14 posts tagged “children”

This is just a sample of what I have to sift through to find decent shots of J.

Nice out today, so I took the kid out for a few.

We found Santa.  Don't know why the picture of P is so blurry.

P turned 2 months last Wednesday.  I cannot believe how time has flown.  It seems like just yesterday I was heading through the hospital door with enough crap in my arms they thought I was permanently moving in.  And now he's all smiling and growing and ... *sigh*

Today he had his 2 month shots, and he handled them like a pro.  As with J before, I could not hold him during the actual process, Tyler had to.  J and I sat across the room, both of us fighting tears when P started screaming after the first shot.  J turned to me and said, "Hurts Peyton!" with tears in his eyes.  What a big bro!

His next appointment is the 29th at 3 months.  I'm curious about his weight gain.  The first month he was gaining about half a pound a week, but from week 4 to week 6 he only gained about 4 ounces, so I'm curious to see if he's continued with the slow weight gain or not.

The colic seems to be slowly getting better.  For the most part he sleeps decent at night, and has long content periods during the day.  Today I even had him cackling before his shots.  It's so nice to see him smiling and laughing after nearly two months of pure screaming.  He's even starting to let me cuddle him now.  I can't even begin to tell you how hard it is to cuddle a screaming, rigid-bodied baby.

I'm kind of sad that we haven't had any professional pictures of P done yet.  As much as I love taking pictures, I'd like to have at least one set of professionals to compare with J's.  But money is just so tight this time of year (whose idea was it to make property taxes due 5 days before Christmas?!) and so they'll have to wait a bit longer.  I feel bad because with J money was tight but I still managed to get pro pictures taken every few months the first year and every six months after that.  We haven't had any professional pictures done since April with my Smile Savers plan ran out at Sears.

In other news, J and I made a Christmas countdown chain yesterday.  I'm not sure how much he understands about Christmas, so I'm doing what I can to get him all excited about it.  We're going to make a tree topper and door hanging, too, as soon as I get some new markers and glue.  I thought I had all of this stuff hanging around, but apparently not.

I have so very little Christmas shopping done that it's not even funny.  I've got a V-Smile, Hot Wheels set, and Christmas jammies for J, a Bod body spray set for my cousin, and that's it.  Tyler's older two nephews are getting wood letters to paint, and other than that I don't even know what to get anyone.  Money is super tight, as mentioned, so no one is getting anything too spectacular.  I wanted to do homemade gifts, but I didn't get started as early as I wanted to.

Tyler missed work last night with the flu, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that no one else gets it.  J and I have both been sniffly for days, but that's as far as it has gone. 

Tyler has to make up the work he missed on Friday night, which sucks, but necessary.  His Christmas party at work is this weekend, and I'm actually excited.  Weird, I know, but the place they have cater is amazing.  I could care less about the rest of the party as long as they keep having the same place cater.  Tyler wants to go out to his buddy's afterwards to play cards, but I will probably end up back home with the boys.  I'm still not comfortable leaving P with anyone for too long, and since my sister will probably babysit and she's not too comfortable trying to take care of P during his fussy periods ... it is better that I skip the poker playing.

A P picture and then I'm out.  It is a lovely angle, I know, but I had to be fast to catch the smile.  He's a quick little bug.

Peyton is now one month old.  How we got here this fast ... I'll never know.

I had him back at the doctor's office on Friday for tummy troubles.  I had done everything I could think of; cutting out specific foods from my diet, Mylicon drops, etc., but my baby still had a very upset tummy.  Dr. L (who was already back at work, even if he was gimping around) thinks he might have reflux, so P's now on Zantac twice a day.  So far, we've had a hard time keeping it down, so it is hard to tell if it is working or not.  Dr. L said that if there's no improvement by the time we need to refill the prescription, to bring him back and we'll look into something else.  This scares me because there's a good chance that he simply cannot digest breastmilk properly, which would most likely mean we'd have to switch to one type of expensive specialty formula or another.  It is rare that a baby has trouble with breastmilk, so I'm hoping that's not the case.  But at the same time if that isn't the problem, then it could be something even more serious, which obviously I don't want.  I'm just torn over the whole situation and want my baby to feel better.

P was weighed at the clinic.  Despite his tummy troubles, kiddo has had NO trouble putting on weight.  A rundown:

Birth:         8lbs 10oz
Release:    7lbs 15.9oz
1 Week:    8lbs  9.5oz
2 Week:    9lbs  4oz
4 Week:   10lbs  7oz

Yes, he's up over 10 pounds.  I knew he was getting heavier, but dang.  At this rate he'll have doubled his birth weight by Thanksgiving ;)

I loathe election time.  Seriously.  There's so many nasty campaign ads on the TV/radio right now, it's driving me nuts.  I'm a registered voter, so if these ads had any value, you know discussing what they are actually campaigning on, that'd be great.  But where all they do is put down the other candidate and talk about the 'bad things' the other candidates are about, and to me that does no good.

Anyway, so it is coming up on holiday season already, can you believe it?  I can't.  And honestly, I'm not too excited.  After the crap with the in-laws, I'm dreading any kind of family function.  If I'm lucky, Tyler will still be so upset with them that he won't want to do anything with them this year.  It'd serve them right if you ask me.

I started today trying to get the boys' Christmas card pictures taken, but no one/nothing wanted to cooperate.  J was just goofing off, P spit up on me everytime I turned around, and my "studio" fell over on me.  I'm going to try again in a little bit once the sun is coming in the windows so hopefully I won't have to use my flash as much (natural lighting looks so much better).

Yesterday Tyler and I took Jonathan to "SpookFest".  It is just a little thing in the park with a few games and rides.  Nothing too exciting, but he had fun.  He played "Wheel of Fortune", pumpkin bowling, got some cotton candy, and went to the petting zoo.  We entered him in the costume contest, too.  He wasn't too sure about standing up on their stage all by himself, but he was a little man and did it anyway.  (More pictures at FlickR.)

And not this disjointed half an hour to two hours at a time.  I need a full night's sleep.  Selfish, I know, but I am having trouble functioning lately.  I don't know how many times I have walked out the front door to go somewhere, got halfway down the walk to the car and realized ... I still have my slippers on.  Or I made it down to the grocery store, all by myself, only to find that I had a burp rag on my shoulder.  Luckily they all knew I'd just had a baby so I didn't look like a complete ass that just walks around with stinky rags hanging off her shoulder.

I know ... breastfeeding is good for Peyton, and really I love that I am giving him great nutrition.  But can I confess something?  We're not really breastfeeding per se.  After weeks of horrid latch problems, I am pumping almost exclusively and bottle feeding the milk to him.  He would either scream his head off or fall asleep every time I got him ready to nurse, and I can only take so much of my little man screaming before I would cut off my own arm to make it stop.

Sometimes I find myself thinking, "this pumping business is the suck," and then wondering if it wouldn't be easier to just stop pumping.  But, then I kick my own ass and break out 'old reliable'.  Yeah, it does suck to be up twice as long as I should have to be for the nightly feedings; first to feed Peyton and then to pump out his next meal.  But also so worth it.

And so, I get no sleep in this endless cycle of pumping and feeding and attempting to nurse ... rather, rinse, repeat.  I know it'll get better, and it probably wouldn't be so bad if Jonathan didn't wake up 99% of the time.  Then he wants to help, or play, or both.  So, not only do I have to get Peyton back down and then pump, but I also have to get Jonathan back to sleep as well.  Fun.Stuff.

Really, I try not to complain too much, though, because when Tyler gets home from work at 8am he does take over with Peyton for an hour or two, but then I feel like ass because I HATE sleeping in, even if it is the only sleep I get.  I wake up at 9:30 or 10 and feel like I have missed out on a better part of the day. 

Not that I get anything done anymore.  Dishes?  I wash them as I need them.  Laundry?  Tyler's domain.  Toys on the floor?  Just a swift kick so they aren't in my path.  Trash?  Again, Tyler's domain.  Pretty sad, really.  I keep saying if I had more sleep I'd be more effective around the house, but deep down I know that's not the case either.  I hate housework, period, and no amount of sleep will ever make me like doing it.  Not to make it sound like my house is filthy or anything.  Just cluttered most days. 

So to end ... I guess I really don't NEED the sleep that bad, do I?

It's not possible, but it's true.