From Bean to Sprout

Ok, I have to get this off my chest, I really HATE how acronyms are completely replacing the English language. I was never a fan of the usage of lol. I never, ever use it personally. Whenever I wanted to write that I was laughing, I would actually write “hahaha” and if I found something to me slightly humorous, I’d write “heheh.” I was ready to let the lol thing slide but I feel it started a whole landslide of linguistic shortcuts.

How does this tie into my blog you say? Why am I wasting your time ranting about how I hate the way people write “ROFL” or “LMAO”? Well it does relate to parenting, I swear. Often in the middle of the night, while nursing Freddy, I find myself researching stuff on babies or parenting techniques. I’m often lurking on message boards or forums trying to find answers to such questions as “How do I get my baby to sleep through the night” to “is my baby blinking too much?” I just go on these boards to see that other parents are going through the same thing or that they have the same questions. Anyways, I’ve noticed that on these boards, there’s all these invented acronyms that are topic specific to parenting. Someone will write “My LO refuses to latch on properly” and I’m stuck there at 2 am scratching my head trying to figure out what the hell “LO means”, the first time I read it, I thought “Liaison Officer?” It honestly took me a while to figure out it means “Little one”. Why can’t people just write “My kid” or “My baby”?  Others I’ve seen are “DH” which I figured means “Dear Husband” and then there’s “DD” and “DS” which I’m assuming means “Dearest Daughter” and “Dearest Son” but I’m actually guessing here. Why can’t you just write, husband, daughter, son? Why do people feel the need to code everything on these boards? We know you have a kid if you’re asking parenting questions, why must you make your question vague with all these acronyms?

I find these have significantly increased since I was on leave with Henry. Is it necessary? Why can’t you just spell it all out? It drives me crazy! The only one I actually enjoy using is “WTF” and that’s more because I don’t like swearing in front of Henry, although that took me a while to get used to as well, especially in the car if someone cuts me off, I would often yell out “What the fuck man?” and then realize Henry was in the car and say “Oh shit!” “I mean oh Crap?” “is crap swearing as well?” Damn!” “I mean darn!” so now I say “WTF man?!?!”

Freddy’s already perfected his WTF? face

Yep, Freddy is one month old today. I can’t believe how quickly it’s going. Chris has been back at work for 3 days now and we miss him terribly. In just 3 days I find Freddy has changed so much. He’s always got a semi-grin on his face like if he’s in on some big joke. He’s pretty laid back most of the time, unless he’s suffering from one of his bouts of bad stomach gas. Man those pains are nasty. I keep trying to alleviate the pain for him since it’s so sad watching a baby contort himself in pain and the more he gets worked up, the more pain he seems to suffer. It’s always in the afternoon/evenings as well. I never thought I’d be someone who encourages someone else to fart.

Anyways, back on topic. Freddy’s a pretty good sleeper as well. He’ll usually go down around 9pm then wake up between midnight and 1am and then again around 5am. Henry was up a lot as a baby, often every 90 minutes so I’m knocking on wood that Freddy will stick to what he’s currently doing. He’s also pretty good at napping during the day. Again with Henry, he would do these 5-15 minute cat naps throughout the day which drove me crazy. Freddy’s been sleeping for 2 hours at a time in the morning and often in the afternoon. It gives me a good chance to catch up on sleep as well given that Henry has decided to completely regress in his sleep and wake us up at 4:30-5:00 every morning and that’s not counting the times he cries out at night.

I know I’m basing all this on one month, but I get the feeling Freddy will be my calm kid. He likes to observe. He just started noticing Henry this morning and loved watching him do his antics. So now Henry has a willing audience which could spell trouble for us.

See what I mean, he’s got this gleam in his eyes like he’s either up to mischief or that he knows something funny is about to happen.

He’s quite content just lying there during tummy time, chewing on his hand.

Happy 1 month little brother

Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror…

It’s been a crazy sick week at home. We got a call from daycare on Monday saying Henry had bad diarrhea. We knew he had been off a little on Sunday but didn’t think it was that bad. They told us there were 7 confirmed cases of the flu. Chris went to pick him up and decided to run a few errands at the same time, which in hindsight he realized was a mistake when Henry puked all over himself in the Walmart parking lot. It just kind of went downhill from there. Henry had another poo bomb at home in the backyard and then went down for a 3 hour nap.

After the nap, Henry was pretty lethargic so we decided to watch a movie. We were all sitting quietly when all of a sudden Henry put his hand over his mouth and then puke just started coming out everwhere. Honestly, I thought there would be some kind of announcement that he was going to be sick. He was pretty stoic about the whole thing. It got all over me and of course landed right in the seat cushion crack. We stripped him down, cleaned the sofa, febreezed the crap out of everything and then sat down to watch some more. That’s when Freddy decided to spit up all over me as I was burping him. Of course,that all went down my cleavage and all over his face. By that time, Chris and I had pretty much had it with kids bodily functions.

Later that evening, right before bed, Henry had another poop bomb and it was probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll spare you a description. Once we got Henry to bed, we realized something was off with Freddy. He was all congested and kept choking on mucus, so out came the snot sucker and I spent pretty much all night sucking snot of his nose with that little doohickey and managed to get spit up on a few more times. FUN! Needless to say, sleep didn’t come that easily on Monday night when you listen to your 3 week old struggling to breathe.

So we kept Henry home yesterday and he slept pretty much all day but seemed better, with no poop or vomit (can’t say the same for Freddy) so decided to send him to daycare today. Well we got a call again this afternoon that he had wanted to sleep all day and within a period of 30 minutes had 3 incidents of diarrhea which required a complete wardrobe change. So needless to say, he’s earned another 24 hour ban from daycare.

This is just so frustrating. Chris’ last week of parental leave involved being drenched in snot, crap and puke. I wouldn’t be surprised if  going back to work on Monday is a bit of a relief. I’m hoping Henry will be better by next week when I’m on my own.

The Horror….. The Horror….

Ugh, my head is killing me.

Poor little guy has been like this for the better part of the past 3 days.

I believe I captured on film the exact moment Freddy got sick too. It’s almost like Henry is saying “tag you’re it”

Now I don’t feel so good.

Yesterday, Chris surprised me with our first picnic of the season. He’s been good at keeping me on a “nap” schedule to catch up on my sleeping and yesterday morning while I was taking a nap in the morning, he took the boys to Sobeys and bought a bunch of my favourite picnic foods. We didn’t get a chance to go last summer since we were super busy so this was the first time Henry got to have a picnic since he was 6 months old. He loved it. Freddy, being only 3 weeks old, tolerated it, but I think in a few years time, he’ll be having just as much fun as his big brother was.

Chris had to run back to the car to get the picnic blanket, then it was a race back to the table.

Setting up our delicious meal. Henry even popped a cherry tomato in his mouth, then spit it out when he realized it was a tomato.

Believe it our not, this was the best picture we could get for Henry and I. At least he’s looking kind of in the direction of the camera.

Napping on the picnic table. That will have to change once he starts rolling over.

Finally a good shot!

So after lunch, Henry spent the rest of our time running up and down a hill. There was a giant bouncy castle a few hills over, but this was what he wanted to do.

He got so hot, the hoodie had to come off. That is a pj top he’s wearing, we’re learning to pick our battles.

More napping shots of Freddy. He didn’t do much more.

No matter how big Henry gets, he still loves doing this with his daddy.

Lucky for us, Henry only realized there was water towards the end of our picnic. Had he figured it out earlier, he would have insisted on being dangerously close to the water the entire time.

So it’s been a whole week since I last posted. I’m kind of disappointed in myself about that. I had all these plans of posting daily telling people all about Freddy, making sure I remained as active in the blogging on my second child. Problem is, life has been kind of getting in the way. We’re two weeks in and are still adjusting to having a second little being to take care of. Our days have been melding one into another and it’s been a blur of activity. Freddy is a great baby. He doesn’t cry much, only when he’s hungry. He sleeps a lot as well and seems to be going a little over 4 hours between feedings at night (with the occasional early morning cluster feeding). Like I think he’s averaging being up for about 2 hours a day total. He just loves to sleep. He’s pretty gassy to which hurts him often and makes him spit up more than Henry did, but we can live with that. I bought so probiotic drops for him and hope that will help. I had forgotten how noisy babies are when they sleep. With Henry, every single noise he made I’d jump up and run to the bassinet to make sure he was ok. This time, I roll over and say to myself  “can’t you sleep quietly?”  I think our approach overall is different this time around. A few people have mentioned a lack of tension, one which I carried when Henry was a newborn.

I used to get so stressed hearing Henry cry when he was this age. Now it doesn’t seem so bad compared to the freak out tears of a toddler. Yeah, things haven’t been easy with Henry lately. Especially this past weekend with him being sick. We could handle one kid being up every few hours at night. Having both be up at night, at different times, is tough. Thank god Chris is home for another 2 weeks, we’ve been splitting parenting duties at night. I feed Freddy, he deals with Henry who seems to be regressing with his sleep, up all night crying. Henry’s been a lot more clingy with me lately too. He loves Freddy with all his heart, but I’m certain he’s noticed a bit more of a divide in attention. He wants to be with me all the time. At night, he wants me to read to him and put him down for bed. When I’m nursing, he wants to sit in my lap. If he doesn’t get his way, it’s meltdown city. This morning I was trying to get him ready for daycare and he wanted to go out our back door, not the front, so he lost it and was flailing his hands around and scratched my face right at the corner of my eye. I kept hearing that toddlers have tantrums but I sometimes feel like we’re the only ones going through these ups and downs. Luckily most of my friends with toddlers have confirmed that they’ve all been through this. I swear, the Hulk is modeled after a 2 year old kid not getting his way.

Anywho, all this leads me to the actual topic I wanted to discuss. I think I mentioned this in a previous post while I was pregnant. I had wondered out loud “how do you know you’re done having kids?” At the time I didn’t feel strongly one way or another. If I was honest, I was leaning more towards wanting another child but I think deep down, it was me wanting another kick at the can to have a girl. Now that Freddy is here, I look at him and Henry and feel complete. I love them with all my heart; tantrums, midnight feedings and all. I have everything that I need and want with my boys and to be honest, I don’t know if I have it in me to go through this all again. I’m eagerly looking forward to my boys being a bit older and a bit more self sufficient. As Roger Murtaugh (aka Danny Glover) famously said “I’m too old for this sh*t”… and recently, I mean that literally.

So this is Henry during a better period. He tends to clam up when I pull out my camera during a tantrum. I guess he knows there’s a strong chance it will make it on the blog.

Yeah, I’m pretty adorable aren’t I?

Freddy doing what Freddy does best. ZzzzzZZzzzz….

A few weeks ago, Henry participated in a photo shoot at the museum of civilization. A friend of mine, Marie-Josee runs a business where she makes and sells baby/kid fashion accessories called Miss-Clip. She organized a deal with a professional photographer, Nadine Langlois who for a discounted price, would do a photo shoot of kids modeling Miss-Clip accessories. It was a great shoot. Henry modeled a great red bow tie (which we bought afterwards since he didn’t want to take it off) and a clip that keeps skinny kids pants up (which is great for kids like Henry).

At first Henry was super shy and didn’t really want to participate, but then eventually he shed his shy persona and just killed it. He didn’t want it to end. My kid just loves to ham it up for the camera. Chris and I needed more direction than he did for the few pictures we were in. We just got a CD the other day of Henry’s best shots and they’re excellent! I’d love to post all of them here however it might exceed my space allotment. Rest assured, they’re all great! Oh and Henry insisted of course on modeling his hat for the entire shoot, it’s like his confidence booster.

Hello Everyone,

Well I have a little bit of time on my hands so I thought I would update you more on the past few days.  Saturday and Sunday were very rough on Melina with Freddy being late.  Apparently Monday morning she gave him a pep talk that it was time to come out and it sure did work.  Right before I left for work Melina told me she had had a few contractions but pretty far apart and that I should go to work. About halfway to work she texted me saying she had a few more contractions about 7 to 8 minutes apart but to keep going.  Then as I was practically pulling into the parking lot I got a call saying to come home as she had a couple big ones at 4 minutes apart.  I pulled a u turn and made it home.  When I got home I heard Melina upstairs trying to explain to Henry that she had a boo boo.  I could here Henry repeat “Mama boo boo?”  I told her we should go to the hospital.  Melina argued with me that the animals needed to be fed and Henry hadn’t had breakfast.  I told her to get in the car and I would throw food some food out for the animals and that daycare would feed Henry.  I quickly got Henry dressed and loaded him in the car.  He freaked out big time the whole way there.  I took a minute to cuddle with him before dumping him at daycare.

We arrived at the hospital and got to the childbirth unit.  Melina was only 2 cm dilated so they said we could go home or walk the halls to kick-start labour.  So we walked around the hospital with Melina stopping every 3 minutes or so to grab the wall.  Twice we were asked if we needed a wheelchair.  A little before 10 they checked Melina and she was 5 cm so they admitted her to a birthing room.  Melina hopped in the Jacuzzi tub to ride out contractions while debating when to get an epidural.  She was torn between getting it too early and slowing labour down or too late and not having it take effect.  At around 11 she opted for the epidural.  Now Melina says this ended up being too late and it didn’t take effect at all.  I on the other hand noticed some significant difference in how hard my hands were being squeezed.  Melina’s water still had not been broken so at 11:45 they broke the water.  Then 8 minutes later Freddy shot right out weighing 8lbs and 6 oz.  We recuperated in the birthing room for a bit until they moved us to a semi private room (no one else was in it so it really was private).  Henry came to visit in the afternoon.  He was a bit off at first probably more to his routine being thrown off.  He got really excited though when he saw Freddy got him a gift.  Henry got a Flynn the fire engine from Thomas the tank engine.  Henry then left and soon after a more important visitor arrived, PIZZA.  Melina’s sisters and Tom brought us a pizza. Although we had read an article a few months ago that the Queensway Carleton Hospital was improving its meal plan, that news must not have made it to their catering services. The food was pretty terrible. Thank god for that pizza and the Tim Horton’s in the hospital!

Shortly after visiting hours were over we got upgraded to a private room.  We think it may have been the same room we had with Henry but can’t be sure.  The night seemed to go easier with Freddy.  Still tiring but I think we were both more relaxed this time around.  Freddy took to the boob like a pro (insert multiple jokes here). Freddy was a tad mucus-y, in those first 24 hours he’d choke a bit on milk but we were told it was normal for babies who come out so quickly, there’s no time to express the mucus out in the birth canal.

Tuesday morning there was talk about sending us home that night depending on how the jaundice test went.  Those hopes were soon quashed though as During Freddy’s second exam it was discovered he had a heart murmur (you can all relax it is gone now).  That guaranteed that we were to stick around another day so he could be thoroughly examined the next day.

I actually got to go home this time around.  I grabbed a quick meal and a nice shower while grabbing odds and sods.  I headed back loaded with a bunch of snacks and we were greeted by a few more visitors throughout the day. Micheline and Francois brought Henry again.  This time he warmed up quickly and was fascinated by Freddy.  He wanted to hold him and gave him kisses. I must say, Henry handled the hospital visits like a pro. He didn’t even freak out when it was time to leave. I think it’s because he knew he had a sweet deal going on with his grandparents.  Melina’s grandmother and godmother Monique also dropped by for a visit. The night went pretty well.  There was one stretch of 4 hours between the start of feedings which was nice.  The next morning the pediatrician came by and gave Freddy another going over and all was well.  His murmur was gone and his billyruben count was low so they discharged us.  I think they were eager to get rid of us as the birth unit was filling up by this point.  We made it home by 10am.  We then settled in home, took a nap and went to pick up Henry from daycare.  Henry was excited to see his little brother.  He told him a story with stuffed animals and explained all the different types of crackers we have.  During this I actually got to transfer some beer into a secondary fermentor.  I had started brewing a batch on the weekend.  Then Henry went down to bed and we settled in for the night.  It was a little rough as Freddy kept feeding every 2 hours for a bit but he settle down in the wee hours of the morning.

Some highlights which I didn’t throw in to the appropriate spot.  During labour Melina screamed out “I am never doing this again” I didn’t get it on film but I have witnesses so I think I can officially say we are done with kids.  Once we were in our own room both Melina and I kind of felt like we would rather just go home.  I don’t think we wanted to be cooped up in the hospital and at first it seemed like time was going very slowly. Freddy also earned the nickname “Tomato” while in the hospital. He got so mad when the pediatrician was checking him out that he turned bright red. Melina was a bit worried about how red he got but the doctor said it was fine, so now she thinks it’s adorable.   Also I have found that I feel like I have a crazy burst of energy were I feel like I can do so much but they are intertwined with complete exhaustion. We’re settling into a bit of a routine, tomorrow will be our big test with Henry at home all day. Luckily we have a swimming lesson in the morning so that ought to tire him out a bit for the afternoon.

Hello world! My name is Frederik but you can call me Freddy.

Henry calls Freddy “mon bebe” and “mon Freddy”. I think he believes we just picked him up at a baby store.