could tell that he was off. He slept a lot today and for real long periods of time too. Dressing his new and improved bottom is fairly easy but I say that without having to clean up a poopy wound yet. Let's see how tomorrow goes before I say that it is easy to care for. Doc says that the whole they created to remove the hole that was there should take about 3-4 weeks to close up. That is a real long time to care for a wound on a bottom of a little poopy, wiggly, baby.

Overall, the day went well and I was very proud of myself for not crying. I think it helped too that this was a butt and there are no major important organs anywhere near where the surgery was taking place. Anything like this on the belly, chest, neck or face I would have been a horrible wreak. Thank you to all who prayed for us today it helped us get through the day. Tomorrow BJ goes back to work and I will be with baby to make sure he is all good.

Surgery

Tomorrow is Elijah's surgery. Initially when I found out Elijah needed surgery, I took it real well. It was presented to me in a very matter of fact way with just a shrug and a "this is very routine." Then we met with the surgeon and he knew what he was doing, and very confident but not overly cocky. I was fine when he told us Elijah needed surgery. Then the Holiday's came and we put off scheduling his surgery until after the new year. Even scheduling it I was fine. It wasn't until today at 12:20 that it hit me. The pre-op nurse called to ask all the pre-op questions that I had practiced and warned patients about for years when I worked on the other side of the phone. I was told where to park, and answered questions that part of me felt were really funny, and part of me was really sad that I was answering if my child had any psychological disorders so he could have surgery. I know that Elijah will be just fine. I know that he won't remember anything. I know that the pain from his recovery he won't remember. But I feel... I guess I feel like a mom. I just want to hold him his whole surgery, I don't want to be rooms away. However, by the time most of you will be reading this we will probably be on our way home hanging with a very crabby baby who is still trying to pop 3 of his 4 teeth. I'll let you know how everything went tomorrow night.

On another note this was my fortune tonight: One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory. Guess that means I should be happy for the rest of my life because I have a horrible memory.

Video

Alright, I finally took some video of Elijah crawling. Now the true test is to see if I can up load it to the blog. If there is a video clip attached to this blog then you know if worked, if there is only cute pictures of my little guy then you are just going to have to deal with that. UPDATE: one video uploaded so we are going to be daring and try a second one.

So here is the story of how Elijah learned how to crawl. Since Christmas he has been pushing up on his hands and knees as well as doing some awesome scooting backwards. Then about a week before he turned 7 months, he actually made some forward movement. But in true Elijah fashion that was it for a while. It's kind of like his babbling. On New Years Day he just started talking up a storm, then that was it for like several weeks. Then kaboom! Babbling again. So as the week went on and there was no news from daycare that he crawled again I was thinking we weren't going to see the crawling for several more weeks. I then started to chalk the lack of crawling to the fact that he is breaking all of his baby teeth at the same time. But then on Friday we headed over to the neighbors/Godparents house and sure enough, he saw dog toys and off he went. We figured out that in order to get Elijah to really move we have to give him something that he shouldn't have to work for. The more he isn't supposed to have it the faster he goes for it. Since that dog toy crawl he has been unstoppable. On one hand it is so great, on the other, I have already caught him playing in the dogs water bowl 2 times. We are in so much trouble.

But her are some cute pictures of Elijah oh his 7 month birthday and 7 months and 1 day. and then today. Daddy and baby watching some Saturday TV. Elijah trying to cheer on the Vikings to win!!

Look at me I have a new tent!! Rescue Come play with me!

Peak I see you!

Just for the Record

Just in case I run of time later... ELIJAH IS CRAWLING!!! Yeah that's right! Oh and today is his 7 month birthday. I have multiple witnesses to this wonderful event so once we get home I'll try to get a video of it for you all to see.

Addictions

Addictions are bad, but lets be honest, we all have them. If you look back over the course of your life you probably notice that you probably had addictions that you have now overcome. Here are a list of some of my current addictions, and past addictions and what caused them to go away.

Past addictions:

• Diet Mountain Dew (stopped because pregnant people shouldn't drink it.)
• Sleep (baby fixed that)
• Doritos (college didn't have vending machines)
• Butterfingers (again no vending machines in college)
• AIM (Facebook)
• Snood (unknown new computer maybe)
• Sims (Snood)
• Facebook (going back to work and not pumping every 3 hours)
• Picross (going back to work and getting gamers thumb)

Current addictions:

• Elijah!
• Disney movies
• TV
• Checking E-mail
• Shaving

Parenting Dilema

The other night I finally had enough. I needed to pluck my eyebrows. I am real sure that the last time I attacked my hairy eyebrows was about 2 weeks before Elijah was born. And even then I didn't even do it, I had them threaded by someone. Now if anyone knows me then they should understand why I shouldn't go more than 7 months between eyebrow trims. For those of you who don't know me let me explain.

The majority of my family history is of European descent and not the cute Swedish European either. Oh no no, the dark haired, lots of hair Europeans. In fact, I get a little envious of people when they say, "I haven't shaved for ages" and you can't see a hair on their leg. I feel like my legs get a 5 o'clock shadow. That's why I wear pants in the summer!

Anyway, I went 7 months without tending to my furry caterpillars on my face. I had finally had it and needed to take care of them. I sat down the other night with the tweezers and the magnified mirror and went at them. It was going good, after the first few moments of utter pain your eyebrow just goes numb. Finally I finished the first eye, then the issue. Elijah woke up and started to cry. BJ was in the shower getting ready for work so i was the only one left to tend to the baby. But I only had one eye done, and I knew if I stopped I would be to sleepy to finish the other side and I can't go to work with just one eye done. I really buckled down and tuned out the baby. I think I started getting sloppy because I kept asking BJ if they looked the same and he kept telling me no. And I kept hearing the baby crying in the background. Eventually I finished and they look, okay. But what can you expect when you have big and bushy eyebrows.

Moral of the story, my eyebrows look better now than they did a week ago, but they aren't Hollywood perfect due to my European background.

Come Out Come Out Where Ever You Arn't

So picking up Elijah from daycare Carissa said, "he is breaking teeth." About time kid!! After poking around in his mouth for a bit there, I then drag him home and poke some more. We figured out that the best way to see into his mouth is to make him laugh. Oh and sure enough, we are breaking teeth. Yes teeth, not tooth. For all of you who don't spend your day working with regular and irregular plurals or the phoneme "th," teeth is the plural for one tooth. And go figure I was just saying to my co-workers, now that all the Tylenol in the world is being recalled, Elijah is going to break 4 teeth. Okay so it is not all 4 teeth, right now it is just 2, but still. Lots of sniffing of the Tylenol though. I refuse to throw out perfectly good pain killers when they don't smell bad. As soon as the teeth come out I will get some pictures of them.

Hubby Hi-Jacking

It is time for me, BJ, to hi-jack the blog again!!! As you all may know, I have been working 3rd shift for the last week. Well we are now two days into the second week and I am really looking forward to being back on the day shift. I will admit that it has not really been that bad as far as my sleep goes. My body is a little sore, but my mind on the other hand is in need of some normalcy.


Although I definitely do not miss driving without traffic and the weight that I have lost. I do have a list of things that I do miss. I miss eating breakfast for breakfast and dinner for dinner. I miss seeing Elijah both in the morning and evening. I miss the sun during the day, even if I can't really see it but through the skylights in the ceiling of the plant. And the thing in which I miss the most is sleeping in the same bed, at the same time, as Kelly.


I am looking forward to going back to a normal day shift and bring my mind back to ease.

Letter to Elijah

Dear Elijah,

Last month (December) I brought you to Michigan and you decided to show us a new trick. At that time I made a prediction (okay a bet) with your grandma that you would be crawling by your 7 month birthday. Since then you have continued to learn to scoot backwards, and are getting really good at pushing up on your hands and knees. The other night you even did the first army crawl forward about 5 inches, followed by a push up onto your hands and knees taking one "step forward." Now it was all looking good for me, you still had about a week to go to complete your crawling for me to win my, uh... prediction. However, today's report from daycare was that all you wanted to do was lay around and seemed a bit lethargic. Now kid, how am I supposed to win my bet, I mean prediction, if you don't practice during the day. So Elijah, get back on that crawling band wagon and start moving. It's to early in your life for me to be wrong and your grandma to be right. So, GET TO IT!!!!

Love your Mommy

200th Post

Today is this blogs 200th post. Yeah, I know, I'm awesome. For this post I'm going to make a list of some things that have been stuck in my head lately.

• We (and really I mean BJ) killed another mouse in the garage.
• I want to know what people said in the olden days (before cars and stuff) said when they pushed their babies nose? Couldn't say beep beep, when horns don't exist.
• So if you work 3rd shift (12 am -8 am) and you have a cold and need to take medicine, do you then take DyQuil at night and NyQuil during the day?
• Now that I have stopped being a cow, what size are my boobs going to be?
• Why do I get so cold at night?
• Found out the dog is scared of the smoke detector.
• I really miss having BJ in bed with me at night. I can't sleep anymore.
• I'm Freezing right now.
• I don't want to go to the dentist tomorrow.
• Still cold.
• How many mice are calling our garage home?
• Guess the rodent repliers didn't work in the garage.
• As I am getting excited for the Winter Olympics, realize that almost all of my clients are to young to remember the last winter Olympics.
• I'm old
• I'm still cold.
• I'm going to bed.

That was just a short list and window into my head in an average minute.

Look I have a new trick!

Elijah has figured out a new trick which is absolutely fabulous, especially when he pairs it with another new trick. The tricks. Blowing raspberries and eating. What do you get? A really big mess. Especially when Elijah then turns his head to blow the raspberries to the side of his highchair then turn his head back so all the food he just spit on the side of the highchair gets in his hair and ear. Its awesome! But it makes for some really cute pictures.

Change

I don't like change. Change is difficult, however, I know that the majority of time, I will not be able to go very long with out a little bit of change. The biggest change in our lives lately (other than the baby) has been BJ's job. He has gone from a 40 hr work week behind a desk, to no job at all, to 50+ hr work week doing promotions at all hours of the day and week, to 45+ hours doing manual labor for food processing plant. In a very short amount of time BJ has been able to dip his fingers in many different areas of "work" and has been able to figure out where he feels happiest. In the end he has decided, and I agree, that he feels the best, both emotionally and physically, in hard labor. Looking back on BJ's jobs over the past 10 years this is true. Other than some technical issues his favorite job was working as a packer/mover for a moving company. Now that he is back in a job where he has physical work to complete he is happy again, most of the time. Starting in about 25 hours from when I am writing this post, BJ will be heading off to work the 3rd shift. Something BJ has never done before, leaving me here with the baby. BJ was told that this is only temporary but things change and I get worried that the time I used to spend with my husband are now gone. For it is early on a Saturday night and when the baby was being put to bed so was my husband. Tomorrow, to get ready for the new work times, BJ will be spending most of the early morning cleaning and hanging around the house until we are off to church, then coming home to sleep as much as possible. I just keep hoping that the sacrifices our new small family is making for this new job will be worth while in the long run. If not, it is back to the drawing board for more change. Just keep us in your prays that eventually we will be back to a routine as a family and happy.

What we found in BJ's car

This all started months ago when BJ made me clean out my car because he said it was gross. So I did. Then months went by and my car has slowly started to collect stuff again. Then a week or so before Christmas we went out shopping and put Elijah's stroller in the trunk. I then took the stroller with me to Michigan and when I went to use it realized that the toy that was attached to the stroller was all ripped up, odd. I then came home and told BJ about it. I just figured it was in our garage and a mouse got in and nibbled away at it. Well the other day BJ realized that there was a possibility of a mouse living in his car. Yes, that's right a wild field mouse living in his car. Now in all my life I will never say that I am super clean or organized but in all fairness I have never had a living rodent in my car. So there BJ, no more comments about my car! To get rid of BJ's new furry friend he bought some traps and set one in his car and one in the garage last night. Today, 2 mice. One in each trap! Success!! BJ then emptied the traps in the middle of the driveway and they waited for the snowplow to bury them.

On another note here is my son making a funny face trying to eat his daddies glass.

Static Electricity

So being up in the middle of the night a lot when it is completely dark has made me realize some things about life. One of the things I have realized is that static electricity is fun to watch. Getting in and out of bed at night during the night time feedings creates some massive static in the comforter. It looks like little lighting bugs running through the bed. What is really fun is to rub the sheets together then touch the dog. Creates a large flash and the dog doesn't even wake up. Then when I was in Michigan at the hotel the little lighting bugs followed me there. Maybe it is the lack of sleep, maybe it is just the way I function but I like the little lighting bolts that run through my bed.

Random thoughts

First of all, there is nothing good on TV tonight. However, as I was flipping through the TV guide on cable I came across a NEW (2010): It looked so weird, I couldn't even watch the show. That and it was probably something about killer bugs or something. Not to sure.

Second: I have a confession to make, I made a New Years Resolution. I don't know if that is something that I should be proud about or if I should even count it as a resolution. More or less it is a start date with a time limit to when I want new behaviors to have replaced old. Anyway, I have decided that 2010 I will be using to get my eating habits back in check. After being pregnant and breast feeding I haven't really given my food a second thought. I need to get back in that habit since I will soon be done breast feeding and I don't think my metabolism will keep up with the way I am currently eating.

Third: Elijah is getting good at moving backwards. I don't know if he did it intentionally or not last night but he managed to scoot backwards to the kitchen table, under one chair, turn 90 degrees, move over a chair, turn 90 degrees again and out the other side of the table. Personally, I thought it was real impressive only getting stuck on one chair leg at the end.

Fourth: I have also recently decided that I deserve a long weekend away where it is warm with out my husband and baby. Unfortunately, my husband doesn't quite understand why I deserve the break or why he isn't aloud to come. Here is my rational for all this. First I spent about 3 months carrying a very large baby inside my body, followed by a natural birth. I then spent my 3 months of summer vacation inside because I was in to much pain and you can't really take an infant out into the sun. I have then also been the primary parent to get up in the middle of the night for the last 5 months tending to baby at 3 am at which time BJ sleeps right though this and has thought the baby doesn't get up anymore. BJ has also gone off to Minnesota for a football game leaving me here with baby, and has had a long weekend at home while I played single mother and got no sleep. Plus he is going off on a long weekend with the church kids to go skiing in about 2 or three weeks. If we only had the cash to do this I would be away for the weekend. I also don't think BJ knows exactly how much energy it takes to get up every night 1-3 times to tend to the child, dress him and get him ready for the day then at night plan his meals, bathe and get him ready for bed as well as getting him to sleep. It has been over 6 months since Elijah came to live with us and even though BJ is a wonderful dad, I have the majority of the responsibilities of taking care of the baby and a weekend away some where warm by a pool would be fantastic. Oh well like I said, the cash isn't there so I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Happy New Year

Today was our first day of 2010. Let's just stop and discuss how difficult it is to write that. 2010, not 20010, and 10 just feels weird for me. Anyway, last day of 2009 both BJ and I put in a full day at work then we went out to dinner with the neighbors and spent the evening at their house. After midnight we packed up our belongings and headed home to get into bed promptly by 12:15. Today we woke up realized the house was freezing and headed over to the neighbors for breakfast. After breakfast we headed home to clean the house. Wahoo what a day. Then we headed out to the mall to exchange the purse for one with more pockets and get Elijah's wardrobe for next winter. Good day.

Elijah has decided that since he woke up he has begun to babble. We have mamama, nanana and some dadada. And he will also begin crawling within a month. Great!

Happy New Year to you.