headaches and NO INJURIES

First off, and most important I would say, we did not manage to injure Jack yesterday. Of course, he was mostly strapped into his carseat while we ran various errands. This is a great way to prevent him from bashing his head or mouth into sharp things but it makes him a bit unhappy.

Got our storage unit rented. This is great because we got a climate controlled unit for less than a non-climate controlled unit. The woman was trying to tell us that this is because of the inconvenience of having to go into an additional building. This didn't make much sense, as climate controlled requires electrical costs to be covered, but whatever.

We also got new tires for Todd's car. These were much needed as the last time he got tires was when we first moved to MA, about 5 years ago. He also splurged and bought new gaming headphones so that he doesn't have to play his video games on silent anymore. However, I foresee this being a problem when I go to bed and he agrees to watch baby at night. We shall see how this works out. In return for agreeing to let him get these incredibly expensive headphones, he agreed that I can get an iPhone in March. YAY!

This week has been horribly stressful. I'm pretty sure I've been clenching my teeth the last few nights, which sucks because I got a bad tension headache. It started in my neck, jaw and ears and eventually worked its way up my head. It didn't progress into a full on migraine and I was able to sleep it off. However, it sucked because I missed going bowling with Brandon and Amy without babies. We will have to reschedule.

School is going okay, even bordering on good sometimes. I miss Jack terribly while I'm there and I don't know if I will ever get past my stage fright in my speech class despite my teacher's assurances that everyone eventually does. I am confident that I will be able to lord authority over 6 and 7 year olds without a problem, but my peers are a completely different matter. It's intimidating up there and I'm in a relatively small and supportive class. I just don't know how to get past the fact that people are looking at me and judging me. I don't want to say much negative here, but there is one person in my class that I cannot stand. The way this person presents themselves is ridiculous. Argumentative when given feedback and then corrects others for the same mistakes s/he makes. It's not very productive and I wish this person would simply keep his or her own opinions to themselves. However, despite this person, my classes are going well.

Our new ottoman should be shipping soon. I'm very excited for this. It's hugeness will be overwhelming for a while, but it's not a permanent fixture. As soon as Jack is able to walk without constantly falling over, the big coffee table will come back. I love it too much to get rid of it.

Jack's first ER trip

I realize that I probably freaked a bunch of people out after I posted "survived our first ER trip with a clean bill of health. Jack does not have a concussion and my blood pressure is back to normal. Whew." I apologize. 


There is a disclaimer to this story: Before you read this and assume that I am a hysterical first time mom, it's important to note that I rarely make a big deal about my son bonking his head. He does this on a very regular basis and I would say probably 4/7 days of the week has a bruise on his forehead from knocking it into something. I don't freak out when he bonks and he very rarely has a reaction to a bonk for more than a few seconds.


Here's what happened:


Brandon, Amy and Calvin all contracted the flu (or possibly some other virus), so I stayed home from school to tend Jack to hopefully avoid the spread of infection. Also, one of my classes was canceled, so it's hard to justify driving an hour for one class. Anyway, I was watching Jack and we were going about our usual day. Jack has been trying to walk hands free back and forth between the couch and the coffee table and most days he does fine. He's fallen head first into the table quite a few times and usually a kiss and a snuggle are good enough for him. 

Jack fell backwards onto the bottom of the coffee table (it has a shelf there) and also somehow managed to roll into the leg. He ended up with a giant bump on the back of his head, his ear split open and the pressure from his ear hitting his head left a little ear shaped bruise on the side of his noggin. He screamed bloody murder and I calmed him down and then saw the blood from his ear. This scared me more than the actual bonk did because my baby has never bled before. 


I called a bunch of people to see what I should watch for, including the doctor-who also said that cognitive tests on babies are unreliable and she'd end up sending me to the ER-all who said to keep an eye on him. He happily went back to playing and I decided to clear the coffee table off to move it. As I'm in the process of doing so, Jack stumbled and hit THE EXACT SAME SPOT again. This time, he didn't really cry; just a long sort of low, whiny wail. No tears and he kind of just sat there afterwards. Then he fell over while just sitting up and THEN HE TRIED TO GO TO SLEEP--keep in mind this was around 3pm, which is no where near when he takes naps. This scared the bejeezus out of me as I didn't know exactly how long to wait to let him sleep. Both incidents were about 20 minutes apart from one another and this was maybe 5-10 minutes after he hit his head the second time. I was having trouble waking him up so I called Todd to meet me at the ER.


I knocked on a couple of neighbors doors and no one was home. I was all set to drive myself and my now sleeping child to the hospital when one of my neighbors walked in the building. I asked her to drive us and she promptly did so. Jack was lethargic and unresponsive on the way to the hospital. I couldn't keep him awake. I was tickling him, blowing in his face and even smacking his little cheeks (not hard, just enough to kind of jiggle him) and by the time we got to the actual ER, he was out. He wasn't waking up when I pulled him from his carrier and when the triage nurses were examining him, he kept nodding off. This is not typical Jack behavior in a new environment. I have one of the perkiest, curious babies I've ever seen and this was unusual for him.


They triaged us right away and got us in for a CT scan. While we were in the hallway waiting for the scan, Jack FINALLY started to wake up and was alert enough to smile at me. I knew he was okay at that point but went ahead with the scan anyway just to be sure. 


Todd arrived before we got the results and by that time, Jack was flirting with a nurse and eating graham crackers and drinking some juice. He was happy to see his daddy and I was happy that he was finally awake. Other than one nurse telling my son how crazy I was and that I was overreacting, everyone was calm and very kind to me. 


THIS IS NOT THE END. 


Today, I was getting him ready to go look for new storage ottomans with trays (to get rid of the offending coffee table) I was in his closet to grab a jacket. I turned around for a few seconds and he smacked his mouth into the bottom drawer of his dresser. It bled. A lot. Mouth wounds tend to do this. He screamed and I had a brief meltdown about being a horrible mother that continuously puts her baby in harm's way. He was fine after a few seconds and even took a nap afterwards. This was his normal naptime and other than a brief moment where I thought he may have hit his eye, there was no thought of taking him to the ER.

I'm happy to say that Jack is perfectly fine. Here's a photo of his two new teeth for you all to enjoy. Todd is a wonderful photographer and chopped the top of his head off :) I'm not entirely sure if the dark spot between his teeth is where he hit or if he hit on his bottom gum. Maybe both; who knows?

Naptime and why you should NEVER EVER wake a sleeping baby

This is a rant. This is me letting off steam so that I don't kill my floudering, trying-to-be helpful husband. Be warned: THERE IS NO BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT OR GIVING ANYONE A BREAK. IF YOU WAKE MY BABY I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO GO POSTAL ON YOUR ASS BECAUSE I AM THE ONE THAT DEALS WITH THE AFTERMATH.

My child has JUST gotten into a naptime routine. We've had the bedtime thing narrowed down to within an hour since he was about a month old or so, but naptime has just sprouted up over the last couple of weeks. Jack wakes up between 8 and 9. Sometimes, we sleep until 10 or 10:30 but those days seem to be going the way of the buffalo. He eats breakfast around 10ish (because I still nurse him at least once during the night and right after he wakes up for the day) and then he will play for about 1/2 an hour before he goes down for his first nap-while I'm home, we snuggle and he nurses. 

Since he was born, Jack had a habit of taking 20-40 minute naps. A couple of weeks ago, he started taking 90 min-2 hour naps. So, I normally get a solid hour of baby free time in the morning. Then, between about 2-4:30, we have snacks, I've been introducing lunch and we play. Around 4, we call the grandmas and around 4:30 he starts to get cranky and is ready for his evening nap. He will sometimes sleep upwards of 2.5 hours at this time. He goes down around 5 and will sleep until about 6:30-7:30 (usually 6:30, he wakes up around the time Todd gets home from work). Todd feeds him dinner and then we all enjoy the evening together. If we bathe him at night, his bath is usually around 9 and then we try to get him in bed before 10. We no longer do bedtime stories because Jack gets too distracted with another person in the room.

Today, someone called 20 minutes after Jack went down for his evening nap. This was after the message I left said explicitly to call back after 7:30. The message was never received and the offender was forgiven. This person knows Jack's schedule and should have known better than to call me. A fact that I should not have to clarify, but I feel for the sake of not sounding too much of a nagging bitch that I should include it. Putting the phone on silent does nothing for two reasons: I forget to unsilence it after the nap and Jack will misplace the handset and we lose the phone. As we only have cordless phones, it's impractical to silence both of them. Yes, he sleeps with sound, but the phone isn't a regularly occurring sound throughout the entire nap.

Tonight, while nursing my fussy baby-fussy because he got a 20 minute nap-I ask Todd to grab my booklight and a glass of water. I wanted to make sure Jack was fully asleep before I transferred him from boob to crib and the quiet was driving me insane. Todd, instead of looking for the booklight, that was SITTING ON THE RELATIVELY CLEAN COFFEE TABLE UNOBSTRUCTED FROM VIEW sat at the kitchen table and asked me where it was. NOT ONLY THAT, but continued talking LOUDLY (this is an issue we have every night where I'm constantly shushing him while bitching about being killed again in CoD; seriously, dude? You sit RIGHT UNDER his bed. Think about it.) about whether it was upstairs or down and did I really ask for a glass of water. His voice woke the baby, who refused to continue nursing because he could hear daddy. He will be up around 1 to nurse because he was interrupted. I will be up for this feeding. I am the one that gets teeth scraped over my nipple. NOT YOU. I AM ALLOWED TO GET MAD. As soon as you learn to lactate I am happy to let you share in the anger of those 1 AM feedings and perhaps then you will understand what I go through. 

At least 4/7 nights I have to remind Todd to lower his voice. He says he never plays Duty anymore. This is a lie. He may not play for hours on end every night and weekend, but he still plays at night while I'm putting the baby to bed. In the dark. By myself. Bored. And the clicking. Don't get me started on the clicking. I can't stand League of Legends for the mere fact that it involves a clicking mouse instead of keyboard commands. I want it to die because the constant never ceasing clicking drills holes in my brain and makes me want to throw the mouse against the wall and end the torture. I'm blamed for purchasing a "clicky" mouse for Todd. At least the clicking doesn't bother the baby. 

please feel free to laugh at my expense

About two hours ago, this story was not so funny. Now, however, after the bleeding has stopped and the welts have gone down, it's hilarious.

My cat scratched my vagina. Read that again, it says what you think. No, I'm not kidding. Yes, it hurt.

This is what happened:
Strider gets settled in for a nice snuggle on my legs, one is underneath the other which is resting on my coffee table. Like a "P" shape where kitties love to snuggle.
Todd sneezes, cat freaks out, jumps off of me but does NOT scratch me at all. I glare at Todd, who promptly apologizes and promises not to sneeze while the cat is laying on me.
Less than 3 minutes later, Strider is back on my lap and Jack is happily cruising around the coffee table. He attempts to climb under my legs while squatting and manages to faceplant. The thud scares the crap out of Strider, who has decided he's had enough with the terrorizing from the people in this family and launches off my lap with full force, claws desperately grasping whatever flesh they can. This happens to be my belly, right along my c-section scar, three puncture wounds on the opposite side of the scar and my who hoo. It bled. It stung. I cried.
Then, I promptly called people that would enjoy laughing at my pain because really, after the pain subsided, it was quite funny.

That's the story of how my cat scratched my who hoo.

I've been away

I haven't been blogging too much lately. There's a reason for this: School. Also, I've been dealing with a sick baby.

Besides the quick illnesses, he's been progressing extremely well. At his 9 month well baby he weighed 20.5 pounds and was 27 inches long. This is the 50% percentile and rather than thinking of him as "average" I'm deciding that he's perfect. Because he is.

Today, while traveling back and forth between the coffee table and the couch, he let go and half stepped/stumbled into the couch. He knew he did something impressive because he checked me out with his cheesy grin on his face. He's crawling like a fiend. I'm always amazed at how FAST crawling babies are. It seems to me that a week after learning to crawl should still warrant a bit of clumsiness.

He's progressing on his words as well. Well, maybe not words, but consonants at least. He has been introducing the "P" sound and also hits his G, N, B, C/K, Y and T sounds. I think this is all for now. He also works on his "ooo" "aaah" "e" and "i" sounds. Of course these are all sounded around "mama" and "dada" and "key-ee" words. He LOVES to say "kitty" and it just cracks me up that that is his 3rd word. It's funny, he gets most excited to see Penguin, who avoids him like the plague; somewhat excited to see Strider, who tolerates Jack's prods and seems to be least excited by Zelda, who he tortures by "cuddling" with but seems to think "hm, too easy she's old news." She is so sweet and tolerates him with amazing grace. I would think considering her age (she's about 7) that she would be the one that runs.

I've been trying to keep up with school, but I have a bit of "senioritis" because it's my last semester at QCC. I'm excited to simply finish community college and transfer to a 4-year school so that I can finally start working towards my degree. I want to finish this soon. I still have to get my transfer stuff done and work on taking my MTEL so that I can officially enroll in my program.

The discussion of future children keeps coming up. I always wanted to have my kids close together, within a few years, at least. Considering I had high blood pressure (which, looking back on it really wasn't horrible except for the spots, dizziness and projectile vomiting) I would want to cut back on the stress. However, simply having additional children would likely be stressful. However, I think in terms of easiness, in my opinion, it would make sense to have two kids while they're still in diapers at the same time. I don't know why. Maybe I'm nuts. Borrowing someone else's child for an afternoon doesn't really give me the idea that it would be easy or hard, since kids are usually on their best behavior when in someone else's home.

Such a hypocrite

I am about to complain about two things that I do myself, thus making me a hypocrite.

I was random Facebook stalking (it's 1AM and I'm in that "no sleep" cycle again) some people and I found that, first off, if you have a generic name like "Jones" or "Smith" that it's nearly impossible to figure out who you are from the many generic first names (sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone here) such as Amy, Jessica, or Katie or Matt, Mike or Ryan. Incidentally, these are none of the names that I was searching. This isn't one of those things that I'm here to complain about, but seriously. Name your kid something different if you have such a bland last name.

Oh, wait. That is something hypocritical. I named my son "Jack" which is one of the top 20 I think for 2010. But, to be fair, our last name isn't generic.

So, first on my list of hypocritical Facebook faux paux is not sharing anything other than a) generic artsy picture, not a photo; b) sharing a group photo so I can't tell who you are in the tiny thumbnail I'm allowed to see and c) posting pictures of your children and/or pets rather than yourself.

I am a big offender of this one. However, I don't particularly want people to know that I am who I am. Also, my kid is infinitely cuter than I am. I understand that this is exactly fictional Jessica Jones' reasoning for not posting a photo of herself, but damnit, I want to know if I look better than you 10 years after high school. Why not let me have my moment?

Second is this, why make every scrap of information private and THEN NOT SHARE A PHOTO. Good lord. Are you in the witness protection program? Should you be allowed on Facebook at this point? I'm pretty sure I don't pay taxes to protect you so that you can just flaunt your gender and name to the world. (on that note, hypothetically, how does the government stop teenagers from experiencing life online while enrolled in the program? photos shouldn't be posted, right???)

I keep every piece of information on my profile private because I think it's creepy that people can randomly look into my Facebook page and check me out. Also, I don't want pictures of my kid being flaunted all over the place in random ads and stuff. I've seen it. I try to keep that stuff as private as possible and know that nothing that I put on the internet is truly private no matter what I do. Thus, me keeping a blog and posting videos on youtube. I get that I am being a hypocrite. If you're here to judge me, read the title, opening sentence and every other sentence in my writing and then decide whether it's really appropriate to repeat the redundancy with a comment. Odds are I'll just laugh at you and delete your comment without posting it to the world.

I realize this is a completely useless blog and has no point whatsoever except to let me bitch about things that I am in clear violation of doing myself. I am tired, procrastinating and practically snowed in (okay, this part really isn't true, the plow was successfully able to come in and clear us out), not to mention cold. I want my Snuggie and I don't care who knows it. It is fuzzy and has penguins on it.

That is all.