Bath Time!

These pictures of Jack were taken on New Years Eve, but I forgot to post them. I just found them today while I was flipping through my photo folders, and thought I'd share.

I love baby toes. :) And baby toes in water and just as cute as can be!



What's cuter than baby toes? Baby fat! Isn't it sad that fat doesn't remain cute into adulthood? lol.

The only way we can keep Jack happy in the tub is to let him chew on this lid. And yes, it has to be *this* lid.

My blue-eyed boy:

A few pictures...

Here are a few pictures Darrin snapped today. I was getting ready to head off to a meeting (helping to plan our 15 year high school reunion), and my Mom had just stopped by to pick up Henry for the afternoon.

Here is Jack with Grandma:

Mama with Jackie:

And a few of me reading with the boys. We've tried to instill a love of books in both of the boys, and it has definitely worked with Henry. He will sit and "read" for hours, and then beg you to read more. Jack is a little more distracted than Henry ever was, but he still seems to enjoy it from time to time. These are two of Henry's favorite books:

Note the bare toes on Jack. We cannot keep socks on this kid to save our lives. No matter what we do, he manages to get them off. He can even de-sock in the saucer, where he can't even reach his toes! It's crazy! I've threatened to buy him tights, but that didn't go over too well with Papa. ;)

It's Always Something...

This morning my husband came into the bedroom at 7:30am. Sarah, are you awake?. *sigh* I am now. He climbed into bed and said he thought the hot water heater was broken, because he just took a cold shower. Feel me, he said, as if I didn't believe him and really wanted to be awake enough to move my arm. I slapped a hand over his way, and sure enough, he was cold. Ok, I'll call a plummer this morning... Lemme sleep.

An hour later, he was back. GOOSE! You have to get up! Yes, he calls me Goose. He has for years, and I have no idea how it started. After leaving the room an hour earlier, he just happened to go down to the basement to check on the water heater, and found water gushing into the laundry room from the bathroom. When he came upstairs, he told me there was a leak in the pipe under the sink. So, being the handyman of the house *wink*, I got up and got dressed, and schlepped down to take a look. As it turns out, there was no leak... there was a tidal wave. And it wasn't coming from under the sink, it was coming from under the vanity... and under the wall... and crap, is that water coming in through the cracks in the wall? Yep. Niiiice. Now I'm willing to tackle a lot of home projects. I learned quite a bit by watching my grandpa work on homes over the years, and feel pretty confident with just about any task you throw my way, but I knew I'd been beaten by Noah and the great flood that was about to come crashing through my wall.

I went upstairs to call the plummer, and was told they could be at my house "around noon". Umm, excuse me? It's 8am, and I have a wall of water trying to break into my house. Noon does not work. She made some calls, switched some appts, and said a tech would be at the house within the hour. Ok, fine. 9am comes.... no tech. 9:30.... no tech. I call back only to find he's "minutes away". *sigh* Fine. He comes at 9:40, and I trust Darrin to the business of getting everything squared away while I take care of the kids.

Darrin comes upstairs about an hour later, and tells me the repair is going to cost us $250. Not great news, but certainly not as bad as it could have been. The pipes burst behind the wall, and needed to be replaced. I asked him how big of a hole they had to make, and "the whole wall is gone" was his reply. Are you kidding me? Then he says, "I never liked that old vanity anyhow." WHAT? The vanity, too? OMG. I must have looked like one of those cartoon cats, where you see the $ signs rolling through their eyes like symbols on a slot machine. My husband, however, was unphased.

Let me give you a little history.... When we moved into our 100+ year old house, we learned the the southeast corner of the basement is an old cistern that has been closed off. Since day one, he has been asking me to let him tear that basement wall out so he can see what is in the cistern. Why would you want to do that? I'll tell you what's in there. Nastiness. Bugs. Maybe even a dead body. Who the hell cares?! Let it be! But no, he refused. Every six months or so for the last ten years, we've gone through the same discussion. Him wanting to tear the wall out, and me knowing that if he did he'd never be able to repair it himself, and it would just sit, or be one more thing for me to do, or one more unnecessary repair bill for us. So when he came upstairs to tell me they had to break through the wall to get to the pipes, he was almost giddy. Well, I said, you finally got to break through your wall. Congratulations. What did you find behind it?

*pause*

*sad face*

Another wall.

BWA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! The cistern is still cemented off, and the pipes were between the cement and the paneled basement wall. So I said the only thing I could at that moment...

*shrug*

Sorry, Geraldo.

ROTFLMAO!

Once I got Henry down for his nap this afternoon, and had Jack happy in his saucer, I grabbed my camera and took it down to the basement to capture the carnage. As it turns out, my husband is quite the exaggerator. Not only is the ugly vanity still intact (albeit very dirty), but only a small piece of the wall had to be removed. That piece was destroyed, but it is easily fixable once everything dries out.

Here is a picture of the cement that still keeps my husband from the contents of our cistern, our $250 little black pipe, and my ugly bathroom vanity:



I was pleasantly surprised to see that the paneling had been put up right over the cement. I thought there would be plaster under it that would need repairs too, as the opposite wall of the bathroom is plastered. Phew! I lucked out this time. :)

Those were the days...

Pretty much anyone who has talked to me for as much as a minute in the past six months has heard at least part of my sob story about Jack, and how he has stopped sleeping. We have tried everything to get him to nap and sleep better through the night, but nothing seems to be working. I've read every book, taken all of the advice, and he has laughed his cute little baby laugh in the face of it all.

Our pediatrician recently referred us to the sleep clinic at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and we had that appointment last week. After a 90-minute check-up, we were told there were no physical problems with Jack. Although this was a huge relief (we feared Apnea), it was a little disheartening because it meant we still had no answers, and therefore no solutions. The nurse who performed the exam gave us two suggestions. The first was to switch up his bedtime routine so that nursing was not the last thing that happened before sleep. We have tried this for the last week, and if anything it has made the situation worse. We figured it would take time for him to grow accustomed to the new routine, but that doesn't really seem to be working out in the least.

Another suggestion was to give him Melatonin, which is a hormone the body produces when it gets dark to make you drowsy, fall asleep, and stay asleep. Some children do not make enough Melatonin, and need to be supplemented. She suggested giving .5 mg per night, a half hour before bedtime. We've done so for two nights now (had troubles finding it at first), and it hasn't phased him in the least. *sigh*

I've now resorted back to my theory that the thing that keeps him up/wakes him up is intestinal, having to do with his bowel movements (or lack there of). Mylicon doesn't touch it (of course), and the pediatrician tells me there is nothing stronger on the market that is safe for him... well, except for Reglan, but after a little research on that, it doesn't fall into my "safe" category either. Reglan is a motility agent though, so I did a little research on natural motility agents, and the only thing I'm coming up with are prunes. Sooooo, starting today, Jack is on an all prune diet. LOL. Totally kidding. :) But I am going to make it a point to give him at least a serving a day in an effort to get him regular (sometimes he is, sometimes he's not) and see if that helps with the sleep as well.

If you're wondering how I came to this theory, well, I've had it for some time and it was quickly debunked by doctors. But, sometimes you just have to stick with that mama gut feeling and run with it. The two times he woke up last night, I happened to be right by his room, and went in quickly. I could hear him passing gas as he was struggling to stay asleep, but the gas won, and he was up.

The nurse at the clinic did say that he seems to be suffering from "infant insomnia" and that he will grow out of it eventually, which I'm sure is true... it's just this in between time that's difficult.

Lunch

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.

~Abraham Lincoln

Those who are reading this and know me well, know I've always held my friendships in high regard. Although our paths may separate for months or years, I can think of no friend I've ever had that I wouldn't welcome back into my life for an hour, a day, a month, or years. I know some people think this is odd, but it's just who I am, who I have always been, and I have no intention of changing.SO, when I was recently given the opportunity to reconnect with an old friend from high school, I went for it. We hung in the same circle in high school, and then life kind of got in the way and we went our separate ways around 1996. We touched base again in 2000 for a bit, and that was the last I'd heard from him until about a month ago when we reconnected online.

We've chatted off and on for the past month, mostly about how many similarities there are in our lives, between both us and our spouses. I've joked that we're like a walking Lincoln-Kennedy penny (did you have one of those? My grandma saved one for me. :o)). We've also exchanged recipes, and just enjoyed mundane chit chat about diaper rashes and lunatic deer on the rampage. In short, its been fun.

About a week ago, he found out his neice was being baptised in Oshkosh, and he was planning to come up for the celebration with his dad, so we arranged some time to meet for lunch. In keeping with my Pound For Pound challenge, we hit Subway. It was actually kind of funny, because this woman was milling around and we were both saying how we thought we knew her but couldn't place her. We ended up realizing she was the manager.... the same manager that worked there when we would go in high school... Weird.Being the good blogger that I am (HA!), I remembered my point n' shoot, and she was kind enough to take a snapshot for me:

Aaron and his wife Kara are now living just outside of Darrin's hometown. Darrin and I are hoping to get back to the area this summer to see his family, and will hopefully be able to hang out with our new old friends a little at the same time.

Jack in a Basket

I thought I'd share a few pictures I took of Jack the other day. He just turned 9 months old a few days before these were taken. He was being super fussy that night, so after trying everything else I decided to toss him into a laundry basket with a few toys. He was happy in there for a good half hour!

I love that bottom picture. You can tell he'd had enough! His personality is really starting to blossom lately too, which is fun to watch. :o)