7 months later...

The last time I posted, I was about to have a baby. Ophelia Maize is now over 7 months old. Some would say that it is excusable to not make writing a blog a priority when you have a newborn. Others would say I'm lazy. While I'm sure my reasons for not continuing lie somewhere in between, I would still like to make the effort to write again. When I started thinking about continuing this blog, I toyed with a few different ideas of how I could write about something different, or choose a different focus...but now it's been months and this lack of focus or direction has led me to do absolutely nothing. So instead I have decided that I just need to start writing and see where it takes me. I'm sure a lot of my posts will be filled with anecdotes about my children or incessant complaining about their sleep schedules (or lack there of), but I am hoping to also fill it with new things I learn as well as generic observations and adventures.

So to begin: If you know me at all, you probably also know that my wonderful son Avery doesn't sleep well. And while I try not to complain about this, I often do. I have to remind myself of all the things he is awesome at (which is everything else, really). So today, I'm going to praise Avery's eating habits. Lately, he has taken to walking to the fridge to ask for something to eat, asks us to open the door, and then looks in the fridge, pondering what to eat. Today, he picked out the following meal: string cheese, turkey, blueberries, broccoli and grape tomatoes. I then put it all on his plate, showed it to him and he said, "oh boy!!" and ran to his chair in the dining room. He was SO excited to eat. This scenario is an almost daily occurrence (with the food varying of course).

It's these little victories that remind me that while Jared and I can't do that much to control his sleep issues (sometimes I think I might have done something wrong, or not done something, to contribute to this problem, but we did nothing different with Ophelia and she has no problems), we have done fairly well when it comes to things we can help control, like helping him develop and create healthy eating habits. I am so thankful that he is a good eater :)

The Muppets

Today, Avery and I watched the new Muppet movie, The Muppets. He LOVED it, and I quite enjoyed it myself.  I am glad we both liked it as now we have something else to watch besides Sesame Street.  Not that I don't like Sesame Street, but I have seriously seen every single episode several times and am up for something new.  Watching the movie made me want to see The Muppet Show as I don't think I've ever actually seen any episodes.  I also think that would be nice to watch with Avery because I would enjoy it better and Avery loves anything with people and Muppets (he has never liked any cartoons). I looked online and I can get all the seasons from the library. Yay!

What I Learned: Avery liked the Muppet Movie and I can get The Muppet Show from the library.

VACATION!!!!

For the sake of time (and for fear of boring you), I will try to summarize this as quickly as possible.

Jared, Blake and my dad planned to go to Michigan on a fishing trip the first weekend of May to Jared's family's cabin. I wanted to come along with Avery initially but seeing as it will be two weeks from my due date and after the whole Georgia "vacation" debacle, I decided it would be more trouble than it was worth for me to go. My in-laws have been trying to convince me to come along so they can see me and Avery at the cabin while the men are fishing. Then today, Charmaine emailed me with some wonderful ideas and this is what was decided:

We are leaving on Thursday to drive to MI. I will be dropped off in Lansing at my best friend Mollie's house while Ken, Blake, Jared and Avery continue on to Flint. On Friday, they will all drive up to the cabin while I stay at Mollie's. On Sunday morning, Mollie, Matt, Lucy and I will head up to the cabin to join everyone else and stay until Monday evening. Then Mollie's family will head back to Lansing and we will head back to Flint, eventually heading for home on Tuesday. This means that a)I get to see Mollie, b)I get two days to RELAX FOR REAL while Avery is up at the cabin with everyone else and c)I still get to go to the cabin (because I do really like going).

The only bad thing is that I have never been away from Avery that long and hope that he is okay (and that I'm okay!) with being away from me for two days. But, if I'm ever going to take a break (and the clock's ticking so I don't have much time left before baby #2 arrives and I will be without a break for awhile again), what better situation to leave him in than in the care of three of his grandparents, both of his godparents and his father at a cabin, especially when Avery's favorite thing on earth right now is to play outside?

Thanks Charmaine for thinking of such a wonderful idea :)

What I Learned: Avery and I are going to go to MI after all and I will get a real break for two days!

Ugly Name List

Back in 2009, before I was even pregnant, my mom sent me an email with a list of all the names she doesn't like, you know, just so I knew. So today, Jared and I were going over our name list and I have a folder with lists of names in it that we made when I was pregnant with Avery. In the same folder, I put mom's list. I was looking over it again since I haven't looked at it since 2009 and I noticed that Avery was on the list! Oh no! Sorry mom, I didn't consult the list first :) I brought this up to her and she said (which she told me before, but I didn't realize it was on her all-time ugly name list because of this) that she just associated the name with this comedian named Avery Schreiber that she found annoying. But as soon as we named her first grandchild Avery, the association moved to thinking of our Avery instead and she likes the name now. This just proves that maybe I should use the list to name all of my children in order to move some good names off of that list!

What I Learned: Mom used to think Avery was an ugly name.

Avery is Awesome

Today Avery had his 18-month check up. He had to get one vaccine and then get his blood drawn to check his iron levels so that we can see if he has restless leg syndrome (see earlier post). I was not looking forward to the appointment, anticipating that Avery would, for obvious reasons, be very upset during and after the appointment.  During the appointment, I found out that Avery is somehow in the 75th percentile for height (which I'm sure will even out soon as both Jared and I are clearly not tall people) and in the 50th percentile for weight. After the basic check up was done, the doctor suggested we give Avery Zyrtec before bed to see if it helps with his RLS.

Then it was time for the vaccine. Now every time Avery has gotten a vaccine, he literally has not said a word, except when he got the MMR, but that one burns and apparently adults complain about how much it hurts, so that's understandable. For some reason, I just thought that because he was older, he would cry this time, but nope; he gave one little yelp of protest and that was it. The nurse was so shocked. Avery's a man! Haha. Then we went over to the lab for the blood draw where he was given a bag of animal crackers to distract him. He certainly protested and even cried during the blood draw but about 30 seconds after it was done, he was perfectly fine and eating his crackers.

There are so many things that Avery is awesome at (eating, getting shots, bath time, entertaining himself, etc). I just wish that sleep was one of them. Let's hope this Zyrtec works!

What I Learned: Avery is tall for his age; Avery is a trooper when it comes to getting shots and blood drawn.

Restless Legs

As you might already know from reading this blog, Avery is not the best sleeper. He never has been.  He is super restless when we put him to sleep for the night, wakes up often, and seems uncomfortable all the time, which makes him wake up more, etc. We are having a hard time getting him to stay asleep and to sleep on his own.  I have thought a few times that maybe he has Restless Leg Syndrome as I have it, and toss and turn all night like Avery does. My mom mentioned tonight that she thought he might have it as well, so we decided to do some more research to see if babies/children can actually have it.

After looking online, I am pretty certain that Avery has RLS, which would explain his sleep problems. He has all the signs and symptoms, especially the fact that when he's tired and trying to sleep, he scratches himself a lot, to the point of bleeding sometimes (which kids with RLS can do because they feel like they have things crawling on their skin). According to one Mayo Clinic study, 72% of children that have RLS have a mother who has it. Avery's 18-month appointment is coming up soon, so I plan on talking to his doctor about this and I hope to God that we can remedy this problem and help him to sleep better (especially before the baby comes). It seems like the number one way to treat it in kids is to give them iron supplements but I doubt Avery has low iron levels as he eats meat at about a 3:1 ratio of all other foods. I hope there is something he can take or something we can do to solve the problem so we can all sleep better (and I will finally know why he's had so many problems sleeping!).

What I Learned: Kids can have Restless Leg Syndrome, and it's possible that Avery has it.

Marching Band Nostalgia

This afternoon, Avery and I were able to get out of the house again and go to my friend Brice's house to hang out with him, his wife Sarah and 10-month-old son Jack. Then two of my best friends from high school, Justin and Whit, came over to hang out as well. As usual, the conversation between Whit and me veered towards marching band and we spent some time reminiscing. It made me realize that I will be sad that Avery will not have the same marching band experience that I had in high school. Even though he could have the opportunity to be in marching band here, it won't be the same. In Georgia, marching band is almost as intense as high school football. The competitions are intense and the marching band is very involved in every football game, both at home and away. Maybe it won't even matter because Avery might not play an instrument and want to be in marching band. But seeing as I have already predicted that he is going to be a drummer and march with the Scouts or Cavaliers, I doubt he will play nothing. Alas. The one good thing about living in Georgia growing up was marching band. I guess I'll take that and be happy with the fact that my children get to grow up in Wisconsin instead :)

What I Learned: I will be sad if my kids aren't in marching band, or if they are, that they won't have the same experience that I had.

Bill's House

We arrived safely in GA this afternoon to find Bill's house all in shambles with stuff everywhere. Mostly there are just boxes all over the place, but while his house was not anywhere close to being baby-proofed before we arrived, it is certainly worse now with the move going on. On top of that, Avery remembered that he loves swimming in pools and so the sight of Bill's pool keeps making him super excited, only to be brought to tears when we have to keep him inside, far away from it. He doesn't understand why he can't go in the pool and he certainly doesn't understand why he can't go exploring all over this new house he's in. It's actually kind of a nightmare trying to be here with Avery. I hope that tomorrow there is some alternative to me staying in the house with Avery or it's going to be a long few days.

What I learned: Keeping Avery confined in Bill's house, in one room, is not only difficult for Avery to understand, but difficult for me to endure. Traveling with a very mobile and curious toddler is turning out to be the opposite of a vacation.

Unpredictable

Tonight, Jared, Ken, Avery and I left for GA around 8pm. We anticipated that Avery would fall asleep as soon as he got in the car because he usually goes to bed between 7:00-7:30. This he did. We also thought that he would sleep for 4-5 hours and then wake up for milk like he usually does. This he also did. But upon waking up, he couldn't fall back asleep because he was very uncomfortable, having been in a car seat for five hours. This was completely understandable. So we decided to just stop at a hotel so that we could all at least get some sleep and so Avery could fall back asleep comfortably. I thought that surely stopping at a hotel would give us all more sleep than continuing to sit in the car with a crabby baby.

But of course, when we got to the hotel (by this point it was 2am), Avery thought it was play time and stayed up until 5am and was wide awake. He finally fell asleep around 5:00, so our plans to leave around 7am were thwarted because Avery of course was so tired that he was sleeping. Jared only slept for two hours while I got about three (Thankfully, Ken slept through it all and got in a solid 6 hours of sleep, plus the few hours he slept in the car, so at least he was capable of driving). We finally left the hotel around 9:00. So what was supposed to be a more restful night because we broke down and got a hotel turned out to be even more tiring. I just hate that I can't predict when Avery is going to sleep and cooperate and when he's going to suddenly be wide awake and not sleep. Grr.

What I learned: Never assume what Avery is going to do when it comes to sleeping. I will be wrong.

Lapsit Storytime

This morning, Jared and I took Avery to the library for lapsit storytime. One would assume from the name of the event that it would involve your child sitting on your lap and listening to a story. However, that was not the case. It was more like a Kindermusic class. The librarian led the kids and parents in some songs with actions (that were clearly meant for older children so it was just the parents participating really). Then she passed out bells to the kids to shake along with more songs. She also had a puppet that she walked around with as well as a teddy bear that she later demonstrated could get dressed "all on his own" by putting all his clothes on correctly (what 1 year old can understand that?). Then she brought out toys for all the kids to play with on the mat, and that was the end of lapsit storytime. Avery still enjoyed it, but the library seriously needs to consider renaming their events.

What I learned: Lapsit Storytime at the library does not involve reading stories.

The Nutritional Merits of Jell-O?

Recently, my mom and I have had several conversations about the nutritional value of Jell-O. My mom thinks it's healthy for you (I think her exact quote was, "It's filled with protein!") and I do not. Now, this isn't to say that I don't like Jell-O or think it's terrible for you or don't eat it myself, because I really like Jell-O. I just think that we have very different ideas of what "healthy" means in this case, so I decided to do some research and this is what I found.

Daily recommended intake of protein:
women-46 grams
infants-10 grams

Daily recommended intake of sugar:
women-20 grams
children-12 grams
(these numbers are confusing because on the same website it said that your daily intake of added sugars should be 40 grams or less, and then it says that the American Heart Association states that you should only have 20 grams of sugar a day, so I'm not sure which numbers to go with).

Jell-O has 2 grams of protein and 19 grams of sugar per serving. I think it's fair to say that the amount of sugar contained in Jell-O overrides the fact that it has 2 grams of protein in it. Again, there are WAY worse things for you to eat, and I am not advocating not eating Jell-O. I just think that choosing to give Avery meat for his protein intake instead of offering him Jell-O is probably the way to go :) Sorry, Mom!

What I learned: Jell-O has a LOT of sugar in it and not much else.

Burning Calories

Today I was reading an article on babycenter.com and they had a list of common household activities and how many calories each one burns. Everyone has seen these lists before showing how many calories you burn by vacuuming or doing laundry, but this list had something I found interesting and don't remember ever seeing before. It stated that you burn 216 calories per hour playing with a toddler, which means that I burn probably 1000 calories a day (an estimate...)! So now everyday when I feel bad that I don't spend any time exercising, I can remember that I actually exercised for hours by just playing with my son. How awesome is that?

What I learned: Playing with Avery burns over 200 calories per hour.

Avery is sick AGAIN!

Avery slept much better last night, however when he woke up, his breathing was really a lot worse. I didn't want to end up going to the ER again tonight so we decided to take him to the doctor right away this morning. Turns out, he has bronchiolitis...again, which is basically baby bronchitis. He was given a steroid, an antibiotic and an inhaler so that we could give him breathing treatments from home. The inhaler seems to help a lot and I'm glad we have one at home now to use in case he gets sick again. He is breathing almost normally already after just one treatment. I can't wait for him to stop getting sick all the time.

What I learned: Avery has bronchiolitis again.

No Sleep

Last night, Avery had a really bad night. I think he is coming down with something as he was having problems breathing. This resulted in Jared and I not getting any sleep whatsoever. We were supposed to go to church and sing for choir as well as have practice for motet choir but we were zombies. Thankfully, my wonderful mother said she would watch Avery so Jared and I could go back to bed and actually sleep (who on earth knows how Avery was awake and functioning!). We each slept about 3.5 hours and then got up. It made me remember back to my college days when I could easily pull all-nighters and function completely normally. Now I am not only ridiculously tired if I don't get enough sleep (which actually is almost every night anyway) but I seriously am incapable of functioning, thinking straight, etc. I felt so old that I could no longer just pull it together. Thank God my mom could watch Avery so we could at least get some sleep, otherwise, I'm sure my son would have been in danger if I had to watch him! I'm hoping this doesn't happen tonight again...

Burt's Bees

I really like Burt's Bees Diaper Ointment so when I finally ran out of everything I had received from my baby shower (yes, it all lasted for 16 months), I went to Target to buy more. Of course, they were out. On top of that, it was about $10 for a 2oz tube of it! Granted, I know it lasts a long time, especially because Avery isn't prone to getting diaper rashes, but still, it's way more expensive than other brands (but still worth it in my opinion). Then I looked at Walmart and they don't even carry it. My next idea was to look online since I was buying a bath net for him online anyway (as I couldn't find one of those in the store either.). Well good thing Target was out because I found a 3oz tube online for $9.78 with free shipping!

What I learned: Burt's Bees diaper ointment is cheaper online.

Far Far Away

Today, Avery's crib got moved down to his own bedroom on the first floor. Since we are expecting a new baby in May, we figured it was time for Avery to move to his own bedroom and we thought this would give us/him plenty of time to adjust and transition. He has always been either in our bed or in his crib, which is 15 feet away from our bed. Most nights he sleeps in a little of both. He has always been just a few steps away should he need me. Now that he is actually in his room in the crib I am feeling incredibly anxious about the whole thing. He is after all only 15 months old (as of today!) and has yet to ever even come close to sleeping through the night. I am beginning to wonder if this is all happening a little too soon. But then I think, it's probably just happening too soon for me, not for Avery. We are hoping that the introduction of a more distinct bedtime routine and having his own room will help him to sleep better and we will have less night wakings. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, I will lay anxiously in bed with the baby monitor on high so I can be sure to hear him the second he wakes up and needs me. I am so afraid he will wake up and freak out because he won't be able to see us and know we are right there for him. I have no idea how parents have their kids in a separate bedroom since birth. This is seriously torturing me. He's not just in another room; he's on a different floor from us! I would not have chosen this but seeing as our house only has two bedrooms, we don't really have a choice. It's either our bedroom, or his own bedroom on a different floor. This makes for one sad and anxious mommy :(

What I learned: I am not comfortable with the idea of Avery being in his own room so far away from me, even though I know it has to happen eventually and the sooner he's used to it, the sooner I can sleep better at night before the new baby comes.

Approved!

Today we got our official medicaid cards in the mail along with letters saying that our coverage was backdated to September 1st. I guess it's normal procedure when you apply for medicaid that they backdate it three months from when you applied. This is awesome news because we have a bill from Avery's ER visit in Montana (which is from the beginning of September) that was not covered at all by our insurance because we hadn't reached our ridiculous deductible yet. Now, medicaid will cover it as secondary insurance and we most likely won't have to pay anything! This also means that Avery's last two doctors visits (one for an ear infection: $226; one for the allergist: over $500) will also be covered now. I am so excited. I guess the only way for Americans to get health insurance that actually covers things is to get government insurance. Gasp! Oh yeah, and you have to be poor, too :)

What I learned: Avery and I qualified for medicaid, backdated to September.

ER Visit

This morning, Avery woke up with a bad cough and he was wheezing when he breathed. He seemed fine otherwise all day. Later in the evening, his breathing was getting pretty laborious and I counted that he was breathing 80 times per minute. According to Web MD, if your child is breathing more than 50-60 times a minute than you should immediately take your child to the ER. Well, I thought this seemed a bit hasty since Avery was still playing and acting normal, other than the breathing. So I called the 24-hour nurse hotline at my doctor's office and per the nurse, I indeed needed to take Avery to the ER. So mom drove me to Children's Hospital and Jared left work and met us there. There were about 4 other kids in the waiting room who were all breathing just like Avery. After two different doctors looked at him and after a chest xray, they determined that he did not have pneumonia, but a raging chest cold that was causing him to have slight wheezing in his upper respiratory tract. This is good because it means the wheezing is not asthma related. They said it was most likely a virus but since one of his ears looked like it was about to be infected, they decided to put him on antibiotics anyway. He also received a breathing treatment (a nebulizer with albuterol in it) which significantly slowed his breathing and cleared his passages enough that it stopped the wheezing. Altogether, we were only there about 2.5 hours, so it wasn't that bad. But we didn't get home until 1:00am, which means that Avery didn't go to bed until then. So now we have to deal with his sleep schedule being severely off again. Gah!

As a sidenote, I was thinking about where Avery could have gotten sick since we haven't left the house in days except to go to church and none of my family is sick. Then I remembered that I brought Avery to the church nursery during the Christmas Eve service on Saturday because he was being too talkative during the sermon. The last time I brought him to the nursery to play, he got fifth disease. So I don't think I will ever play with him in the nursery again!

What I learned: Avery has a bad virus and luckily he does not (as of yet) have asthma. Also, the church nursery apparently is a breeding ground for disease, even when you go there when no other kids are there!

Chinese Christmas

Merry Christmas! Today was a great day filled with lots of presents and delicious food. Avery had a wonderful time with all of his toys that his grandparents and aunts and uncles got him (Mom and Dad did not get him any toys, anticipating the amount he would get from others).

The last present and probably the most surprising gift we opened was a gift from my Dad and Neal. Last week, they took our server home to update/upgrade it as it was older and slower than we would like and they said they could piece together some things to make it better. Fast forward to this afternoon and looking at this last present, it was shaped like a computer tower, so we thought, oh, it's the computer tower they fixed for us. Awesome! So Jared and I opened the box and found a computer tower inside. Upon taking it out of the box however, we noticed that it was covered in black duct tape and that while it was heavy and not empty, it clearly did not have computer bits inside of it. So we took off all the tape and opened up the case to find a wrapped present inside the tower. The present was a laptop! Apparently their neighbors had two identical laptops, neither of which worked. They told Neal and Ken if they could get them to work properly, they could keep one. So they kept one and loaded software on it for us and even put TV shows and other programs on it that they knew we wanted. It was such a surprise!

One of the things that Neal included on it was the Mandarin Rosetta Stone. He knows that Jared (and I) want Avery to learn Mandarin and that we need to learn some ourselves in order to accomplish this. So we loaded it up and I started doing the first lesson to see what it was like. I put the settings to pinyin because let's face it, there's no way I'm going to learn to speak some of it AND learn the symbols, at least not unless we move to China. So the words are at least recognizable and somewhat pronounceable but the inflection of each syllable is what is hardest for me. I also found that I easily recognized the words by sight after learning them but could barely differentiate when just listening to the words. This will be problematic as I will need to learn how to say the words in order to say them to Avery. Who cares if I can recognize the words in pinyin?! (<--insert interrobang here). I have a long way to go, that's for sure. We got Avery the Little Pim videos from the library for him to learn, but he's still a little too young for it. We figured it's better to at least start hearing it now though!


What I learned today: Mandarin is going to be the most difficult thing I will ever try to learn. I also learned the words for water (shui), tea (cha) and juice (guozhi) among others. ***Sidenote: All of those words have symbols over a lot of the letters but I don't know how to do that here so you get the English bastardization of the pinyin :)

Self-weaned

This may be more of a realization than something I learned, but realizing something means you didn't know about it before you realized it, so that's the same thing as learning something new, right?

Today I realized that Avery hasn't nursed at all for about week and a half-two weeks.

Since he still wakes up a lot at night, I thought night-weaning him might help him make the transition to sleeping better and for longer. The problem is, then he got sick, so we couldn't deny him liquids when he asked for them, so we started giving him a bottle at night. Eventually, he never asked to nurse any more during the day. Anytime we thought he was thirsty (because he hadn't had anything to drink in a few hours) we would bring him a bottle of milk and he was perfectly happy and content about this. I never once had deny him nursing because he just stopped asking for it. Next thing I know, it's been almost two weeks and he no longer nurses. I know that this is normal for a toddler to self-wean when their mother becomes pregnant. I wasn't actually intending to wean him any time soon, preferring to let him self-wean, but I had no idea it would happen so quickly and easily.

I am both happy and sad about this change. I am happy because a)it was beginning to hurt a lot due to me being pregnant and b) I was honestly getting tired of nursing him on and off all night. But I am also sad about this because he is growing up :( Obviously this was going to happen regardless of how long he nursed, but it was such a wonderful bonding experience that we've shared for the entirety of his life and it's sad that it's over.

Now, if only he would sleep through the night so easily...

What I learned: Avery self-weaned (well, during the day; we prompted night time weaning) in less than a week.