Copycat

So lately Elijah has been getting more demanding.  He also hasn't been sleeping well the past few nights and days but I suspect that has to do with the fact that Daddy is out of town for work.  He'll be back Saturday and my mom is coming in tonight to help me since I'm having surgery on Thursday to finally get rid of this silly cyst on my wrist (most likely caused by picking up Mr. Demanding over and over, but I digress).

Anyway, lately when he wants something--like to be taken out of his high chair or to be fed or to be picked up out of his pack and play or just to have attention paid to him--he starts making this whiny, increasingly loud and high-pitched "ehhhh!"  It is really annoying.  But then today when he did it, I thought, "Oh no, did I teach him this?" because it's surprisingly reminiscent of the way I get with Mike when he's annoying me.

"Mike, will you please CUT THAT OUT!!!"  (Imagine the voice getting increasingly loud, intense and shrill.  Poor Mike.)

So nice parenting on my part.  I sound like a toddler, therefore my son thinks, "Hey, this is the way we get stuff!" even before he can really be classified as a toddler. Whew!  I'm so glad the blood of Jesus makes me righteous because I could SO not be good on my own.

Anyway, here's a funny scene from the movie "Big Daddy" to showcase how wonderful of a parent I am (the part at 30 seconds where he throws the fries cracks me up every time): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjO6Tjn8wS0

In other copycat news, I copied an idea from some Real Simple magazine for measuring Elijah's height as he grows.  It's basically a huge ruler you can mount on the wall in his bedroom.  Also, it's real simple to make. (Get it?  Like the magazine?  Man, I'm hilarious.)

Anyway, here's what you need:
6 foot board
Wood stain (whatever color you prefer, I used maple b/c it's more ruler-color & all the other wood in Elijah's room is the same color)
Polyurethane (buy separate stain & polyurethane)
Black paint
Stencils for numbers 1-6 (or if you want to be fancy you can buy house numbers 1-6 and tack those on then you won't have to have the stencils or the black paint)
Black permanent marker
Tape measure

Instructions:
First thing I did was stain both sides.  Then when it was dry, I measured out the inches all the way to the top.  On the foot markers I made the lines 2 inches long, the half-foot markers 1 & 1/2 inches, the quarter-foot markers 1 inch, and the other inch markers I made 1/2 an inch.  I did it in pencil first and then went over it with the permanent black marker.  Also, I started the bottom of the board at 3 inches below the 1 foot mark so that there was room to stencil in the number 1.  (This means you will mount it 9 inches from the floor.  Be sure to measure everything well or it won't accurately measure your child's height.)  Anyway, then I placed the stencils next to the foot markers and painted the numbers on there in black.  Later I am going to put a coat of polyurethane on top but the black paint is drying right now.  Once that's done, though, it will be ready to mount in his room and start measuring his height as he gets older.  I'll probably use a medium-tipped sharpie to mark his height and age each year.  It's better than marking it on the wall, I think, because if you move you can take it with you.  Enjoy!

It's Been Too Long

So it's been awhile since I blogged and I thought I'd just share some info and pictures this time.  First, Elijah was doing that reverse army crawl for like months.  Then one day he figures out how to do the hands and knees crawl and go forward and the next day he's all over my house and I can't keep up with him.

Then the next week after he felt like he had a solid hold on the speed-crawling, he moved to pulling up on the furniture, but only to his knees--testing the waters.

We did this for about a week and now we're doing this:

Don't know if you can tell, but that's all the way up on his feet.  Sorry the picture's a bit fuzzy.  It was taken with my cell phone.

This is what Elijah thinks of your attempts to suppress his crawling prowess.  Also, he has taken to throwing everything on the ground.  Apparently he thinks of Mommy as a golden retriever.

This is him helping Mommy go to the grocery store.  It is like walking around in a friggin oven out there. UGH!  I hate the heat.  I much prefer the cold.  Anywho...  Elijah also wants to inform you all that if you have no toys or are tired of the toys you do have, the trash is a perfectly acceptable alternative.  Observe:

Our recycle bin was overflowing.  Don't judge me! ;)

Whining About Mousey Things

So there's another damn mouse in my house (or possibly more). It freaking infuriates me b/c we paid Orkin so much $$ and I don't feel like they did ANYTHING!! And now the mice are back. I really want to go on every review site there is and give them a bad review. I'm usually pretty forgiving of bad service but I just thought they were totally worthless!!! But I digress.

Yesterday while I was out with Elijah in the stroller I was thinking "Hey, life is kind of good right now. Mike's job is good. Elijah is sleeping better. It's nice outside so I can finally start exercising and trying to lose some of my mom pooch and thunder thighs..." And then I hear a mouse scratching around in my kitchen last night while I'm sitting on the couch. And, of course, Mike's out of town (it seems like the mice always show up when he's gone). So I was all pissed like "gee, sorry I was so HAPPY!" And I know a mouse isn't that big of a deal but this has been an ongoing problem since we got this house and I am afraid it's never going to fully go away unless and until we move. And then I'll feel guilty about selling someone else a mouse house.

Anyway, Mike called another exterminator and they're coming tomorrow but that's another $200 I don't have just lying around, but Mike seems to think they're going to do a lot more than Orkin did and actually get rid of the mouse while they're here and find out where they're coming in and make sure they stay out from now on. I'm less hopeful. Mostly b/c I'm a giant cynic due to all the crap I feel like happens around here all the time.

Headaches

So lately I've been having tons of headaches.  I thought they were just sinus headaches because they're always right between my eyes right where my sinuses are and there's a lot of pressure-feeling that goes along with them.  But then I'm not congested and everything I look up indicates that sinus headaches are when there's congestion in your sinuses.  And the worst thing is, there's nothing I can do to get rid of it except wait it out.  If I go to sleep, I'll wake up and it's still there.  I take 4 ibuprofen (200 mg) and it won't go away.  If I take a hot shower, it alleviates it somewhat while I'm in the shower, but it never fully goes away.  And this morning another one has decided to set up shop in my head.  I'm certain this one has something to do with the fact that Elijah decided to spend last night screaming bloody murder rather than sleeping, but you know, I should still be able to get rid of a silly headache.

I'm starting to think maybe I should go see a doctor, if for no other reason than simply to get her to give me some kind of pain medication that will get rid of it when it shows up.  On the other hand, is that even worth it if I can't take the pain meds because I'm still nursing?  Or if they have to give me wussier pain meds that don't work because of the nursing?  I don't know.  Plus, if you want to talk about pain, it is a huge pain to take Elijah to appointments with me and I've had several over the past couple of weeks (for like eyes and Elijah's 9 month checkup, etc.).  I was kind of looking forward to not having to take him anywhere in the carseat for awhile (except for when we go to Oklahoma, of course).

The very worst thing about these headaches is that they keep me from really interacting with Elijah.  I can go in his room with him and give him toys to play with or lie him down on his tummy to practice crawling, but I can't really play with him because my head is throbbing and so I just lie there on the floor and watch him play or scoot around by himself.  It makes me worry that I'm stunting his development by not playing with him enough.  At his appointment they were like "Is he crawling?  Is he pulling up?  Does he have any words yet?" and I'm like, "Uhhhhhh.... nooooo..."  I'm afraid I'm keeping him from developing as quickly as he could/should because I don't have the energy to play with him while my head is killing me.  Just another thing to add to the guilt list, I suppose.

Anyway, that being the case, I should probably get off of here and go let him practice crawling even if he's still not doing it right and I'm going to just have to lie there holding my aching head.  TTFN.

Day at the Park

So we went to the park this weekend.  Elijah is still a bit too little to do much but he did get to swing by himself and in Daddy's lap.

He seemed to like it.  Mike pushed him first.

Here we go.

Coming closer!

 Mommy got to push, too.  (Try to ignore my giant poochbelly.)

Then we got to swing in the big swing in Daddy's lap.

I think this picture is so awesome.  I don't even remember what they were both looking at.  Probably some other kid at the park or something.

Then we got to slide down the slide.  If you think this picture is comical, you should have actually seen 6 foot 1 inch Mike squeezing himself onto that slide.  I have another picture where his shorts were riding up but I promised him to keep that one private. LOL.

Not much to say, just funny pictures to share.  Next time, hopefully, Elijah can swing and slide down the slide by himself.  Might be awhile before we get there, but in the meantime, sitting in Daddy's lap works out okay.

Congestion, Crawling, and Cysts

Hey, look at that, it didn't take me a whole month to get back on here.  Possibly because there's lots of stuff to talk about.  The three mentioned in the title aren't all, I'm just a nerd and I like alliteration.  (Though, is it true alliteration if two of the "C"s sound like a "K" and one sounds like an "S"?)

Anyway, I'll start with the cyst since everyone loves to hear about those.  I have this bump on my wrist that showed up when Elijah was about 3 months old.  I went to pick him up and I felt something in my wrist pop and it hurt and was sore for quite awhile and this weird bump showed up.  At first I was like "Terrific, I broke my wrist!" but then I concluded that if I had actually broken it, it would hurt a lot worse and since it stopped hurting eventually and I was still able to use it, it was probably not broken.  But the bump didn't go away and I showed it to Mike's sister (who is finishing up her Bachelor's in Nursing this May) and she said it was probably a benign cyst and might go away on its own, but that I should watch it.  Well, it didn't go away but I don't have time to make doctor's appointments for myself for silly things like benign cysts that don't even hurt, they just look weird.  But Mike finally convinced me to go to the doctor and, lo and behold, it's a ganglion cyst (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganglion_cyst).  The first wikipedia picture in the top right is pretty much exactly what mine looks like.  So now I have to make an appointment with a plastic surgeon guy to have it excised.  What a pain.  I'm tempted not to worry about it, but if it keeps getting bigger then I guess it could become a real problem.  Right now it's just weird-looking.  So to the plastic surgeon I will go.  (Maybe he can suck some of this jelly out of my thunder thighs while he's at it.)

On top of that, I got a cold last week, which again, is mostly just annoying.  It started out as allergies, I'm sure, because it was during the super high pollen days and was accompanied by super itchy eyes and face.  But since there is apparently no allergy medicine on the planet to help me and I just had to suffer through, I think it went into a full-blown cold.  It always gets better by the end of the day and then worse again when I wake up in the morning.  The past five mornings in a row I've woken up with a massive sinus headache right between my eyes.  I take ibuprofen but it doesn't seem to help, I just kind of have to wait until it dissipates or something.

But enough about my minor health issues.  Elijah seems to be napping better.  Of course, I'm just cynical enough to fear that if I say that, it will cause a rupture in the space time continuum and ruin his napping altogether.  However, I am also trying to transition him to finger foods and he's working on crawling.  He's actually been trying to crawl for awhile now and he does this thing where he lays on his belly and pushes himself around with his hands.  Unfortunately, it means he can only move backwards and he often gets stuck when he runs into something behind him that he can't see (see the picture below).  He has started pushing up on hands and knees and rocking back and forth but I think he's just so big and weighs so much that it's more difficult for him to hold all his weight up like that and actually move around.  Either that or he hasn't quite figured out that he needs to move his limbs independently, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

As far as the food goes, it isn't going as well as when I started him on the pureed food, but that went so extremely well that I probably shouldn't complain.  He doesn't want to eat finger foods that aren't especially yummy or that he has to work at much.  So far I can get him to eat cheerios, blueberries, small pieces of cantaloupe, and pita bread with little to no trouble.  Mike gave him a tiny cucumber piece the other day and he ate that, too.  He's not too fond of peas or broccoli or cauliflower, which surprises me because I pureed cauliflower and he ate it happily.  But I'm going to try to cut up peaches and stuff for him, too.  It's just hard to know how much to give him so I don't waste a bunch.  Any my dog LOVES it because he drops so much stuff that becomes Nickel's snack.  It's helpful to me, too, because then I don't have any floor mess to clean.  That's why you get a dog!

In addition to the crawling and the feeding himself, he has also started giving kisses.  They're slobbery and not at all the kind of kiss you'd want from anyone but a baby, but they're also super sweet.  I couldn't get a picture of it because every time I aim the camera at us, he wants to look at it, rather than focus on me asking him to give me a kiss.  Mike and I have both gotten unsolicited kisses and I think he gave a few requested ones to Grandma, I'm not certain.  I seem to get the most but I told Mike that's probably because he has a rougher face than me when he comes home at the end of the day with his five o'clock shadow.

I hope everyone enjoys the pictures.  I love them but they also make me sad because he's really starting to look like a little boy and not a baby anymore.  Time to go cry and make my congestion even worse. ;)

The Continuing Saga of the Elusive Nap

So I really wanted to maintain this blog enough to do at least one post per month.  I'm not entirely sure I've managed to do that, but I'm not giving up yet.  This past week has actually been okay, which is why I now have a moment to do a posting.

Last week was not so great.  Elijah has not been a good sleeper since we stopped swaddling him and we finally got to the point where we had to teach him to put himself to sleep.  I hated it and I still feel guilty about it but we had gone weeks without anyone (including him) getting any sleep during the day or at night.  I had even tried several ways to prop myself up and hold him at night so that we could sleep like that, but he would only sleep for a couple of hours and then wake back up, crying and driving everyone crazy.  So he was crying all night anyway.  And of course I'm saying all of this to justify my decisions because I still feel terrible for letting him fuss until he learned to put himself to sleep.  But that's what we ended up doing.  He wasn't crying the whole time or anything but he was fussing or at least making noise.  Mike stayed with him because I couldn't handle it and we didn't want him to be left all alone.

So he finally did learn to put himself to sleep and now, generally, at night I nurse him and he goes down and goes right to sleep without any crying or fussing of any kind and then usually sleeps straight through until 5 or 6 in the morning when he wakes up and needs to nurse.  I nurse him and put him back down and he goes back to sleep until about 7.  I think he's used to waking up at that time because Mike always gets up and Nickel gets up and clomps around and wakes him up anyway, so even if we don't get up then, Elijah's internal alarm clock is set for 7.  Oh well.  I can get up at 7, no big deal.

So the night sleep was going better and he's sitting up by himself now and he's even starting to try and crawl.  In fact, I'm sure it will only be another week or two before he is crawling all over the place.  Which means that he really needs to nap during the day and you would think with the night sleep all hunky dory that naps would follow.  But last week I nearly had a nervous breakdown because the naps kept getting shorter and shorter until they were pretty much non-existent.  First we were doing three mini-naps (anywhere from 30 - 45 minutes) and I was like, "Okay, this sucks, but whatever, at least he's napping some."  Then he started refusing to take the third mini-nap, which meant that he had to be up for like 5 or 6 hours between his mid-afternoon nap to bedtime.  So, naturally, he was insanely cranky by the time Mike would get home.  And I'm like, "Okay, this sucks worse but I guess I can deal with it."  Then finally last Friday he refuses to nap AT ALL.  I got him to sleep for 15 minutes in my arms and then later for 20 minutes in his crib.  And, of course, the rest of the day he's Cranky Von Whinypants because he's so friggin tired!

Part of the reason was this on-again, off-again cough that he's had for months.  But of course his doctor's office is like "too bad, so sad" because if he doesn't have a fever apparently they think a 2 month cough is no big deal.  And there is nothing you can give a child this young just to dry up his snot so he can stop coughing and go to sleep.  Seriously?  It's freaking 2011!

But that was last week.  This week we have managed to have some decent days.  Monday and Tuesday he took two hour and a half naps each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  I thought I was going to have to throw a parade.  Then yesterday he napped for an hour and 20 minutes in the morning, but only 35 minutes in the afternoon.  So I'm thinking, "Well, it was fun while it lasted, back to insano-world."  Now he's been napping for about an hour and 20 minutes.  I had to put him down an hour earlier than normal because he's was being so cranky, which kind of pushes back all of his sleep-times but I don't mind because I'm supposed to go somewhere tonight and I was going to try to get him to bed earlier than normal so that Mike's mom can just come over and watch our TV while he sleeps.  Please pray that he does sleep while she's here tonight.

Anyway, I don't know whether to be hopeful that the good naps we've had the past few days continue or just assume this is my reprieve before my life goes back to crazytown.  And, really, I feel guilty for even complaining about it since there are people who I know deal with things way worse than a kid who won't nap.  But it isn't simply about me wanting a break from him, it's also the fact that we can't do anything fun the rest of the day because he's so fussy from being tired.  On the days he has napped well we've taken walks outside in the stroller and played in his bedroom and read books and laughed at the silly dog just walking around the house.  I want to say, "See, kid!  See how much better you feel when you nap like Mommy's been telling you to!"  But, of course, I'd just receive a bunch of nonsense babble and a little hand trying to pull off my glasses again.

Word.