Parent Hack 2-for-1

I have had a dilemma plaguing me since Emily was little.

The dilemma is how to retrieve pacifiers that fall on the floor under the crib without doing an extended puppy pose at 3 in the morning.

I solved part of the dilemma by keeping at least 3 pacifiers in a central place in the bedroom so that if one falls, I can just grab another. But what do I do when the supply of back-up binkies are all on the floor?

See? Lots of binkies on the floor. (Please ignore the dust bunnies.)
What to do? What to do?

Hmmm.... I wonder. Wait! I'll be right back!

Yes, these are barbeque tongs.


This still requires that I get down on my hands and knees, but now I don't have to crawl under the crib to get a binky while Lucy screams. And yes, Mike does think I'm a loon. It's OK, he knew how it was before he married me and now he's stuck forever. [insert evil cackle here]

6 month check up

Six months already
getting so big, and so sweet
my sweet baby girl.

Lucy had her 6 month check up today and she is doing really well.
She's a little concerned because she weighs 17 pounds, 4 ounces and is 26.5 inches tall (long? whatever.) That puts her in the 75th percentile for her height and her weight. Her head is 44cm, which is 80th percentile. She's tall and she's smart! :)
The nurses were fighting over who had to give Lucy her shots today. None of them wanted to be the one to make her cry.
This is the picture the studio ordered for their sample book (without the border). Whether they decide to get a gigantic version of it is still up in the air as there are a bunch of changes coming soon and so their sample prints will probably be changing, too.
Mike says Lucy is going to hate this picture when she gets older, because you can see a bunch of her butt crack* and because she looks so incredibly pudgy. I love it. Especially the elbow dimples.

*This reminds me of an Emily story. She has a pair of pants that seem to always give her killer plumber's crack. Mike pointed out one night that he could see Emily's butt crack. Emily kept twisting around, trying to see it herself. So we took a picture and showed it to her. Then she asked to see Daddy's butt crack, so he mooned her. It wasn't until a couple of minutes later that either of us realized that teaching Em about butt cracks was probably not the best parenting decision we'd made...

Nothing new to report

It is freezing cold here. I have been holed up in the house all day.

The swimsuit has more or less been put to rest.

I like the blue flowered suit and Mike expressed the opinion that swimsuits look better in a heap on the floor, so I'm going to wear it and be done with it.

Mom and I went back to the Lands End Inlet on Monday because they started a buy-one, get one free sale on their swimsuits. Mom found a cute polka-dotted one that she liked and got me a navy-blue with light blue trim one for free. Woo!

So now I have 2 suits to wear to Waterbabies.

Other than that, I have nothing exciting to talk about, and even that is pushing the definition of exciting by a lot.

Lucy has her 6-month check up on Friday, so I'll come back and post pictures (the adorable nakey ones I've been raving about for so long!) and give the terribly fascinating details of her checkup. I'm sure you all are just on the edge of your seats with excitement.

What say you, Internet?

I bought a swimsuit Thursday and showed it to Mike. He isn't a terribly big fan of it and well, he said so.

I tried it on for him and he said it looked better on me than it did when I showed it to him the first time.

I'm not so sure.

What do you think?

Is this suit

a) adorable, tropical and perfectly suitable (heh - no pun intended) for taking the girls to Waterbabies at the local rec center

OR

b) unattractive, garish and should only be worn by the local octagenarian?

So, lemme have it. I want to know what you think about my new suit.

Back on the wagon

Lucy and Emily started Waterbabies this morning. My mom and I are taking them every Thursday. What a hoot! The girls really had a good time. Emily had fun going down the froggie slide and Lucy enjoyed chewing on her water toy.

While we were waiting to get in the water, I was sitting with Lucy on my lap.

My God, that child is covered, just covered in eczema.

I knew she was having a breakout on her chest, but WOW. Girlfriend has eczema all over her back, down her arms, on her legs...

I have been somewhat lax in my avoidance of dairy and Lucy is definitely feeling the effects.

But, after seeing all that patchy dry icky-ness all over my sweet girl, I am going to redouble my efforts.

Dairy-free is the way to be!!

PS: Karen D., please email me. I seem to have misplaced your email address.

Whew!

Wow. I am tired. I spent the day at home and my day went something like this:

wake up.
dress Emily.
feed Emily.
Wiggles.
shower.
dress myself.
dress Lucy.
feed Lucy.
feed myself.
clean bathrooms.
brush teeth.
strip Emily's bed.
make Emily's bed.
sort laundry.
do laundry.
clean up kitchen.
check email.
change diaper.
IM Mom.
make lunch.
feed Emily.
feed myself.
feed Lucy.
feed Lucy (cereal).
play.
nap.
work.
nap ends.
work ends.
change diapers.
laundry.
start dinner.
Elmo.
dinner.
feed Lucy.
eat dinner.
clean up dinner.
feed Lucy (cereal). (to be honest, Mike did this.)
play.
read blogs.
Emily tub.
Lucy tub.
bathe Lucy.
Lucy jammies.
feed Lucy.
Lucy bed.
bathe Emily.
Emily jammies.
Emily bed.
laundry.
ashes out.
shake fire.
load fire.
laundry.

Lucy's pediatrican called during all of this and said that the test results (oh yeah - I forgot to mention that the other tests, the first batch, came back negative, but the wonderful Dr.Sara said that if Lucy was still coughing we needed to regroup. She was/is still coughing so we went back to the doctor on Friday. Dr.Sara did two more nasal swabs, one for whooping cough and one for a sinus infection) came back indicating that Lucy has a sinus infection. She's also on Singulair, which seems to be reducing the 3-pack-a-day-smoker's cough that Lucy has had for 2 stinkin' months.

New Baby!!

I am an auntie
now times two; a sweet boy and
YAY! A pretty girl.

My little baby
isn't little anymore.
Waa! Where does time go?

Six months old already
so much fun watching you grow
my sweet sunshine girl.

My sister-in-law had her baby by c-section this morning. I know very few details right now. I know that she is a girl, she has red hair (like her Daddy) and he said she's got more of it than he does (but that's not hard, because he shaves his head). The names they had picked out for a girl were Elinor Mae or Natalie (something - I don't remember if I heard a middle name for that one.) Mike and I are going to go see her this evening.

[Updated to add: Elinor Mae is 8 pounds, 9 ounces and 20.5 inches]

Lucy is 6 months old today. I cannot believe it. She is getting so darn big. She cut 2 teeth this week and is trying so hard to work on crawling so she can play with her big sister.

My mother-in-law pointed out that both of Lucy's names (Lucy Claire) mean light. We didn't do that on purpose, but she is the sunniest baby. She is light personified. Always smiling, always happy, loves to gives hugs and be cuddled. In the middle of the night, she'll cry out and when I go in to give her a pacifier, most times I'll get a happy kick and a big smile.

She loves to play in her exersaucer, and has discovered the joys of eating solid foods. She gets seriously jealous when she sees us eating dinner and we don't share. She reminds me of Jack-Jack from The Incredibles - her face gets all red and she cries. Too funny.

I'll come back to update with baby's vital stats when I get them. Off to get Lucy's 6-month pictures taken.

[Update #2: Lucy's pictures turned out AWESOME!! So good, in fact, they had me sign a release to use them in the studio's sample book and, depending on how the print looks, might put it up on the wall. Yay!!]

Insult to Injury

As though 6(? 8?) weeks of illness weren't bad enough, Monday and Tuesday Lucy's teething kicked itself into high gear, resulting in the arrival of a tooth (her first!) Tuesday morning.

Another came through this morning.

I went out last night and bought pretty much every kind of medical teething pain remedy known to man. Want some Baby Orajel? We've got some. Want some infant Motrin? Got that, too.

I gave Lucy some of the Orajel this morning (4 am, if you want ALL the dirty details) and WOW. She did NOT like that AT ALL. I haven't heard shrieking like that ... well, the closest was probably when she was getting the blood drawn last week. Or when she was born (I don't think I mentioned that. She was pulled from her cozy home in my belly and didn't stop crying for ? 10 minutes. In retrospect, we should have turned on the video camera to catch the pissed-off crying. It was pretty funny.)

Wait. Where did my point go? Oh, yeah, here it is.

Add to the teething infant a monster windstorm that blew through here at 530 and you can understand why I am irritable and tired today.

I hate it when it is really windy. Our house faces west, so we get the brunt of every storm head on. We have a giant picture window in our living room that is original to the house and when it is really windy, I am terrified that it is going to implode under the force. We had wind gusts of 70 mph today, so I'm not whining about a gentle breeze here, honest.

At the peak winds, it was so noisy in our house that if Lucy had been crying, we wouldn't have been able to hear her.

But, we were lucky that the worst damage we sustained was some garbage strewn around our yard and the disappearance of our 3rd recycling bin in a year. Why, oh why do we only get windstorms on Garbage Days?

How I got 15 minutes of my life back

Simple! Let the girl hold her own neb mask. Woo! I was able to feed Lucy her cereal, brush my teeth, take the ashes out, and take 2 letters out the mailbox while Emily did her own neb.

She looks really pitiful here, but she actually is feeling much better. Both girls are cranky today. Emily will dissolve into tears at the slightest provocation (or no provocation at all, really) and Lucy.... wow. Lucy. She's not the happy, smiley baby I am used to having. This one will start crying if you look at her funny. I'm hoping that a good nap will help that situation.

I have to go give Emily her albuterol neb now and then make lunch. I lead such an exciting life...

Christmas Decorations

Please forgive this last Christmas post. I thought I would put up pictures of our decorations before I take them down.

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree. You are ... OK, for a $20 tree. But I am very tired of you dropping your needles all the heck over.

The stockings were hung on the piano with care, in the hopes that Mike's sister would some day come and take the piano away.*

I never know what to do with all the Christmas cards we receive. This year, instead of piling them on the counter, I stuck them to the cellar door. I'm standing in the garage to take this picture. (Katie & Jill, can you see your cards? I just realized they are right next to each other!)

This pretty much represents the entirety of our Christmas decorating. I have a bunch more stuff I could have gotten out, but it just made me tired to think about it.

* We are "storing" Kate's piano for her because she and her husband seem to be incapable of renting an apartment that isn't up a flight of narrow, steep stairs. They were under the impression that we would keep the piano for them until they bought a house, but that wasn't the case, mostly because we know that they will buy a house on the 5th of NEVER. Mike's current plan to evict the piano? Tell Kate to donate it to the church. Whee! Please join me in praying that works. I want my living room back.

An Auspicious Start

2008 is off to a hacking, coughing, wheezing, puking start here at Chez Looney Bin.

Both Emily and Lucy have been sick since ... well, it feels like since the dawn of time, but I think it is really only since Thanksgiving.

I wasn't going to go back to the doctor, since she pretty much told me that all of the coughing was "just winter" and not much, short of April, was going to help them.

But then, this morning, after spending 4 hours in bed with Emily in the night, I crawled back into her bed to snuggle. She climbed up on my chest and laid there working so. incredibly. hard. to breathe. It made me hurt. I took her jammies off and the skin was sucking in around her ribs and throat with every breath (retracting for those of us who deal with asthmatics and RAD kids). Her head was bobbing up and down, too (tugging). I grabbed my stethoscope (a leftover from pharmacy school that is come in veeery handy with Em's twitchy lungs) and sure enough, there was a wheeze when she was breathing. And she was running a fever of 102-something. Again.

Sigh. Crap.

I gave Em a quick Albuterol treatment by nebulizer and listened again. Still tugging, still retracting, wheezing less. Okay.

I took her in to the doctor's office and lo and behold, we weren't scheduled with our regular doctor, but with Dr.Yummy (not his real name. He's very cute, though.)

While we were there, I did a big doctor's office no-no and asked him to take a quick listen to Lucy just to make sure that her lungs continued to be clear.

Except they weren't.

Sigh. Crap.

We went through another round of stump the doctor. Both girls have been on antibiotics at least twice since Thanksgiving, neither has shown much, if any, improvement and I am slowly losing my mind with all the coughing.

Current theory is either RSV or walking pneumonia. Dr.Yummy took a nasal swab from Lucy to culture for RSV and then we had a choice of who to get a blood draw from for the micoplasma (walking pneumonia) titer. Neither was my first choice. I did a quick eeny-meeny-miney-mo and landed on Lucy. Wow. That was NOT fun. Emily's wouldn't have been any better, but yowza. Lucy was an UNHAPPY camper.

We'll get results from all of the tests in "several" days (the quotes are from Dr.Yummy) - I'm going to pester early next week if I don't hear from them.

Tonight, so far, seems to be going better than last night. By this time last night, Emily had already thrown up twice (from all the coughing), and was coughing pretty much incessantly. So far, and please join me in some furious wood-knocking, she is asleep and we haven't heard much, if any, coughing.

It would seem that I am going to have to chain myself to the nebulizer and give Emily 3 Albuterol and 2 Pulmicort treatments a day. The Albuterol-Pulmicort combination takes slightly less than an eon to complete and in theory, I should be doing this for both girls. Geh. Mike brought up an air-hose splitter from his aquarium stuff that I might be able to use so that I could - hee! - multitask the nebulizing. I'll try it tomorrow.

And now, I have 85,000 loads of laundry calling my name.