The Little Ripper Report

The Worst Kind of Tired

2012-01-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

I am SO tired today. And I have no idea why. No, I'm not pregnant. For once I am very sure of that. I had a fun and relaxing weekend, and other than a couple-hour span yesterday, I didn't really exert myself at all. We spent the weekend with my parents while Craig was on a two-city roadtrip, and despite the help, I'm exhausted today. I even went to bed at a reasonable time--earlier than usual. In fact, I fell asleep on the couch at 10pm, which almost never happens. I got myself into my real bed sometime between 11 and 11:30, and I woke up for a few minutes when Craig finally got home past midnight, but other than that, I slept well and yet still woke up feeling no better than when I went to sleep last night. Just tired.

My one tiring experience (other than dealing with a little boy who was uninterested in listening all weekend) was the couple hours after we got home, in which I ran around the house like a crazy woman, unpacking and putting other things in their proper place. I was compelled to put things away that had been sitting in the wrong spot for weeks, or pick up little messes that had been bugging me. I also made dinner and did dishes during that time, and shortly after had to do the bedtime routine. I settled onto the couch with a snack and a newspaper to watch an episode of The Biggest Loser on DVR, and found myself thankful that it was only an hour--not the usual two--because by the end, my eyelids were drooping. And I just couldn't muster the strength to get up and go to bed, so there I napped for a bit. But I was still in bed earlier than usual and I don't recall any wakeups other than when Craig got home. So why am I so tired?

Normally I'd spend a day like this just a tiny bit intrigued/excited because I'd be hopeful that it meant I was pregnant. Or, at the very least, I'd be convinced it was a symptom of a greater problem that might be impacting my ability to get pregnant. While any problem isn't ideal, at least it would provide a place to focus our efforts. And assuming it was something fixable, it would be nice to know that there was just a simple bump in the road we had to get past in order to get back on track. But this time around, I'm just tired. I know I'm not pregnant because I know where my cycle is and I just had bloodwork last week. It confirmed that I wasn't already pregnant, which I knew, nor did I have any obvious evidence that anything was amiss...no thyroid trouble, no hormonal imbalances. So while that's all good news, it sort of just leaves me back at square one for the next few months until we're past the window of time where the Disney trip is at risk. I do have follow-up bloodwork next week as well, which may give another hint or two as to what might be going on, but I'm pretty sure it's all going to be chalked up to bad luck or the dreaded "unexplained infertility" which is the diagnosis when nothing seems wrong but nothing's working, either. It reminds me of the term "irreconcilable differences" that every Hollywood divorce claims. Clear as mud.

So, without the many possibilities that a tired day could signify, I'm just left with with a tired day. Bummer.

Pain

2012-01-27T23:39:00.000-05:00

Seeing your child in pain is one of the worst things ever. Even if you know it's common pain and something they will get over, it's hard.

The last few days Jacob has been complaining of a sore butt. Now that he's potty trained and has had very few run-ins with constipation, I guess I figured we might be past the stage of down-there discomfort. But apparently not. The other night when he first complained about it, I took a look and it was, in fact, a bit red. It looked like it could use some extra wiping, like maybe he pooped at daycare and it didn't get wiped well enough, or maybe he farted and a little sneaked out. I knew that having even that little bit against his skin could make things a little raw, so I wiped him and figured we were done with it.

But then it happened again the next day, and when I went to check it, there was a little bit of watery poop there this time. Which made me think maybe he was getting a case of diarrhea and that's what was causing his issues. But no, he pooped (with much angst) and it was mostly solid. Nothing large either.

Last night he was absolutely miserable around bedtime, to the point I put on diaper rash cream when I put on his nighttime diaper. He struggled and screamed through his time on the potty and the cream application, and it was pretty awful to watch. He just would not calm down. This morning he initially seemed fine. But then I made him go potty and he freaked out. He didn't go and then wanted to go back to his room, so we did and I put a little more cream on, just in case. But shortly thereafter, he said he had to poop and we ran back to the bathroom. It was a really painful one for him to get out, even though the size wasn't anything major, but he did it...and after that he seemed fine.

When I brought it up at daycare, they confirmed that he had been having issues with needing to poop but nothing coming out, and him saying his butt was sore. So, at least it's not just us.

But the question remains--what is it? Did he have one big poop that tore him up a bit and it can't quite heal? For the record, this kid can get out frighteningly large poops without flinching, including one the other night--pain-free--in about five seconds, tops. So if that's the case, I don't know why it would just be happening now. Might he have some minor irritation that's making his poop sting? Or is he suddenly having a problem with extra strong urges that make him push more than normal? Can kids even get hemorrhoids?

I'm going to just wait it out over the weekend and see if it happens again. If not, I'll assume that he healed up and all is well. If it happens again, I guess it'll be worth calling the doctor. I'll probably hear all of the usual stuff--suppositories, stool softeners, fiber, juice, prunes--anything to get him going, but softly. But whatever it takes to not go through another round of Jacob screaming or writhing in pain. It was so hard to watch that. We've all been there, and it bums me out that he has to be there, too. He probably doesn't remember the few times that he had trouble when he was a baby, so this is most likely a foreign concept to him. He doesn't know why pooping hurts him, and the last thing I want him to do is hold his poop for fear of hurting himself, because that will only make it worse. It's hard, but in the meantime we just have to do what we can to support him when it happens...encourage him, become deeply reacquainted with his nether regions, and hug him through it all. Poor baby.

Scarred

2012-01-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

One year ago yesterday was Jacob's mole removal surgery. I knew it was right around this time of year, but I didn't know the date until I looked back in the blog, and voila...January 24th, 2011. That was quite the day. I mean, it was an early morning, and a cold one at that. We had to send our little boy off with a surgeon, then go through the stress of waiting extra long while the drugs wore off. We were home pretty early and the worst was over, but we crammed a lot of emotion and action into those few hours.

A year later, the scar is probably about as good as it's going to get. I take comfort in the fact that someday it'll be covered with leg hair. I tried to get a good picture of it, but it wasn't easy. This was probably the best I got.

Interestingly, there's another picture I took where you can barely see it. It just depends on the angle and how the light reflects off of it. The skin is mostly the same color now, despite what you see above, but there's a definite scar. But the irregular cells are gone, and that's what's important. A scar is nothing compared to a healthy little boy.

Ironically, over the past year another scar has replaced it on the top of the list of body concerns, the one on Jacob's face that he got on his trip to Delaware Labor Day weekend. That one is slowly but surely getting better, but I'm not sure it'll ever totally go away. It's all a part of him now, right? I'm still hoping his little boy skin will heal better, but we'll see. There will be many more where they came from, too, I'm sure.

While I was trying to take a picture of his leg, I took this one of his feet. I never took a super cute one when he was tiny, so I figured I'd get one now before I totally lost my chance...

That's my moose, Loosey Moosey in between the feet. Those feet are gigantic compared to what they once were. Still cute, though.

He slept all night on the floor last night and decided to do it again tonight. He has a significant layer of stuffed animals and some comfy blankets to keep himself snuggly, but we have no idea why he finds this concept so novel. As long as he sleeps through the night I'm not going to bug him about it...unless it goes on way too long and we're risking him being "the weird kid who doesn't sleep in a bed". Such an oddball.

But he's our oddball, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Tuesday News & Notes

2012-01-24T23:11:00.002-05:00

- We're still dealing with some behavior issues, enough that the Batcave is taking a vacation locked in the basement, but at least Jacob is feeling better. It was still a pretty low-key weekend. Jacob and I hit up Wegmans during a prime sample time on Saturday, then went to the Knighthawks game that night. Sunday we went to church, I made a good dinner and the boys did movie night (complete with popcorn), and that was pretty much it.

- I did the strangest thing on Sunday afternoon during Jacob's nap. Well, two strange things. I tried on skinny jeans at Old Navy, which was pretty awful. I thought maybe I could pull them off with boots, and maybe I can...but perhaps not in the way I'd like myself to be seen. So that folly is still a bit of a work in progress. The weirder thing I did was go to a real estate open house. No, I have no intention to move again any time soon. I can probably read my blog from that period and be thoroughly convinced of that. However, I still keep my eyes on the local real estate listings, simply because I'm curious. It's an interesting opportunity to take a look inside houses you pass every day. I've never gone to an open house just for fun, though...mostly I just look on the internet at the pictures. But this particular one intrigued me, and I had the time to go see it. There are a lot of houses around here that look like our old one. I saw one a couple neighborhoods over that was so similar, yet so different. It had a family room off the kitchen and an unfinished basement. I was just interested to see an "alternate reality". In the end it made me grateful for our house now. It wasn't a bad house, but the rooms looked so small and it had a lot of little issues with the way it had been updated that made me so happy we have our house now. I think we made a very good choice!

- Today I got a call from daycare midday from the director. I always cringe a bit because most calls either mean Jacob is sick or injured. Well...today was his one teacher's birthday (not the one he "married" last week) and her boyfriend sent flowers and balloons to the center. The director told me that when Jacob saw them come into the room, he started saying, "They're from me! They're from me!" Seriously?! Everyone got a kick out of it, I guess! Even when I asked him about it on the way home, he insisted they were from him. Wow.

- As I mentioned earlier, we went to the Knighthawks game Saturday night. Here are some videos and pictures to give you an idea of the best 10 minutes of Jacob's night...first him taking a shot, then him doing a faceoff, and then what Jacob does most of the time...

He felt so cool in his big boy jersey. We happened to be sitting in a section with a lot of real Greece Hurricanes, which was sort of funny. Of course, we sat with a real lacrosse guy--Knighthawks Hall of Famer Tim Soudan, who used our other two tickets--and Jacob was beyond shy. Silly boy.

- Recently at daycare I've been impressed by Jacob's puzzle prowess. He's been doing this puzzle when I've come to pick him up, and he's really good at it. It's a real puzzle with interlocking pieces, not a baby puzzle. It is only 24 pieces, and good-sized ones at that, but still...he does it well. Years ago at a baseball game, we saw a puzzle that we thought would be fun, and it was so cheap that we couldn't pass it up. It was made up of cartoon images of minor league baseball mascots, including the Rochester Red Wings mascot and three Buffalo Bisons mascots. The puzzle was 150 pieces, with bigger pieces than your standard adult puzzle but far smaller than what Jacob is used to. And this morning I brought it out and told Jacob we could do it tonight. And when he was still talking about it at pickup, I knew he'd be up for the challenge. I definitely did most of it--mostly because we wanted to finish before bedtime--but I took the opportunity to teach him the technique of finding the flat pieces first and doing the frame, then asking him to find pieces that fit certain criteria. And you know what, he got a lot of pieces all by himself! The kid is apparently a puzzler. It suits his attention to detail well, I guess. It was really fun to see!

Putting in the last piece!

All done!

The finished product. Spikes is fourth from the left on the bottom, Buster is the lower right corner, and Chip is a couple up and over from Buster. Well worth the five bucks or so that we spent on it! I pulled out all of the white writing pieces at the top, but Jacob put that whole section together by himself!

- Tonight Jacob wanted to sleep on his floor. I decided it wasn't worth a battle and he'd probably figure out quickly that it wasn't comfortable. I'll be interested to see if he's still there when I go up to check on him. Then I need to decide if we should move him or risk him waking up uncomfortable in the middle of the night. Ahhh, parenthood.

On a Break

2012-01-22T17:22:00.000-05:00

Well, as of yesterday, we're officially on a baby-making break. Somehow ovulation wasn't detected despite more than two weeks of testing, but ironically this cycle was right on time. Let's hope it's the start of a trend. If so, that would be a tiny bit of good news in the midst of a generally unhappy little scenario.

As I mentioned previously, if we didn't get pregnant this time around, we had to wait a while to start trying again. We're going with Craig's whole family to Disney in November, and if I were too pregnant too fly or if we had a really new baby, it would prevent me from going, which would be such a bummer. I want to see Jacob's little face the first time he sees it all, so I just can't fathom not being there. Plans have already been made, so it's full speed ahead with that. The way I figure it, getting pregnant next month would have put a due date right near the end of October, less than two weeks before the trip. I think you're not supposed to fly any later than seven months (and frankly, I don't know how I'd feel about a week on my feet at that point either), so that's a couple more months we'd have to wait. If we wanted to aim for a spring-ish due date (April?) that's moving toward a summer conception.

So, for a few months, we're off the hook completely. The decision will come after we're past that Disney trip window, when we need to decide if I'll be risking my sanity by being homebound with a baby in the middle of winter. A lot will depend on what happens in the interim. Will my cycle regulate itself to the point that making real attempts will be easier? Will the blood work I need to get done tomorrow give us any insights into why things have been so off? I think it may be silly to wait lest we still find ourselves in this same position a year from now. And beyond that, if things still don't work, we'll have to decide how far we're willing to go to have another one. Risk having twins? IVF? Adoption? Hopefully we never get to that point, but admittedly, it's getting a tiny bit scarier each month.

It hit me yesterday morning that we're just not getting any younger. I mean, I understood that I'm currently facing being 34 going on 35 at the youngest. That's far from old in the childbearing world, but fertility declines considerably around 35, and I'll be five years older than I was the last time I went through the pregnancy/labor process. It may not seem like a lot, but a lot can change in five years, from the way my body handles pregnancy, to how it tolerates labor and delivery, to how it snaps back (if it does) afterward.  Everything could be totally different next time around, and I wasn't really planning on that when I started looking toward #2. In addition, Craig turns 40 at the end of this year. I don't know how sperm quality might be affected by age, but I know he doesn't want to be an old dad, either. His recent diet and 30 pound weight loss should help a bit, at least, but the more this gets put off, the more this stuff becomes an issue.

In the meantime, it's a funny place to find ourselves in. All of the planning we'd been doing, all of the things that were waiting on a new baby, sort of find themselves in no-man's land. Lately I'd been thinking I should think twice about buying new pants, but now I know I'd get quite a bit of use out of them regardless. I was thinking about Jacob's big boy bed and bedroom, too. I mean, we figured it was just a matter of time until he had to move, but now it could be another year and he's getting awfully old to be in a baby room. I think we've both been looking forward to the day where we can snuggle him in his bed, as book reading and bedtime will take on a whole new joy. Of course, on the off-chance that we ended up using Clomid and (God forbid) had twins, they'd have to end up in the big room and I'd hate to work hard on a big boy room only to have to deconstruct it again. And we'd lose our spare room in the meantime, unless we push forward with the plan to get a trundle bed for the office...which could be a waste if none of this pans out. It's funny knowing that I won't be pregnant this summer after all, and that I might not be pregnant for the Disney trip either if things continue to not go well.  After nine months of planning and mostly blind attempts at getting pregnant, all of a sudden it's just...done. It's weird. And yes, sad.

I'm hoping the lack of pressure will be a good thing, and it'll make everything that much more special if/when it finally happens.  It's a lot of time to focus on Jacob and pray hard for a quick and simple resolution once we're ready again. But right now it's a little bit of a bummer.

Reasons Why

2012-01-19T23:24:00.002-05:00

The other day I discussed the many thought processes behind my questionable fertility and my reservations about changing up the plan. Today I'm pondering some of the reasons why God may be making us wait longer than we thought. Some are shallow and some are serious, but here's what I'm thinking...

- Quality time with Jacob - I know that this time is precious, and I won't even know how precious until we have to split our time between two kids. A baby will limit some of what we can do, so I suppose we should be getting as many experiences out of the way with Jacob now as we can before it goes on hold for a bit. I know I'll someday look back wistfully on this time much as I look back on our life before kids now--incomplete yet blissfully low-key.

- Time to get stuff done - I still haven't gotten the carpet replaced in a couple of our bedrooms and there are plenty of other house projects we could probably take care of now, before we're short on time and shorter on money. And while we're at it, we should really appreciate our sleep, too.

- Saving our finances - While we could pull off a second kid in daycare, ultimately we'd probably be digging into our savings a bit. As it stands now, we'd only be paying for full double daycare for a short time before Jacob heads off to kindergarten (!). We'd still be paying aftercare, for sure, and maybe before, along with tuition if we decide to go the private Christian school route. All of that may still be less than we're paying now, but perhaps God is giving our finances a break in the interim, too.

- Setting our kids up for a good relationship - Per my last post, maybe this span will be better than anything else. It's hopefully also giving Jacob time to become the best big brother he can be. The older he is, the more of a help he'll be and hopefully the less his behavior will be a distraction when we have to care for a baby.

- Setting us up for a girl - In all my planning I had a perfect scenario to get pregnant at a similar time of year as last time so I could reuse a good portion of our baby clothes and all of my maternity clothes. I also really want to have good weather so I'm not cooped up in the house with a newborn. Now that my schedule has been turned upside-down, either we'll be facing a cold due date or we'll be waiting a very long time. We'll just have to deal with that either way. But it would cushion the blow if we had a girl off-season, since I wouldn't need to reuse many clothes anyway.

- Making us grateful even if it is a boy - After such a long wait, we'll probably be so grateful to have any baby that the gender will be a non-event. I'll still probably walk through stores staring at the gorgeous little dresses and adorable shoes, and spend my life longing for a shopping buddy and someone to play with my old dolls, but I'll also be so grateful that we could have a second that perhaps it won't matter as much. I know I will be absolutely in love with any child we have, and when I see the whole brother thing in action, it probably really won't matter.

- Fixing any lingering health problems - Not that I have any, but I have been meaning to change my primary care doctor for a while. My current doctor seems quite unfazed by my lack of smell and taste, and I feel like a clean slate might be a good thing. I should get a physical anyway, so a new patient visit seems like a good way to do it. And between that and the blood work that I'm supposed to get done during my next cycle, if there are any issues preventing me from getting pregnant, hopefully we can find them and fix them...before any treatments could impact a fetus.

- Confirming that two is it - Before this, I figured that if we didn't get a girl this time around and circumstances changed to the point that having a third seemed doable, we'd just have enough time to sneak another one in. But as each month passes, that window is getting even smaller. The longer it takes to have another baby, the less time there would be to do it again. And even if there was time, would we have to go through this all over again? So, yeah, pretty much this is the sign that this is it. The world is made for families of four anyway, but I am still intrigued by the dynamics of three kids.

- Teaching us to stop planning - It's nice to work with a bit of a framework, but let's face it, rigid planning is probably a bad idea. At least, if you believe in God and believe His plans are far better and far wiser than ours, it's probably a better idea to stay flexible. The more we plan, the less we lean on Him and allow Him to direct our path. I'm pretty terrible at that, which is why this process is probably a good thing. I need to take this time to become a more prayerful person. Admittedly, that part of my life has suffered since having Jacob, since often at night I am so tired that I only make it partway through my prayers. Sometimes I carve out moments during the day to try to "catch up", but even then it's far too easy to get distracted. I really need to use this time to get that back on track and fully trust that God's plan, whatever it is, is better for us than anything we could imagine.

Hot Stuff

2012-01-18T22:47:00.000-05:00

When Jacob was born with a dimple, I remember a lot of people saying that he'd be a heartbreaker courtesy of that dimple alone. I've continued to hear it all along for the past three and a half years. And now, it appears that he's finally got the personality to go along with it.

Right around Christmas, one of Jacob's teachers had a friend come in to help out. Her name was Emily. Apparently Jacob and Miss Emily hit it off. I don't know what the draw was, but he'd wake up from nap and give her hugs and cuddle with her whenever he had the chance. I never got to see her, and presumably she won't be around a lot, but it was certainly intriguing that he took to her so quickly.

Over the past few months he's talked quite a bit about inviting his teachers over, or going to their houses. He's talked about going on dates with them. Jacob told one of his teachers that they should go on a date, and since Catwoman is Batman's girlfriend in the one movie he watches, she could be Catwoman. When she said that she wished she had a body like Catwoman, Jacob told her that she had  "boobies like Catwoman". Awesome. Yesterday he and this teacher went on a "date" that apparently involved a movie (that they shared with the rest of the class), and Jacob was offering to give her smooches during the movie. And today he said he gave her a rink and they got married. Where the heck does he get this stuff?! Pretty sure it's not from us.

For all his bad boy ways that got him into such trouble over the last year or two, he sure seems to have some big fans. One day one of his current teachers and one of his former teachers were giggling about how they love his laugh and think he is just too cute.  I've heard quite a bit lately about what a good boy he's been lately, and admittedly, it's really nice to hear. After all, a year ago he was the one inspiring the sticker chart in his old classroom. I'm not sure what accounts for the difference, but perhaps it's maturity, or perhaps it's less boredom. Either way, it's a nice change of pace.

I'm not quite sure what this means for the future. I figured my sports-obsessed boy wouldn't even see girls for at least a good 12 years, but apparently he's jumping ahead to the older women. I'm sure it means nothing, but I guess it's good to know that we may have a mini-playboy on our hands. At least I've got a few more years to adjust.

While my little boy may have the hots for his teacher, thankfully he no longer has the "hots" in his body. He seems to be considerably better after his traumatic triple feature of illnesses last week. Stomach bug, strep throat, and pneumonia...crazy. He's still getting the nebulizer and still has a few days left of the amoxicillin. But for the most part the problems are done. We're still dealing with some residual behavior issues, but who knows if it's still from the prednisone, which is done now, or the culmination of his eased boundaries last week. I'm relieved the worst is over, but hopefully we'll get back on track behavior-wise soon.

Ironically, yesterday I got a box in the mail that would have been helpful last week. I had forgotten that I had signed up a while back to be a mom tester for Parenting, to try out a new product--a digital thermometer. I really could have used it last week! The ear thermometer we have just doesn't seem to be consistent. It's based too much on angle and it's too hard to get right on Jacob, let alone ever using it on myself. Turns out this new one is pretty good...and we get to keep it for free! It's a Vicks Behind the Ear thermometer, and it's quick, painless, and easier to position. I'm so excited about it that I'm talking about it here--and I don't have to...I'm not that popular of a blogger! And in case you want to get one, you can enter coupon code SHARE20 at checkout via www.behindear.com and www.coldandflushop.com. Seemed like a waste not to share the code, so why not here?

Anyway, I'm happy Jacob is feeling better, and increasingly amused by the silly, enchanting, complex little boy he's becoming.

Waiting

2012-01-16T23:24:00.001-05:00

Waiting to get pregnant has been a challenge. I know that my issues are nothing compared to those who have been through round after round of fertility treatments, month after month of negative tests, and go for years without conceiving a child. I already have one, after all, and asking for more seems greedy, even if there are perfectly good reasons to want another baby that have nothing to do with me.

I've been hearing more and more lately about infertility issues--a blogger here, a friend of a friend there, random discussions about late childbearing--and it helps me to know I'm not alone in this. I'm doing fine overall, but it's still not easy at times to deal with the wrenches that have been thrown in our plans. The crazy thing is that there's still no official reason to believe there's a problem that can't be easily overcome. At this point the only confirmed physical problem is a wacky cycle. It just takes one time to figure it out (or get lucky) and this will all be behind us. Maybe there are problems beyond that, but we haven't gotten to the point to find that out. We may get some hints next time through a cycle, but sometimes it's easier not knowing.

It's been hard hitting certain milestones and not being pregnant when I thought I would be. Originally I had a plan to have kids three years apart...only when the time came, I didn't feel comfortable about it. I wasn't thrilled with our financial situation, nor was Jacob's behavior at the time conducive to managing two children, both of whom register high on the needy scale. Then I figured we'd wait an extra year...only, despite thinking I left enough time to aim for a spring-to-summer due date, things never materialized. I figured I'd be pregnant by the fall...then by Christmas...and then I figured I'd definitely have a baby sometime in 2012. But now that the Disney trip is on the radar and a break is in order to avoid missing the trip, now even that seems unlikely.

Growing up, there were four years between my brother and me. Gender differences are one thing, but those four years provided a considerable challenge. We were never in the same "thing" at school. After four years on the grade school basketball team, he went to high school just as I got old enough to join the cheerleading squad. He went to college when I went into high school. And when I finally got to college, he was off to the real world in a job a couple hours away. I'm sure for most of our childhood I was the pesky sister who ruined his Lego projects, stole the remote control, and consistently got better marks in school.

Our experiences at each level were significantly different, as well. He was always into sports...I was content reading, drawing, or playing with dolls. He was popular in high school...I was just one of the smart kids. He partied hard in college...I hung out with a group of Christians. He moved a significant drive away, then across the country...I'm still relatively close to home. Yes, we're both married and we both have kids, but our lives otherwise are quite different. We don't communicate as much as we should. Warm fuzzy moments have always been rare. It's sad and regrettable, though I'm not sure what the best fix is at this point. Old habits die hard and you can't necessary create common ground. I don't really know how things ended up like this, or what could have been done to avoid it.

As a result, I've put a lot of thought into age differences between my own children. Three years seemed perfect because so many people I knew like that had really good relationships with their siblings. They were close enough in age to share some school experiences, but far enough apart to stay out of each other's social circle. When we put off baby #2 for another year, I knew we were facing the same dreaded four year span. I wondered if same-gender siblings with that gap might be better. After all, I have cousins with that gap, both girls, and they're now best friends in their 20s. But now we're looking at five years, and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that. Will that make them even farther apart? Or will Jacob be old enough to become a protector for a little sister or his brother's biggest fan? Five is old enough to be an amazing helper, but it's also old enough to be stuck in your ways as an only child. I suppose a lot of it depends on the kids' personalities and interests, and some of it depends on our influence on them--teaching them to appreciate each other and creating opportunities to bond. I know my parents had the best of intentions in not taking us on many fancy trips (financial sensibility, taking trips sans kids to reconnect with each other), but maybe if we did we would have created more unique memories to look back on. Maybe we had it too easy...after all, think of the bonding kids do when faced with adversity like divorce or death of a parent. I certainly don't hold the vacation thing against my parents, and I'm obviously grateful we never went through negative stuff like that, but I'm just not sure what the missing piece is...and I hope to figure it out by the time we have two.

It's disappointing and deflating each time a milestone passes by, but let's face it...there isn't much that can be done at this point. I'm not really keen on taking Clomid because I'm worried about the increased risk of multiples. I don't know if I could really handle two at a time. We got lucky last time, I guess. There are some other steps we need to take first, and hopefully they'll get the job done first. Or maybe we'll get lucky in the meantime. It only takes once, after all. In the meantime, I can only ponder why God has put us in this position, and soon I'll tackle the possible reasons...stay tuned.

Prednisone is Evil

2012-01-14T22:51:00.000-05:00

So...things are getting better. Jacob has a pretty significant course of meds, and so far they seem to be working. Amoxicillin twice a day for seven more days. Prednisone twice a day for the next three days, per an extension from Jacob's doctor. Nebulizer at least three times a day through Friday. It's a lot, but if it makes him better, it's worth it. We went to his follow-up appointment yesterday, and his doctor told us that everything she was hearing seemed to be consistent with a viral pneumonia. The wheezing was mostly gone, but the crackling remained a bit. She was happy to see his progress, though, and he's pretty much in good shape to get back to normal life. In theory.

I can tell he's still a little off. His naps are a little all over the place. Sometimes they're long, sometimes they're short. Sometimes he's running around energetically, sometimes he's curled in a ball. His fever is gone but he's still super congested. He's getting much better at nose blowing, thank goodness, but he's still having a tough time with a sore nose and nasty cough.

The biggest side effect at this point is plain ol' crankiness. I don't think it's just sickness crankiness, though. I think it's the prednisone. As you may recall, back in May I was on it for a while to see if it helped my missing sense of smell (no luck then or since), and it made me absolutely nuts. I was so cranky, so miserable, to the point of wanting to crawl out of my skin. If it did that to me, I can only imagine what it's doing to Jacob. And to that point, maybe it's just me, but he seems a little crazy at times. He whines about the most mundane things, and freaks out about the most routine requests. When it's time to get ready to eat or ready for bed, it's a full body tantrum. He screams bloody murder about nothing. He whines about something as simple as getting a tissue. It's pretty grating and I'm hoping it's just the medication causing it.

The nagging thing that keeps crossing my mind is that this illness is going to blow all of our hard work. All of the limits we've set down are pushed when Jacob is sick. We're lenient about his appetite, his sleeping, and his behavior in general. We know he's not feeling well, we know he's not in control of his body, and in this case especially, I'm pretty sure the prednisone is making him a little wackier than usual. We give him the benefit of the doubt and try to pick our battles. But with an illness this long and this serious, it puts us in a precarious position.  After so many days of relaxed rules, it's hard to get Jacob back in the groove. He was freaking out last night at the prospect of sleeping alone in his room after two nights in our spare room with both of us keeping an eye and ear on him. He had a meltdown about taking a bath tonight. He says he has a stomachache when it's time to eat. He curls up on the couch when it's time for a nebulizer. He stiffens up when it's time to brush his teeth or move on from his current preferred activity. It's been a challenge taking into consideration that he still may not be feeling well (or may be a little out of control, for reasons beyond his control) while still trying to stick to the rules. Last night I did manage to coax him into his bed, probably by sheer luck, but perhaps by getting him back into the bedtime routine. Once we got through books, he was down easy. But I worry about the long term effects of this long week off our schedule. Will he stop whining about everything? Will he panic when we go back to daycare on Monday?

On the bright side, potty training is still on track. In fact, the last two mornings he's woken up dry, which almost never happens. The downside of that is that he's been up late both nights having to pee. So apparently he gets it out of the way by midnight and doesn't have to go after that. Oddly, we've always been pretty strict about drinks after dinner, yet he still wakes up wet every morning...until now. Oh, and that no drinks rule has been relaxed this week because we wanted to make sure he was hydrated and comfortable since he's doing a lot of mouth breathing right now.  At least the fact that he's waking up indicates that he's starting to recognize those urges even at night!

I'm very relieved, however, that Jacob seems to be doing well. It sounds like the cough is still a bit away from being gone, but that's no surprise given his history. We still have a long road ahead, as well, as treatment isn't ending anytime soon...so while it's hard to keep expectations in check, we'll have to do just that. But looking back on the events of Wednesday night, I feel so grateful for a healthy-ish little boy. It's all I can ask for at this point. Anything more seems greedy. But good thing for us that God often leaves cups running over.

Scared

2012-01-12T23:01:00.000-05:00

I wrote the following post last night:

There's nothing quite as scary as knowing something is wrong with your child, but not knowing what it is. As I've mentioned, Jacob seemed to have a stomach bug Monday morning, and has been fighting a fever since Sunday. Fevers seem to go hand-in-hand with viruses that cause stomach bugs, so I can't say I was surprised that the fever was sticking around. Often I hear about people who talk about their kids being out of commission for a week, and I think, "Man, how do you get through a week with a sick kid and two working parents?" Well, we're inching ever closer to that week mark, and per yesterday's post, it's been tough. I worked all day today while Craig stayed home, and I managed to get some good work done. However, tomorrow could be another tough day. I'm hoping for half days for both of us at worst, but I know Craig is really feeling the pinch with the Knighthawks' first game coming up on Saturday.

Anyway, when I called daycare today the director told me that one of the kids in Jacob's class hadn't been in all week, and his turned out to be a surprise case of strep. If there's one thing I've learned from life at daycare, it's that strep comes in many forms. In adults it's a sore throat, but in kids, you'd often never know they have it. Last year Jacob's only symptom was a rash around his mouth. Another kid at daycare recently had pinkeye, but their strep test came back positive. Rarely do they complain about sore throats. Apparently a stomachache is a symptom, which a co-worker of mine validated. Jacob's been complaining randomly of stomach pains all week, and while part of us thought it might be an escape route, it did seem a little oddly timed sometimes to be faked. Yet it came and went so quickly that we just couldn't be sure.

I had already planned on calling the doctor today, but my chat with the director solidified it. Not to mention that Jacob's nose seemed to be running worse than usual and his cough had picked up. While I know he's been vaccinated and the odds of this are slim, I thought his cough sounded strangely similar to this commercial about whooping cough I heard the other day. I don't really think he has whooping cough but as I type this I'm a bundle of nerves because something IS wrong with my baby and I don't know what.

Craig took him to his appointment two hours ago and they're still not home. In fact, the doctor's office is closing right now and yet I haven't heard anything solid. Craig has snuck on Facebook a couple of times, but all I know is that his breathing was too low and they were trying to get it up. I sent him a message (that I'm not sure he's gotten yet) reminding him that we have a nebulizer at home in case we need it. But even still...not knowing what is wrong with my little boy is making me a little crazy. And sad. And guilty for not getting him in there sooner.

I don't think I've been this freaked out about Jacob's health in at least three years. Three years ago we were going through the many tests to find out why Jacob was still coughing months after an initial bout with RSV. We did breathing treatments, horrible tests in the hospital, and in the end it was determined to be caused by reflux, which he's still on medicine for today. We got the ok to take him off of it, but he has been just sick enough to keep him on it.

~~~~~~~~

And that's where I cut off. I'm sure I had more to say, but by that point I was starting to lose my mind with worry. I did find a text message from Craig from earlier, but all it really told me was that he had strep and he was having breathing problems. They couldn't get his oxygen level up to the target 95%, and we were thisclose to having to go to the emergency room. In the end we filled three prescriptions: amoxicillin for the strep, prednisone (a steroid), and albuterol, to use in our nebulizer. We've giving him treatments every four hours, around the clock, for two days. Then it's four times a day for two days and three times a day for five days. Hopefully by then he'll be back to normal. He seemed considerably better today with just the first few doses of everything under his belt.

roadtrip and wouldn't answer his phone. It was literally painful and beyond agonizing.

Eventually I couldn't just sit around, so I headed out to see if they were still at the doctor's office. They weren't when I got there, but I didn't miss them by much. At that point Craig finally called and they were on their way to Wegmans to fill the prescriptions. I met up with them there, we waited until the pharmacy closed, then came home to finally eat some dinner (around 11pm!), do another breathing treatment, and get Jacob in bed. It was a late night, with a 3am wakeup for another treatment, and an early morning. Craig got up extra early to go into work early and I let Jacob sleep until 8am before getting us up for yet another treatment. We switched off home duties at lunch.

My parents are coming tomorrow because Craig's off on a roadtrip and I really can't miss more work. We have a followup appointment at 8am tomorrow, so I should get some answers then about what caused these problems (the strep, a different infection, bad genes, etc.), and what the implications might be (asthma, future things we have to watch). It scares me to think what might have happened had this not been caught when it was. It's been such a crazy week that I can barely begin to wrap my brain around it all. I'm so relieved that Jacob appears to be doing better. I'll be even happier when thing whiny, demanding, shrieky randomness that's overtaken him this week goes away, but for now I'll take better breathing by a long shot. Still, probably the thing I will most take from this experience is the absolute gut-wrenching pain that I felt when I didn't know what was going on. Oh, and the thing that really set me off? When I saw all the comments on Facebook from my friends who were praying for him (per a request in my status)...the mere sight of them almost solidified the fact that something was truly wrong, and I lost it for a few minutes. The helplessness and worry were overwhelming. More than any other time in his life--even among the problems he had at birth or the issues he had in his first year--I was so desperately worried about the state of his health. I hope I never have to feel that way again. Ever.

Even still, keep us in your prayers. If there's anything I've learned from parenting, it's that you just never know what's next. I pray he only continues to improve, but suffice it to say that my confidence is a bit shaken. My faith, however, is intact, and I'll be holding on to that until further notice...

Work-Home Balance

2012-01-10T23:29:00.000-05:00

I know this post isn't really going to say anything that hasn't been said--either by me on this blog or by dozens of other folks in the blogosphere--but today proved to me, more than ever, that the conflict of the working parent is eternal. The primary thought that popped into my head, was, simply:

There is no way that a working parent can have true balance. Each will always suffer at the hand of the other.

There is no getting around it. No matter how careful you are, no matter how hard you try, it's going to happen. Work will suffer because of your home life, and your home life will suffer because of work. Just by virtue of being at work the home life takes a little hit...I mean, the long-held ideal is to raise your child in your home, so being a working mom means that I'm not getting nearly as much time with Jacob as would be ideal. I've said before that I wouldn't be a great stay-at-home mom, but if I could have more of a balance--working part-time--I'd feel like I'd be a better person and a better mom. I'd have more home time which would hopefully mean less stress about getting things done there. However, working part-time means that I'd get less work done, so maybe my stress would be higher there. Again, can't win.

I feel like I'm in a tough spot in my job because I'm the only one in my department who has a child. No matter how everyone might think they understand, I don't think they truly do. I can't stay late at work, nor is it easy to come in early. Most of the time I need to leave work in time to get Jacob at daycare by closing time. I don't want to leave extra early in the morning because that means I need to wake Jacob up extra early so he's ready on time. I could enlist Craig to get up earlier or pick Jacob up more, but he's got his own commitments and it's not necessarily fair to "punish" either of them because of my issues. Maybe I need to stand up more, but it's not easy.

This week Jacob has been sick. This is one of the busiest weeks of Craig's season--the week before the first game of the season. He had a meeting yesterday and a press conference today. I had a doctor's appointment first thing yesterday, but came home to take over Jacob's care right after so Craig could make his meeting. Even though I was planning on coming in later, my boss told me to stay home--probably to make sure I wasn't spreading germs either. Craig took the morning shift at home today, but I had to take over for the afternoon...which means that in the last two days, I've been in the office for less than four hours. That, on top of a four-day week last week, and a week off before that, and an inconsistent schedule for a few weeks before that. I'm way behind on everything, and it's driving me nuts. Today I wasn't able to get something done that my boss needed, and she sent me a rather unhappy email about it, basically wanting to know why I didn't get it done even though it was communicated to be a high priority. It's hard to explain why, I suppose, but a couple other projects also noted to be "ASAP" took a while, and then the little things--responding to emails, moving projects forward, etc.--just took long enough that the other thing couldn't get done. And I simply couldn't stay to do it. Oh, and my work laptop simply will NOT work at my house.

I don't think people fully understand how limited your schedule can be once you have a child, and having a spouse with an unconventional schedule isn't easy either. The road trips start this weekend, so that's even less often that I can alter my schedule. When you have a child, you can't just do things for yourself. It's one thing to impact your spouse, a grown adult who could fend for himself if needed. It's another to mess with the schedule of a child who craves structure and routine, and who only gets a limited amount of time with you as it is. And when they're sick? Yeah, all bets are off. We can't send him to daycare with a fever, let alone as the sad, whimpering boy he's been the last couple days. Ultimately, we both need to sacrifice, and as it worked out, I've had to do more time-wise this week. But considering the week it is, Craig's time is probably more valuable. How can you choose?

Tomorrow I get to work all day, I think. We're hoping Jacob's fever breaks overnight, though I reluctantly gave him medicine tonight because the fever really seemed to be bugging him. I wanted to let the fever do its thing, but a good night's sleep and his general comfort seemed more important this time around. If the fever doesn't break, Craig will be staying home. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, though. Even if it does break, I'm not sure his energy level will be quite where it needs to be, but it'll be worth a try. It has to be.

Well, it WAS a good weekend...

2012-01-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

The weekend started out with a gorgeous sunset as seen from my office. It was breathtaking. The sky was doing this crazy ripple thing in one spot. I've seen clouds do this before, but these ripples were so tiny! It was awesome. This picture almost looks blurry, but it's not.

And toward the other direction, it was doing this:

And later, this:

Friday night we went out to a local restaurant where the Knighthawks' dance team was doing their official calendar release party. The girls loved Jacob, and the players that were there couldn't help but laugh at how shy Jacob still is. He's seen them a bunch, but he still shies away every time. We had fun, though, and headed home so he could go to bed and I could start packing for our weekend trip to Buffalo.

Saturday we had hoped to get a quick start, but it just didn't happen (as usual). We took off after a quick lunch at home, did some quick shopping, and stopped at my parents' for a little bit since it was my dad's birthday. After dinner, we headed out to a big event: Jacob's first NHL game! He's been to a preseason game, but this was the first real thing, and it was exciting for all of us. Not the least of which me, since I hadn't been to a Sabres game in probably five years. This from a girl who spent a lot of time at Sabres games back in the day. We had great seats and although Jacob was quiet when we got there, he was definitely taking it all in.

Pregame photo op with Daddy...the best I could do!

And one with Mommy...again, the best we could do!

During an intermission, we managed to track down Sabretooth!

And the requisite popcorn shot...

At least the full mouth helped him to stop asking to go out and play hockey...yep, great seats, but he still wanted to go play.

The Sabres lost in overtime, 2-1, which was a bummer even though we were slightly torn. I mean, obviously we're Sabres folks at heart, but after Craig's job situation, things were tarnished a bit. Then, of course, there was the matter of our postgame activity. Two of the Winnipeg Jets used to play for the Amerks, and Craig has kept in contact with one of them. We set it up to wait for him after the game. While we were waiting, I snapped this pic of Jacob. I sorta like it.

Eventually the players came out, and the other former Amerk recognized Craig right away and was happy to see him. Finally Tanner Glass came out, and man, was he ever a nice guy. He and Craig caught up, and Jacob (of course) got shy, but when Jacob wouldn't give him five or shake his hand, Tanner told him he would shake it out of him...and he picked him right up! We got a good laugh out of that, and I think Jacob thought it was pretty cool, too! He got an autograph on his Amerk puck, and we eventually said our goodbyes and headed out.

On the way out, we snapped this random picture in the old Aud seats outside the Pour Man's Aud Club. Random, yes...totally us, yep.

We spent the night at Craig's parents', and spent Sunday with his whole family. Jacob enjoyed discovering some of Craig's old toys in the basement and spent most of the day hiding from Lulu the dog, who still likes to nip. He had a lot of fun, but he felt a little warm to me and seemed a little off...not wanting to eat, a little sleepy, etc. He went down pretty good once we got home, but he seemed extra tired. This morning he woke up extra early, and when I got out of the shower he was in our bed. I walked into the room, he told me he was sick, and when I asked what was wrong, he promptly threw up in our bed. Yup. Awesome.

We got him into the bathroom for the next round, and he freaked out a bit when it was all over. Luckily he didn't have much in his stomach since he didn't eat much yesterday, but it was still pretty awful to watch. He threw up once again after a couple sips of water, but that ended up being it for the day. On the bright side, everything was pretty easily cleaned up, and puking in our bed spared his million stuffed animals. Best idea ever was to put down an old comforter on the living room floor to keep a comfy safe-zone for him. He seemed better around lunch time, asking for food and keeping it all down, but he slowly became more lethargic and his fever came back. He fell asleep out of the blue around 5:30, after a fitful nap full of sleeptalking earlier this afternoon, but still went right down at bedtime. I always worry a bit about dehydration even though he was peeing normally and crying tears. He just seemed so miserable at times, whining about random stuff and staring off into space. He said his belly still hurt, but everything stayed down. Not sure how things will go tomorrow--or for Craig and me for the rest of the week, both health and work-wise--but at least I got all of my Christmas stuff taken down today. A little bonus for me, I guess.

So, it was a good weekend...but today was not the best kind of Monday. Wish us luck...

From the outside...

2012-01-07T10:56:00.008-05:00

A few weeks ago, just before Christmas, one of my best friends from college had a baby. I posted back in November about my trip downstate for her baby shower, and she ended up having her baby about 10 days early (much like I did!), coincidentally on the same day as my niece's birthday. It's her first baby, a boy, and I couldn't be happier for her.

For myself, though...I'm a bit sad. No, not because I want to have another baby. I think it's easy to get jealous of acquaintances and feel a little bummed when you see a pregnant woman you don't know, but when it comes to close friends and family? I think happiness is a far easier emotion to feel. Maybe if this goes on for many more months I'll feel differently, but when you truly care about people, I think you can't help but feel joy for them when they receive such a precious gift.

So why am I sad? Well, it's because we've grown apart. As I alluded to in my baby shower post, we had sort of fallen out of touch for a while. I can't blame it all on her, by any means, but I do think that in the nearly five years that have passed since our college trio last had a fun, non-event-based weekend together, I've been the one trying the hardest to get together again. Then again, I was the one who had a baby first, and the first year or so after Jacob was born was hard--I was nursing, I was tired, I was hesitant to leave him--so for a while there I wasn't trying that hard either. I'll admit that I was hurt when neither of my two best friends saw me pregnant, but I chalked it up to crazy schedules all around and tried not to let it bother me. And I think that's part of the reason I was so determined to make it down for the shower--I wanted to make the effort because I knew how crappy it was to not have my friends to share the experience with.

In the interim, I've certainly seen my college roommate more. A couple concerts, day trips and dinners here and there have solidified the fact that our friendship is still an important element of my existence. It weathers times of less communication relatively well. She's also been awesome with Jacob.

I know that my friend who just had the baby has a full plate. She has a demanding job and a full personal life. Since meeting her husband she got very involved in his (now their) church, and they're super-involved with the youth group there. Between that and family commitments, they had things going on nearly every weekend, so it was always tough to find one that worked--let alone one that worked with all three of our schedules. In addition, I suppose that Facebook makes it easier to not bother with a big email, since you know and share enough random details that it doesn't seem necessary. It was a gradual change that turned into total lack of communication, and by the time I went to her shower, it didn't exactly feel like I was seeing one of my best friends from college...it was more like hanging out with a good acquaintance. Catching up on three years of stuff was just...odd. It was fine but not nearly as comfortable as it was before. That alone was a bit of a bummer.

In the middle of everything, when I found out she was pregnant via a slightly premature Facebook post by her husband, he ended up de-friending me, and I had no idea why. I asked while I was there for the shower, and the reasoning had something to do with the fact that he posted that status before she was ready to tell people...even though I had already seen it and commented. The whole thing was just weird. Knowing, however, that he posts on Facebook far more than her, I told him that I was going to re-friend him, if only to keep up on baby stuff. Good thing I did, too, because pretty much the day I did it, he posted a picture of their new little boy about an hour after he was born. And he's posted pictures nearly every day since.

The pictures are super cute and I'm so happy for them. But I can't help but feel a little sad. I mean, up until a few years ago, or maybe even the last year, I imagined how great it would be when my friends and I were having kids. I pictured fun visits, holding newborn babies, and even our kids playing together someday when we got together for one event or another. Considering none of us live close I knew that it wouldn't be a frequent thing, but I still envisioned that we'd have plenty of opportunities to enjoy one anothers' brood over the years. I fully expected that I would know my best friends' children, and they would know mine. But so far, that isn't how things are shaping up. And every time I see that sweet little baby, there's a twinge of sadness knowing that I may never know him like that. The way things are going, it's pretty apparent that visits would be few and far between at best. And maybe that should be enough...but I can't help but wish for more.

There's a point in a waning friendship when you wonder if it's worth the work. You wonder if it's better to cut and run and move on, or push through the frustration and perceived rejection in hopes that things will improve down the road if circumstances change. While pretending everything's okay doesn't really appeal to me, neither does giving up on a friendship in which much has been invested. I guess for now I'll continue to enjoy the baby pictures and consider any sadness as further investment in a friendship worth saving. Love at your own risk...

News & Notes

2012-01-04T23:34:00.000-05:00

- We now have a date for the Disney trip, which means we have a self-imposed deadline for one last try before taking a baby-making break. Not that we're even trying in the traditional sense...it's all just a shot in the dark at this point. I haven't seen one positive ovulation test yet. Not that I've been consistent, but I guess things have been that far off. On one hand it seems asinine to let a trip get in the way of creating our second child, but then again, there are a lot of people involved in this trip (eight not counting us) and it's a huge thing for Jacob, so I guess we'll target five years apart instead of three (and then four). I have to do some calculating to see when we can at least try again without risking the trip. That would mean another trip without rides, but I suppose that's among the best case scenarios here, since it means we'd be on our way to another baby. It's bothering me a lot but I'm trying not to worry about it, because that will only make things worse.

- Have I mentioned that Jacob is pretty much potty trained? Day trained, at least. Of course, posting it here means that he will start peeing his pants right about...now. I don't know when it happened, but it just did. He started to be really good about going to the potty without us asking. He'd had very few accidents at daycare. And most importantly, the wet spots on his undies became fewer and smaller. I had long suspected that his bladder just wasn't ready yet, and perhaps now it is. Or maybe it was his brain all along. Either way, things appear to have caught up. He's been dry for naps at home for a while, but night is still going to be a while yet. Still, this has been awesome and I'm so excited he finally gets it. It's like having a real big boy.

- This weekend we're taking Jacob to his first Sabres' game. The Sabres were a huge part of both Craig's and my life growing up (my parents had season tickets, Craig even went to Sabres' hockey school), so it's neat to share that with him. Amerks' games have been old hat his whole life, but Sabres' games are a whole different ballgame. He's already been to the arena for a Bandits-Knighthawks game, but it's exciting to take him there for the sport I know best. It's been far too long since I've been to a game. Craig's been to a couple here and there through work, but I think it's been five or six years since my last one. That seems like so long ago, but I think that's the case. Considering how often I went to games when I was a teenager (thanks to my late Uncle Bink's work connections--it was the best thing ever when my cousin Kim and I could go there by ourselves! Ironically, she works there now!), it's actually a little sad that it's been this long. Hopefully it's a good game and Jacob enjoys himself. We'll see if our connections to players on both teams are able to enhance the experience. There's a chance...

- This coming weekend marks the official end of the off-season. The Knighthawks first game, a road game, is the following weekend, and there are games every weekend from then through the end of April with the exception of one weekend. I know I shouldn't complain because there are about 20 hockey games Craig hasn't had to work this year, but it's never easy when it starts. Jacob and I do fine, but it's always nice having Craig around. One of my favorite bloggers writes about her husband's work trips quite a bit, and she's got three kids (including a newborn) so she's got plenty more to complain about. She always says that the anticipation of the trips is worse than the trips themselves. I think she's probably busy enough to not wallow in self pity once he leaves, but I can relate to the whole anticipation thing. Knowing that you're going solo for a few days, you have time to think about all of the things that can go wrong and worry about how you'd manage if they did. In reality, if something goes wrong, you just deal. It may not be easy, but you do. The bright side is that Jacob loves going to games (and so do I), and it provides some extra incentive for my parents to come visit now and then. We'll miss Craig when he's traveling or working a 14 hour day, though. Speaking of which, he's probably on his way home from Canada right now after a full work day and a trip north for Knighthawks practice. Time to get to bed so I can sleep deeply enough to not wake up when he gets home. I was awake with Jacob at 4:30 this morning (not sure if he really wasn't feeling great or just wanted to play) and I never really went back to sleep after that, so I need to get whatever sleep I can. Getting back to the grind this week has been tough (though routines have their perks), but thank goodness for a four-day week!

Nothing like the real thing...

2012-01-02T21:25:00.003-05:00

If there's one thing that I learned this week, it's the value of doing things the right way...you know, the old fashioned way. In this era of shortcuts and any attempt to make life easier, it's easy to forget that there's still same value to the way it used to be done.

Case in point, my kitchen floor. Friday afternoon while Jacob was napping and Craig was working, I did some housecleaning. I vacuumed the kitchen floor and brought out the Swiffer Wet Jet to clean up the non-vacuumable messes. Our kitchen floor is a light gray linoleum that's made to look sort of like stone. There's a definite texture to it, with small nooks and crannies, and each tile is made to look different. Over the 20 or so months that we've lived here, I'm ashamed to say I've never gotten on hands and knees to scrub it. In the five years we lived in our other house, I probably only did it a handful of times there--more often once Jacob was crawling than early on in our time there. However, that floor got visibly dirty more often because it was where we entered the house. Salt, mud, and the design of the tiles all made it much easier to see the dirt. Well, here the kitchen is only used as a kitchen, not a pass-through, and the Swiffer Wet Jet seemed to be doing the job. The pad was dirty every time I cleaned and the visible spills were cleaned up. I noticed in some spots the nooks and crannies were a little darker than others, but no matter what I did with the Swiffer, the spots didn't seem to change...and I never got around to trying anything else. Well, Friday when I was cleaning up a stubborn mark on the floor, I used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, and oops...the haze on the floor and the dark spots cleaned right off. Crap. Turns out the floor was filthy and every single one of those dark areas cleaned up. Mom FAIL right there. So, I put away the Wet Jet, filled a bucket with water and Mr. Clean, and started scrubbing the floor with a good, old-fashioned scrub brush. I'd scrub the dirt up, use a sponge to soak up the dirty water, and do one last rubdown with a towel to speed drying. It took a while, but man, was it worth it. The floor now looks more white than gray, and the dark spots are gone. And now I know. I either need to find a new day-to-day cleaning method, or I need to commit to scrubbing it more often. And it apparently can't be a modern shortcut, because that just didn't cut it.

Same goes for quality time with Jacob. In this age of countless toys and ever-present technology, nothing really gets the job done quite like sitting down and spending good, quality time with him. He's a great solo player, and it's easy to just let him go to it. Interestingly, electronic toys have never really grasped his attention. It took a long time before he really noticed the TV, and even now that he loves movies, he never really sits and focuses on them for long. Many of the toys he got for his first birthday and Christmas involved batteries, and only a couple of them were ever really big hits with him. In fact, I just took most of them down to the basement to make room for his new toys, and I had to take batteries out of most of them. I think I could count on one hand the toys he plays with now that involve any meaningful battery use. The toys he loves most are his hockey guys, baseball guys, and most recently his new Batcave and Daddy's old Legos. Good, old-fashioned action figures and imagination all around. While it warms my heart to see that, it's still pretty apparent that Jacob thrives off one-on-one attention. Nothing beats it. The Play-Doh and coloring book time we spent last week brought out a great side of him, and over the weekend he and Craig had great times in the basement playing with Craig's Legos. Jacob was such a good boy for all of it. It might also explain why he's such a good boy when we visit my parents--because with at least three adults around, there's always someone to keep him company. So while technology and an everlasting supply of toys may help keep him occupied, nothing replaces one-on-one time.

I'm definitely grateful for modern conveniences and all (hello, I'm blogging for goodness sakes!), and there are plenty of instances where older isn't better. Cars beat horses and washing machines beat a rock. But some things just can't be replaced. Sometimes when things just aren't working like they should, it's probably a good idea to take a step back, think about how it may have been done way back when, and see if any old school methods might work. I used to bemoan the arrival of the video scoreboard to sporting events, because it seemed like they always lulled the audience into a stupor that they only emerged from when the scoreboard told them to "Make Noise!" Gone were the days when music or a good PA announcer could pump up the crowd better than anything. I think many things in life are much the same--we're so tuned into the easy way that it's hard to see past to what might be a better way. Maybe this is a flawed concept as I can't think of another prime example right now, but it just struck me that sometimes the better way might be easier than it seems.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T23:55:00.000-05:00

And so another year begins...and while it barely seems possible, this is the sixth year in which I will have blog posts! I started late in 2007, and now here we are in 2012! Last night Jacob tried to stay up until midnight. Craig had been telling him they could camp in the basement sometime, and I guess last night was the night. We hung out in the basement (home of our own personal "Legoland", where the boys have been building quite the little town) and watched a movie. I spent part of the movie attempting to Skype with both my brother and my parents. There were some odd issues on both counts, though my brother's iPhone saved the day! I rejoined the boys in time to catch the end of the movie, but then Jacob had a couple rough spells, and it became apparent by about 11:30 that he was way overtired, so he was in bed by 11:40. We watched the last few minutes of our movie, then turned the TV to New Year's Rockin' Eve to catch the annual painful countdown from Dick Clark (poor guy). We watched some of the post-midnight festivities before heading to bed ourselves. The good news is that Jacob slept until about 9:30 this morning.

We headed to church to start out the year right, and then came home for a relatively lazy day. I did do some laundry and some cooking, but other than that...not much. Jacob was a little on the obnoxious side today--mostly just having some attitude and pushing buttons on purpose--which I'm sure is a direct side effect of the late night, even if he did sleep late enough to compensate. Being off-schedule definitely has its own issues.

I'm thanking my lucky stars that I have off tomorrow, if only because it's supposed to snow and I don't really feel like dealing with both a day of work and a snowy commute on the same day, first day back. Jacob's daycare is closed and I managed to carry over one vacation day to cover it. That means I'll come back behind after the extra day off, which sort of stinks, but I don't have the same anxiety about that as I do when thinking about how I'd feel going back tomorrow. It's been a long break, which has been amazing...10-1/2 days away. Heavenly. It'll be hard to go back, but I suppose that I'll be busy enough to distract myself.

Anyway, a new year is upon us. I'm not quite sure what to expect this year, but I'm hopeful. The whole baby-making thing is getting increasingly complicated. My cycle still isn't on track, and now we have our big Disney trip in the fall, which is freaking me out a bit. I mean, I totally can't wait to go, mostly because I can't wait to see Jacob's face. However, there are a couple scenarios in which I may not be able to go at all, which would kill me. Best case scenario at this point is that I get pregnant very soon and we have a couple-month-old baby by the time we go. If I don't get pregnant for a while, I could end up doing exactly what I said I never wanted to do again--go to Disney while pregnant. I don't know how I'll survive walking past all the fun rides again. But that's still a far better scenario than a) being too pregnant to fly; or b) having a brand new baby and it not being safe or comfortable for either of us to travel and/or spend a week walking around amusement parks. This is all assuming I get pregnant, of course. The ever-widening gap between kids is starting to freak me out a bit, and the longer it goes, the harder it might be to even get pregnant. Fortunately I have an appointment with my doctor next week (scheduled annual visit), so at least I can talk through some of this stuff and get feedback. They usually don't do much on the infertility front until you've been trying for a year, but considering we can barely try at this point, I don't know what their response will be to that.

I'll admit that there are times when all of this drives me nuts. At the same time, there are moments where I have some peace with the whole thing, like it'll happen at some point and God's got better plans than I could ever have. Deep down I know that, but my own internal planning is hard to ignore sometimes. Particularly now that the Disney thing is a newly imposed "deadline" of sorts that we need to work around. I told Craig that if things don't work out in the next couple months, we'll have to take a break to strategically avoid the two scenarios above that would prevent me from going altogether. It would KILL me to know the boys are there and Jacob's getting his first taste of Disney without me being there to see it. But this is obviously a very special, very generous gift from Craig's parents, and it's not like we can dictate how it should go or turn it down. And under all other circumstances, we never would. It may all be a moot point (let's hope), but it's certainly in the back of my mind for now.

A Week at Home

2011-12-31T11:36:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting week at home. I'm always a bit cautious about these weeks home with Jacob, just because I'm well aware that I may not be suited to full time mothering at home. I've long said that I'm made to work part time. I need the adult interaction, but I still feel like the couple weekend days and a bunch of evenings aren't quite enough. It's hard to find time among errands and relaxing during my non-work hours where Jacob isn't sleeping but is a willing participant in whatever I'd like to do. It's a tough balance at best.

I was looking forward to this week because Jacob got some crafty stuff for Christmas and I figured it would be a good week to play around with some of it. The other night we did Play-Doh for the first time ever, despite having numerous little cans of it sitting around, courtesy of goody bags from daycare and parties. I just never wanted to take the time or deal with the mess. But this week, it seemed manageable. And it was....we had a good time. It took Jacob some time to get used to rolling it out and using cookie cutters, but he was really great with it.

Not bad for an automatic timer shot!

Making "cookies"

Wednesday morning we built a giant tower with MegaBloks...

...and later that day we took Jacob to a lacrosse camp that Craig had players at. Strangely, Jacob didn't look that much smaller than the smallest kids, who are a few years older than him. He didn't get to play long, but he certainly looked cute doing it...

Thursday I had planned to send Jacob to daycare, just in case there was anything I needed to do solo...shopping, returns, etc. In the end it turned into a date day for Craig and me. We saw a movie ("The Muppets"--brought back good memories and I wish "The Muppet Show" was still around), went out to lunch, and did some shopping. It was a nice day and I think it's good to do that once in a while.

Friday night we went to an open house at the sports complex near our house. We're planning on sending Jacob there for one sport or another next summer since he's just too young for tee-ball (which is crazy since he's probably at least as good as those kids already). I just got a Groupon-esque deal for half off, too! Anyway, most of the local teams had players and/or mascots there, and Jacob spent most of the night playing soccer. I made him watch a magic show and he took a break to go see the Rhinos' mascot, Rex, but neither the inflatable slides and obstacle courses, nor the lure of pizza, were much of a distraction.

I still have a few days to go since we're all off Monday, but it's been a good week. To be honest, we're a little slow getting going in the morning, and Jacob is all about playing anyway, so by the time we get through lunch and nap, the day seems mostly over...just a little more playtime and dinner before bedtime creeps up. He's taken a few marathon naps during this break, which seem to hinder bedtime a bit. I think he's probably getting to the point where he could start giving up his nap, but since he takes it, it gives him an abundance of energy. He can keep it up as long as he needs to, even though it's a little inconvenient sometimes.

It's nice to have the time to sit and play with him, and to do some of the stuff we don't usually get around to doing. He's at a fun age right now, where he can get into some of this stuff and isn't always stubborn like he was a while back. He plays well by himself, too, so I've had some opportunities to blog, clean or relax...which has been a welcomed opportunity. Still so much more I'd like to do, but hopefully the next few days can be productive as well. I've organized toys, washed our kitchen floor (more on that in another post), and hope to do some laundry today, among other things. I could take down the Christmas stuff, but I can't bring myself to do it just yet. It takes me a little while to downshift from Christmas. I hate when Christmas lights start disappearing from the neighborhood and trees start appearing on the curb. I cringe when people post on Facebook that their tree is down on the 26th. I sort of like the lazy side of Christmas, even if it is a little depressing to know that the fun is over.

We have some fun things to look forward to, though. Next weekend Jacob is going to his first Sabres' game, and Knighthawks season is just around the corner. Later this year we're going to Disney with Craig's whole family (part of our Christmas gift!), and hopefully this will be the year we add to our family...though we need things to start working out sooner rather than later for that to happen. 2011 was a year of ups and downs. Despite the losses (primarily my aunt and grandma), we still had a good year--we gained a nephew, took a great vacation, and came out of the changes in Craig's job no poorer but with more free time. So, overall, not too bad. I pray that this coming year is at least this good, and hopefully even better. Best wishes to everyone out there for a very happy and healthy 2012!

Photo Friday

2011-12-30T22:35:00.000-05:00

Now that we're through Christmas, time to catch up on some pictures from the past few weeks...

Here's a reject from the Christmas card photo shoot. I got a LOT of this, because every time I went to hit the shutter button, Jacob bent over, moved closer to the camera, and made that crazy face. Thank goodness we got the ones we did!

We went to the Knighthawks' home preseason game on the 17th, and Jacob kept talking about going on the field postgame. He loves it, and although it made for a late night, he was such a good boy that we stayed. I got some fun shots...

Where did this big boy come from?

Focused

Posing, per my request. Didn't quite get the smile I was looking for, but still, he did that pose himself.

Again with the silly, wide-eyed face. So much for getting a regular old smile...

And now for a few more miscellaneous ones...

Our Christmas card, with bonus artistic shots of one of our ornaments and our nativity scene

The winning picture from Jacob's latest daycare photo shoot. For prints we cropped it just below the hand in the pocket. He looks super handsome and it was well worth the obscene cost to purchase the CD (which was far less than the prints would have cost). There were some other good ones, but this one was HIM. Picture courtesy of CLIX Rochester.

It's Captain America! Jacob showing off his shirt, shield and mask, all Christmas gifts. There's that face again...what a goofball!

What a crazy few weeks it has been. Good weeks, but even with a week off, man, am I tired!

Different

2011-12-28T18:18:00.010-05:00

On Christmas morning as we were heading from one house to another, Craig remarked that it didn't feel like Christmas. I knew what he meant. I don't know what it was, but for some reason it didn't exactly feel like Christmas. I mean, it was a great couple days and I have really changed anything, but even now I'm almost surprised that another Christmas is behind us. It always goes fast. It's like planning for a wedding or the birth of a baby, but on a smaller scale. So much buildup for a day or two of craziness, and then it's over. You're left with good stuff in the aftermath, but there's so much planning and then...it's over. I have some theories about why it felt that way, but I'm not sure if any of them really explain it...or even all of them.

1) This was the first Christmas without my grandma. For a variety of reasons, we didn't even see that side of the family this year. My parents had everyone over on Christmas Eve, but that's our prime time with Craig's family, so we missed it. For Christmas, everyone had other family commitments and our Christmas day is usually full enough that there was no need to force it. And without the gifts my grandma used to give, there wasn't that added motivation. While I didn't miss the gifts themselves, I certainly missed the dose of "Grandma" those gifts represented. Every year we'd get a new Hallmark ornament (our tree is covered with them), and that tradition is over. It's probably a good thing as we're nearly out of room, but I did enjoy pulling them all out this year and appreciating how special they are now that she's gone. She also tended to give certain things over the years--Christmas linens, jewelry, perfume, etc.--and I'll always look at that stuff knowing it came from her. So while it's not the gifts, I do miss time with that side of the family and the memories from the gift opening over the years.

2) Last Christmas was pretty hard to top. Last year, John, Kristin and Kate flew in from Portland on Christmas. We had a blast on the 26th opening presents with both kids, and the next few days were really great having the whole family together and watching the kids interact for the first time. Also, their presence extended the holiday a bit. Like this year, we did our Santa presents at home on the 23rd, Christmas with Craig's family on the 24th, family stuff on my side on the 25th, and two exchanges on the 26th (as I recall) because my mom's family came over to see the Portland crew that night. It made for a great, long-running Christmas. In comparison, this year seemed short and significantly less exciting. Still great, but you know...different.

3) Christmas mass was in a gym. It was still lovely, but it was different. Growing up, we spent all of Christmas at church, or so it seemed. We did two services on Christmas Eve (Children's service and Candlelight service), and then one on Christmas morning. I loved the Christmas Eve services so much, and once Craig and I started spending the holidays together, the compromise was giving up Christmas Eve traditions with my family. In return I got to keep all of our Christmas Day craziness, which was the key part of Christmas for me. But I've always missed Christmas Eve...even though my parents now go to a different church anyway. For the past five years or so, we've gone to Christmas Eve mass late in the afternoon. I actually really liked the year we did Midnight Mass, but I don't think that's the best idea for a busy next day. But over these past years I've really come to enjoy that time at Craig's parents' church. The music is beautiful, the mood peaceful, and knowing that the kids are hyper because they're excited for Santa makes the distractions a little cuter than usual. This year the church had another service in the gym to handle the overflow from the very busy mass in the main sanctuary. Craig's mom was part of the singing group for the gym service so we went to that one. And while it was fine, it was different. And in a year of lots of "different", I suppose it didn't help. Still, it was impressively lovely for something in a gym, and the message was really nice.

4) No snow. We hardly had any snow prior to Christmas and other than a flurry the moment we arrived in Buffalo on Friday night, no sight of snow through the holidays. I appreciated the easy driving while running Christmas errands, but I missed that extra Christmas spirit boost. Of course, here we are three days later with a few inches of blowing snow.

5) Maybe I planned better. I still had a lot of last minute stuff to do, but I think overall I planned better so I wasn't spending the few days before Christmas buying things like teacher presents and co-worker presents and all the stuff I normally scramble for. Maybe because it was more evenly spread across the last couple weeks of the season, I didn't have the same rush I normally associate with the end of the Christmas season.

Like I said, in spite of all of these changes, we still had an awesome Christmas. Jacob's excitement was fun to see, and that probably made the holiday for both of us. We enjoyed our gifts (one of my surprise favorites--Shel Silverstein's "Every Thing On It"--loved his stuff as a kid and can't wait to share it with Jacob), but Jacob's joy was infectious. As I alluded to above, Christmas tends to change as you get older--from the crazy-about-Santa phase, to a more mature but still excited phase, to sharing it with a special someone, to enjoying your children and grandchildren. Every phase has its good points and bad points, and each phase involves some adjusting. "Different" doesn't necessarily mean "better" or "worse"...but it does take an open mind to appreciate the new and gracefully miss the old. I may miss my old church on Christmas Eve, but a chaotic-but-fun time with Craig's whole family is a special blessing itself. This year may have been different, but despite that, we still had a fantastic holiday. We are truly blessed.

One more thing for today...

2011-12-27T22:17:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to this blog! Hard to believe, but it turns four years old today! Four years ago today, I vividly remember sitting down at the computer in the office in our old house and sharing with the world (or at least the select friends and family members that I sent the link to) that we were having a baby. Four years later, that baby is running around the house changing his clothes repeatedly, leaving bits of Batman's "house" on the living room floor, and yelling to me that he peed in the potty. Definitely a big change from that Christmas to this one!

Craig and me with the first ultrasound picture, which we had framed and wrapped up for our parents' Christmas gifts--our way of revealing we were expecting. I look so young.

I'm not sure I would have expected to still be doing this four years later, but I certainly hoped I would. And nowadays I'm hoping that I'll have a whole new story to tell at some point in the not-too-distant future. But I suppose Jacob is enough subject matter for now. It's worked for this long, anyway.

FOUR YEARS. Wow. As they say, a baby changes everything.

Christmas Recap!

2011-12-27T17:36:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a crazy few days it has been! I knew last week it would be non-stop, and it was. But it was awesome. We really had a great holiday.

It all started on Friday afternoon. I made a couple stops on my way home from work (half day, thank goodness!) and started working on one last batch of cookies to take along with us to our family gatherings. I knew it would take a lot of time, but I still did it. I had more presents to wrap (including a couple waiting on our doorstep when I got home), and I needed to pack up both Jacob and me for the trip to Buffalo. It was quite a to do list for the end of the preparation process! We didn't leave until late-ish that night, but it all got done!

The tree was ready to go, fresh from our annual "test run" visit from Santa, by the time Jacob got home from daycare.

Jacob very much enjoyed his gifts from Santa and us, as well as Uncle John, Aunt Kristin, Kate, and Max. This year seemed to be a bit different than the past--he wanted to fly through gifts much more quickly, rather than how he was in the past where he wanted to stop and investigate every single gift. Too quick, in my opinion, and I found it nearly impossible to get a good picture! He got a lot of gifts, most of them superhero-themed. If last year was the year of sports, this was the year of the superhero. He got a Spider-Man-themed toothbrush/cup holder, a lot of superhero books, Batman slippers, a Captain America Pez dispenser, and a few action figures, among other things.

Captain America figure! Oh, by the way, he's in his jammies because it was PJs day at daycare...appropriate for gift opening, though!

First Knighthawks jersey! They were way discounted so we thought it was just about time for one!

And yes, the Batcave! This was the big, long-awaited gift, and Santa delivered. Jacob once again walked in the door and pinpointed which present was the big one he wanted (he did it with his hockey rink last year), and he was right.

Jacob loved the Batcave, and admittedly it's pretty cool. It was tough to pry him away once we finished dinner and packing, but eventually we were off...but not before taking a little detour through a nearby neighborhood to see their amazing lights. Almost every house decorates, and they even sell hot cocoa and popcorn! The lights were awesome.

We got to Craig's parents' house pretty late, but Jacob went back down without a problem and we spent the next morning lazily getting ready for a busy afternoon and evening. We headed out to Craig's parents' church for Christmas Eve mass, and Jacob was actually pretty good for it! After that we were off to Craig's aunt's house for the annual Christmas gathering with his extended family. We ate, Jacob opened a few presents (including the Captain America shield he's been eyeing up and trying on at every department store we've entered for the last few months), and then it was time to head back to Craig's brother's house for our exchange with the immediate family. The stream of superhero presents continued...

Captain America mask to go with his shield!

Batman undies...for Daddy!

He also got a Batman and Batmobile, as well as a bunch of crafty things we'll hopefully play with this week. He got a couple pairs of PJs and a Captain America t-shirt. And here are the boys after the gift rush...

Captain America (and other superheroes) PJs!

Everyone seemed to like their gifts a lot, too, so that was great. The boys played a bunch with their toys (Grant got a Batcave too!) and there were only minimal sharing issues before the kids headed up to bed prior to Santa's arrival. Jacob even got a little solo playtime before we were ready to head back to Craig's parents' house. All in all, it was a good (albeit late) night.

Christmas morning Jacob slept in until 9am (good, but bad because we couldn't make it to church with my parents, which would have been nice). We got ready, packed up, and headed off to my parents'. It was a much lower key Christmas day than usual, but we had a nice, quiet Christmas dinner with just the five of us. Jacob opened up presents before and after we ate. This one was a hit!

The Jokermobile actually elicited a squeal!

Excited to get the Riddler and his car!

Other than three villains to go with his Batcave, Jacob got a bunch of Lego-themed books and a Viewmaster! After a nap, we headed to my uncle's house for the annual Binkley gift exchange and smorgasbord. The adults did a Yankee swap-type exchange, and the kids got gifts from Santa. Jacob got this awesome Melissa & Doug set where the little boy can be dressed in magnetic outfits, all of which were sports uniforms! He loved it!

Studying the options...

Anyway, it was really a nice weekend with a good mix of family time and down time. I ate (and even drank!) a little too much, but it was such a fun time. Another successful Christmas in the books, and hopefully a fun week to go!

Christmas' Cast Members

2011-12-22T23:41:00.000-05:00

Now that Jacob is getting old enough to understand Christmas, there are so many more elements that play into how we approach the season. I have known for the last three Christmases (holy cow, Jacob's fourth!), it's all been a lot of practice. I've been trying to get better at this "parent-at-Christmas" thing before it became a big deal that could make or break the holiday for my little boy. From start to finish, Christmas is jammed packed with things to get right. There are traditions leading up to the day, and one major amazing day (or two) at the very end. I'd probably panic more about doing the million little traditions if I wasn't already so busy shopping, baking, wrapping, and celebrating. But in the grand scheme of things, the culmination of the holiday on Christmas Eve/Day seems to, by far, overshadow anything that leads up to it. We all have memories of advent traditions, special craft projects, and Christmas programs and pageants, but doesn't the thrill of Christmas morning beat it all?

But regardless of everything else, you really want to get Christmas right when it comes to your child. You want to make sure that you give them just the right amount of tradition, and that you create the magic that you had as a kid. If you read too much in the blogosphere, your mind will spin from the various takes on the Christmas season presented by any number of parent bloggers. Traditions, theories on Santa, and every craft project known to mankind can really make you think twice about how you're spending your holiday.

More than anything this year I've been thinking about Santa and the Elf on the Shelf. In case you're unaware, the Elf on the Shelf is a big thing now, involving a book and a creepy little elf doll that costs somewhere around $30. I've never read the book, but the basic story is that the elf comes into your house, keeps an eye on the kids, and flies back to the North Pole at night to report back to Santa. Presumably this makes keeping the naughty and nice lists updated much easier. The parental secret to the whole thing is that each night (or early morning), the parents must move the elf to a new location in the house so the kids think that he flew back to the North Pole and landed in a new spot in the house upon his return. It's a big deal the next morning for kids to find their elf's new spot. Here's a picture of the elf at John and Kristin's home, from my trip to Portland...

I made him look a little creepier than usual by using my fish-eye setting to emphasize his head...but yeah, that's him.

Some parents have a blast with it, judging by various blog posts and Facebook photos showing the elf in fun and/or precarious positions. I've seen a couple making snow angels in flour, one straightening the star on a tree, and numerous adult-themed ones involving alcohol and its after-effects. On the other hand, some parents forget to move the elf regularly and blog about making up stories about why it's still sitting in the same spot. The ultimate reward, however, is that every time their kids are being bad, they simply point to the elf and poof! Perfect kids. Maybe.

On one hand I think this is a super cute tradition. I think I'd have fun thinking of places for the elf to land (though I think I would lose my creativity quickly) and if we had time in the morning for a game of hide-and-seek, I think Jacob would love looking until he found him. However, I'm not sure I want to add the elf to my arsenal. I mean, I'm not sure what's wrong with just using Santa as a good behavior incentive, and that's free. I'm just not sure we need the elf doing Santa's dirty work, too. If it's the visual impact of it, I did read somewhere to tell your kids that smoke detectors are Santa cams (though presumably make sure your kids understand their dual purpose first). I have an inkling that some parents might use the elf for evil, and perhaps I'm worried I might be one of them. I try not to bust out the Santa threats too often (though admittedly, I "called" him twice the other day!), but sometimes you just have to. It's probably manipulative and an easy crutch, since we should be encouraging good behavior for reasons other than losing Christmas presents, but hey, it's the one time of year that parents can take advantage and get a bit of a break. It just won't have the same impact after the presents have been delivered, so get it in now. Long story short, part of me really wants to do the elf thing, but I need a couple things to happen beforehand: 1) The price needs to drop a LOT...or we need to get the book from the library and find a cheaper version of the elf; 2) I need to get to a place where I wouldn't rely on it as a crutch, and just enjoy it more as a fun holiday tradition.

As for Santa...well...there are a lot of people that think encouraging your kids to believe in Santa is like telling them a giant lie. Just the other day I read that Justin Bieberthis route, however. Because truly, even if St. Nick doesn't deliver presents to good little boys and girls, we as parents take that role so his spirit lives on. I mean, no other time of year will I spend money like I do right now, so it has to be the spirit of St. Nick taking over, right?

Interestingly, there was one question Jacob had about Santa already that I couldn't even answer. He was rattling on one night about all of the gifts he wanted, and I told him how lucky he was already to have the toys he has. I told him that some kids don't get any toys at Christmas because their families don't have any money to buy them. To which he responded, "Doesn't Santa bring them presents?" Shoooot. Smart kid I have, eh? I was stumped, and then finally revised and said that they may get one or two from Santa, but that's it. It did sort of put the whole Santa thing into perspective, that it certainly sets things up for some confusion as to inequality, etc. I did read somewhere that someone told their kids that Santa may bring the toys, but the parents still have to pay for them, which may be a good out for that one.

So, for now we'll do without the elf but keep Santa in the mix. I think it's fun to see the holiday through Jacob's eyes, and this is the purest way to do it. He'll learn the truth soon enough, and I want to enjoy this time while we can.

The final character of Christmas is, of course, Jesus. He's the most important, yet he's probably the least understood by a three year old. Santa is everywhere, and the Elf is something he could see and understand...but Jesus? Well, he knows bits and pieces. Let's just say the whole story of Jesus isn't the simplest of stories to present to someone his age. You can try to simplify, but ultimately it's a hard one to describe. I mean, this time of year Jesus is a baby, and in the spring he's a grownup dying on a cross? And then he comes back to life? Why don't other dead people come back to life? Jacob keeps asking about baby Jesus' lack of shoes and whether "he's a baby yet". "Not until Christmas," I say. I did shell out a few bucks this year to buy Jacob the Little People Nativity set, because I thought it would be nice to have one he could play with, and eventually we can recount the Christmas story together with tangible figures to help him understand. I'm waiting on our delivery of the shepherd addition, which I think is important since the shepherds' encounter with the angels, and later the Christ child, is a huge part of the story. Anyway, Jacob knows some of the bits and pieces, but keeping it extra simple at this stage is a challenge. I certainly want him to know what's most important, but getting past the presents is going to be a longstanding challenge. When I was a kid we spent Christmas at church--two services Christmas Eve, one Christmas Day, whereas we're lucky to get to one thanks to our crazy schedule. I couldn't really avoid it as a kid (particularly since I went to a Christian school and spent most of December practicing for one program or another), but Jacob's around it a bit less. I do hope that someday we send him to a Christian school so he can celebrate the true meaning of Christmas full time, without hesitation, but the elements factoring into that decision will fill another blog post at another time.

Anyway, the craziness is about to start and I won't lie--I'm excited. I always take a deep breath right around this time, knowing that the next few days will be an amazing whirlwind of emotions, sleep deprivation, family, and wrapping paper. It's truly an awesome experience but it is not for the faint of heart! And with that, it's time to get what little sleep I can before it all begins...stay tuned :)

42 Months

2011-12-20T22:44:00.000-05:00

So, today Jacob officially turns 3-1/2. I feel like I've been calling him 3-1/2 for a while now, but now it's official. We're halfway through the age of three and headed toward four. Holy cow. My baby isn't a baby anymore, as he so often reminds me...and to which I respond that he will always be "my baby". Yup, already setting up to me that mother-in-law. Sorry.

Truthfully, I can't imagine how I'll feel when he's legitimately grown up. Will he still be my baby when he towers over me? Will I still long to snuggle him on the couch, or will the weirdness of that overpower the urge? Or will I just be over it, no weirdness necessary? Or, God forbid, he'll make me so crazy that I'll feel like I barely know him and could never have given birth to him. Again, God forbid. I'd like to think that if we made it through the terrible twos, we can make it through anything, but I know that the problems only get bigger and more complex from here.

But for now, we're in a pretty good spot. We still have a lot of moments where the selective listening, direct defiance, painful whinyness, and oblivious goofiness when we least need it make us a bit crazy. But things are getting better. Jacob is getting to be such a little person. I think Craig is in all his glory, reliving his youth as Jacob gets into superheroes and Legos. And, of course, the whole sports thing. On the other hand, I'm trying to embrace the superheroes and figure out how to accept that they will be part of our world for the next few years. It's only the beginning, I'm sure. But when I consider that Jacob is finally getting to a point where he will sit still, hang out, cuddle, and have a normal conversation, superhero everything is a small price to pay. To watch his little brain work, to see him put things together and make sense of his world, is such an amazing thing. Up until now, most signs of independence he showed were unwelcome...otherwise known as defiance. But now we see him do things on his own--get dressed, use the potty, walk into his classroom alone, learn songs--and this kind of independence is pretty awesome.

He's so full of life. He runs, dances, makes up silly words, and pretty much doesn't stop until bedtime. He changes his "uniform" every few minutes. He's passionate about his stuffed animals, his sports, and his superheroes. He's got an infectious giggle, and actually asks to be tickled to let it out. He's exhausting but enchanting, and while there are moments that we'd like things to be a little easier, we are beyond grateful to have him for our son. And today, three and a half years after he entered our world, we're beyond blessed to have him.

Jacob's Christmas Concert

2011-12-17T17:09:00.000-05:00

Last year I had one of my biggest mom fail moments yet, where I just missed Jacob's performance in his Christmas program because I miscalculated the time it would take me to get up to Greece after a workout. I got out later than I wanted and hit a little traffic along the way, and they were just coming off stage when I got there. Horrible. This year I was determined to do it right.

Good thing I did, because I would have missed one of my first truly memorable parenting moments. What I mean by that is, while there are dozens of amazing, awesome, memorable things you go through as a parent, there are certain moments that stand out as classic, bizarre hilarity, something that's right out of your favorite TV show...even if that show is America's Funniest Home Videos. Thursday night, we had our moment.

The classic moment happens right around the 2:40 mark. Craig was up front getting this video, and I was in the back taking pictures. When the fateful moment happened, I pretty much had my head in my hands but laughing, too. The mom next to me (whose son was the one in green covering his face) said, "At least your son is singing!" True. Despite the moment, which was indeed funny, I was really proud of Jacob. He knew his songs well and was singing along just fine. That's gotta count for something.

Interestingly, having been a kid (and adult) who mostly tried to fade into the background, I wasn't quite sure what to make of my little scene-stealer. One of my most horrifyingly frightening moments when I was a kid was when I was selected as Mary in the Sunday School Christmas Eve program. It involved speaking into a microphone and everything, which was pretty scary. I have no idea how old I was--maybe 9 or 10?--and I wish that there was video floating around of it, awkward as it might be. I was in such a haze of fear and nerves that I only remember bits and pieces of the experience. It would have been nice to see my performance in context, all these years later. And while the end result was exhilarating, I spent most of December fearing microphones and trying to overcome my fears in time to put on a flawless performance. I knew my lines well and actually enjoyed the end where we got to hang out with the manger and be visited by the shepherds and three kings. It was certainly a character-building experience, if nothing else.

From everything I've heard from Craig, he dealt with much the same nervousness when he was younger. So, to see our child in only his second big performance stealing the show, I wasn't sure if I should be happy he's so comfortable up there, or mortified that he was such a grabby-hands with the mike during a group performance. Oh, and stealing from the director's grandson (also a Jacob, born the day after our Jacob, in the same hospital), no less.

I'm so glad I got to be there, though. I am very proud of my little man and applaud his enthusiasm. Looks like we could have an interesting run of shows for years to come...

Feeling the pressure...

2011-12-13T23:25:00.000-05:00

Last weekend Jacob and I went to visit my parents. Craig had a road trip (and so it begins) and since we hadn't been there a lot I decided it was a good opportunity to get in one last visit before the holidays. I had been wanting to go to the Christmas market set up in Niagara Falls anyway, so it seemed like a good fit. We headed up Friday night with Craig, who was flying out of Buffalo early Saturday, and fortunately our sleepy boy did, in fact, sleep. He was awake but drowsy when we arrived, and went back down with little fanfare.

Saturday was a pretty lazy day. We mostly just hung out around the house, which was fine with me, and after naptime we got packed up and headed off to Niagara Falls USA. Niagara Falls makes me sad, because there's so much potential there but not much going on. Even with the Christmas market and some event getting set up in one of the buildings near the market, there wasn't a lot of activity. But the casino was packed, of course. It was COLD, though, and it was probably a good thing the market wasn't as big as I'd hoped. Keep in mind I've been watching webcams across Europe for years with Christmas markets like this (though many are WAY bigger), so I really wanted this to give me a taste of that fine (predominantly) German tradition. It ended up being a bit lackluster, but it also gave me a new appreciation for the thousands of people that go to those things since it was so cold! Here's the rundown, though...

View as we came out of the casino, where we parked. Pretty lovely, eh?

Zoomed out, looking down toward the market. If you look close you can see little huts and tents down the way.

The ice rink at the far end of the market. Jacob wanted to skate. Of course. No dice.

My dad, posing with one of the ice sculptures nearby

Jacob with another ice sculpture

On the bright side, the time in Buffalo coincided with the first real snowfall of the season. We got a little bit here but it melted during the day. Buffalo, however, got enough that it stuck through the weekend, which was nice to be able to get a little Christmas enhancement. I don't particularly love snow, but I don't mind just enough this time of year to make things white and Christmasy.

Sunday we went to church and I sort of freaked when I saw the third candle was lit on the advent wreath. Holy cow, Christmas is coming fast! We did some shopping after church, had a fantastic lunch made by my mom, and then headed out in time for nap. Jacob conked out pretty quickly on the car ride home, and I felt bad that he woke up when we arrived at our pit stop, the photo place where I had to pick up a CD of Jacob's picture from daycare. I need to print photos ASAP! Oh, and there's that little issue of getting a picture for our Christmas card, but whatever...

Sunday evening I started work on Christmas cookies for today's office cookie swap. Last year had been a disaster, so I was nervous this year to try the cutouts my mom does so well every year. In the end they turned out beautifully...and don't they look pretty?

Pre-baking...elegant in their simplicity. Picture the finished ones frosted in white and sprinkled with red, green and blue sugar.

I baked another batch last night, mint chocolate truffles, and got a nice assortment of treats today to bring home. I'm still freaking out about how quickly Christmas is approaching, though. I had an opportunity to do a ton of shopping today, but it didn't do much good. I had a really hard time finding what I wanted or deciding on certain gifts. We're running out of time and I have no idea how we're going to have enough time to pull it all off. Not gonna lie...as usual I'm stressing out more than I'd like to be. I need visits from the inspiration fairy as well as the time fairy, ASAP.

I'm beat, though--thanks in part to a caloric work holiday dinner, no doubt--so for tonight, I've done what I can.

Back in the swing of things...

2011-12-10T14:17:00.000-05:00

I've been back for a few days now, and as you can probably guess by the lack of blog content, I've been busy. Work has been crazy, and it will only get crazier since we have just a couple weeks left before a week off at Christmas, and lots of activities and parties and vacation days to work around. I don't even think I can fit in all of my vacation days, since my request for the 23rd was denied (eh, it'll be a half day anyway). I've got a cookie swap and our department's holiday celebration next week, as well as my office party and Jacob's Christmas concert. We have a ridiculous amount of shopping to do, and I already feel like the Christmas season is slipping away without a good opportunity to enjoy it. I don't think any of us are feeling particularly fantastic--I feel like I'm on the verge of another cold, after never getting over the other two I've had over the last six weeks or so; Jacob had a couple lengthy coughing fits the other night; and Craig has had some cold symptoms, too. On the bright side, Craig has been doing a fantastic job losing weight lately, so at least one part of the health department is going well. And no, not even close to any baby news these days.
Coming back home has been...interesting. It was a little frustrating coming home to things being a little out of place--laundry in the wrong drawers, all out of certain foods, etc. I shouldn't complain, because it means that Craig did laundry and they didn't just eat fast food the whole time, but it's hard to come back and have to resettle more than just yourself. My jet lag wasn't too bad since I never actually adjusted to Pacific time, but I was still very grateful for my extra day off before going back to work, even if it wasn't nearly as productive as I would have liked it to be. Lately I've been feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day...and if I'm not feeling that way at any given moment, I'm probably forgetting half of what I need to be doing. It absolutely boggles my mind--whether I'm at home or at work--how quickly time passes after I put things off. Suddenly weeks (or months!) have passed and I never got back to something. It's pretty awful and there are times I wonder how on earth I'll ever keep up with anything if this second baby ever happens.

This month is yet another excuse to let the housework slide. I'm busy enough with shopping and decorating and planning, and it's probably not good, but all of the other stuff just doesn't get done. And I'm sure next month I'll find plenty of other better things to do yet again. And suddenly I'll realize it's been a couple months since the last thorough cleaning, or that I've been trying to get around to shampooing the rest of my carpets for weeks. Time passes all too fast. As much as I keep trying to rush the pregnancy thing, I know there's so much I could be doing in the meantime.

Speaking of time passing, I think Jacob aged while I was gone. Sounds silly, but maybe it's just a changed perspective after having a break. There are certain things that strike me as much more grown up, like the way he talks or plays with his toys. He's a pretty awesome kid, though. He said that he missed me, and he's been pretty generous with the hugs and kisses since I got back. He still has moments that are so infuriating, though, where he just blatantly ignores what we're asking. I had very little tolerance for that when I got back, surprisingly. Perhaps Kate is that much better of a listener that I forgot how bad of one Jacob can be. But the good moments in between are really great these days. He certainly makes us laugh sometimes, and his sense of humor is definitely moving to a new level. Oh, and while I'm 100% sure this will jinx us, Jacob's been back in underwear for the first time in a few weeks, and things have been going well. Very well.

While I was gone, Craig and Jacob went to an Amerks game and saw Santa. Jacob hopped right up on Santa's lap and told him he wanted Batman. That's quite a switch, but it's further proof our little boy is growing up. I'm excited for Christmas this year and hope he's happy with his gifts. And I hope he's grateful. Hard to believe we only have two more weeks until we find out! Let the rush begin...

...And Back...

2011-12-05T23:04:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm on my way back from Portland, composing this offline to kill some time on my long flight. Looks like I'll actually have a movie on this one, but I might also have a little trouble making my connection, so we'll see how that goes. Thank you, morning fog, for delaying my flight crew. My trip was really nice, a mental break from my usual responsibilities at home and some good quality time with John, Kristin, Kate and my adorable new nephew, Max.

It was a pretty low key visit compared to my last trip west, when Craig and I visited Seattle and Portland during a whirlwind week of sightseeing—Pike Place Market, Space Needle, Rose Garden, Mt. Hood, Oregon Coast—but this trip was really mostly about Max and Kate, and I definitely enjoyed that portion. We ate well—a fantastic Mexican place, a cool brewery, a funky pizza place, the tiniest sit-down restaurant ever, along with a couple delicious meals prepared by Kristin. We walked around the neighborhood a bit, and ventured downtown. We went to the Nike campus and shopped at the employee store, and had a brief but lovely visit to the Oregon Zoo's Zoo Lights display. But the most precious moments were certainly spent cuddling my new nephew, and it was fun to play with Kate, as well. She was hesitant and shy at times, but when she let down her guard, we had fun.

Max was a delight, and it definitely reinforced my desire to have another baby. And playing with Kate solidified that I'd love to have a girl. But I do think it reminded me that I'll be totally in love with a new baby regardless of the gender, even if I might still have a nagging desire to buy cute dresses and play with dolls and play kitchens in addition to daily games of lacrosse and soccer in the living room. Holding a little boy definitely brought back memories from 3-1/2 years ago, when Jacob was a newborn and made those adorable noises. It's been a long time since I dealt with a baby too young for head/neck control, or that did the crazy, explosive poops mid-feeding. It took a little adjusting, but I was pleasantly surprised that the instinct came right back. Perhaps a little clumsier than I was before, but I think I was a lot less phased by getting peed on than I may have been before! I savored every moment of snuggle time and tried to take a lot of pictures of both Max and Kate.

Of course, I had my new camera with me, which presented both an opportunity and a challenge. I had great subjects to test out my camera on, but also the issue of trying to get good pictures despite not knowing the best ways to use my camera. Lots of settings to try out, lots of fun shots to play with, but all with the risk of not getting great pictures of the kids or the scenery while I was there. It didn't go perfectly, but I think I'm reasonably happy with the shots I got. Definitely a few winners in there, as you'll see below.

Clock of Nations in the Rochester airport. It used to be in the mall I walked through every day for work. I took the picture with the "toy camera" setting on my new camera to age it a bit.

View of Mt. Hood from the plane. Gorgeous, and you can even see the snow blowing around!

Max...so sweet. So. Sweet.

View from John & Kristin's condo

I love this picture and it was totally random. Trixie came right up to me and set her head on my lap. Couldn't resist.

Max, wide awake and still so sweet. Handsome little man.

The tree got put up and decorated on Friday, and here's Kate with it. Her ornament hanging handiwork is in the lower left :)

This picture turned out a little blurry, but it was probably the best smile I got!

Apparently sweet runs in the family, eh?

One of my favorite artsy pictures from my trip...fisheye effect on the hanging decor in the mall downtown

Pretty tree from Zoo Lights

We only got to see a portion of the decorations, but this was one of my favorite walkways

Anyway, I'm happy to be heading home to my boys, even if Craig was dreadfully sick yesterday morning and I'm in total fear of Jacob coming down with the same thing...or me, for that matter. Being with another nearly-three year old was a good reminder of what I had left at home, and although I wasn't anywhere near miserable without him, I did miss being a part of his daily life and I'm looking forward to getting back. It is Christmastime, after all, so I'm happy to be getting back in the groove in time to start enjoying some of the best parts of the season.

Now there's just the little issue of catching my connection in Chicago to get back to that life. Or rather, catching it with a full belly, empty bladder, and enough room to store my luggage on board. Fingers crossed, because I want to see my baby tonight...

[Insert extra long flight, brisk walk through O'Hare, arrival at my flight with about five minutes to spare, super quick flight to Rochester, and a ride home from my boys here]

So, I'm finally home. It's been a long day (did I mention I woke up extra early?), though my travel was relatively painless other than the stress of potentially missing my connection. A movie made the first flight go quickly, and a rousing game of Mahjongg

Calm Before the Storm...

2011-12-02T22:30:00.000-05:00

Well, not really "calm", but the blog's been a bit quiet, eh? Sorry. I'm not sure if I'm simply content with nothing to vent or discuss, or if there's just been too many things on my mind to get overly philosophical about any one thing.

We had a lovely thanksgiving. Not a particularly photogenic one, apparently, as the last pictures on my camera are from last Wednesday's thanksgiving feast at Jacob's daycare. I will post those and a couple others soon, but seeing as how there aren't a LOT of pictures on my camera to pull off, there just hasn't been a high priority to do it (or to post them here) since last week.

We left for Buffalo on Wednesday night. Jacob went to bed late and woke up coughing in the middle of the night, yet he was still awake shortly after 7am. We had a lazy morning then did a quick errand before heading over to Craig's brother's house for the feast. We had a fantastic meal, and for a change, it was just that one. My parents were in Portland, so we only had one stop this year. It was a little bit of a bummer to not see them, but I was more than happy to share this year. It was great for John, Kristin and the kids to have my parents there, and good for me to only have one meal to gorge on and less driving to do. We had a good time with Craig's family and Jacob definitely made good use of his cousins' stash of masks and helmets. That kid is totally into role playing right now--in his own weird way, hence the the fact that he's been parading around in as many as four layers lately. He'll wear four short-sleeved shirts on top of one another, and shorts under his pants, and for some reason in his mind he's being a superhero or a sports guy. Don't ask me how, but that's the latest thing.

I did some shopping online thanksgiving night--got Jacob's big gift and a new camera, which I cannot wait to play with! Good timing, too, since that means I can leave one camera with Craig and take the new one with me to Portland. More on that in a bit, though...

Friday we headed back around lunchtime and I managed to put up the tree (no decorations) and get settled back in. Craig was busy most of the rest of the weekend with work, but I managed to do a little shopping (nothing exciting), put up most of the Christmas decorations, and finish the tree over the past few days. I wouldn't call our weekend relaxing, exactly, but it wasn't super crazy either, which was nice.

However, being back to work this week has been a little on the hellish side since I have a ton of work to do and only three days to do it in. Everyone's busy, everyone needs everything ASAP, and I'll be in Portland in less than two days. So, yeah, not exactly a happy start to the week for me. On top of that, I had to finalize Jacob's daycare pictures (yes, there were a couple good ones, but I needed them to fix one for me, since he had a major patch of hair out of place) and changing over all of our insurance (medical and dental) to my job. Craig's offerings changed and mine turned out to be the better deal. I hate that kind of paperwork. All of these things had a deadline of tomorrow, so between work and decorating and planning for my trip, I've been making lists and trying to carve out time to get everything done. I'm not even sure where to begin on instructions or "suggestions" for Craig for his five days alone with Jacob. I know they'll survive fine, albeit with a lack of home cooking and probably a little less structure than usual. They'll be fine. The bigger question is what I will be returning to!

I'm sure I'll be blogging from the airport pondering my coexisting angst and excitement about my trip. It's rare enough that I even get on a plane, let alone be away from Jacob for this long, so the whole thing means I'm just a bundle of emotions heading into it. The busy week isn't helping, nor is the mere fact that it's Christmas season. As it is this time of year I usually have a million things swirling around in my head--gift buying, cookie baking, parties and dinners, Christmas events--and there's never enough time to do it all as it is. Throw in a cross-country trip and it leaves me a little more anxious than usual. However, I have no doubt it will be worth it in the end, just as it was last time we had a trip in the middle of Christmas season, our fantastic trip to Florida when I was newly pregnant. This time I'm flying solo, though, for only the second time ever.

This is my first time traveling with technology, so I'm trying to remember everything I might need for my laptop, MP3 player, cell phone, and new camera. I'm trying to bring stuff to run outside. I'm trying to remember the rules for packing liquids. And I'm trying to pack it all into two carry-ons. Ha!

Should be an interesting few days, that's for sure.

Photo Friday

2011-12-02T22:26:00.001-05:00

Of course, it's almost the end of Friday in the time zone where most people who read this blog reside, but oh well. Things are good in Portland, though I do feel a little like I'm missing a body part without having Jacob as my constant companion. Perhaps being around another child of a similar age makes his absence even more apparent, as some of Kate's tactics are similiar to Jacob's at times, though she's got a girlier, sweeter delivery most of the time. It's different not having to be the disciplinarian, though...but I appreciate the break.

Here's a couple pictures from late last month:

Jacob discovered he could take the flight goggles off our stuffed Snoopy and he thought it was really funny to wear them.

Jacob has been wearing a ridiculous amount of clothing on a regular basis lately. This day he was wearing his new lacrosse jersey, his favorite shorts, lacrosse gloves, a fancy helmet that Daddy got him, and his soccer shin guards. He was ready to go!

This is at Jacob's daycare thanksgiving feast...this was a totally random face and it seriously cracked me up!

This has nothing to do with Jacob, but I just wanted to share--because isn't this gorgeous? It's the view from my office. This is the only redeeming quality of these early sunsets this time of year!

Hopefully more soon from Portland...

On my way...

2011-12-01T08:42:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in O'Hare after a perfect first flight, utilizing my 20 free minutes of WiFi before my next flight, which boards in another 15 minutes or so. It's been a long morning already, up at 3:15am and to the airport at 4:30am. Security was easy and I had some time to hang out with the old Midtown Plaza Clock of Nations, which I used to walk past every day on my way to work, that is now sitting in the airport. It was fun to have time to sit and watch it as it came to life on the hour. I got online for a bit, and then it was time to board. The flight was smooth, with my own single seat and window, and a gorgeous sunrise following us all the way here. The descent into Chicago was exactly as I'd hoped when I'd picked the left side of the plane--I finally got a nice view of Chicago after so many flights here on the other side without the city view.

It was hard saying goodbye to Jacob this morning while he slept, not to mention last night while he was still awake. It's hard to take this time away, but I feel it will be worth it. More on that later.

Time to board...

Instant Gratification

2011-11-23T22:57:00.001-05:00

I decided this morning that instant gratification is ruining our society. We're obviously aware of the impact of technology...and yes, it's nice. It's nice to be able to look up anything instantly, call people at any time (no need to have a pay phone or quarter), or watch a show or movie whenever you want. No need to wait until Saturday morning for your favorite cartoon--just pull it up on Netflix or the DVR. We see pictures instantly on Facebook, mere moments after friends' babies are born. We download music moments after the album releases, order items from our couch and have them arrive the next day, and email or text people to get our message across instantly. Sorry, snail mail. Heck, even the prevalence of premarital sex (and at ever-younger ages) plays into this as well. So while all these things are convenient, they're doing nothing to teach us patience.

Recently I've been getting very frustrated with the emergence of Christmas in October. I hate seeing Christmas displays across the way from Halloween candy, and the way we just skip over Thanksgiving completely makes me crazy. Part of me thinks we should adopt Canada's thanksgiving, just because it times out better for the early introduction of Christmas. We lose a vacation day, but heck, make Black Friday a holiday then. I'm a purist, and I hate to hear Christmas music before Thanksgiving night. Back in the day we didn't hear Christmas music at all until then, and the all-day music didn't happen until Christmas Eve! Now it starts in mid-November (if not sooner), all day every day, right through. Even Black Friday has been stretched earlier, with sales well ahead of the actual day coupled with crazy hype all the way there. And if that wasn't enough, we stretch the madness out to Cyber Monday now, as well. I've been shaking my head all week at the Christmas lights popping up all over, and the last month of mall shopping has been downright sickening. I'm not ready for it yet, and it bugs me that we're rushing the season so early. It never used to be this bad, and I feel like it's cheapening the season.

Part of what makes anything in life special is that there's some anticipation leading up to it. Think about it--Christmas was special as a kid because we had this one special time of year where everything was focused on the holiday. Advent calendars, countdown chains, and all of the traditional preparations made the season so exciting, and it was all crammed into one very special month. Finishing school is a big deal because you've had a certain period of time to anticipate the ending. Weddings and babies both have "waiting periods" for a reason--time to prepare and get excited. Back in my dating days, one of my best first kisses came after weeks of nothing but great conversation and very deliberate restraint. I just don't think any of these experiences would be as exciting without that build-up.

On the other hand, if the time gets stretched out too long, it becomes old hat, just part of regular life. If we had to go through the same gestation period as an elephant (22 months), we'd probably get a little bored with the concept and the excitement would probably trail off until right before the end. Likewise, if we keep stretching out Christmas preparations way in advance, that special period that makes the season so great will just be part of life this time of year. Instead of knowing you need to fit in certain activities during this special month, procrastination will reign as people think they have months to do it. It just doesn't make it as urgent, so chances are, it might not get done.

Maybe I'm just a stick-in-the-mud purist and I need to get with the times. Maybe I should just jump right in and appreciate the bonus time we have to enjoy the season. But I still can't get past the importance of Thanksgiving, and the reminder to be thankful (particularly when heading into a season of greed and materialism) is that much more important.

As Thanksgiving approaches this year, I'm a little bummed that we're not quite where I was hoping we would be by now--pregnant with #2 and in a much better financial situation than we were before. Craig's job situation has changed, and it's probably a bit better than it was last year, though for non-financial reasons. Baby #2 just isn't happening right now, and it's disappointing. However, we have much to be thankful for, and at this point I'm in no position to complain. But again, per my theory above, if it would have happened right away, I just don't think it would have the same impact as it will when we've been waiting and anticipating it for this long. I've maintained all along that it'll happen in God's perfect timing, so while I have all of my earthly plans and schedules, I know that whatever His timing is is better than what I could imagine. It's not easy to wait, but I know it'll be worth it. And if it never happens? Well, hopefully I'll have the grace to accept that, too, and appreciate all we have been given.

You'd never know it by our society, but there's nothing wrong with slowing down a bit. Everything happens in its own time. We don't need to get ahead of ourselves just to make things happen faster. It cheapens the experience and doesn't teach the importance of the process of preparation. And God knows that whether it's our baby or His baby that we're preparing for, that time is precious.

Tuesday Randoms

2011-11-22T23:44:00.000-05:00

The craziness has begun. Thanksgiving is a couple days away and it's going to be full-speed ahead from now until the end of the year. I have a ridiculous amount of work to do in the next week, and then I'm off work for four days to head to Portland for five days and meet my adorable new nephew, Max. I can't wait to spend time with my niece Kate (and of course my brother and sister-in-law, as well), but of course I'm facing long travel and plenty of mommy guilt for leaving behind my sweet boy for that long. Once I get back, I'll be diving head-first into Christmas planning, events, and shopping. It's crazy to even think about. Before we know it, Christmas will be here, I'll have an amazing week off work, and then it'll be the new year and we'll be back to the beginning of another year. It's mind-boggling.

I've been dreadfully sick for a while now, which probably isn't helping. The cough I've had for a month turned into a brutal assault on my sinuses over the weekend. Terrible congestion that left me totally incapacitated Sunday night motivated me to go to the doctor on Monday, but unfortunately she couldn't do anything for me. I probably just have an upper respiratory infection, which she wouldn't prescribe antibiotics for, and because I'm in the midst of the whole trying to get pregnant thing, it's risky to take any sort of drugs. So, I just have to suffer through it. She also said that it could just be my allergies being out of control. Doubtful, in my opinion, though I'm sure they can contribute a bit. I've been off allergy meds for a while, though, without much problem, but I guess cold season takes it to a different level. I dunno...I'm tired of hearing her blame every single problem I have when I'm there on allergies, including my loss of smell and taste. I'm ready to get a new doctor, even if just to get a second opinion. It'd be nice to get someone who's willing to think a bit more creatively and listen to my concerns without sounding a little old-school-judgmental, like I'm someone who's spent a little too much time on the internet or something. I've still had my moments the past couple days, but nothing as bad as Sunday night. I've even had moments of relative comfort--not clear breathing, but not severe pain, either.

Jacob had been pretty awesome lately--which, of course, now that I've blogged about it, it will come to an end--but he's still having moments that make me crazy. He's just been sort of fun and sweet and awesome lately. Lots of hugs and kisses and cuddling, funny little observations, and silly little moments. However, when he's bad, he's awful. He's been super whiny lately about everything, demanding everything in an instant. He has a major tantrum, complete with hitting and kicking, when he doesn't get his way. That's just being three, I think, and I'm doing my best to maintain composure, raise my voice only when necessary, and try to be simply firm and consistent. It's a fine line between disciplining him and finding ways to comfort him when he knows he screwed up, but lately it's been manageable. And really, that's all I'm asking for. Maybe he's easier, maybe my attitude is better, or maybe those good little moments have been good enough to remind me what an awesome kid I have a lot of the time. It helps.

He's also been eating better--which I credit to rewards of Halloween candy--and going down to bed well--which I credit to a good routine. Nothing's better than seeing your kid instinctively walk to bed after you finish the last book. Sweet. And the better behavior in general may be thanks to the Santa threat that we can exploit this time of year. We don't use it a lot, but hey, one of the songs he's learning for the daycare Christmas program is "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"...you know, "he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake." Lucky us.

Speaking of which, tonight we sat down to practice his songs, the other of which is "Up on the Housetop", which I don't know that well. But you know what, Jacob does. The kid knows almost the entire song--all five verses. I can't seem to learn it, so I'm extra impressed at how good he is. Amazing how young minds soak this stuff up.

Tomorrow is his Thanksgiving feast at daycare. I didn't go last year because I didn't really think it was worth taking off work. But this year I had this image of him sitting there all alone when everyone else's parents were there, and I didn't like it. I feel like some of his tantrums are just an attempt to get attention, so keeping that in mind I've been trying to do what I can to be there for him. This seemed like a good idea, and I have a little vacation to burn. I have way too much work to do, but this is important, too. Should be interesting, considering how he acted the last time we hung out with him at a daycare event.

washload, and good for teaching a little bit of responsibility. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I'm hopeful for a good but busy weekend. Time to figure Jacob out, transition into Christmas mode, and just be thankful for all we have. Here we go...

Cell Phone Pics

2011-11-19T14:03:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are the pictures I snapped of the photos stuck on my old cell phone. Enjoy this blast from the past...

Five days old...hard to believe.

So sweet. These two pictures were taken in the overnight room at the hospital a couple days before he came home.

This one was taken at the mall the day after his christening...which may have been Labor Day, if that's possible for it to be on Sept. 1st. He was sleeping so sweetly.

This was taken Christmas Eve, possibly at bedtime. He was laying on the bed in our room at Craig's parents' house, apparently very happy.

This was apparently on our living room floor. Not sure why I used my cell for this one, rather than my real camera, but it's so cute!

Hard to see his face in this one, but he's in his car seat. The winter hat and stuffed moose are perfect accompaniments.

Jacob's first experience with a balloon, at Fairport Canal Days.

He just kept holding it, which was so stinkin' cute.

Sleepy boy, probably in his car seat.

Drinking our frozen strawberry lemonade...yum!

Still drinking...

Attempt at a good pic of both of us after the lemonade. Not too successful.

I think this was at the doctor's office. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so out the cell phone came as one more distraction technique.

At the Red Wings game, taken the same night as I snapped the picture we eventually used for his 3rd birthday invitation. I think I'd had so much success with the real camera that I thought it was a prime opportunity to update my wallpaper.

So, yeah, suffice it to say that I'm happy I at least have these to remember these little moments. And what's better, now I carry my camera with me all the time so I should catch more moments naturally. And in the event that I don't, at least I have a better cell phone camera this time around, so if they're better quality pictures, perhaps there will be more motivation to transfer them when they happen. Not to mention that I've learned my lesson...

Little Moments

2011-11-17T23:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had to get a new cell phone. I wasn't expecting to, but I did. See, I'm still living in the dark ages and my cell phone is a Tracfone. It's a prepaid thing, and considering I don't use my cell phone a lot, it makes sense to keep it. I don't feel like spending $30-50 per month for a cell phone, even if I could use it more, because I don't need to. And while in theory we could just ditch our home phone, I'm hesitant to do that...probably mostly because of 911 and the million things we'd have to change and the knowledge that I don't want to have to buy Jacob a cell phone the moment friends start wanting to call him. So, after looking around at some plans online, I just decided to stick with my Tracfone. I still had a ton of minutes left from when they screwed up and bonused me the last time I had to get a new phone, when their systems upgraded and my old phone no longer worked. That one I got for free. It took them ages to get it back up and running, though, so somewhere along the way I got a ridiculous influx of minutes. Sweet. Years later I'm still working through them, but when I had to buy a few more to tack on more time, they told me my phone could no longer be used. Ugh. I had been thinking about getting a new one anyway, one with a QWERTY keyboard so when I did text or try to hop on Facebook (I could sort of access it from my old phone, but it was terrible), it might be a little easier. So, I had been eyeing a couple up and once I got word that mine was useless, I ran out to the store to get a new one and get the painful transition period over with ASAP.

I got the best one within my price range, and so far it's cool. I haven't tried Facebook yet, mostly because I'm still waiting for my 2,100 minutes to come back to my phone. I'm giving them the two business days they said it might take, but you can bet I'll be calling them again tomorrow night. Oh, and while the phone works, it's listing the wrong phone number within the phone. Weird. And yes, I called it, and it's someone else's number. Oy. But at least it's working.

The point of this boring little story? Well, as I was going through and changing over my contacts, I realized that a bunch of pictures of Jacob were still trapped on my old phone. And there's no way to get them off. While most of them are nothing special, they're still pictures of my baby...when he was a baby. Most of them aren't fantastic memories or anything, but just little stolen moments when we were waiting around or he looked super cute and my crappy camera phone was all I had. In most cases I just took the moment to try to get an updated wallpaper for my phone, and periodically I'd get one good enough to change to.

Much to my surprise I found pictures from when he was five days old, still in the hospital. I remember taking those in the overnight room we stayed in. There was one from when he was sleeping in his stroller (Labor Day 2008, I think?), another from when we shared a frozen strawberry lemonade from McDonald's after a haircut, a couple adorable sleeping pictures, his first experience with a balloon, and at least one picture from waiting in the doctor's office. They're all pretty sweet in their own way, though the new baby pictures are the ones I'm kicking myself about the most because I didn't take enough pictures with my regular camera back then. Insignificant moments, perhaps, but all the more significant now that they're trapped there and time is passing us by.

Every time I stumble through old pictures, I marvel at the big boy we have now. For example, I have this one as my wallpaper at work right now, and I catch myself just staring at it. Jacob was just over 16 months in this picture, half a lifetime ago for him.

For the record, I don't miss raking all of those leaves every fall, but I do mourn the loss of photo ops like this one. I got a couple dandies that day, even though Jacob had sliced open his lip the night before (Halloween). Luckily, you can hardly tell.

When he's having an adorable moment, it's easy to let myself think back to my amazing little baby boy. I see his face and the little baby comes rushing back, even if it seems almost impossible that he was ever that small. Did I mention he measured in at 39-1/2 inches at the doctor the other day, which is a full inch more than he did back in August? Looks like Daddy's genes are officially kicking in. He's jumped up to the 75th percentile, which is somewhere he's never been. But let me tell you, his pants are evidence that he shot up. Jeans that I thought would fit all winter are getting short. He's getting to be such a big boy, and those baby pictures blow my mind a bit.

Maybe I'm just extra sappy because I was reading another one of those depressing blogs, this one about a family whose oldest son died of a drug overdose and related assault at 18. Seeing pictures of the kid when he was little just reminded me of how we capture these moments in time, never knowing the significance they could have down the road. What if it turns out these random photos were more of an endangered species than we thought? Every once in a while I take a completely awful picture of Jacob--blurry, blinking, odd face--and the instinct is to delete it because I know I won't use it and don't want to take up memory with it. But there's a little nagging thing in the back of my mind...that if, God forbid, something happened to him, I'd kick myself for every photo I didn't have, even the bad ones. Let's face it, in a situation like that, there would never be enough.

Tonight I took pictures of the pictures on my old phone. Hopefully I can post them one of these days, to give you a peek of these unseen moments. For now, he're's a sneak preview--two pictures I did email off of my phone a while back...

Dinner outside at a restaurant near the lake on a warm day in spring 2009

Jacob's first gelato later that same summer, a baby cone just for him!

More to come...

Potty Problems

2011-11-14T23:30:00.000-05:00

I mentioned last week that during our trip to the doctor's office I had a lengthy conversation with the doctor, during which Jacob ripped the exam table paper to shreds. We were discussing the topic of potty training. It hasn't been going so well.

There was a time not too long ago that I was convinced we'd be done potty training by the end of summer. Jacob was wearing underwear all day, and most days they stayed dry. But then, little by little, it all broke down. I don't know why, as we didn't have any major life changes or anything else that would be an obvious trigger for regression. He just started being wet more. And then the pooping started.

To be clear, Jacob has been using the potty for over a year. He started sometime in the summer of 2010, and we've just sort of let things progress on their own. I bought some underwear last spring, I believe, and I got a potty sticker chart going as well. We encouraged him to use the potty, but we never did potty boot camp like some people do--leaving their kids naked (i.e., without a "place" to put their pee and poop), or filling them with fluids and setting timers--mostly because Jacob struck me as the sort of kid that would just do it when he was ready and not a moment sooner. We had a potty prize in place--a lacrosse net--and the motivation to wear underwear seemed high. He did pretty well with pull-ups so we moved on to underwear. All along he did a reasonably good job with using the potty, particularly for poop, and moving up to the three-year-old room at daycare seemed like a good motivator to keep up his big boy status. He was never dry in the morning, and naps were a bit of a crap shoot, but I was less concerned about those. I figured that peeing in his sleep was involuntary and probably just indicated that his body wasn't ready yet. But he seemed to do a decent job in the daytime, so we soldiered on there.
For a while, things were good. I seriously got to the point where I wondered if a pack of pull-ups I was buying might be the last pack. Jacob dribbled a bit and had major accidents once in a while, but I figured it was just a matter of time. I thought he'd adjust to the various sensations and the accidents would decrease, even if they didn't go away completely. I guess I couldn't have been more wrong.

I remember gushing a bit to the doctor at Jacob's well visit in August that he was pretty solidly pooping in the potty. We hadn't had a poopy diaper in ages, and we'd never had poopy underwear. And then later that week he promptly pooped in underwear for the first time. I was shocked. And it's been happening a bit ever since, maybe once every couple weeks. And ever since then, with the exception of a couple decent weeks, I think there have been more days where we bring home a bag of wet undies than days that we don't. More often than not, when he'd actually go on the potty, his underwear would be wet--maybe not soaked, but a pretty significant dribbling. That can't be comfortable, but he never bothered telling us unless it was a major accident. It seemed, though, that things were getting progressively wetter all the time.

Of course, all along he's been wearing his plastic pants to contain any mess, and I can't help but wonder if that's somehow contributing. I don't know why it would matter, since wet underwear is still wet whether it's soaked through to other clothing or not. I'm not sure we have enough pants to attempt to go without the plastic pants, either.

The tough thing is that I know he's capable of being (mostly) dry, because he's done it at times. But whether his problem is more physical or mental, I'm not sure. Maybe he really can't hold it. Maybe he can't tell when he has to go, or at least not with enough notice. Maybe he's too busy to care. Maybe wet diapers and now wet-ish underwear have completely desensitized him. I have no idea. And while I tried not to make a big deal of the accidents, it's hard...especially when you know he knows what he should be doing. And still...I need to at least make the point that having an accident isn't our ideal scenario. While he's not in trouble, he still needs to try to make it to the potty.

So, at the end of my rope last week, I asked the doctor her thoughts. And much to my surprise, she gave me the green light to go back to pull-ups for a while. I figured that might be a bad idea since it's almost giving in to his (perceived) laziness, but at this point anything is worth a try. It takes away potty training as ammunition for a power struggle, so if that's what he's been doing, this should help. I do need to get a new potty chart up and running, one that focuses solely on staying dry. We know he can use the potty, so now it's more about making sure he gets there in time.

The frustrating issue here is that I don't know if there's a physical issue that is causing all of this, or if that little smirk on his face when we ask about accidents shows an underlying agenda. It's so hard to not know, even if ultimately it doesn't make a difference because he's just not staying dry anyway and we can't keep doing the status quo

Away

2011-11-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

This weekend I took off for a weekend away. I took a vacation day Friday and headed out alone to the downstate baby shower of Lois, my good friend from college. Jacob's existence is probably part of the reason I haven't seen her in three years, since her wedding. Between her schedule, my schedule, and a period of time where leaving Jacob and pumping all weekend seemed impossible, it just hadn't worked out. I had to miss her bridal shower because it happened right around the time Jacob was born, and besides that very busy wedding weekend, I hadn't seen her since. And there hadn't been a lot of emailing either, but I was determined to go down there for this shower and make up for lost time.

I decided to make a weekend of it, though Lois had a busy weekend herself so I had to make some other plans. I took the long way down on Friday and stopped through Geneseo (to buy a baby t-shirt for part of the gift) and Corning (to check on some stuff at the glass museum store) to break up the trip. I also had the option to stop in Binghamton to see my oldest friend (since Kindergarten), Heather, but in the end I just wanted to get to my destination as soon as I could since I hate driving in the dark. The drive was very pretty. Most of the leaves were gone, but the sun made the remaining rusty reddish-brown leaves look gorgeous. There were also some snowflakes that didn't stick, but some of the cloud formations that resulted were pretty cool. I got to do some shopping once I was down there, and spent some time at Panera utilizing their free wi-fi until I could head to Lois' house for the night.

It was nice to catch up with her, though it was definitely crazy seeing her pregnant after considering her wedding was the reason for my last visit. We had a lot of catching up to do and there wasn't a lot of time, but it was fun to see her not-so-new-anymore house and hear how pregnancy has been treating her. The shower yesterday morning was lovely (amazing brunch food!) and they got some great gifts. It was fun to see all the baby products again, though it left me wishing even more that my body would get its act together and let us try to get back in the baby business again.

After the shower I headed out toward Binghamton to stay with Heather overnight. We spent the evening working at her husband's orchestra concert (more fun than it sounds! There were cookies!), then got ice cream with her husband and father-in-law. This morning we went to church, which was interesting in more ways than one. First, everyone there was so nice! The congregation is small and Heather is a teacher at the school there. The members are mostly on the older side, and many of them greeted me and were genuinely interested to hear my back story. Second, the church has a new pastor, and he's so young! I'm not sure I've ever been to a church where the pastor was younger than me! Young and fresh is good, though! Third, I had a chance to see a lot of the Binghamton flood damage in person. As you may recall, the Binghamton area got slammed in August by a passing hurricane's rain, and there was widespread flooding. It was pretty crazy to see major businesses--Home Depot, McDonald's--still closed months later, and old Victorian houses with nothing inside them, some offered for sale "as-is". Sad stuff. We actually went to a newly reopened Pizza Hut whose trademark red booths had been replaced with plain old tables and chairs. That was odd! The visit with Heather was a good chance to catch up and reminisce about some of the nearly 30 years that we've known one another (well, 28, but who's counting? ;-) ).

I did the drive back this afternoon and came back to an empty house. Boo. A little while later, Craig walked in with a sleeping Jacob over his shoulder. For the second day in a row, Jacob fell asleep around dinner time. Yesterday he woke up at 10:30pm and stayed awake until 2:30am! Thank goodness I wasn't here, because that would have sucked. I couldn't risk that tonight because we have to be up for an early doctor appointment tomorrow, so I woke up the sleeping monster sometime after 6pm and endured his wrath for a while until he really woke up and realized he missed me. I got a big hug and an "I love you" tonight, so that was pretty awesome.

I missed him a lot while I was gone. A lot of people asked about him--probably because a lot of the folks at Lois' shower knew I had a baby right before the wedding--and the whole baby thing definitely made me think about him in simpler times. I didn't miss the misbehavior, of course, but I missed his sweet smile and his hugs. Coming back to a way off schedule child wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, though. However, I suppose it's the price I pay for some alone time to think, shop, talk uninterrupted, be spontaneous, and pay attention in church.

This whole weekend was a bit of a test run for three weeks from now when I pack my bags to head out to Portland for five days to see my new nephew Max and the rest of my brother's family. I can't wait, but admittedly I'm a bit nervous. It's not often I fly...alone...for five days...away from my child. Jacob was only six months old when my niece Kate was born, and with nursing and general concerns over leaving Jacob, I didn't get a chance to go visit. That meant that I didn't see Kate until she was over eight months old. I made a promise to myself to see this one early on, so this is my chance. I'm excited, but considering the stress of making sure things are set up when I leave (and of not having any control over things when I'm gone), I'm already a little nervous. I'm always nervous about flying, but the fear of flying with a child is even more intense. Yes, it will probably be fine, but it's still scary. I want to make sure the boys are prepared for life alone for a few (more) days, and I also want to ensure that I don't come back to a little boy who's fallen into bad habits. I'm definitely more of a planner than Craig (at least as far as Jacob is concerned), and sometimes I think Craig thinks about what's fun first, and what's better in the long run second. Sometimes it provides a good counterbalance to me, but sometimes (like the wacky napping this weekend, brought on by an ill-timed soccer game and football party) it makes things a little tougher. He might pay the consequences when they're alone, but I don't want to come back to find our good routines are out-of-whack, either. I know they'll have fun while I'm gone, but there's definitely more to it than that.

Alas, I have three weeks to obsess over that. Right now, I'm just grateful for the time to spend with two good friends and a little time alone for myself. It was a great weekend and I'm just happy to be back to the smiling face of my sweet boy.

Nauseated

2011-11-11T20:54:00.000-05:00

I wish the post title was in reference to some sort of early pregnancy symptoms, but alas...nothing to report there. Instead, it's in reference to my feelings about this whole Penn State scandal. It's not often I get into posting about current events or politics, but geez, I just can't let this one slide. The scandal makes me so angry. And I don't think I'd feel quite that way (at least not as strongly) if I wasn't a parent. Particularly a parent of a sports-obsessed little boy.

I get it. I mean, Joe Paterno has been coaching at Penn State since my parents were in junior high, for goodness sakes. He's a legend. And obviously, to still be working at a job like that at 84 years old, he definitely loved it--and they loved him.  The other night we were watching ESPN as they showed footage of students gathering on campus and at Paterno's house. The group got a little violent later in the night, but for the most part they were just there to support Paterno. Lovely gesture, but misguided sympathy, if you ask me. The guy helped cover up serious atrocities committed against innocent boys. Yes, he told the powers that be at the school, but when nothing came of it, how could he possibly stand by knowing it was still going on? How can a man that deals with a huge group of guys, probably most of whom he'd consider to be like sons to him, not be absolutely disgusted and appalled at the thought of any one of them being abused by anyone? I'm not talking about specifics here, as I don't believe Jerry Sandusky touched any of the Penn State players. I'm just talking about the same level of disgust I feel as a parent even thinking about someone taking those liberties with my son. How could he not look at his players and think how angry he'd be if someone had touched them when they were younger, too young to appropriately defend themselves? That's what I don't get.

I understand that people are arguing that Paterno didn't commit a crime. In some places it may be a crime, but apparently not in Pennsylvania. To me that's just semantics. They may not be able to arrest him, and that's fine. Annoying, but fine. Some people would argue that since it wasn't a crime, he shouldn't have lost his job. But how can you deny that his inaction, his willingness to overlook crimes committed by a friend, was so wrong on a moral level that it should cost him his job? If someone came into your office and murdered your co-worker, and you kept your mouth shut because you knew the murderer, don't you think that alone should be grounds to evict you from your job? No, those kids weren't killed, but I have to think their spirit was. And to me, that is enough.

Maybe the grad student who first witnessed it should have taken matters into his own hands when he saw that nothing was happening, but I can sort of imagine what might have been running through his head. He was a mere peon amidst giants, and if he did go to the cops, no doubt he'd have been shushed in a big way by the powers that be. He probably figured it would be career suicide, whereas if Paterno had been the whistleblower, he'd have probably been a hero. In the years that followed, that student became one of the football coaches himself, so maybe he too should be responsible for not fessing up at some point. I can't help but wonder if any of the people involved in this scandal, from the grad student on up, regret not telling more than they regret getting caught not telling.

The account of what that grad student encountered in the shower absolutely haunts me. To think that a 10-year-old child had to endure anal sex (sorry, graphic but true) from a grown man is beyond horrifying. It had to be so painful, so confusing, and so life-altering. These kids were underprivileged kids who were probably just grateful for the opportunity to be involved in this coach's program. I can imagine they didn't want to say anything for fear they'd lose the opportunities that were no doubt promised to them. Kids look up to authority figures like coaches and teachers. They trust them. And that's what makes these crimes so heinous when they come to light. These kids were innocent. They no doubt knew that what was happening was wrong, but I don't think they had any idea HOW wrong. It hurt them, it allowed a grown-up to have power over them, and had such horrible implications for the rest of their life. I can't imagine what those victims' present and future hold as far as relationship troubles, sexual problems, trust issues, and haunting nightmares. As much as this thing had to come to light and may, in the end, bring some closure, I'd have to imagine that reliving all of this stuff now through the media has to be incredibly difficult. Heck, I wonder if in some twisted way they feel guilty for what happened to Paterno...that it's their fault that he got fired. God forbid that's the case.

As we were watching the throngs of students that were out and about supporting Paterno that night, I started to get angry.  While this whole situation was already so horrible, my anger went to a new level when I saw that. I even posted a Facebook status about it. I can't believe how short-sighted those college kids are, and it sort of supports what I feel like I've seen from so many kids around that age (experience mostly with interns, honestly). I've long felt that there's a disconnect between cause and effect and a complete denial of consequences. You see so many college kids coming out into the world thinking that they deserve a $60K per year job (and that's probably conservative), yet they have no experience and no desire to work hard in a crap job to get there. They've had helicopter parents that were their friends instead of their disciplinarians--the kind of parents that blame the teacher rather than their own child. I'm not saying all kids are like that, but apparently there was a troublingly large group of kids that valued a man's contribution to a football program over the well being of eight young boys whose innocence was taken from them. Instead of standing outside Paterno's house, how about holding a candlelight vigil for the real victims of this atrocity?

It makes me physically ill to think of what those kids went through, and I can't even begin to comprehend the craziness that's contained in the mind of Jerry Sandusky. How anyone could ever think that was okay is just beyond me. And as a parent, I can't even fathom the venom that would result if anyone so much as laid a finger on Jacob. I have no doubt that he will have many coaches throughout his sporting life, and it pains me to think that any of them might be untrustworthy.  This whole situation serves as a strong reminder to be vigilant--Keep your eyes and ears open because you never know what tiny little clues your child might let slip. Even though it's hard for me to fathom, it seems like we might be close to the point where we need to sit down with Jacob and give him a brief, simple talk about private parts and how they need to remain private. It seems so early, but I guess you never can be too careful. Of course, I have no idea how we'll get him to sit through and listen to such a serious talk, since we can barely get him to do that for disciplinary purposes.

Anyway, the whole situation is so sickening and it boggles the mind how in a world where people freak out about the most insignificant stuff, a tragedy like this is allowed to go on quietly for years. God bless those poor kids, and may they find the healing they need.

Away

2011-11-09T23:42:00.000-05:00

So, last night we headed to Buffalo for Election Night. Craig's mom was up for re-election but was thankfully running unopposed. We still felt like we should be there, so off we went. We knew it would be a late night (polls don't close until 9pm, after all) so we dropped Jacob off at my parents' for the night before heading south to meet up with Craig's family. Before we left and on the way there, Jacob was begging to come with us. I know he loves my parents and has fun there, but he just seemed like he was desperate to stay with us. We kept telling him that we were doing boring grown-up stuff (pretty much true despite the party-ish atmosphere at various campaign headquarters), and we knew none of us would have a good time if we kept him with us. The rooms are generally crowded and would make it hard for Jacob to run...and if he did, it would be disruptive to other people and extra annoying for us because of the difficulty in catching him in a full room. Regardless of his unwillingness to stay without us, I knew he'd have far more fun with them than with us. And on a school night, it was even more important to stay on a schedule.

Well, the second we got there, he freaked out. It took a Herculean effort to extract him from his carseat, and continued strength to get him into the house. He didn't want to let go of us, and cried and screamed and reached out. This has happened plenty before, of course, but I sort of figured he'd have gotten over this by now. Sad, maybe, but freaking out? A little surprising. But as I've said before, when the boy knows what he wants, he's determined to get it. And apparently he really wanted us.

We told him we loved him, told him he'd be fine, and left as quickly and simply as we could. While we hated to leave him like that (for everyone's sake), they always say that you should not make a big deal out of that stuff. Doing so only entices the child to do it more, and you want to leave them with the impression that leaving is not a big deal. If you freak out, they will catch that vibe and assume that it means that it's something worth freaking out over. If you leave simply, it might give them the impression that it's not such a big deal after all. Because, as every daycare parent knows, two minutes after you leave your screaming child behind, they're usually playing contentedly like nothing ever happened.

Well...not this time. Apparently Jacob cried for an HOUR. Seriously? I feel bad for Jacob that he had to go through that, and I feel bad for my parents that they had to deal with that. Eventually my mom talked him down and he was fine, but I have to imagine that exhausted him a bit. He slept well and managed to stay awake this morning on the drive home, but when we got to daycare, it was more of the same. We arrived just as his classmates were starting lunch, and immediately as we walked into the room he turned and clung to my legs. When I tried to pass him off, he literally would not let go of my hand. He cried again, and when I picked him up today, his sheet said that he didn't eat any lunch because he was so upset.

To be fair, we were worried that Jacob's health was impacting his reaction. He finished up a round of antibiotics last week, given to him to clear up some fluid in his ears and help prevent a full-blown ear infection. However, over the weekend Jacob started to get another runny nose and complained a couple times about his ears hurting. So, today I called the doctor and we went in. Fortunately, he was fine. He's still got a cold and that could be making him a little extra clingy and cranky, but at least there's nothing more. While we were in the room I spoke to the doctor about another issue (one for another blog post), he proceeded to rip the paper covering the exam table into about 50 little pieces. After an initial attempt to stop him, I let it go on so I could talk to the doctor, with the reminder that he would have to clean up every bit of his mess. It took a little convincing, but in the end, he picked up every single piece. Win for mommy.

So...there's a whole lotta guilt resulting from his sudden separation anxiety. I'm not exactly sure what's causing it. I feel like we've been trying to spend quality time with him, so I don't know if it's been too much of a good thing, or still not enough. I worry a bit, too, since I'll be gone this weekend to go to my friend's baby shower downstate, and in a few weeks I'll be on a plane to Portland to meet my new nephew, Max (!), and will be away from my little boy for five days. Craig will be with him both times, but obviously some need isn't being fulfilled and my absence can't help.

On the other hand, maybe all of this means that we need to get away more often, to desensitize him to being away from us. It's fine to miss us, but not to be rendered inconsolable for an hour at a time. Maybe he needs more reminders that when we go away, we always come back. I'm sure he still doesn't like the concept of missing out on anything, but as long as his time is filled, hopefully he'll adjust.

So good, yet so bad

2011-11-07T23:19:00.000-05:00

I've come to realize that Jacob is at opposing ends of the spectrum when it comes to his behavior. Sometimes he is so cool, so funny, and so sweet. And yet when he's not, watch out. He's just an intense kid, and as I've been saying about him for ages, when he knows what he wants, he's determined to do it. Tonight I finished folding a giant basket of his laundry that barely fit in the washing machine...and it was only from the past week. Between potty training accidents and his incessant desire to change his outfit for whoever he wants to be (athlete of a certain sport, superhero and cowboy all have different outfits, after all), he's going through an obscene amount of clothing. I'm having a hard time convincing him to leave his drawer of summer clothes alone, so he's frequently running around in shorts despite the cool temps outside. And if you try to prevent him from changing at all...wooo boy...watch out. We've had some battles over it. On one hand this may be a pick-your-battles situation, but at the same time, I don't want him constantly pulling out clothes (his winter clothes are a bit more limited at this point--by design, with Christmas coming and a bunch of 4T reserves waiting in the wings) and creating more laundry or leaving a trail of discarded clothes all over the house. It's crazy. I keep telling him to use his imagination, but no such luck so far. But seriously, need we have battles over that, or getting dressed every morning, or going to bed every night, or picking him up at daycare? They say that kids need routine, but despite having a pretty basic one, he's still not down with it. I guess that goes along with my complaint about him not learning from his mistakes. Past experiences apparently have little impact.

The battles are brutal, though--lots of crying, lots of body positioning so we can't move him, lots of yelling (even though I'm trying to cut that down--sometimes I have no choice), and they're just exhausting all around. But when he's being a good boy? He can be so darn cute. Smiles, laughs, funny things that he says and does...so awesome. Sometimes we have these moments where he's playing nicely or talking coherently (sometimes he's a bit off in fantasy land), and it's like, "Ok, this is how it's supposed to be." But then he takes the fun a little too far and inadvertently injures someone (himself included), and we're back to just trying to maintain order. He's got a lot of energy and he's very determined. Those traits will serve him well someday, but right now they're definitely challenging.

However, I feel like once in a while I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I see an awesome little boy that I want to hang out with and can't wait to see grow up to be a pretty cool kid. And that's more than I might have said a few weeks ago. Small steps...

So, over the weekend I took advantage of Jacob's nap and Craig's player appearance to shampoo our carpets on our main floor (living room, dining room, stairs). I bought a Bissell ProHeat 2X when they were on sale at Lowe's and I could get 5% more off with my credit card there. I figured that with a house full of light carpeting and a boy that sometimes has trouble getting to the potty, it probably wasn't the worst investment I could make. The carpets were looking pretty gross and one professional cleaning would cost nearly that much so it was worth a shot. Hard to say for sure, but I think it worked relatively well. Considering I was battling at least a year and a half of dirt and stains, it did well. The water I emptied out of the tank was gross, so I know it at least did some good! Because of the time the rugs take to dry, it's not going to be a frequent thing (maybe twice a year, with spot cleaning more frequently as needed), because I have a hard enough time vacuuming, let alone doing something where the rugs are damp for a few hours.

The reason I did it Saturday was because we were headed out that night. We took a trip to Syracuse (along with a Knighthawks player) because Craig had two players (the other was local) signing autographs at the Amerks-Crunch game. It was weird being part of the Crunch's production, but Craig is trying to expand the fan base out to Central New York, and the response was pretty awesome, actually. Jacob spent most of the evening running around like a maniac. The guys were set up in an area of the arena called Memorial Hall. Like the arena in Rochester, the Syracuse arena is also a War Memorial. Memorial Hall had flags and murals, as well as a bunch of mannequins dressed as various war's soldiers and cases of war artifacts. Jacob just loved running in the wide open space. At one point he was even joined by the little boy of the Crunch goalie, who was beyond adorable. That little boy was younger and was totally doing whatever Jacob did. His mom, a tall Finnish brunette in very high heels, stood by watching, too. I guess Jacob just needed to get his run on, so it worked out well. Here are a couple pictures:

I thought this picture was sort of oddly cool. I was playing around with my camera settings, and happened to snap this blurry picture of Jacob running around. You can just see his ghostly image at the top of the circle design in the floor. Considering that's about all I saw most of the night, I thought it was appropriate.

It was a fun night and Jacob fell asleep late on the way home. I was hoping for a sleep-in because of the time change, but no such luck. He was up bright and early. He did, however, take a three hour nap in the afternoon. He was nearly perfect at church since I let him bring a couple Star Wars figures and one of Craig's old G.I. Joe's, and it kept him occupied the whole time. Score! But that must have tired him out! I did some yardwork thanks to the great weather (while the Bills were stinking it up on TV) and pulled out crazy roots from these evil weed/perennial plants in our backyard. They'll be back with a vengeance, but I tried.

Now on to another busy week. Tomorrow is Election Day, which means a trip to Buffalo, plus the birth of my new nephew out in Oregon! Half day on Wednesday, and a vacation day for me on Friday so I can head downstate for my friend's baby shower. My weekend is still up in the air, though I may spend most of it away. We'll see. The whole scenario is a little crazy, but I'll make it work--if not with one friend, then with another. Then we have one less crazy week (I think) and then it's thanksgiving week...and the week after that I head out to Portland (solo!) to meet my new little nephew and hang out with my brother and his family. And then it's Christmas time, and we know how fast that goes. So yeah, 2012 will be here before we know it. Crazy. Hold on tight...

Random Ramblings

2011-11-03T23:21:00.000-04:00

Time for some random updates, news and notes...

- The Milk Project - Well, I guess the project is officially over. I haven't actually told daycare that Jacob can have milk yet, mostly because he missed breakfast two days in a row and I wanted to avoid a messy breakfast Monday when he had his costume on. He didn't really like the soy milk, at least not without chocolate or strawberry flavoring, so had it continued we would have had to try another type. I wasn't seeing much improvement, though, so I figured it was ok to stop. However...after a few good days at daycare, yesterday wasn't great. I was hoping I could just chalk all the bad behavior up to Jacob having been sick for weeks, but other than a slight lull since late last week (with still plenty of moments in the middle), it seems that getting better hasn't really helped matters. I've been sick as well, but despite the considerable amount of crap I've been able to expel from various facial orifices, I'm still not better yet.

- Picture Day - Today was picture day at daycare. As in, official picture day. They do those themed ones now and then, but today was the official, formal school picture day. I didn't exactly have high expectations. Jacob's still got his scar on his cheek, he had some minor scrapes on his forehead (might be from some Jason hockey masks he tried on at the store), his hair is crazy, and he's just not a good posed smiler. I did some last-minute damage control with his hair (lots of wetting down, some trimming around the tops of the ears), I was depending on peer pressure for a good smile, and I was hoping they zipped up his sweater right. Lots of "ifs" there, but surprisingly, the handful of advance proofs we got look good! Now we just need to see how guilty we'll feel if we don't get the pictures...

- Potty Training - Potty training is not going well. In fact, I think we're worse off now than we were six months ago. I'm truly not sure what the problem is. I have no idea if it's just a laziness thing, or if it's physical, or both. My guess is that it's a little of both. For starters, I know Jacob is always very wet every single morning, even though we limit post-dinner beverages and have him pee before bed. So, it would appear that his bladder just isn't ready to hold it yet, at least not when he's unconscious. That's fine. I have very little concern with overnight at this point. It's the daytime that drives me nuts. Once in a while he'll do really well, but most of the time he's wet. Every time. No matter how much he goes to the potty, he's almost always got a wet spot on his underwear, and many times, it's a big one. He still wears plastic pants to contain messes, so most of the time his pants are spared, but the wet undies are really starting to bug me. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that they bug him enough. Back in the summer, when he'd have an accident, he'd tell us that he needed new undies. Now, he doesn't even bother and we usually just discover it when he finally goes potty. To be clear, it's rarely a full blown accident, but generally a pretty big leak. It can't be comfortable, but apparently he's just used to it. So now what? How do we get him to stop going in his pants--that is, if he physically can. The doctor downplayed his issues back in August, saying that it's normal until 4 or 5 to have accidents. But all the time? I'm starting to wonder if there's a problem, or if there's anything we can do until Jacob or his body decides it's ready. The wet undies thing just seems problematic (if only because it'll keep desensitizing him to that feeling), but from everything I read, we shouldn't go backward and rely on diapers or pull-ups at this point. I haven't tried hardcore bribery, but from what I'm seeing, I'm not sure that would help. And anyway, I can't bribe him every day. We ran out of undies last week, and running out of pants is a distinct possibility each week. And I feel bad for his teachers to constantly have to deal with it. I just don't know what to do, and it's getting so frustrating. Oh, and I'm trying not to make a big deal about it, but I do ask Jacob periodically why his pants are wet. No answer.

- Jacob did the cutest thing the other day. We were making a deal--he wanted to wear his Team USA soccer gear, and I made him promise that when it was time to take it off and get in his pajamas, he needed to do it without arguing. When I asked him to shake hands to seal the deal, I turned around and he was literally shaking his hands (almost like "jazz hands", if you will), which was so ridiculously adorable.

- This is apparently a pretty significant time of year in my life. Twenty years ago last week I officially started my hockey obsession. Fourteen years ago today (I think) I went to my first Amerksroadtrips, two houses, one child, and so much more. Good thing I called him back about five times before he actually returned my call to hire me ;-)

Why not us?

2011-11-02T23:07:00.000-04:00

It's not hard to look around and see that bad things happen to good people. Watch the news, browse the Internet, or hear stories from friends, and that fact is abundantly clear. It may seem easy to assume that some people had it coming to them, be it karma or bad planning/prevention, but I think that's probably a little too simplistic. I mean, we've all had lapses, but I'd think most of the time we all come out scot-free and the lingering problems are minimal.  Think about it...that time you left the door open all night, or drove home from the bar a bit too tipsy, left your kid alone a second too long, or even went too far with a romantic interest who could have been an STD nightmare. We've all had moments where we look back and go, "Oh yeah, that could have been bad..." and thank God we made it out unscathed. Logic would dictate that at some point all of those free passes would catch up with us, and we, too, would be among the unlucky for a change.

Having kids can amplify this issue immensely, since it's not only you that you're concerned with, but your kids as well...and in most cases, a significant other, too. The harming of any of those elements impacts so much that it's hard not to be a little worried sometimes, or at least feel a small knot in your stomach every time you hear about some sort of terrible situation that impacted an ordinary family just like yours. Perhaps I make matters worse, as I follow quite a few blogs. Most of the ones I follow are pretty lighthearted takes on parenthood, but periodically they'll delve into a tough topic, either from their own experience or to share a fellow blogger/friend's story. I've read about everything from a couple badly burned in a small plane crash, to a young couple who both discovered they were dying of cancer, to a guy who was widowed the day after his daughter was born, to autism, miscarriage, and infertility. Maybe this is bad, but I try to stay away from the depressing ones. I mean, I worry about enough stuff without adding things like that to the mix, so I consider it self-preservation. However I do realize that I am truly blessed to be able to click away from the page and not have that as my full-time reality. In some cases it's interesting to learn about people in different, difficult situations, and even to know that some form of normal life is possible. Still, it certainly makes you grateful for normalcy in your own life.

This is going to sound like a laughable concern amongst the issues I mentioned above, but you know, I just don't want my entire world to be defined by one issue or one event. Some bloggers get pigeonholed into a role--the autism blogger, the burn victim, the cancer patient--and I assume those roles go beyond the blogosphere as well, into their daily life and interactions with real people. It's got to be a little annoying at times to always be introduced in a certain manner, or immediately have to explain yourself to someone. I was reading one blog yesterday recounting trick-or-treating with a kid with a peanut allergy. He'd go up to the door and immediately after "trick-or-treat", he'd mention his allergy. Definitely important, but what a bummer, huh? It has to be so hard when something like that shapes your entire world--not just impacting holidays, but every trip to the grocery store, every meal at a restaurant, every day you send your kid to a peanut-infested school. Nearly everything is tinged with fear.  I can't even fathom how frustrating, difficult and generally annoying that has to be.

I know how fortunate we are, and I like that I'm free to talk about anything on this blog. Yes, Jacob's behavior probably ranks up there in topics, but I don't HAVE to talk about it. But when something impacts your life so greatly, inevitably it's going to come up. And sometimes it's going to come up a lot. And that has to be tough, both when it comes to blogging and real life. Do you need to blog about a topic because it's expected or therapeutic, or do you purposely do other things just to feel normal and not get repetitive? I just know I'd resent having a "thing". Kudos to the people who take their "thing" and run with it, who raise awareness and are an advocate for their cause. I just don't want a single element of life to be one that defines our existence. I know none of those people did either, but just saying...

So, anyway, back to the original question I posed, "Why not us?" There have been so many times where I've felt like I've had a charmed life. Things have just worked out better than I imagined so many times. All of the worrying turns out to be for naught. But as I see all the things other people go through, I wonder if at some point it'll be us. There's no reason to assume something horrible will happen, but there's no reason to assume that we're immune, either. Perhaps I'm in this mode because we're still in a holding pattern for baby #2 and I'm wondering if we're going to run into infertility issues. A couple bloggersish now), and will his behavior ever get better? Will things stay good with our marriage, jobs, and extended family? Will I be stuck without a sense of smell forever, and might it have dire consequences someday?

As you can see, there's no shortage of worries that pass through my mind. While I trust God to take care of us in any circumstance, I'm increasingly aware of the fact that we only have one life to live and certain things can truly make or break it. One moment can impact things forever, and that's just a little intimidating. There's a song by a Christian artist named Natalie Grant called "Held", and the premise of the song is that, contrary to popular (mostly secular) belief, God never promised to spare His people pain.  But instead His promise was, "when everything fell, we'd be held." While I never want to go through that kind of pain, or even frustration that pales in comparison, it's good to know that one way or another, we'll always be held. And sometimes that's all I have to hold on to.

Halloween!

2011-10-31T23:32:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe, but today was Jacob's fourth Halloween. How is that even possible? From a bee to a mouse to a fireman to Batman, here we are. His busted lip was two years ago already! Time certainly does fly.

Sunday Lori came over to carve pumpkins with us. Jacob was a little disobedient so in the end it was hard to keep him around for the carving process. He kept trying to steal the carving tool (not sharp) and stab the pumpkin, and he wasn't really into digging out the guts. He couldn't quite grasp how to separate the seeds from the pulp, either, so ummmm...he was a little useless for the process, which was a bit of a bummer.

Lori had the misfortune of picking up two rock-hard pumpkins (pie pumpkins, maybe?) and struggled through the carving process. We had our two, one big and one small, and carving went well. I even managed to carve a Batman pumpkin!

L to R: Our big one, Batman, Lori's spider, and Lori's jack o' lantern

Lori's pumpkins...she was a trooper. Even a real knife had a hard time with these!

Close-up of my Bat Symbol

We roasted the seeds (three large batches, all made slightly differently) and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". Jacob really liked the pumpkin seeds! After Lori left I spent most of the evening baking up my famous pull-apart (monkey) bread for work. I do a double batch and stack them, but I have to do them the night before. I also made sure everything was ready for this morning--costumes, snacks, laundry, etc. Let me tell you, there's nothing like Halloween to make you feel like a "real" mom--having to remember a million things, get a little crafty, plan ahead, and get abnormally excited about things, among other tasks. Last night it just never seemed to end!

This morning it took a little convincing for Jacob to wear his Batman costume. He's been wanting to be a fireman again, for some reason (the helmet, apparently), but we convinced him Batman was cooler (add that to the list of things I never thought I'd say!). We did manage to get him to pose with the Batman pumpkin before we left:

I was all ready with my costume as well. Here's a full length shot that shows a little more than the shot from the party...

I ended up winning the best overall costume prize, which was cool. Not a lot of competition in my office, though. But it was nice to wear my grandma's old dress (now I wish more than ever that I could find a picture of her in it!) and appreciate the fact that it only cost me about 10 bucks total. Everyone seemed to like it a lot, and over the last three years I've managed to fool everyone into thinking I'm some sort of costume genius. I was a Deal or No Deal model two years ago, and a grocery bag last year. I just need a little random inspiration, but without that I'm toast.

After work it was the mad rush to get home, eat dinner, get Jacob changed, bundle up and get out to trick-or-treat. It was a bit of a struggle. Next year I think I will rely on fast food. We did manage to get through most of dinner before the first trick-or-treaters arrived, but then it took us a good half hour to convince Jacob to get in his warm clothes and his costume. As it was I had to rig up his costume a bit (good thing I bought velcro to make a new Batman cape for him (work in progress), because I used it to extend his neckline around bulky warmer clothes. Amidst his reluctance, we told him he didn't have to go, but that he'd regret it (like he does when he decides too late that he wants to do something, which happens often). Eventually we got him out, and had the opportunity to snap a couple pictures.

Better shot of our pumpkins--I can't take credit for either design. One was stencils that came with our carving tools, and Batman was printed from the Internet. I guess a couple kids really liked it...and I think it looks pretty cool, too!

Ready to go...finally!

I took him out this year. Craig took him in sleet and snow last year, so I got off way easy! We walked around a little part of our neighborhood and were gone maybe a half hour. We hit up about 10 houses. They were a little spread out, as our neighborhood has a lot of dark houses...boo. Jacob still got a pretty good haul, including one house with a full bag of Skittles. At one house that he knows has a lacrosse net in the yard, he asked repeatedly about shooting on it. At another he was apparently fascinated by some fancy lights along the long stairway to the porch and kept wanting to have a dance party! I made one good call, though--Jacob had a flashing skull clip-on toy that came in a cereal box years ago, and I clipped that to his pumpkin bucket for a little extra visibility. It hung inside the pumpkin and lit it up when it flashed...really cool! We came back home on our way back around, and Jacob decided that was enough for him. I was ready to do more, but in he stayed. I think we got less kids this year than last, despite better weather. It's too bad our neighborhood doesn't have a little more action, though sometimes that's not a good thing for other reasons.

So, another Halloween is in the books. Pretty good, all things considered. Hopefully next year he'll be even more into it, and with any luck, hopefully we'll be carting around another little cutie, too. Still working on that one, but no luck yet. Off to get some sleep now...it's been a busy few days!

Hope

2011-10-27T21:14:00.005-04:00

So, Monday night I ended up taking Jacob to the doctor. He's had a nasty cold for a good three weeks or so, and it didn't seem to be getting any better. Runny nose all the time and lots of coughing. Of course, I think he passed it to me somewhere along the way, but until the last couple days it hadn't been too bad. A little sniffliness and some coughing...up until the last couple days where the congestion's been worse and the coughs almost feel productive but aren't. It's definitely no fun for any of us. Heck, last night I thought he was going to cough until he puked. And given his history of nagging coughs, I figured we might as well get him checked out. Thank goodness for insurance without a co-pay for Jacob visits.

I picked Jacob up from daycare. It was pouring rain and we had about 25 minutes to kill, so I decided to get some gas and visit the bank ATM before looping back toward the doctor's office. The rain was miserable but the clouds were pretty stinkin' awesome from downtown up to Greece, dark in some areas, bright sun in others. After getting gas I swung my car around to exit the gas station, and all of a sudden, there it was--a gorgeous rainbow! It was so bright and beautiful. I carefully fumbled for my camera (with my mom bag I now carry it with me most of the time), and quickly snapped a picture.

Slightly obscured by a wire, but you get the idea...

By the time I could take a picture while not driving (after visiting the ATM), the color had dulled a bit but it was still beautiful. I especially like the contrast with the clouds and trees in this one. It was bright behind me, which highlighted those gorgeous trees even more.

It's hard to see here, but there was this radiating effect coming off the bottom of the rainbow. If you look closely below the green-blue part, you can see a couple extra lines of pink, which are the top of additional mini-rainbows that were smaller than your average double rainbow. It was really cool and I wish I could have captured it better!

The rainbow had faded completely by the time we got to the doctor's and got out of the car. However, the sky was still pretty awesome looking between the setting sun and crazy clouds. Suffice it to say it was one of the more lovely drives to the doctor we've ever had.

I'll admit I was pretty amped up about the rainbow, not just because it was beautiful, but because I honestly believe that rainbows are directly sent from God and their purpose is not far off from what it was in the Bible after the great flood. I firmly believe there's a promise in each rainbow, and they've been well-timed at many points in my life where it was just the reassurance I needed. Same goes for Monday, where I was still obsessing a bit over the whole milk thing and just generally frustrated with Jacob's behavior. It definitely gave me a sense of calm.

We ended up seeing the elder statesman of the doctors in the practice. He's probably only my parents' age, but I think he's the oldest by quite a bit. He looks a bit like Groucho Marx and he's definitely an energetic guy. He checked out Jacob and gave us a prescription for antibiotics, just because his ears appeared to have some fluid and it seemed wise to be proactive. I didn't really get a vibe of when we can expect the cold to go away, but I'm hoping the antibiotics help that too.

After he finished up, I started to ask him his opinion of the milk experiment, and before I could even get it out of my mouth, he stopped me. First he explained that milk is not a necessary element of our diets--that's just something doctors say to keep the dairy farmers in business. However, he said, people like to blame food for kids' problems--dyes, etc.--but it really just takes firm parenting. Don't hit, don't be mean, but use a firm voice, be consistent, and take away privileges. Oy. I mean, nothing I didn't already know, of course. We've tried all that and it hasn't worked. We'll keep trying it, but in the meantime it'd be nice to get a little help and a break from constant firm voices and threats. And I am totally not normally one of those people who wants to believe all that stuff about additives and whatever...but as I said the other day, the mere fact that many people, including a real, live person I have met, saw such a marked difference in their kids makes me think there's at least some validity to it. Do all kids need discipline? Certainly. Could diet impact things? I'm pretty darn sure of it. Might it help my kid? Not sure. Jury's still out but he's still been enough of a handful that I'm thinking it's a no. I'll give it to the end of the soy milk, though. He had a fairly good morning this morning, but our normal routine was a little off so maybe that helped...but my hopes were dashed when we found out that Jacob can't go on the field trip tomorrow because he was THAT bad today. Ugh. Anyway, it was a little frustrating to not even get the full question out, as I was actually more interested in his response of soy vs. almond vs. coconut milk, but it never even got to that point as his discipline lecture sort of put the kibbosh on it all. And while I appreciate his sentiment--seriously, I do, as it was pretty much how I was brought up--but knowing that there may be some validity in it somewhere out there actually got me a little mad. However, I like our normal doctor and the practice works for us otherwise, so I'll just let it pass and see how things go from here.

Still, despite the frustrations we have with Jacob's behavior, things could be so much worse. The rainbow was a reminder of that, that no matter what, He's got us covered. It won't always be easy, but we'll figure it out.

Open House

2011-10-26T22:17:00.000-04:00

Last night was open house night at daycare. We went to Jacob's classroom and experienced a typical circle time, craft project, and cooking project. I was interested to see how it all went, knowing that there would be other kids there, not to mention their parents. I'm sure Jacob is usually a lot better at daycare than he tends to be with us, just because of peer pressure, but I also know that he doesn't get "Cooperative" checked every day, either.

When I got to daycare, he looked like a ragamuffin--snot all over his sleeves, different pants than he had this morning thanks to his second accident this week, and a little blood behind his ear from some sort of self-inflicted injury. Lovely...just how I want him to look when everyone else's parents are around.

Once everyone arrived, we sat in a circle to see how their daily "circle time" goes. They do songs with the days of the week, months of the year, and the alphabet. They go through letters and the kids provide words that start with those letters, then hold up numbers, colors and shapes to be identified. Finally, they read a story and do a couple little songs with motions (Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear Turn Around and the Hokey Pokey). It's pretty cool to see a bunch of three year olds sit nicely and participate like that. They even have little mousepads with their names on them so they know where to sit. It's cute.

Of course, right away Jacob didn't want to sit up, didn't want to participate, and kept trying to grab toys or books. He did well during the alphabet/word activity, though everyone laughed when all of the words he supplied had to do with sports or Batman. Yep, that's our kid. He got a little antsy again during the numbers, and ended up on Craig's lap, sitting at an angle where he couldn't really see the shapes or colors to participate in that part. Eventually he got to be a major distraction, and then started screaming in the middle of storytime, at which point Craig took him out. I think he thought he was going to get a beat-down or something, because he was totally freaking out. He missed the Teddy Bear thing and the Hokey Pokey, which was a bummer because it was really cute watching the other kids do it. In general I just sat there mortified because my kid was the one being disruptive, not listening, and making us look ever-so-slightly like incompetent parents.

After he calmed down, it was time for a craft. It was basically just sticking adhesive foam shapes (Halloween, of course!) on a piece of paper. We had to help with peeling off the backings and punching out eyes and mouths, but the kids were good about it. They all sat nicely. After that was the long awaited treat--pumpkin cut-out sugar cookies! They each got an unfrosted cookie, a dollop of orange frosting, and a pile of chocolate chips. The kids had a bit of a tough time frosting, but parents stepped in to varying degrees and helped out. The kids then downed their cookies. Jacob was the first to finish, but then again he hadn't had dinner yet since the open house started so soon after pickup time. I just wish they would have had some for us!

Afterward the kids started playing with toys and parents just sort of hung out. Throughout the evening, we really didn't talk to many other parents. I guess neither of us are particularly good at small talk, but then again, no one really talked to us either. At the end of the evening we did have a chat with the one mom (probably the one that looked most like someone I'd want to hang out with) about hockey, since she knew Jacob liked it. It was pretty short-lived, though I did also ask her how old her baby was (10 weeks!) and we commiserated over sending babies off to daycare. But other than that, we didn't really talk to anyone. Maybe people saw Jacob's behavior and felt like they didn't want to open the door to encouraging play dates or anything. Maybe they just see each other more at drop-off or pick-up, so they know each other better. Maybe they've been together, doing events like these, since the beginning. I'm still sad we didn't get to know other parents better at Jacob's old daycare until the last day, because it turned out that most of them were pretty cool.

I'm not really sure about the whole play date thing anyway, because I feel like we don't even have time for play dates. Our weekends are jammed and evenings are short enough anyway, so I don't know when we'd fit more in. Does it really matter, though, since Jacob's entire day is like a big play date? Maybe playdates are more for non-daycare kids. As he gets older I'm sure he'll want to play with another kid outside of school, and that's fine, but hopefully we have a little time before that. Based on everything I read on blogs, there's good reason to be anxious about playdates...though they do have upsides, too.

As a whole, I was so annoyed by how the evening went. Every fear I had pretty much came to fruition--Jacob was a mess, he misbehaved and we probably looked pathetic trying to corral him, and we didn't really fit in with the other parents. On the bright side, it was cool to see what he does each day, and I can definitely tell that circle time has improved his letter and number recognition. Despite his behavior, the assistant director did say that normally he's sitting so nice and participating well during circle time, so he must have just been "showing off" for us. Why he feels the need to "show off" like that, I have no idea. He seems to take great pride in making us crazy, and I'm just not sure how to help him understand that's a bad thing. He doesn't learn from his mistakes, so he doesn't get that disobeying and not listening seems to end in an injury (usually from fighting us and falling), a punishment, or some sort of yelling. Never a good outcome. One of these days, like everything else, hopefully he'll figure it out.

Halloween Test Drive

2011-10-25T20:59:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we had a busy few days. I took a half day on Friday so we could get on the road to Buffalo by mid-afternoon. Craig had to be up in Canada for work by dinnertime, and since we had plans later in the weekend together, it only made sense to carpool. We picked Jacob up from daycare--it was snack time and he was so ridiculously cute when we got there, getting up from his seat and running over to give us a hug--and we headed out. Craig dropped us off at my parents', and he continued on to Canada.

We had a relatively pleasant evening with my parents, although the low light was right as we were starting dinner and Jacob decided to play with his plate. He dropped it, and although the plates are shatterproof, he must have hit in on a sweet spot because the thing shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. I had a similar one break in the microwave on me a few weeks ago, and let me tell you, those shards are evil. It was just amazing to see since we'd probably all dropped plates like that many times with no issues. Leave it to Jacob.

Saturday my mom was off to a church retreat before we were even awake, and we spent the day with my dad. We had a lazy morning before I went for a quick run, and then we had a quick and relatively uneventful lunch at Arby's. Jacob almost fell asleep on the way there, and although he was antsy, he did end up eating well eventually. Back for a nap, and a little while after he woke up, Craig swung back through to pick us up.

We headed off to Craig's parents', where we were getting dressed up for a Halloween party hosted by the school our niece and nephews attend. Considering how bright my costume is, I was a little nervous about dressing up...partly because we didn't know anyone and partly because we weren't sure how many other parents would be dressed up. Fortunately, it was fine, but I definitely got noticed! Craig had originally wanted to be Robin to go with Jacob's Batman, but he couldn't find this caped t-shirt he saw in his size. So, at the last minute he settled on Superman. And at the last second, when faced with the dilemma of what to wear on the bottom, he ended up putting on a pair of dress pants and a dress shirt, but left the dress shirt open so he could be Clark Kent, mid-transformation. Smart guy.

Nope, not sure what face he thought he was making, but it just makes the picture funnier.

As I mentioned, I definitely got noticed in my costume. Hard to miss someone in a full-length bright yellow dress wearing three-inch cork platform wedges and a basket of fruit as a hat. At least the first person who saw me knew what I was! I'm hoping to get a better picture on Halloween at work, but here you go for now:

In case I didn't mention it before, that dress came from my grandma's house. I noticed it on a garment rack among all of her very nice, but very "grandma" clothes. Considering the nearly bare midriff and very bright color, I couldn't even fathom my grandma having worn something like this. It may have been a Hawaii purchase, but even still...I was perplexed. However, every time I went back to her house to look around, it caught my eye, and finally I tried it on. When it fit, the wheels started turning. Initially I was just going to be a Hawaiian tourist or something, but then the concept of the fruit hat was too hard to pass up, and voila--lots of engineering later, this is it! All of the fruit was fake except the banana (long story), but both the moms and our nine-year-old niece and her friends thought it was pretty darn cool. Now I can't wait to wear it to work! Of course, I did learn that wearing a fruit basket involves excellent posture and is better suited to when I don't have to turn my head suddenly or bend down to deal with a crazy three year old. Some of the fruit took a tumble now and then, but I think for work it'll be fine.

Jacob looked adorable as ever in his costume. Here he is enjoying popcorn...as usual.

And this is what happened when I told him to show me his muscles...

We had a good time, though Jacob was a little thrown off by everyone being in costume. He didn't recognize any of the family--which in some cases was understandable! He mostly just wanted to run around, which was difficult given my high heels and fruit basket issues...and particularly when Craig got a call from his big boss and I had to manage Jacob solo for a good 15 minutes or so! He was running around like a maniac, and I was so afraid he'd fall and rip his costume. He did fall, and he cried hard for a couple minutes even though there was no apparent injury...and thankfully, no damage to the costume either. Not that he was eager to get involved with any of the party activities--there were a lot of cute ones--but I was in no rush to do any of the ones that involved mess, so it was just as well.

We had a pretty lazy Sunday, as well, before heading back to N.T. for the annual Binkley family Oktoberfest. We had a good time, though Jacob ran Craig ragged playing sports, which was easy since there was plenty of sports equipment around. The food was awesome and it was great to see my family. Even though we did the strategic "put him in his pajamas and leave a little before bedtime" routine, Jacob was awake the whole way home. He went down easy, though, thankfully. And now we're off to another week...

More Thoughts on The Milk Project

2011-10-24T21:00:00.002-04:00

Well, I officially sprung the plan into action this morning when I dropped Jacob off at daycare and told the director and a couple of the teachers about it. We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping no one slips up, but then again, it's in their best interest for him to behave better as well!

The responses I've gotten have been interesting. Honestly, I feel a bit crazy even talking about all of this, since it seems a bit pseudoscience-ish. It's definitely not a well-known connection, judging by the response from the daycare director and the woman who handles their food. They joked that maybe they should take most of the kids off milk and see how it goes! However, one of the teachers (not Jacob's) who was in the room at the time is gluten-free, and she mentioned that when she made the change she noticed a lot of changes beyond the physical. It had an impact on her emotional state as well. It seemed to give the whole thing a little extra validation, and everyone seemed to agree it's worth a try.

As I said, the whole thing seems a little far-fetched even to me, but knowing that there's some research, plenty of bloggers, and even someone I actually know who's seen it work, it makes me feel like it's worth a try. I'll admit that when I hear people screwing around with their kids' diets, I'm always a little suspect and wonder what bit of "research" they happened to read that prompted the change. There's absolutely no reason for me to really think that way, because no one can judge anyone else's choices until you've been in their place. Deal with a problem long enough and you'll be willing to try almost anything to solve it. When it comes to Jacob or even my loss of smell issues, that's definitely the case. Some fixes are harder than others, and this seemed like an easy enough one to try. The long term maintenance may take some work, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I know there's the whole prevailing wisdom of, "We all ate dairy/gluten/nuts for our entire lives and never had these problems," but how many kids lived in pain and misery for years because no one knew any better? It's sort of like the argument about modern safety measures, like car seats.  I hear people talk once in a while about how years ago, some of us had no more protection than a nip-nap in the car and yet we survived. But what doesn't come up is how many kids didn't survive because of the deficient safety standards? Same argument...except in the case of nutrition, kids are exposed to so much more now in the way of chemicals, crappy processed food, and God knows what else, so it's potentially a very different world than previous generations grew up in.  I also think that as people with hidden recessive genes for allergies and other issues reproduce, the genes become dominant and problems keep getting worse. I'm no expert, but just an educated guess based on years of those brown eyes/blue eyes charts in science class. And with autism and ADHD, perhaps we finally have the research and knowledge now to know that kids aren't just learning disabled or "difficult" children, but that there's a real, specific problem causing their troubles. Increased diagnoses may happen because people are quick to jump on the bandwagon, but I think there's some legitimate things going on there, too.

I did a little more searching around yesterday and seemed to see a lot of blogs and articles talking about taking out both dairy and gluten together. That seems to be the combo of choice for a lot of people, especially when it comes to autism. I don't think Jacob is autistic, nor do I think he has full-blown ADHD, but I think he exhibits some characteristics that might make some wonder. It's a fine line, though, between normal three-year-old behavior and more troubling behavior, so it's hard to tell. Jacob can sometimes be very social, but then at other times he won't look you in the eye or answer direct questions. Sometimes he can't focus long enough to put on a pair of pajamas without being reminded 20 times that he needs to do it, but then he'll spend an hour playing contentedly with his hockey guys. He's so clumsy, but then he can sometimes throw a baseball better than I can. So, in either case, I still think that he'd be on a functional level, which is a relief. Maybe things could get worse, but for now at worst things are still manageable. I would just rather spend less time yelling at Jacob.

If taking milk out of his diet works, great.  If we see small improvements, maybe we take it to the next level and strip out all dairy. If it doesn't work and things seem to get worse, maybe we'll have to resort to the experimenting with gluten, too. Even crazier, my friend emailed me something she read about a child whose behavior improved when salicylates were removed from her diet. They're found in, among other things, grapes and apples. Those are two major fruit staples in our world (not to mention juice!) so I'd hate to have to resort to something like that, either. I suppose the possibilities are endless.

I'm in awe of people that have to strip their diets of certain things due to allergies or other sensitivities. I marvel at how Craig's brother's family has done with managing our nephew's nut and egg allergies. That's certainly more of a life-or-death situation so the motivation is considerably stronger, but considering I struggle to figure out what to cook my family now, I can't even imagine what I'd do with other limitations. You make it work, but I really don't want to go there unless it's truly necessary. It makes eating (especially in public) a major challenge, and it's a heck of a lot more expensive, too. But if I see a major improvement in Jacob, I assume it will all be worth it. It's just hard to know early on how it'll work or how far you'll be willing to take it, particularly in a case like this where it's more or less a voluntary change.

I'm not particularly excited by the dairy-free options out there, unfortunately. My other sister-in-law emailed me last night mentioning that they use coconut milk, rather than soy, because soy can mimic estrogen in the body and have negative side effects of its own. I remember reading that a while back, too, though from other things I've read it seems like it's ok in moderation. We've used some soy meat replacement products before without issue, and I think one cup of milk at dinner should be fine. If not, we can look into coconut milk or almond milk as a replacement/supplement. The non-dairy milks lack certain vitamins or minerals, even when they've been fortified, and Jacob's diet isn't always broad enough to be able to add those things back in with other items, so that's a concern as well. Jacob still has to like the taste, too, so that's going to be another consideration. I don't want the go-to beverage to automatically be juice, either, and I know water only goes so far even though he loves it a lot of the time. Suffice it to say that we'll have a lot of research to do, regardless of the result of this experiment. We might have just opened a crazy can of worms...

I'm not even sure what I should be wishing for at this point. Part of me is so desperate for a sweet, good listener of a child that I hope it works. But that would mean he could have life-long issues with behavior and be banned from milk and potentially other dairy products, which stinks. I feel like I should just be hoping it's a phase, that I can suck it up and deal with the difficulties until he simply outgrows some of this behavior.  But, oh, to feel instant relief and know we didn't cause his behavior by bad parenting...but that could mean it might be in our genetic makeup and show up worse in another child...

Yep...can of worms, indeed. More to come...

The Milk Project

2011-10-22T10:25:00.000-04:00

At some point in the next couple days, when I finally get up the guts and Jacob is out of his current milk, I'm going to try to take him off milk. Not all dairy, yet, but milk as a drink. This is a big deal because Jacob drinks a lot of milk. He's loved it since the beginning and has always drunk it so well. I ordered it with pride (white milk in particular) out at restaurants, and kept Jacob's juice drinking to a minimum. SO what's changed?

Well, a friend of a friend has a little boy about Jacob's age, and he was quite a handful. From all I've heard, he sounds about as difficult, but he tended to be even more challenging at times, to the point of being destructive. The little boy's grandma happened to read about a connection between ADHD and milk, and mentioned it to his mother. She did some research, and it sounded like it had potential to help her son, even if he was too young to actually be diagnosed with ADHD. She started him on soy milk, and within a couple days, he was a different child. He was still three, of course, but he listened better, behaved better, and was just a more pleasant kid to be around. And that wasn't even taking him off all dairy, which seems to be the ideal.

Long story short, something about the way casein in milk interacts with the bodies of kids with ADHD that makes their symptoms worse. It's basically like an allergy. Considering how much milk Jacob drinks, it's amazing to think that he might actually be allergic to it, but you never know. Back when he was a tiny baby, I had a suspicion that he had a sensitivity to cow's milk because it seemed to make him gassy, or at least generally uncomfortable. I stopped having milk, both as a drink and in my cereal, but I couldn't quit dairy completely. Whether he just got better on his own or changing my diet worked, I'm not sure, but I figured he just outgrew it since he seemed to tolerate milk fine.

It's hard to say if it might be affecting his behavior. I mean, his intake of regular milk was probably right around the time that he started to get a little more difficult, but that could just be coincidence since that was when he started to get more mobile and more independent. Nowadays, he tends to get crazy at the end of meals, but is that the milk he's drinking, or is it just boredom and normal, age-appropriate antsiness?

In the end, I figured it was worth a shot. If there's any chance that changing that part of his diet, even just a bit, will make a difference, it's worth trying. I know that Jacob can be an amazing kid, and I wouldn't want to change the essence of who he is...but if I can make him an easier kid to be around by making a change like that, then it's something I'm willing to try. I bought one half gallon of soy milk, and he'll drink that this week. I'll have to ask daycare to give him only water or juice, and skip milk in his morning cereal. I'm not thrilled about the thought of losing our ability to do milk in public, nor spending twice as much for half as much milk, but I feel that it's only fair that we give it a shot. If it works, then we have a happier kid. If it doesn't, then we'll just hope he grows out of it and take satisfaction in knowing we tried. And hopefully we could take that as some evidence that he doesn't have any blossoming ADHD issues. But you never know.

In between some pleasantness lately he's had some ridiculous meltdowns about nothing (the bowl his cereal is in, issues about getting clothes or pajamas on), and he tends to ignore us or defy us most of the time. While on the surface it doesn't sound any different than most three year olds, I feel like some of the tantrums are too intense and too frequent to be normal. He needs to be told over and over to do simple things, and he can get rather violent out of nowhere. It gets exhausting, and as I tell him all the time, I'm tired of yelling at him. I'd like to give it a shot and see how it goes. He's had a cold for a while now, so I think we'll be going into the doctor sometime this week. I can ask their thoughts on it then.

It's a big step and I'd hate to set him up for a life of expensive, hard-to-find milk, too many sweeter-than-necessary beverages, and a potential for lactose intolerance (if he's away from milk for a long time I'm guessing that could happen), but for now, it's just one week, one half gallon, and an attempt at bettering all of our lives. I'll let you know how it goes.

Alarming...

2011-10-21T22:40:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, there was a small fire at Jacob's daycare. It wasn't actually in the daycare, but in the boiler room of the church attached to the daycare. The boiler overheated and started smoking, setting off the fire alarms to the whole building. It happened in the middle of naptime, which had to be a little chaotic. Any fire that there may have been was quickly contained, but according to the note on the door at daycare, all of the kids were out in about 30 seconds anyway. Pretty impressive considering they were all napping.

Ironically, I happened to call a cafe just across the street so I could order some treats for a farewell party for a co-worker whose last day was yesterday, and when I mentioned that my son's daycare was across the street (I was trying to schedule the pickup of the treats around the same time as daycare dropoff the next morning), they mentioned that there had been emergency vehicles somewhere around the church, and that a portion of the road was closed. They didn't know what happened, and it took until the next morning when I dropped Jacob off to see the note and know what happened.

In the meantime, I had asked Jacob if he saw fire trucks that day, and he said something about police cars. While he didn't mention the fire alarm, he did say something about his socks getting wet and being in a teacher's car because he was cold. I totally didn't put two and two together until I heard what really happened.

Once that connection was made, I had two different trains of thought. One was the realization that I really need to listen closely to everything Jacob says. Those two items of information were weird, and I just sort of glossed over them. In the future I need to ponder the random things he says a little more and try to get to the root of them. Jacob doesn't always make that easy, since he talks about such random stuff and often ignores questions completely. But the whole "in a teacher's car" thing seemed odd to me, but he didn't seem thrown off by anything so I guess I ultimately wasn't either. Still, it was a reminder to think a little more when he rattles off a bunch of randomness.

Second, I realized how relieved I was that the whole thing was pretty much a non-event. No damage to the daycare (and minimal to the church, I'd think), and a quick, safe exit for the kids. Jacob didn't seem the least bit phased and didn't admit to being scared by the fire alarm in the middle of his nap. God knows that would totally freak me out! But I guess that's good, because it probably also indicates that the teachers stayed calm, too. Every time I hear about a tragedy at a daycare, be it a fire, shooting, or stabbing, or even a teacher getting arrested, I always wonder about how it all tortures the parents. Most recently, with the tsunami in Japan, the tornadoes in the U.S., or the earthquakes in New Zealand, I always think about how insanely panicked I would be if something like that happened here and I couldn't find out what happened at daycare and couldn't get there immediately. I would be overcome with fear just wondering what had happened. Was the building intact? Would Jacob be okay? How guilty would I feel if something happened to him while he was there? Unthinkable.

Luckily, in this case I already knew he was fine before I knew anything had happened. I'm so happy that it wasn't serious and the daycare was untouched. I'm grateful everything went as planned with the evacuation, and I'm relieved that Jacob seems completely unaffected by it all. As much as it seems like a non-event now, I guess it's just another reminder to be thankful for our blessings.

Time isn't on my side...

2011-10-19T22:54:00.000-04:00

I feel like no matter what I do these days, I'm battling time. There isn't enough of it...ever. I'm sure that's the refrain of moms everywhere, but for working moms, I'd have to think that the time crunch is even worse. I could be wrong, because there's probably some angle I'm not thinking of. While I'm sure some stay-at-home moms probably think some days don't go quickly enough, I have no doubt that keeping your children occupied all day doesn't leave much time for anything else!  But all I know is that a working mom has the crunch coming from all sides--getting their paying job done, housework, time with their kids, time with their spouse, time with friends and family, time alone--and there just aren't enough hours in the day to give everything its just due.

As I said, I'm sure that stay-at-home moms have their own version of this, but at least they can sneak in moments of time with their kids here and there, and even if it's not quality time, at least they're in their presence for most of the day. I don't even see my child for over nine hours per day, which is the vast majority of the time he's awake. It's sad.  It is what it is, though, and I knew this would be the case when we decided to have a baby. The reality of it is still pretty crazy, though, and I try not to think about it too much.

I definitely think if I stayed home I'd still have hard time focusing on Jacob. I'd see housework to do (and feel guiltier about not doing it since I'm physically there), have errands to run, and still want to spend time on the computer reading the blogs and articles I do now when I have a free second or while I eat my lunch. And, of course, this blog won't write itself :)

But even with a multitude of distractions, I'd have to assume that I'd inherently get in a little more quality time with Jacob, even in the form of sharing meals (if you can call that "quality" time based on how eating goes some days), putting him down for his nap, or even a little snuggle time once he gets up. Our weekend days are usually busy, and even if I'm not on the floor playing with Jacob a lot, we're still talking and interacting. Which is a heck of a lot more than we do when we're 10 miles apart most days.

Don't get me wrong--I'm actually a little okay with the whole daycare thing. I mean, because he started so early, we haven't had a lot of the separation anxiety issues that kids tend to have if they start daycare or school later in life after a long period of time at home. It's just always how life has been, and he doesn't know any differently. I like that he gets social interaction with other kids, and I like that there are people who have actually studied education (I think) teaching him things. If I had the time I could work on those things more, of course, but exposure to people with experience teaching crazy three year olds can't hurt.  Peer pressure does amazing things, too. He might not want to learn it from me purely out of spite (or whatever cranky reason causes him to not listen to anything else I say), so it's good to know he's getting it somewhere else. In theory they'll fill in whatever gaps I miss, and vice versa. I like that he gets that experience, however I wish he only got it three days a week instead of five.

As it is now, our mornings are rushed. I try to let Jacob sleep as late as he can before getting him up--though normally he does wake up on his own--and from that point on I feel like a drill sergeant directing him to the bathroom to pee, brush and wash, and then back to his room to get dressed, all in enough time to still get myself ready and get on the road so we arrive at daycare before the end of breakfast. It's always a challenge, particularly since I rarely get enough sleep and have a hard time getting going myself.

Once we're home in the evenings, we rush through daycare pickup since it's usually time for the teachers to leave, too, and rush home...or to the grocery store or any other quick errand we can fit in without pushing dinner too late. One day a week I go to the gym straight from work and the boys get some quality time together. Many times this summer they went to the baseball field to play, but those days are looking to be over now that colder, wetter weather has set in. Regardless of when I get home, I'm generally rushing to get dinner made. Craig and I eat relatively quickly, but Jacob takes longer, of course. I'm inevitably pushing him along a bit because he gets so distracted, trying to keep myself occupied by washing dishes or cleaning up.

Once he's in bed, I usually multitask--catch up on internet reading, write a blog post, and catch up on some shows on the DVR. Usually that takes far longer than I'd like it to, and before I know it, it's way past my desired bedtime. I get in bed too late, and as already stated, morning comes too quickly.

Even on weekends I find myself cramming things in. As much as I appreciate Jacob's naps, they do tend to get in the way of getting things done. It's a two-plus hour chunk in the middle of the day, and it's especially tricky on Sundays when most things close by 6pm. In addition, we spend a lot of weekends on the road visiting family, so it takes up a lot of time we might otherwise spend doing things around the house, running errands or enjoying other local activities. We wouldn't pass that time up, though, because it is so important. Most of the time, the other stuff can wait.

This weekend we jammed the zoo and a hockey game into Saturday. Then I wanted to try to cram both the visit to the pumpkin place and an open house at the fire station in on Sunday afternoon. That did not happen. I hated to miss out on the fire station thing since it was a one-time thing, but I felt like we needed to get our pumpkin because we're on the road this weekend and I didn't want to wait until a day or two before Halloween. I've needed to go grocery shopping since the weekend, but that hasn't happened yet. I still need to do work on my Halloween costume, but that's not happening yet either.

On a bigger scale, there's also the issue of baby #2. My body is still battling me about getting back on track, and despite starting this process earlier than last time, we're now behind the timeline we were on with Jacob...which means even if things happen ASAP and go perfectly, everything will be considerably later than I wanted it. So much for a late spring baby :( I know I shouldn't be picky, but it's getting harder to be patient.

On a selfish front, I also don't have enough time to explore other hobbies I'd like to look into, like photography. I feel stuck in the kitchen, both because the boys' palettes aren't too fancy and because I just don't have the time or energy to do more. I feel guilty thinking about getting involved in a Bible study at church (and yes, I know that should be higher on the priority list) because it would mean another evening away...and a rushed one at that since it would have to be a quick transition from work to daycare to dinner to church. I keep hoping the day will come that it'll all work out, but when? Add another baby to mix someday and it probably only gets worse. The best version of bad, of course, but the battle against time is so agonizing...if only because, in addition to there not being enough of it, what little there is is passing us by so quickly. Our little boy is getting so big, and I'm just not sure I'm appreciating enough of it.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the answer is, but I guess being conscious of it is a step. Getting off the computer would probably be another, right?

More Fall Fun

2011-10-16T23:31:00.000-04:00

We had a busy weekend as usual. While summer weekends are usually packed with traveling and picnics, fall weekends are packed with activities closer to home, usually something just trying to pull out what fun we can from the remaining good weather. Pumpkin patches, football games, hockey games...you name it, we keep busy.

Thursday night Jacob and I headed out to the Amerks' home opener. Craig had to go to a big annual event up in Canada hosted by the Knighthawks' owner, but I opted to stay home with Jacob and check out what the Amerks (and Sabres) had in store for the new season. I also didn't want to have to worry about taking time off of work or being up very late on a work night, so staying home made more sense. Jacob and I had a pretty good time at the game, though we were disappointed to discover that the guards were preventing kids from playing knee hockey in the nooks off the concourse. No idea why. Jacob did get a moment with the Moose and Sabretooth, which was cool...

And here he is trying to escape me while we were waiting for the game to start...

He wasn't quite as good of a sitter as he has been in the past, but we managed. The team looked terrible, but some interesting changes had been made around the arena. It was funny being there without having Craig as an employee of the team. First time since I've known him.

Saturday morning we headed out to the zoo where Craig was working at ZooBoo, the zoo's Halloween event. Because the weather was cool, windy and rainy, I didn't want to risk Jacob's Batman costume since he still needs it for a few more events, so we opted for last year's costume, which still fits fine.

My little fireman...now with red pants AND winter boots that still fit!

Before we tracked down Craig we ran into Spikes, the Red Wings' mascot, as well as the zoo's penguin mascot...

Once we found Craig, we went around to the rest of the trick-or-treat stations and took a quick play break...

And had a little more fun with the polar bear statues...even if Jacob doesn't make it look fun ;-)

We got to see the sea lions go crazy at feeding time, saw the otter take a swim, the wolves run laps, and the penguins waddle around their new habitat. We tracked down Jacob's good buddy, the Knighthawks' mascot R. Thunder...

And Jacob got what will probably be the first of many photos with pretty girls...

Soon he'll be watching the Knightingales closer than the mascot...

Saturday night we headed back to the arena to see the RIT Tigers take on St. Lawrence. RIT usually plays in a much smaller arena (1/5 the size) but they managed to sell out the arena with more than 10,000 fans, which isn't something that happens often. Even with all the buzz the Amerks only announced around 9,000 on Thursday. Many of the 10,000 fans were crazy college kids, and boy were some of them into it. There were lots of chants (many with profanity, unfortunately--thank goodness Jacob didn't pick up on that), a full band, and some fun little quirks. I loved that some of the chants included sign language, since RIT has a whole deaf program. Jacob spent quite a while taking it all in, but eventually he really just wanted to go play hockey. Here he is being a little crazy with a borrowed pom pom before we took a little walk...

This morning we got up for church, which was a near-disaster today for some reason. No idea why Jacob decided to be absolutely ridiculous today. Ugh. After that, Craig headed out to the Bowhunter Cup, a lacrosse game he had to cover that was held at Turning Stone Casino out past Syracuse. After Jacob's nap, we headed out to get some pumpkins and check out an indoor fall festival site nearby.

The place was pretty cool and had an insane number of pumpkins of all kinds. I had a field day taking pictures of random stuff. Jacob took a liking to this stage coach...

I thought this little photo op was appropriate...sorry Jacob.

I fell in love this this warty pumpkin, but no, I didn't buy it.

There was no admission to this place, but most of the activities--little rides, crafts, and a petting zoo--cost money. We skipped past everything and did what we could for free. Maybe next year. We did get to see giant bunnies and a llama, and then we saw some of the coolest birds...

This was one of my favorite ducks. You should have seen how the feathers on its head fluffed up when it got ticked off.

You'd never know it, but this is a pigeon. There were some very regal looking ones, too, but this one with the "feather boa" was too fun to pass up!

Jacob desperately wanted to get into this car...even as he pointed to something else...

He ended up getting a free fire helmet from the firefighters there (appropriate, since I was also hoping to get to a fire station open house today, but his nap went long...not a bad thing), and we ended up back at the stage coach...

He made the most hilarious face on my first attempt at this spot, but the picture was blurry. I knew it right away and he managed to do a pretty good reenactment, minus really wide eyes :)

We headed off to the craft store and the dollar store afterward to do some Halloween costume shopping (enhancements for my costume), and we had a fun evening trying on our respective costumes. Jacob still absolutely cracks me up in his. I never knew I'd find a storebought costume so darn cute.

We had a handful of difficult moments as usual today, but all in all it was a pretty manageable day, thank goodness. We have another busy weekend next weekend, so hopefully this week goes quickly and restfully in the meantime.

Sad Realization

2011-10-14T23:34:00.000-04:00

I had an inkling this was true, but it didn't truly hit me until the other day when I was looking back in the blog to posts from when Jacob was just a little baby. By all accounts, I was a happier parent back then. I never would have known it considering the sleep deprivation and multitude of worries that go along with having a tiny baby, but the way I was posting pretty much confirmed my suspicions. In general, when I wasn't having moments of total panic, I was just head over heels in love with my baby boy.
Please understand that that does not mean that my love for him is any less now. It's just different. Let me explain...

I'd venture to say that love for your child isn't far off from the progression of a romantic relationship...at least to a point. When you're first with a person during the "honeymoon phase", you are totally into them. You could spend every waking moment with them and probably never be bored, never be annoyed, and never feel the need for alone time. However, any little chink in the relationship's armor is probably blown way out of proportion...most likely because any issues are a major shock to a system that's been nothing short of obsessed with this other person. In addition, you have no idea how the relationship will weather the storm. Basically, panic ensues because you get into uncharted territory. As a whole, good or bad, everything is new.

But as the relationship deepens, things even out a bit. And while your love for them never wavers, it doesn't necessarily hit the highest highs as often. It's deep and stronger than ever, but finding that giddy excitement you once had seems almost impossible to recapture. It's not, mind you, but I believe that it takes a truly special situation to get there--say, a romantic getaway, enough alone time to make the heart grow fonder, or an exceptional achievement that makes you glow with pride. At the other end of the spectrum, the lows may not be quite as dramatic, but they're probably even harder to manage because you have invested so much and hate to see anything jeopardize that.

When Jacob first arrived, I remember the insane hormonal craziness, but I remember thinking at the time that it was all worth it. It was so amazing to see this little baby that we had created, holding him, feeding him, and watching him grow. It was downright euphoric. We cheered for every little milestone--first smile, first laugh, first crawl, first steps--and marveled as he got bigger, moved to the next room at daycare, and started to learn so many things. I know that there were so many scary, frustrating and even awful moments in those early days, too, which is why having a baby is beyond hard. But the miracle of this little child just outshone everything else.

And then the discipline era started. As Jacob grew, he was able to get into things. Then he started to get strong-willed. Bad combo. Prior to that, any behavior that didn't conform to what we'd have liked was most likely involuntary. Crying at 4am? Well, it's not fun, but he's probably not feeling good. Throwing food? Well, he's probably just exploring his world and doesn't understand that Mommy doesn't like the mess. But after a while you know they're wisening up and you know that they're starting to grasp their power. They learn to take action and press buttons, and honestly, that's when the honeymoon phase starts to end. Again, you don't love your baby any less, but it becomes brutally obvious that they're not the perfect, angelic, never-done-wrong child that they were for those first few months.

Perhaps the issue is that all of the effort seems worth it early on. You see a helpless baby grow and thrive, and because they were helpless, it's clear you made an impact. But as they grow older and become more independent, all that effort sometimes seems wasted. Parenthood can be a thankless job, and it's much more obvious when you know your child is capable of thanking you, but doesn't. A cute smile is no longer payment enough. They ignore what you say, break free from your grasp, and generally find ways to render you useless at any given moment. It's a far cry from the early days.

Home is much the same. Whether it's time to get dressed, go potty, eat dinner, pick up toys, or anything else that he's supposed to be doing, he's always doing something else. During the course of putting on a single pair of pajamas, I probably have to yell at him to get back to actually putting them on at least half a dozen times. At least. And that's not counting the prodding to get him to go potty, get his teeth brushed, or pick out books.

He pokes me with stuff, tries to wrestle, hangs on my legs then won't stand up, and throws things. First thing this morning I walked in and he threw one of his animals at me, full force. I didn't even get "Good Morning" out, so I can't imagine what provoked that. I've always made a point to not laugh at certain behaviors at risk of him wanting to recreate the performance repeatedly, but no amount of straight faces or stern voices seem to communicate that it's not nice, not acceptable, and not okay.

I could go on and on (even more), but long story short, it's exhausting to try to keep Jacob on track and battle through. And all that exhaustion makes it so hard for that pure, simple love to come through. I used to be so excited to go home and spend time with him, but now I know I'm facing an evening of yelling and bargaining and it's hard to get excited about that. I'm so wrapped up in dealing with my stubborn little boy that there just aren't many moments where I can see the face of my sweet, innocent baby come through. Once in a while he'll be so genuinely sweet, or adorably excited about something, and I instantly have that awesome high where parenthood is the most fulfilling thing ever and my heart practically explodes. But where I used to be so fulfilled by parenthood, now I just feel a bit overwhelmed.

I love Jacob so much and would be lost without him. He's the center of my universe and I only want what's best for him. Yet after so many attempts at discipline and doing what we can to encourage his interests, I'm left not knowing what is best. I should just find ways to enjoy him, but instead I find myself withdrawing at times, as an attempt at self-preservation or a sub-conscious action motivated by fear of failure.

Maybe the key point is this--When Jacob was a newborn, I knew how to love him. There was no wrong way. Nowadays I still love him so much, but I'm not sure how to love him best. He now needs more than lots of hugs and kisses and prompt meals and diaper changes. He needs direction and discipline, to listen and learn...and yes, he needs those meals, hugs and kisses (and periodic assistance with his pants), too. The stakes are bigger now, and the fear and frustration are, too. I'm doing the best I can, but I never know if it's good enough...for him or me. The joy is missing and I hope I find it again one of these days. Let's hope it's just hiding under the couch with everything else.

Pumpkin Time! (Well, sort of...)

2011-10-11T21:59:00.003-04:00

Sunday was going to be a beautiful day. It's not often you get an 80 degree day in October, but that's what we had. Based on our schedule for the rest of the month, I was planning on going to the pumpkin patch next Saturday. However, the weather was looking iffy--upper 50s and rainy. There's nothing worse than hanging out on a farm when it's wet and muddy. So, sometime on Saturday the thought crossed my mind that if we skipped church (I know...bad) we could go to the pumpkin patch before Craig had to leave for the player appearance he had to go to. We don't skip church often, but I felt like doing it this time, to take full advantage of the beautiful weather, was worth it.

We decided to go to Stokoe Farms, the same place we went last year, as well as the year I got pregnant. In fact, I think the first pictures of me pregnant were taken there, but I didn't know it yet! I knew it was probably going to be crazy busy and unfortunately we didn't get there quite as early as would have been ideal. Still, we had a lot of fun. The bummer was that a lot of the good stuff had long lines--the zip lines, gourd slingshots, the pedal cars, and the human hamster wheels were all super busy. We couldn't spend time getting lost in the corn maze, either.

The first thing we did was hop on the hayride, and we finally got a really good family picture. Seriously, it's nothing short of a miracle. This right here was worth the price of admission :)

Upon seeing the long lines, we headed off to a set of big slides on Billy Goat Mountain. There are four open slides and two tube slides. The four slides and one tube slide are really huge. And fast. Jacob seemed eager to do them, so up we went. He decided we should do the open ones, but the second we got there he freaked out. However, people were waiting and there was really no other way down, so I sat him down next to me, grabbed his hand and pushed us off. He wasn't too happy on the way down, and as you can see in the picture, he's flopping around a bit (I'm on the left, he's sliding almost sideways next to me), but we made it down very quickly. It was crazy fast!

Surprisingly, despite insisting he didn't like it, he wanted to go back up. We ended up doing the big tube slide that time. He seemed to like that one a lot more, but boy, was that one ever fast, too!

After that we checked out the goats and Jacob got to feed one. It took a while because I think they were already stuffed!

His technique was much improved this year!

We checked out the most adorable little piglets, a couple emus, sheep, a yak, and a bunny, then headed to an area full of trikes and Little Tikes cars, among other things. The area also has a couple sandbox-esque digging areas, and rubber duck races, but Jacob gravitated to the giant tractor in the middle. I found it ironic since he refused to go up on it last year!

He couldn't really reach the wheel so we moved along to this "tractor"...

We checked out some baby chicks before heading to the corn box...yep, just a BIG area full of dried corn kernels...

And I think Jacob was so proud of himself getting up on the slide that he started causing a traffic jam! Of course, the girls at the bottom of the slide weren't doing him any favors...

Then he tried "milking a cow"...

,...saw some alpacas, and climbed a mountain with Daddy...

Victorious!

At the bottom of the hay mountain, I tried to get a good picture of Jacob, but he found it more fun to try to poke the camera with hay!

But I did get a smile out of him, so it was all worth it!

Time was running short so we had to skip pumpkin buying. We grabbed one last photo op...

...And we headed out so Craig could meet a Knighthawk at a benefit for a 14-year-old kid with cancer. That was pretty sobering, but there was a ton of support. We headed home to watch the end of the Bills game, eat some dinner, and relax after a busy day.

I'm bummed we couldn't do our pumpkin shopping, but I'm hoping we can hit up a local garden center whose activities are all inside this weekend and make up for lost time. And if nothing else, there's always the little farm market on the same road as Jacob's daycare. We'll get pumpkins, I have no doubt!

The 'Cuse

2011-10-10T20:33:00.005-04:00

So, we had a busy weekend. I guess busy is usually good because it also generally means fun and eventful...and that was certainly the case. However, I'm heading into another brutal week of work and I have caught Jacob's cold, so perhaps rest would have been better...but in the end, I suppose it was all worth it.

Saturday we went to Syracuse. Despite the fact that Craig went to Syracuse for grad school, I had never been there. The boys went last year when my college roommate Mary came to visit, and it was for the same thing we went to this year--alumni lacrosse games. I was actually excited to go to the Carrier Dome, since I've seen it so much here and there (from afar). It was a pretty limited audience for this event, but I can only imagine what it's like when it's full and rockin'! We were pretty much there because Craig wanted to interview a few Knighthawks' players who were participating.

Jacob barely napped on the way up, but other than having ants in his pants for a good portion of the time we were there, he was pretty good. He did well with the potty and didn't stray too far from where we were sitting. He did take one little spill down a couple steps where we were sitting because he wasn't watching where he was going, but other than a lot of crying, he was fine. He kept asking to wear a different pair of shorts (his Nike shorts) and really just wanted to go play lacrosse, but all in all I can't complain. I was getting fidgety too, to be honest! The game lasted so long that Craig even decided to just interview one guy who played in the earlier, less formal game (the one we watched was the current team vs. the most talented alumni) rather than stay through the end to get the guys he ideally wanted. Still, it was cool to see. I couldn't help but wonder if we'll be among the ranks of the very-obvious parental supporters for something like this in another 15-18 years. For some reason seeing the real deal made it just a little more realistic in my mind. I'll be proud of Jacob regardless of what sport(s) he ends up playing, though.

I got a couple pictures of Jacob while we were hanging out, and while they're both similar, I like 'em both for different reasons.

Doesn't he look like such a big boy here? Holy cow that freaked me out! Maybe it's just the new sneaks.

He's actually looking at the camera and smiling. A real smile. Amazing how that works.

In the end the game lasted so long that walking around the campus didn't work out, as we were eager to grab some dinner and get on the road back home. We did drive around a bit, and it was interesting to see things around campus. The kids, of course, look younger than ever. The reality of the fact that one year of their education is more than pretty much my entire college education combined boggled my mind a bit. I mean, that's a lot of money, a lot of debt, and a lot of pressure to make good use of that degree. However, I can't help but wonder if the students themselves realize the situation they're in. Regardless, it underscored the fact that Jacob either needs to get a fantastic scholarship or he should attend a state school.

The campus itself was interesting. There was a mix of classic older buildings and fancy new ones, all in a city street setting (at least, the area we were in). It was sometimes hard to tell what was an academic building vs. a residental building. It was a far cry from Geneseo, where all the academic buildings are basically in one big cluster around a couple grassy quads, and the dorms are all clustered on the outskirts in a few distinct areas. No cars, no streets...just a few simple paths. In case I wasn't already, that sure made me grateful for my college experience, where I just had to note the locations of a handful of buildings on a simple campus map...because God knows the college experience was enough of a change/challenge that I didn't need "finding my next class" to be a lesson in city street navigation as well.

We finished off the trip with a gluttonous visit to Cici's Pizza, which you may remember from our trip to the NLL All-Star Game in the spring and our detour through Erie on our return trip from Pittsburgh last summer. And of course, the was also that fantastic, bottomless-pit-while-pregnant visit when we went to Orlando in December 2007. That was the BEST. No, it's not the highest quality pizza, but it's still good and the variety is a nice change of pace. And Jacob eats for only 99 cents, so that's cool too...even if he did eat enough to more than justify the price.

We had an uneventful drive home with the boys watching movies in the back seat and me catching up on some of the new, free music I added to my iPod over the past couple weeks from a couple sites that offer free downloads of independent artists or sneak peek songs from established artists. It was a peaceful night that ended with the usual Jacob tantrum at bedtime, but all in all, it wasn't a bad day.

We ended up having a spur-of-the-moment-ish fun Sunday, which I'll report on soon :)

Memories...

2011-10-05T23:27:00.000-04:00

Today my co-worker's water broke at work. She's a month early. Her baby was measuring big, so assuming his lungs are adequately developed, everything should be fine. It was a big surprise, of course, particularly considering her office shower was just last Thursday. Needless to say it was a bit of an unorthodox afternoon in the office, and there was much reminiscing about our own experiences in the water-breaking, labor-surviving world.

It brought back a lot of memories, that's for sure. My fluid started leaking 12 days before my due date, and even that was a shock. I can't imagine how my friend was feeling as she hurriedly gathered up her stuff and headed out, a month ahead of schedule. In addition, she had an hour drive to the doctor, as she lives quite a ways outside the city and her doctor is even beyond that. I was lucky enough to have some time to kill in the city between my doctor's appointment and getting the go-ahead to go to the hospital, enough time to clear a few more things off my desk and make sure everything was good to go for my absence.

I will apparently never live that little stop down, as it came up today and people still I think I was nuts to be there. But here's the deal--there was no sense going all the way home, only to get the imminent call to drive 20 minutes back to the city, so it just made sense to go somewhere in the city. And it sounded like a good idea to take a few minutes to go to the office and clear some things up. It wasn't ideal since I was leaking fluid and all, but it's not like I was in active labor. And a little peace of mind goes a long way.

I pondered the hours she had ahead of her, maybe the beginning of contractions or getting started on pitocin, lots of pain, and eventually holding her sweet little boy in her arms. I remembered the nervous excitement and reality setting in that this was really going to happen, one way or another. I didn't have a birth plan other than just going with the flow and trusting my doctor. I've done a lot of reading in the years that followed, and I think I want to be a little more active in deciding how I want to give birth next time. However, I'm well aware that things don't always go as planned and next time things may end up quite the same. God knows that no matter how much I'd like to avoid drugs so I can push more efficiently next time, I know how early the pain got to me, and it was painful enough even with the drugs...so I really have no illusions that I'll make it anywhere without them. Passing out and puking don't work too well in the middle of childbirth, so I don't think I have many other options. Still, it would be nice to be up and walking, or try out the tub thing that so many women say works wonders, but both of those things weren't options while being induced thanks to all the monitoring. I think I'd also like to try laboring on all fours or using a squatting bar, rather than on my back, but I have no idea how that would go over.

Of course, this is all assuming I ever get pregnant again, which seems like a more difficult prospect every day. My body is still very, very confused, maybe even more than last time. Here I thought I had left myself plenty of time to get on track and maybe even aim for an earlier due date than last time, but...nope. Even if things were to magically work out (much like last time) within the next couple weeks, I'd be lucky to be looking at a similar timeline as last time. And that's assuming all goes well. There are no guarantees in any of this, and I think the complete and utter uncertainty of pregnancy is one of the things that's easy to forget once you're more focused on worrying about the very real, very tangible little human that suddenly appeared in your world. Those nine months of worrying pale in comparison to worrying for the rest of your life once they're in the outside world, where the stakes are so much higher. For all the amazement that comes with pregnancy, there's a boatload of worry, too. And it starts even before the two lines pop up on the pregnancy test.

I'm still not freaking out, but I'm quite annoyed and wondering at which point I give up trying to figure it out myself and call the doctor. Most likely I won't have a major issue getting pregnant if things get back on track, but again, no guarantees. But assuming that's the case, it's probably fine to ask for a little help. All I can do is call. It all worked out last time and it probably will this time, too...and as I've said before, it's all about trusting in God's perfect timing. It's never failed me before, and it won't now.

So, anyway, it was an interesting day. Lots of unexpected reminiscing and hopefully some good news to look forward to in the morning...

Weekend Review

2011-10-03T23:45:00.000-04:00

Despite the fact that it was a rainy, miserable, cold weekend, we managed to keep ourselves occupied and have some fun. Friday's night's movie night (per my last post) wasn't exactly ideal, but in retrospect I take some solace in the fact that he probably didn't bother other people too much with his antics. Much preferred to the screaming child or something worse, you know?

Saturday was a pretty low key day. It was so awful outside that there wasn't much reason to leave the house. I spent a good chunk of the morning sorting through Jacob's clothes, doing the much-dreaded every-few-month try-on to see which things from last season still fit. I cleared out enough space in his closet to put in the new/hand-me-down stuff for the fall, and as the weather officially cools, I'll take out the rest of the summer stuff and stow it away until next spring's try-on session. I also did a bit of work on my own closet, taking out the sleeveless stuff and selecting a few things for donation that I either haven't worn in ages and won't wear again, either due to style changes or (more often) my post-pregnancy belly that won't quite go away. It's pleasantly freeing but it's still a bit of a melancholy process because it either feels wasteful or sad when the clothes no longer work for me. I also worked on getting out the Halloween decorations and made a fantastic dinner--this really great creamy chicken casserole we fell in love with when someone gave us a batch during the week my grandma passed away.

We needed to go out to pick up milk anyway, and I had noticed that the coupon I had set aside for Jacob's Halloween costume expired that day, so we decided to head out in the evening to get Jacob's costume. After originally insisting that he wanted to be a ghost, at some point in the last few weeks he settled on Batman. As you may recall, he started on this Batman kick after the Labor Day long weekend trip with Craig's family when he saw some Batman DVDs and got Batman pajamas. He now requests to be called Batman ("I'm not Jacob, I'm Batman!") and refers to Craig as "Robin". Since he seems to be pretty deeply entrenched and Craig is fueling it (the weekend viewings of the old school Batman TV show on this new channel we have were among his fuel), I figured we could take the risk to buy the costume this early. The coupon made it within my threshold, though not nearly as cheap as the few bucks we spent last year on his fire helmet (he already had received the jacket as a gift). So much for attempting to make it through his childhood without a major branded obsession. At least it's one that's stood the test of time, right?

So, off we went to Party City, where I had a $10 coupon and had pinpointed an acceptable costume. There are many preschooler Batman costumes out there, but most of them are pretty odd looking. Admittedly, so is the one we ended up with, but I think ours is exaggerated enough that you laugh more than thinking how pathetically store-bought it is. We tried it on Jacob before we left, and I couldn't even get the mask on without laughing. Once I got the mask on, I had tears. So funny. In a good way.

Check out the six pack!

Too cute!!

Now if we could just get him to stop asking to wear it. I don't trust its durability and I am NOT buying another one if this one rips while he's messing around in it.

Sunday we met my parents at their friends' house out in Victor (east side of Rochester), where their daughter Laurie was visiting with her two kids. You may remember them from our last day of vacation, when the boys got to play and I got to hold her new little girl. Our parents had just returned from two weeks together in Alaska, and it was my first time seeing my parents in over a month, which is a pretty long stretch for us. Colin was very excited to see Jacob, and the boys got right to playing...

One big McQueen, one small McQueen...the big one had to be shaken up and then it took off very fast! They got in a pretty good groove taking turns, since the second shake-n-go car (Mater) was losing his battery power.

Eventually playtime headed to the basement, and they continued to have fun...

Puzzles...

Togetherness in the car!

They even set up a "gas pump" for the car, using an unplugged shop vac...

Fill 'er up!

They played very well together. As usual there were a handful of sharing issues but they were very well-controlled. They still did some parallel play, but that's to be expected since their interests are a little different overall. Jacob was completely happy to throw a soft football to anyone who would play with him, though he probably got more than he bargained for when Colin tackled him! They were both good sports, though, and in the meantime the moms got to chat about the joys of three year olds...potty training, ill-fitting pants (tiny waists, long legs), and tantrums.

I got to hold sweet little Kelly for a while, and later on I hung out next to her spot on the floor while she contentedly stared up at the baby gym. Oh, how I miss that age, where they smile at your goofy faces and lay there completely content, unable to roll or crawl away. I know there's a lot of hard stuff that goes along with that age, but she was just so sweet...and I even caught a smile!

urprised at how functional he was while we were there. By the end, though, I could tell he was starting to crack. We snapped one last picture of the boys, and then headed out...

Such big boys! They're almost exactly the same height, despite how it looks here. Let me tell you, they're both a far cry from our first visit!

We got in the car a little before 6:30, planning to go home, have some dinner, and meet up with Craig, who'd spent the afternoon at a lacrosse tournament. Jacob fell asleep by the time I hit the end of the driveway (it was a longer than average one, but still!), and barely woke up when we got home. I plopped him on the couch to get myself settled, but when I went to try to wake him up, he just snuggled into the couch more. I left him for a bit and tried again a little later, but again, no dice. Craig snuggled up to him at one point, but I decided that we really needed to do something--namely, get him up to his room and see if that woke him up--since normally the second he hits his bed, he decides he wants to be awake--or if he was really down for the count, despite not eating dinner. He settled right into his bed and I left him just like I would at bedtime, but fully expecting him to wake up at a really inopportune time in the middle of the night. Right before I went to bed (early--just in case we had a long night ahead of us), I changed him out of his jeans and into his pajama pants to make sure he'd be comfortable. He slept right through that, too. I was still convinced he'd wake up in the middle of the night or really early in the morning, so off to bed I went. But sure enough, I didn't hear a peep out of him until just before 7am! He slept nearly 12-1/2 hours! Normally he sleeps about 10-1/2, no matter when he goes to bed. I was hoping all that sleep would deliver us a perfectly sweet child, but no...he was perhaps more difficult than usual. Other than dinner, that is. He inhaled his dinner, which doesn't surprise me one bit considering his missed meal last night.

So, yeah...crazy weekend, but really good. It was nice to see my parents as well as the Dohertys/McDonoughs, and I feel happy knowing that we got Jacob's costume in case we want to take advantage of any pre-Halloween events, like the one at our zoo that we're always missing because I'm figuring out his costume at the last minute. The weather was a tough reminder that winter will be here all too soon and we'll be stuck inside (or freezing outside) for months, but at least I got a jump on that too by organizing clothes. On to another week--ridiculously busy at work yet again--and at least one adventure to look forward to this weekend!

At least he's consistent...

2011-09-30T23:35:00.000-04:00

Well, if there's one thing Jacob is good at, it's finding ways to ruin much-hyped activities. From our mini golf experience to our summer vacation, the higher the expectations, the more frustrating he tends to be. Whether that is more about him or just our disappointment talking, I'm not sure. But it makes it hard to make plans for something fun when you have an inkling that he's going to choose that exact moment to be difficult. On one hand, what's the point of doing fun things? On the other hand, he's going to have to learn how to be cooperative at some point so we might as well attempt things when opportunities arise and hope for the best.

Tonight we decided to take Jacob to his first movie theater experience. He's done the drive-in a couple times before with mixed results, but the last time was over a year ago. Craig is a big movie person and he's been practically begging to take Jacob for months. I wanted to be there for his first time and I refused to go when the weather was beautiful, since we have a long winter of cold, crappy weather ahead of us that needs to be filled by inside activities.

Tonight the weather was crappy and Cars 2 was up at the cheap theater. I'm not sure if Jacob has ever seen all of the first one (I've only seen bits and pieces), but it's more about the experience than the movie at this age. We had to pick up McDonald's and eat on the way to make it in time, but we finally did. He was pretty good for the first half of the movie. He ate his popcorn (his favorite) and talked a bit, but there were a lot of kids so he fit right in. He was a little fidgety but it was tolerable. Then suddenly halfway through the movie he just got frustrating. He had to go potty once, but then he was moving around in his seat, sitting on our laps momentarily, taking off his shoes and socks, turning around in his seat, and headbutting the seat. It got to be very distracting and really annoying. Luckily, I don't think he was particularly distracting to anyone else, and his behavior was probably pretty age-appropriate overall, but it was frustrating nonetheless.

Why he doesn't understand that his behavior means we won't be back for a while, I'm not sure. Apparently he can't help himself, but you'd think one of these times when he misbehaves he'll remember that it comes with consequences. It wasn't intolerable, but it just makes me wonder (again) why we bother doing fun things. On the bright side, the movie was cute. And at the beginning of it, Jacob seemed to really like it. The Toy Story short at the beginning was actually pretty awesome, and he had this big grin on his face for that. If only that utter joy could have stayed the whole time.

So, long story short, another "first" in the books. One of these days it will go well and his excitement won't be tarnished by his stubborn dark side. Someday.

Just the beginning...

2011-09-27T23:18:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned on Friday, Jacob got his first real sports equipment upon Craig's arrival home. He got a real lacrosse stick, a helmet, and the most ridiculously adorable tiny gloves. Of course, he loves the stuff.

He loves it enough that I've decided to use it as a bribe to get him potty trained. He's been having a ton of accidents recently and I'm starting to think he just doesn't care. So...if he stays dry, he can play with his stuff. If not, it stays put away. I've known people who have used items like that--our friend used her son's goalie mask, and my roommate's parents used a special Thundercats sword for her brother. Worth a shot, anyway. He may still not be quite ready physically, but we'll judge it as we go along.

Case in point, our trip to the library on Saturday. Craig went to Buffalo to spend a day with his family, so Jacob and I spent the day together. When he woke up from his nap, we headed out to a new library near us. There was a book there I was dying to read, and I figured it would be nice to get some new variety in Jacob's bedtime book rotation. We got there and Jacob amused himself on this cool computer thing (embedded in a Little Tikes desk!) while I browsed the picture book shelves for books for him. I found six great ones rather quickly, and then Jacob and I sat down to put together some of the cool puzzles they had. In the middle of it I noticed that he was doing a bit of a "stutter step" but when I asked him if he had to go, he said no. Not 10 seconds later, he was like, "Mommy, I peed." We ran across the library to the bathroom and it was a really good thing I had spare undies in my purse. I changed him (luckily the shorts survived thanks to the plastic pants), and we checked out quick before heading off to a sorely-needed haircut for him and a couple more quick stops after that. On the second stop he said that he had to go again, so we ran down the plaza to Wegmans. He had had a bit of an accident again, but at that point it was either a pull-up or damp undies. He didn't seem phased so for the five more minutes we had to be out, undies it was. Bad, I know. I figured maybe it would convince him that he didn't want to feel like that, but I'm a little worried he's just getting used to it now. I guess this is the dark side of having a baby that didn't freak out despite a wet diaper. And here I thought we caught a break with that one. Darn.

Sunday Jacob and Craig headed out to a lacrosse camp at a local country club. The Knighthawks put it on and although the kids were older than Jacob, Craig was encouraged to bring him. So, off they went, which was great because it gave me a little free time--I finished up a ton of yard work and then did some running around to finish off my "Mom bag" purchase. I decided I needed a new wallet because my old one was just too small but my purse was never big enough for a bigger one. It took a few tries to find one I really liked that worked, but I'm happy with my purchase and it was nice to have the time to get it done. Meanwhile...

He's looking in a ball collector thing on the driving range where the clinic was held

As usual with most much-hyped activities, Jacob had some rather frustrating moments. He freaked out about little stuff, but he got through it. He even happened to repeat something he learned at the clinic at one point in the last couple days. It was a small step, but perhaps the first one in a long line of sporting endeavors.

We were hoping to take step two in signing him up for tee-ball for next summer, but it appears he turns four a couple months too late. There are other non-league programs we can try to do instead, but it's a bit of a shame as he's probably every bit as good as kids much older than him. He could probably use some "teamwork" training as much as anything, so hopefully we can find a good setup for that next summer. I must say I'm a bit relieved to have a year's reprieve on the hardcore little league stuff, particularly because I'm still hoping to be in new baby mode by then and that might have been a crazy schedule to keep. No guarantees, of course, but it crossed my mind.

It truly is just the beginning, though...

Photo Friday

2011-09-23T23:50:00.000-04:00

To lighten the mood a bit after my post yesterday, I figured I'd share a few random pictures from the last week.

Here's Jacob at the birthday party we went to on Sunday...

Superstar in the making? Or the next Elton John?

While the other kids were doing bubbles, Jacob was insisting on playing football in the house. While the other kids were playing games, Jacob finally discovered the bubbles. Here he is with one of those huge bubble wands. I love seeing genuine joy on his face instead of his oh-so-frustrating cheese face...

He insisted on layering his Oregon State jersey (Christmas gift from the Portland contingent!) over his Bills track suit. It was way too warm for that, but whatever...

Last night when I went in to check on Jacob, this is what I found:

Out cold!

He always has quite a menagerie in there with him, and I try to build them up along the sides so he still has sleeping room and won't fall out. But apparently last night he piled them up at one end and decided they made a good pillow. I took this picture in the dark and I don't think he even flinched.

This morning he got up and changed out of one pair of pajamas into another pair of pajamas...because today was pajama day at daycare. He'd been begging to wear his new Batman jammies all week (got them on the trip to Delaware), but I kept telling him that I knew he'd be begging to wear them Friday, so he couldn't wear them ahead--too much risk of peeing on them in the middle of the night (yes, even with a diaper). Finally, Friday morning arrived and on they went:

Have I mentioned that Jacob wants to be referred to as Batman now? Yep, he's going through that phase. He's really into the Imaginext Batman toys at daycare, and he got to watch some old Batman movies on that Delaware trip. Craig is doing his part to encourage the interest, as well. Not sure how I feel about that, but so far it's manageable. He's been saying funny things lately as Batman....you know, like stuff about going to the Batcave and riding in the Batcopter and stuff. Silly boy.

In other news, Jacob's cut on his face is healing nicely. We have an appointment with his dermatologist Monday (general follow-up from his mole removal) and I'm going to ask if we should use any sort of scar cream (Mederma) to help it along even more. It may heal fine on its own, but I'm not sure if I want to take that chance. I also need to ask her thoughts on tiny freckle-ish moles that he's developed in the past six months or so. They're not nearly as menacing as the one he had removed, so I'm pretty sure they're harmless and natural (I have a ton), but if she has any indication that they might grow and/or become an issue, I'm wondering if they're still small enough to remove quickly and generally painlessly in her office (though a squirmy child could again be an issue) before they get to be big enough to leave a major scar or cause further trouble. I worry more about the ones on his face, mostly because I've always been self-conscious of the one between my mouth and nose and would like to spare Jacob any potential angst. We shall see.

Potty training has been a bit of a hit-or-miss proposition, and I'm not referring to his ability to stand and pee (though that is coming along a bit--though not at our house yet). Some days he's perfect, some days he dribbles, and some days (like yesterday) he has a pretty hardcore accident that not even his plastic pants can contain. I know you're not supposed to freak out when stuff like that happens, but I did. It's hard not to when your fully capable child puts off going, then stands at the top of your carpeted stairs and pees, rather than using that valuable time to at least make a run for the potty. The carpet didn't suffer much damage this time, but still, it's frustrating. And yet...this morning one of Jacob's buddies (who finally joined him in the three-year-old room this week) and his mom walked in with a big box of diapers and I came to the realization that we're not doing too badly if I only have to send in a handful of pull-ups (one per day for use at naptime) and I'm only buying diapers once in a great while. We use one at bedtime, one at naptime on weekends, and maybe a couple more in the event that we need to go somewhere involving no bathrooms or lengthy travel. Not bad. But still, it would be nice to be done.

Other than that, not much to report. Jacob is going to his first lacrosse camp (with Craig) on Sunday, so that should be interesting. Craig came home with Jacob's first real equipment--gloves, helmet, real(ish) stick--and I'm trying not to ask what it cost. That stuff is going to be the least of our worries for the next 15-18 years. It's not like he's going to get sick of lacrosse since he's already been into it for so long, but I just have to brace myself for the beginning of the onslaught of sports. It's coming. Tee ball registration is in a few weeks, after all. Ugh.

Off to bed now...the weekend awaits...

Then and Now

2011-09-22T23:29:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since I last covered this topic in depth, but in case you were wondering, Project Baby #2 is still a go...but it's still pretty much stuck in the mud. Again. I'm coming to understand that my body apparently doesn't like being off birth control, but as much as things are the same as last time, some things are just a bit different...

Then: I ended birth control with little regard for how long it might take to get on track.
Now: I ended birth control with what I carefully calculated to be plenty of time to get back on track...and yet, here I am facing a bit of a time crunch. Originally I wanted to aim for an earlier due date than last time, but now, even if we get pregnant on the first "real" attempt (assuming things ever get straightened out--see below), we'll probably be on about the same schedule.
Both times: Apparently God's timing wins out over everything else.

Then: I waited five weeks for my first cycle after getting off birth control, then never got another period before getting pregnant out of the blue.
Now: I waited over six weeks for my first cycle...and seven weeks after that I'm still waiting for my second. I've tried ovulation predictors here and there, but if I were to try to do them every day in the supposed middle of my cycle, I might go broke just buying those.
Both Times: I'm getting really sick of waiting for it to show up, if only just for practicality purposes of planning my wardrobe around appropriate underwear/preventative measures.

Then: I obsessed over the whole process constantly. It ran through my mind all the time and constantly made me just a little crazier. I have a feeling that stress might have been contributing to our problems. Eventually the process went on for so long that I couldn't think about it all the time, and once I eased up, it just happened...coincidence or not.
Now: It runs through my head mostly when I go to the bathroom and see, yet again, that nothing's happening. I'm not really stressing out this time, but it is getting a little annoying.
Both Times: The waiting game is a tough one. It's extra hard not knowing what's happening when, and trying to decide when it makes sense to do an ovulation test or even a pregnancy test, just to get some idea of what might be happening.

Then: I had no idea what the problem was. Was my cycle messed up? Was I infertile? Did I have another health problem? Were we just not trying at the right times? At the same time, any diversion from my body's usual behavior was a surefire sign of pregnancy...which then turned into a surefire health issue once a pregnancy test came back negative. When I finally did get pregnant and didn't know it, I was so tired. I had pretty much given up hope of getting pregnant and was so confused when the ovulation-stimulating drug I took didn't seem to work. I was ready to call my regular doctor to see why I was so tired, but decided to take a pregnancy test just to rule it out beforehand. Sure enough, positive.
Now: I've had a couple pieces of circumstantial evidence, but for the most part I've kept a much more level head this time around. I'm more likely to blame it on a more realistic reason. If I do blame anything on a potential pregnancy, I'm well aware that it's probably more wishful thinking than anything.
Both Times: Random body oddities still sometimes get me wondering. If I'm extra tired, feel a little crampy twinge, or notice something really off, I can't help but wonder if it's pregnancy hormones. Lately I've been losing hair like crazy, which I've mostly decided is post-birth control hormone regulation, much like women lose hair a couple months after birth due to hormones. Regardless, both times it's been just one big question mark.

Long story short, I find it interesting that we're going through this same waiting game again. It's easier this time, I think, since I know it had happy ending last time. We have Jacob, and if that's all we're meant to have, that's not the worst thing in the world. It would be sad, but not the end of the world.

But it's frustrating and I find myself wondering at what point I call the doctor. They'll probably want blood work, and if all is normal, they'll probably order up the same stuff I had last time--the drug meant to induce ovulation that I ended up not even needing. Part of me feels like that's cheating, but on the other side of the coin, I hate having to wonder for weeks on end when my period is coming. That alone is annoying, let alone the whole pregnancy aspect. I keep telling myself that it will happen when the time is right, so I'm trying to remain level-headed about the whole thing. What's the fun of going through this process if it isn't a bit of a journey? I hope it's a nice pleasant journey, not too long and with a lovely destination...but a bit of an adventure nonetheless.