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.

Valentine's Day: The Scariest Day of the Year

So I was going to blog about how things seem to be looking up.  I was going to say that I found a way to get Elijah to go to sleep in his crib out of my arms for somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour and a half.  I was going to say how I used the same technique to put him to bed at 7:30 at night and how some nights he sleeps in his crib without waking until midnight or one o'clock.

But, of course, as soon as that happens, something else happens to mess it up. *sigh* Such is life.  I had started doing this psuedo-swaddle that was helping him to sleep in the crib for longer stretches, at least 45 minutes at a time.  Basically I would nurse him until he got sleepy, switch the boob for the pacifier, then wrap a blanket really tight around him so that when I lay him down, his arms don't go flying up and rub his face and wake himself up.  And sometimes it would even keep him from waking up at the 30 minute mark.  He's actually taken hour and half naps, praise Jesus.  (No, seriously!)  So here I was thinking "wow, what will I do with all this TIME?"  I could unload the dishwasher without him screaming for me to come pick him up.  I could use the bathroom without having to try for the championship award for world's fastest pee-er.  I could even EXERCISE for heaven's sake and get rid of this extra 15 pounds I need to lose.

But, alas, then Monday night occurred.  Monday, as you all know, was Valentine's Day.  I'm not a huge V-Day person so it wasn't that big of a deal to me that Mike went out of town for work and wasn't going to be back until Wednesday night, at least no bigger a deal than it normally is.  But, of course, that's the day Elijah decides to start this weird raspy, dry cough.  He'd had a kind of snotty nose the past couple of mornings, but not throughout the day, he would just wake up with a stopped up nose and I would pull out that torture-device known as the booger-sucking bulb and clean his nose out while he screamed bloody murder and then everything would go back to normal.  But then this cough started.  It wasn't mucousy, it just sounded like he had a frog in his throat.  If it had been mucousy I would have assumed he was getting a cold, but instead I didn't know what was going on.

So thinking if it got worse I would call his doctor, I went ahead and made plans to have dinner with a friend of mine and I took him with me, of course.  It was a nice dinner and I got to catch up a little with my friend Jamie who I hardly ever get to see anymore.  But Elijah was acting fussier than normal and still doing that cough.  So when I got home and put him to bed I decided that I would call his doctor in the morning.

But then I went to bed and the nightmare began.  I woke up around eleven to the sound of him crying and when I went to get him, he was wheezing like crazy.  When he would cry it would get worse, to the point where he would get silent like he wasn't getting any air.  And he was majorly upset.  So I called Mike, but of course, the doo doo head left his phone on vibrate and wouldn't answer.  So I called my mom but I guess her phone wasn't in her room or she didn't hear it.  So finally I called my dad and said "What do I do?  I don't want to be the looney parent who takes their kid to the ER for a cough, but he's wheezing." Dad convinced me to go to the ER because if there was something wrong, it needed to be taken care of.  So I packed him up and drove to the closest one to my house--St Jo.  Fortunately, it must have been a slow night because they got us right in.  He got his airway suctioned out again (he hated that), he got a steroid shot (also hated that), he got chest xrays (wasn't too fond of that, either), and a breathing treatment similar to the one my brother used to have when he was a kid and had asthma.

I did finally get ahold of Mike and, of course, promptly griped at him for not having his phone on.  But he said he thought I did the right thing. (We'll see if he still feels that way when we get the bill.  So much for our nice  tax refund.)  Anyway, we got out of there around 1:00 a.m., got home by 1:30, and got to bed about 2:00.  But of course he still didn't sleep very well.  And he didn't sleep well the next night or the night after that.  The ER said he did have a touch of pneumonia so I wasn't totally crazy.  It seems very odd, though, because the next day when I took him to see his pediatrician, they said his airway sounded fine, and he hasn't really had any wheezing since.  He still has a little bit of a cough but it's nowhere near as terrible sounding as it was.  It makes me think I dreamed the whole thing up or I overreacted but it just really seemed like he couldn't breathe on Monday night.

I don't know.  I'm not sure I'll ever really know what happened Monday night unless he's later diagnosed with asthma or something because that's really what it sounded like.  No medical professionals we saw seemed to think it was asthma but I suppose they could be wrong.  Anyhow, we're staying away from public places for awhile so we don't infect anyone else (although I'm still not feeling sick at all, which also makes me wonder if he was actually sick because I don't see how I could have avoided catching it from him).  And we're looking forward to a nice chunk of change being demanded from us for my crazy mother visit to the ER.

I hope, however, that once he's over whatever this is, we can go back to the better sleeping.  I think maybe the roids they gave him were messing with his sleep.  So no more roids, okay?  Unless he totally can't breathe again like before.  Plus, I don't want him going into some roid rage and breaking all his toys. ;) (Just kidding, it was only 15 mg of prednisone.)

The Holidays

So the long and short of it is that the nap plan failed.  Elijah was sleeping good in his bouncy chair so it was working for awhile, but then he outgrew his chair, so we're back to the terrible 30-40 minute naps.  Also now night sleep is getting bad again because I think he's teething.  So I give up and am just going to try to wait it out.  In the meantime, though, I don't want to just be in survival mode and be hoping for him to get bigger.  I want to enjoy him at the age he is.  I feel like too often I'm just waiting for the next stage of my life and thinking that once I get there, everything will be okay.  And then I don't savor the place I am in.  I did this in college and then in law school.  I do feel like I did a decent job enjoying my time as a young professional and a newlywed, but once I started trying to get pregnant it became another situation where I just had to get where I was going before I could be happy.  And now that I have my son, I am happy to be a mother, but it gets very tiring never having any time to myself and such.  I am trying to keep perspective, though, since his life as a baby will only be a year or two of his life.  But I want to keep that perspective while still enjoying his time as a baby.  It's a difficult balance.

Recently we had his first Christmas.  This was both a blessing and a difficulty.  First off, we had early Christmas with Mike's family because we were going to be out of town right around Christmas Eve and Day.  His parents went way overboard buying gifts not only for Elijah, but also for us.  It always makes me feel terribly guilty when we spend like $25 a piece on them and they spend about $500 on us.  But then my parents do the same thing and I guess I shouldn't complain about getting gifts.  After that we took a week-long vacation to Oklahoma City to see my mom and stepdad and brother and sister-in-law.  Like I said, my parents also went insane buying stuff for us and making me feel guilty for getting them only one thing.  But other than that it was a nice break.  It was especially nice for me because having my mom and Mike around 24/7 meant that I didn't always have to be the one to hold Elijah and try to get him to sleep all day.  Mike actually became pretty adept at getting him to sleep for longer periods of time.  Basically he would hold him and stand up and bounce with him until he went to sleep, at which point he would find a comfy spot and sit down and hold Elijah while he slept.  Then when Elijah would start to wake up, Mike would stand up and bounce some more and sometimes it would put him back to sleep.  Not always, but sometimes.

We also got to see my dad, who came up for a couple days to do gift exchange and hang out.  Elijah got to wear Papa's Harley Davidson hat.  As far as Mommy is concerned, this is as close as he's going to get to a motorcycle, at least until he's 18 and I have no more say in the matter.

We stayed the week between Christmas and New Years and got to see some long distance friends of mine that I hadn't seen in a really long time.  We didn't get to spend much time with them but it was lots of fun and I think we get to see them again in May.  Two of them just had a baby so the babies got to meet each other and play together--at least as much as a five month old and an eight month old can.

After that on New Year's Eve we drove back home with my mom and stepdad following us home.  They came to help with some projects that needed to be done around my house.  Most of the projects got done, but not until after I nearly had a nervous breakdown from the stress of having multiple projects going on at once and not getting finished at a pace that I preferred.  Plus, all the changes, I think, stressed Elijah out too much.  He did not sleep well the few days we got home.  I think all the activity and people being around just got to be too much for him.  The past few nights he's slept better now that we are kind of getting back into our routine (of course, I'm using the word "routine" very loosely here since his erratic napping really does not provide us with any kind of a normal routine).  So even though I have many other things around this house that need to get done, I'll probably just have to stick to taking care of Elijah myself for several days until he feels semi-normal again.

On the plus side, several of the difficult projects I needed done are now done thanks to my wonderful stepdad.  And Elijah now has several new toys, including a walker that he can almost use--his legs just need to grow like one more inch.  I feel certain that next Christmas will be even more fun--and possibly more stressful, but hey, what is parenthood if not stressful?