Curious, isn't it?

Hmmmm.... I wonder if Blake took a shower in my shower? He knows he is not normally allowed to unless in extreme dire circumstances. Perhaps he should get better at hiding the evidence.

PS - those are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures.

Blogapalooza - here I don't come

We had a pretty uneventful cold/flu season this past winter which I was grateful for being pregnant and all.
However, it all caught up with us and my two youngest are sicker than dogs, which if you've ever seen a 2 month old baby sick you know it is HEARTBREAKING! Therefore, we WON'T be getting on a plane today to come out for BP 2008.

I'm so bummed I won't be meeting all the people on my sidebar - bummed I won't be seeing Kara , a person I haven't seen since 1993 but have gotten to know over this blogging community.
Bummed I won't be seeing my blogging cousins Heidi and Rachel whom I have gotten to know better in the past year and haven't seen in person for ages.
Bummed I don't get to meet the Greenbaum sisters Celia and Paige.
And D-dawg.
And all the other people who I forgot to mention but am really excited to see in person - I will miss meeting you!

Oh well.....
Promise we'll do this again next year - I hope to make it!

Blake don't got a new face

Heather - here is Blake's review of the Vampire Weekend's song "Blake's got a new face".

Okay then........

Although this one didn't turn out, keep 'em coming.

Pieces of Puzzles

Here are the facts.

I have a very very sick little boy (who has a bad VIRUS cold but it provokes asthma attacks every night). He needs to stay home in bed all day.

I have another baby boy who has a cold, but his coughs are tiny and makes it so he doesn't want to eat anything which worries mommy (me) to no end.

I have an oldest boy who has his FIRST non-rained out baseball game today and he needs to be there playing.

I have a husband who will be AT WORK all day today.

Hmmmmm.....how do these pieces all fit together?

ON a side note, I have the same cold and it stinks.

Light in moments of dark

I won't lie, pretty much every late afternoon, a dark cloud starts forming over me. And I continually fight it off through the evening and late night. Then, for some reason, my body kind of "resets" around 5am and I wake up whole and happy no matter what happened the evening and night before. And I have great mornings and good early afternoons. I can't tell you how much it has meant to me all of you who haved called me and offered words of support and encouragement. I have appreciated every last nugget of encouragement from comments and emails. I guess I chose to be so open about what is going on with me because I have always considered my stumbles and troubles as opportunities to show the humanness of me and that absolutely no one, despite meticulous planning and scheduling and prevention, can ensure that life will be perfect. I know I appreciate it when women close to me show that they are only human and can handle only so much.

And guess what? Chase slept from 8pm to 8am last night. I'm not kidding. Woke up just two times for a quick 10 minute bottle and nestled right back down again. I project that my clouds are going to start looking like this pretty soon.

Guilt Payment

So let's say you are the middle child in a house where your mother is frayed along the edges. You've been waking up several nights in a row and come into her room and say you can't sleep. She dismisses you and even sometimes yells at you to GET BACK INTO BED. Then one morning (yesterday) you wake up with a fever and point to your ears. She takes you to the Dr. and low and behold you have a double ear infection. She is so overwhelmed with guilt that:


A: You get the DVD TV moved into your room (a truly special privilege) and you get to watch movies all day in your room.
B: You get to eat all of your meals in bed that day (another truly special privilege)

And C: When she goes to pick up your prescription at the store, she picks up a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure (something it takes usually two weeks for you to earn with chores).

Mom better get over her guilt or this middle child is going to have the whole family wrapped around his little prince finger.

Guilt Payment #2

So I figured it out. It only took 7 weeks.
Even though I've been b/f'ing Chase since birth, I've also supplemented daily with a milk-based formula. A few days ago, I substituted this


and not only does he now do this

he and I are much more like this because of it.

Here's my dilemna however - he hates the taste of the soy formula - HATES the taste even though his body is doing much better because of it. Any advice? Should I go with a lactose-free formula? A "gentlease" formula? What do you think?

Thoughts on postpartum depression

Last night at 3:30 am, my husband and I had a very frank conversation about PPD or postpartum depression. In the dark hole of the night, I often feel like I have it. I wake up - in the middle of the night - very angry. Last night I was so angry that I walked into the kitchen and sat and steamed for ten minutes while Chase cried in his bassinet in my bedroom. Jeremy thankfully got up with him and fed him a bottle while we talked and I calmed down. Thank goodness for him.
Why would I be so angry? I feel guilty I'm so angry that Chase isn't sleeping. Remember how I asked for advice a few weeks back to get him to nap? Well over the past two weeks, I've been trying all the techniques and he STILL isn't napping well. He wakes after every sleep cycle - he only will nap for 30 minutes at a time. If he is in the bijorn - he'll sleep the whole time. Whenever we are out and he is in car carrier, he will sleep the whole time. But never at home and never at night will he go super long. He is about 11 lbs now and 7 weeks old. I feel like I"m going crazy. Or rather, depressed.

So yesterday afternoon I had Chase in his bassinet - crying it out - and I remembered some comments from some of my blog friends. So I crept into the room and turned Chase over to his stomach, patted his back, put his paci in his mouth and you know what? -he fell fast asleep! And he proceeded to sleep a few more naps on his tummy for the rest of the day. Jeremy got home from work and I showed him Chase sleeping on his tummy and Jeremy did not like it at all. So today I'm going out and buying this so that way we can all get some sleep.

But this leads me to my thoughts on PPD. I don't remember feeling like I do now when I had Jackson and Blake. Jeremy told me last night that I acted the exact same way before and that I had the same misgivings that I do now. For me, PPD manifests in the lack of continuous sleep. I get anywhere from 5-7 hours at night, but only in 2 hour blocks. And because Chase isn't napping, I'm not getting a long nap at home as well.
I also think that PPD manifests as failed expectations. I feel like I'm failing as a mother. I've had two other babies before Chase, why should I feel inadequate? What's my problem? I feel guilty that I'm not spending time with the older boys like I used to. I feel guilty that I wanted this third baby so much and now that I have him and he is healthy and perfect, I spend some of my time angry and resentful. I expect some high things of myself and when I don't accomplish them, I feel deflated - thus why I think I'm failing.

But this is what I did. My one good best friend here in Salem offered yesterday to take Chase for me. I accepted her offer today. She has him for 2 hours so I can go work out and not be on baby duty this morning. I also called my babysitter and I'm going to have her come 3 times a week in the afternoons - right when I'm falling apart - and have her care for Chase for 1-2 hours so I can rest my mind. Also I'm buying that Angelcare monitor so Chase can sleep on his tummy and I don't have to worry about him. These are all things I need to do so I won't keep venturing down the path to PPD because I've had a taste of it and it is lonely and sad.

Boy, do I feel like Brooke Shields or what?

Revised Mornings

For eight years as a mother, I have risen before my children or with my children to start their days with them. Because I believe in a good hearty breakfast, most of these mornings I have made breakfast for them. Starting about 4 years ago, I have made Blake a morning "hot chocolate" which he demands every stinkin' morning.

Then Chase came along and I am frayed along the edges. By the time I had fed Chase at 5:30am and had him quiet, along Blake would come in my room demanding his TV show and his hot chocolate. I lost it.

So I developed the revised morning routine. Every evening after I put Chase and the boys to bed, I get things ready for the next day. This is the benefits to having older children.

Here is the toaster and some english muffins or toast.

Toast it yourself.

Here is *gasp* an assortment of cold cereal. Choose what you want, grab an already laid out bowl, and pour it yourself. Next to the cereal is your hot chocolate getup, do it yourself.The TV is set to your favorite channel. Your favorite DVD is already in the player. Just turn it on.

And I gave them explicit instructions to NOT, I REPEAT, NOT come into my room in the morning. I will be up before you have to go to school.

When I do wake up, my coffee is all ready to go, I jsut have to push 'start'.



And here is my morning steel cut oatmeal with water premeasured. I just have to turn on the power. And add the oats when the water boils.

This is my new morning routine.

And I'm lovin' it!

Happy Pizza

I can always count on Blake for help in the kitchen. He's my little sous chef. The other night we made homemade pizza and Blake made a "Happy Pizza".

You know what? It made me happy.

Fini

Well my friends, I am fini. La Boobalicious Milk factory is shutting down. Permanently.
I'm sick of the DDD's, upper back pain, breast infections, being tied to an infant every 2 to 3 hours, the extra 10 lbs my body retains for lactation, soreness, having to wear a bra 24-7, having to wear THREE bras just to jog, etc.
As guilty as I feel about this (because I do), all of my support system has commented that I seem happier when I'm giving a bottle and that I will be a better mom because I am more satisfied.

PS - Thank you so much Alison for your talk today; it really really helped!

My oldest is great

I kid you not, this is what Jackson said to me last night at 9pm. Completely out of the blue.

"Mom, you've had a hard day. Let me take Chase for you."
And he did.

And frankly, that is perfectly what I needed - just for someone else to hold him for thirty minutes.

Whomever Jackson marries is going to be a lucky woman.

In the thick of it

Guess what? I learned the secret of getting through this tough newborn time. Wanna hear it? Lean in closer......

Here it is.......

There is no secret!!

The secret is you just have to get through it. All the books I read, all the people I talk to, and all the memories I can scrape from my own brain tell me that this part is tough. You're in the middle of forest. Deal with it. Get over it. Brew a pot of coffee and call your mom to vent. That is how you solve it.

Six weeks old today and guess what? This is the most gassy time (for the baby and even for perhaps the mommy), it's the peak of the fussy period, growth spurt (which means he won't sleep and will want to eat every 1.5 to 2 hours) and oh yeah, your sleep depreviation has REALLY SUNK IN NOW. Add a breast infection to the mix and you get posts like my whole week last week. Sigh.

So now, I have slid back my expectations and I take it day by day - even 3 hours cycles are the max I can handle now. But then I look at this face

And I feel it is all worth it.

Here are some quick tips I picked up this past week. This book offers great advice. I have reinstated swaddling and using a sound machine for sleep.

Also, I have been using gas drops after every feeding, seems to help.

And for the finale, when I have afternoons like this with Chase, then I am a better momma.

5 weeks is not too early?

Thank you for your comments fellow friends and bloggers. Okay, just to get this straight, 5 1/2 weeks is not too early for 15 minutes of crying, right? I am willing to do this because I did it with the other boys, but I don't remember at what point I did it.

Looks like I'll be seeing a few days of this. Gulp. Big deep breath.

On a side note, it looks like I win the 'Bad Mother" award for letting Chase cry because that is exactly what Jackson told me I was the other night. I believe his exact words were "Stop letting Chase cry - it means you are a bad mother."

Did that just come out of his mouth?

I guess bad mothers also clean up your vomit because that is exactly what I did 8 times this morning for the name caller himself. Karma, Jackson, Karma.

Baby Mamas - I need some advice!

In the Seattle area, there is this organization called PEPS or Program for Early Parent Support. When your baby is about 4 months old, if you sign up for a PEPS group, you get to meet with about 8-10 mothers in your area with babies the same age as yours. You meet weekly with this group and because everybody is going through pretty much the same thing at the same time, you get tons of "this is working for me" or "this is what this means" kind of stuff. And while we all know that you can go to the doctor or nurse for advice, the best kind of advice comes from your girlfriends and other baby mamas. I was in a PEPS group with Jackson and was a group leader for a few years after that. To me, it was an invaluable tool for new parents.

Well, now I'm in need of a PEPS group. So I'm calling out to you if you are able to give me any sort of advice. Specifically about sleep.

Here are the brief details. Chase is now 5 weeks. I am "scheduling" him, which basically means that I feed him every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. At the beginning of each cycle, he eats, then I try to keep him up for some waketime, then down for a nap the last 1.5 to 2 hours of each cycle. This has worked beautifully until about 4 days ago. He wakes up about 30 minutes into each nap! It is mostly due to gas, but none the less, he wakes and won't go back down. He isn't hungy, he isn't wet or dirty - it is mostly gas. I try to head it off by using gas drops, but they usually don't work. I thought it was acid reflux after talking to one of my girlfriends, so we started to prop him up and let him sleep in his carseat and boppy, but he still wakes.

He will stop crying if we pick him up, but frankly, I can't hold a baby for his naptimes. 5 weeks is too early to cry it out, right? I forget these things.

Sometimes he will make it through the whole nap, but like I said, he mostly is waking and we still have another hour until he is due to eat again. When do babies fall into the morning nap, afternoon nap, and late afternoon nap schedule instead of 6 naps a day?

So there you have it. Please tell me what you did - I will really appreciate it!

Our real 3rd child

I know I have said in the past that I'm not a huge Oprah fan mostly because her shows these days tend to be a little unrelevant to me. However, I caught today's show because I happened to be feeding Chase at the time. The show was on puppy mills. Puppy mills seem to be getting a ton of attention these days in the media; it's kind of the story au jour.

Here's the thing. I totally agree with this story. Instead of buying a purebread puppy - go to the human society or any adoption/rescue foundation to get your next pet. Jeremy and I have had 3 dogs. The first two dogs were from purebreed breeders and both of those dogs did not last long in our house. When we decided to give our boys a dog to grow up with, we first went on petfinder.com. We probably visited 5 shelters, including the Seattle area Humane Soceity. We knew we had to find the right fit for our family. So we turned down a lot of dogs and our children left a handful of times with no dogs in their laps. One day, Jeremy went to the HS before work and they had just received a pair of puppies that were found walking on the side of the road in North Bend, WA. They had fleas, were dirty and very emanciated, but extremely fluffy and ready to be loved. We took Jackson out of school and Jer called in late to work. We visited with both of the puppies and we found the girl puppy to be a lot more mellow, didn't jump on the kids and didn't nip at them. We decided to take her home that day. That was how Chilidog came into our family. She is a flat coat retriever and she has turned out to be the best dog in the whole world. In the future, our family will always adopt our pets.



Chili never barks (except when playing with other dogs), never licks, is very submissive to her pack leaders, and is the most sweet and lovable dog you could ever find. Flat coats are known for this temperament and they make the BEST pets for little kids. We joke that she is our real 3rd child because she thinks she is human and one of the children. When I am lecturing the boys on misbehavior, Chili will sit next to them with her ears back and act like she is being lectured as well.

So in this case, listen to Oprah and adopt your next pet. Now off I go to my garage gym for my workout. This last post was my last attempt to avoid the gym. But I still have one hour left until I am needed by Chase and I'm bored, so I can either hit the pantry or hit the gym. I'll pick the latter.

Later!

Baby Daze

These are some tired eyes. Me. Tonight. at around 9pm. Another long, hard day.
I post these things not to wah-wah-whine about my life, but really, to document what I was going through, because years from now when I'm craving another baby, I'll need this blog (in book form) to look at and to remember what it was really like. Like my cousin said, it really is brutal. But the thing is, you survive. I know I did because I have two healthy, active and completely normal older boys. And Jeremy had worse work schedules with the older boys than he does now. But that doesn't change that I'm trying to be super mom. I'm trying to get a homemade dinner on the table every night. I'm trying to lose the baby weight. I'm trying to be a good mom to the older boys while I have to pay so much attention to the baby. I'm trying to get everyone to baseball practice and piano practice and have friends over. And I'm trying to be a good wife to my husband who works hard for our family.

Every day I have a block of time that is really really bad. And I question all the decisions I've made. Like today, I should have applied to SuperNanny with the way Blake was behaving around dinnertime and right after dinner.

Then, every day I will have a series of events go the way I planned and I'll think, hey, it isn't so bad. Like today when it was 65 degrees and I met a friend at the park and I saw the Delta flight take off from the airport. And that this morning because of scheduling tweaks I made yesterday, Chase woke up at 7am today.

But mostly, I just try to be honest with myself and that is when you get blog entries like today's and some of the ones from the recent past. I guess the best piece of advice I could give myself is to take it one day at a time, one child at a time. If I feel overwhelmed, then push back to attacking the day 3 hours at a time and then evaluate. And if it is too much, take it one hour at a time. And remember, you always move forward.

One month old

I was hoping to write this on a day when I was in a better place, but today Chase is officially one month old and I wanted to write down the latest even if I'm having a bad day. We had a rough night last night coupled with Jer working very very long work days. I'm on mommy duty from 5am (when Chase wakes) until 10pm (when Jackson turns off his light). Today it is all getting to me a bit.

Lucky for me, Chase has been a pretty easy going baby. I don't know why that is, but he is just a lovable guy. I'm big time into a schedule, so during the day, I have him nursing every 2 1/2-3 hours (per Babywise fame). He eats, plays, sleeps. Wake him up at 3 hours and repeat cycle. Lucky for him he is also the best nurser out of the whole bunch. He may get a shot at being BF'd a lot longet than his brothers. Then again, I have these huge gigantic milk jugs and I'm getting sick of lugging them around so he may not after all.

After weeks of playing with him and solicting smiles, we finally got an official one yesterday! Out of all the places, he was sitting on my lap in our office and he was staring up at the bookcases and books and broke out into several random smiles. A future bookworm?

His favorite place of all is to lay in the boppy. He generally sleeps at night in it. Hangs out during the day in it. And eats while on it. He loves it. To give him sensory shape time, I put him on our bed propped up in the boppy in front of the black and white shapes and he will sit there for a good 30 minutes just looking. See for yourself.

At 1 month, he is waking twice a night to eat. Last official feed of the day is at 9-10pm and he wakes at 1-2am (dad wakes up to give this bottle) and then at 5:30am. (I'm trying to get this to go a little later, but so far no success). I'm hoping that by week 7 or 8 we have dropped the 1am feeding. Chase is such an easy schedule boy that I'm sure he will once he gets his weight up above 11 lbs. He is now 9.4 lbs.

The last developmental note I want to make about Chase is that he is quite the interactive baby. When I sit face-to-face with him, I will talk and coo and exclaim to him and he patiently sits quietly listening to me and waiting for me to finish and then he when I am quiet, he will start moving his arms and legs in a cycle motion and he will begin to coo and grunt in clear intonations as if he is talking back. I can't wait until I actually get really babbles from him.

We started doing "tummy time" about 2 weeks ago and by today Chase gets up on his hands in a push up and turns his head from side to side about 5 to 6 times before he is done. Then he'll just lay on his tummy sucking his fists. None of my other babies tolerated tummy time like this kid.

Our current daily schedule looks something like this:

5:30am Chase wake to feed and awake for rest of morning - very interactive and alert

6:30 I get out of bed to make coffee and breakfast

7:00am Blake wakes up - get him breakfast

7:30 Jackson gets up and gets ready for school.

8:30 chase eats and then down for morning nap, I do morning chores and then get ready for day. If Jer is home, I do errands in the morning.

11:30 chase eats - get Blake lunch and then Chase and I walk Blake to school

12:30 Chase naps and I exercise for 45-60 minutes

2:00 Chase eats, afternoon coffee break for me, I get stuff ready for dinner. Usually he only sleeps for an hour so if he wakes early, he spends the rest of this nap cycle in the bijorn so I can get things done.

5:00 Chase eats - family then eats dinner.

6:00 Either baseball practice for older kids or if we are home Chase gets his bath.

4 B's for chase - Bath, Bottle, Book, then Bed by 7pm

7:30 Blake get ready for bed

8:00 Blake in bed

8:30 Jackson bed

9:00 I watch some TV and then bed for me by 10pm. Jer stays up with Chase. (he usually wakes up around 1-2 am to eat)

Repeat cycle all over the next day.

They are born this way, part 2

As the only girl in this house full of boys, I can't tell you how many times I mutter to myself, "Don't they see it? (in reference to empty toilet paper roll)" OR "Don't they get it (in reference to the way they just pick their clean clothes for the day OUT of the laundry hamper I put in their room instead of putting the clothes away in their drawer, unfortunately husband does this too)"

The other night as I was turning off the lights in Jackson's room, I came across this....

That would be a CLEAN pillowcase that I put on top of his pillow as a subtle hint to put it on pillow before he went to bed. Uh, he just decided to sleep on the folded case on top of the pillow. Boys, boys, boys.