first months with baby 2 2011

rapunzel, rapunzel… let down your oxygen tubing
14
JUN
2011
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by meaganmoving in Uncategorized

oh snap. it’s been a hot minute since i’ve updated this thing. well… 50,400ish hot minutes to be precisely imprecise. these last 5 weeks have been awesome. i am now the mommy of 1 nugget and 1 nuggita. as i write this, i have the nuggita dining at the milk factory. (it’s CRAZY how much i love bfing and how much easier it is than pumpfest 2010).

let me see… hmmm… whats a been goin’ on? we left the hospital after a full 72 hours. we tried to get c off of her O2 before we left, but her lungs just weren’t ripe enough for that. she is still on 1/32 of a liter (down from 1/16th that we left the hospital with). we stayed in the house for about 3 weeks except for trips to the doctor (which were plentiful). after about 3 weeks of house arrest, i finally decided that c needed to leave the house sometime and that they probably didn’t give us 2 portable oxygen tanks to help me with my weight training exclusively. on our first trip out, we went to the movie. my mom and i saw bridesmaids. i probably would have peed myself if 1. i hadn’t been a gold medal contender in the kegal olympics and 2. holding clara kept me from laughing to hard because she got startled. after the movie we stopped by colorado springs gourmet cupcake shop. the cupcakes were gross and stale and the chick at the counter said “whats wrong with her?” when she realized that c was tethered to a super sweet (and oh so out of fashion) oxygen tank.

**side note: i just remembered seeing a very old lady with a bedazzled O2 tank bag before c was born. i said “im totally going to do that when i get old.” hell, i am doing it now. i smell a joann fabrics and hobby lobby shopping trip. we are fixing to trick her ride**

anyway, i was so flabbergasted that this girl would just straight-up ask “what’s wrong with her?” i mean for jeebus sakes she worked in a cupcake shop… was there a shortage of sugarcoating? doubt it. i stuttered something about the altitude and hoped that she would just pack up my stale-ass cupcakes and we could split. it was at that moment that the lightbulb of “shoulda, woulda, coulda” came on and i realized that i should have said “she is perfect, whats wrong with you?” ever since that day whenever asked “whats wrong with her?” (it’s happened 3 times since) that has been my response. you come and me with rude, you get rude. so there.

ive seen clara without her oxygen tubing a few times and everytime she looks super weird. it’s funny how you just get used to seeing someone a certain way and then they take off their glasses or their oxygen tubing, in our case. i must admit, she is pretty gorgeous. i don’t care what she has hanging off of her face. well, except boogers. i don’t do boogers.

her brother doesn’t care one thing about her until she touches one of his toys and then it’s game oooooonnnnnnnn. i think he finally realized that she isn’t leaving. he is pretty ambivalent about that too, i suppose. since his sister arrived he has had all kinds of visitors and gotten tons of attention. he doesn’t hate that. i have been busy with my boob jewelry, so i haven’t changed many of his diapers but everytime i do i think “why am i changing this giant’s diapers?!?”

in the past 5 weeks original recipe nugget also learned how to parkour himself out of his crib. one day while i was at the grocery store j called and said that the baby was crying in his crib and then he stopped. j thought he’d finally gone to sleep. apparently, what actually happened is that he escaped his crib and was pulling every book off of his bookshelf and assaulting the pages with his teeny tiny weapons of destruction hands. we promptly removed the front of his bed, converting it to a toddler daybed. we had visions of the tiny sleep terrorist walking his crib railings like a tight rope and ddt-ing the night stand (headfirst). the first night in his toddler bed (a sunday… poor jerry) DID NOT go well. in the meantime, things have gotten betterish. we still have to wait for him to be on the verge of comatose before he will lay down and go to sleep. he also combat rolls to the floor during the night. half the time when we peak in (re: look under the door) he is asleep on the floor beside his bed. we go pick him up and put him back where he belongs. oh boiiii. i ordered a toddler bed rail from walmart that will be here tomorrow. it magically attaches to the springs under his mattress. he will still be able to get out, but shouldn’t be able to roll to the floor. we will see.

anyway, its after 8 here and i am an old woman now that must go to sleep early. i’ll write more later. holla.

———–
i think the best way to start this post is with this picture:

i am not thrilled that my son started drinking at 18 months, but i absolutely will not him tolerate drinking before noon on saturday.
this was my first week with the dueling nuggets. days 1 and 2 were fine. big boy was a recovering from the big week so he took 2.5 hour naps in the morning and 2.5 hour naps in the afternoon. thats right 5 of 9 hours that jerry was away, he slept. i gots lots of snuggle time with lil c. (defintely not the lil c from sytycd- my little clara.) i also got all domestic diva up in here. the house was spotless everyday right up until j came home from work and the 4-6 witching hour for my son.

so monday and tuesday were so good that i thought it would be smooth sailing and then wednesday happened. i got a glimpse into the terrible twos and i dont like it. i dont like it one bit. it’s not so much that he was bad as it was that he wouldn’t listen to reason. surprise, surprise a 1.5 year old can’t reason with me. this, i fear, will be increasingly frustrating as his vocabulary continues to expand. i mean, if the kid can say “cow, mooooooo” why can’t he understand that pressing the button that says ‘test’ on the carbon monoxide detector means that it’s going to beep very loudly and scare the pants off of him? (incidentally, it took us 4 screaming/crying tries before this lesson was learned the hard way). he also decided on wednesday to go all mike tyson on me and hit me. oh helllllllssssss to the no. i have never been so mad at a person less than 36″ tall. (and no, jenn arnold has never stirred anger in my heart. how could she? she is so darn cute) anyways, when he swung at me i was too stunned to duck and so he got me square in the eye. then i was like an angry pirate w/ only one functioning eye. i set him down and told him “get out of my sight” he either understood my words or he understood the anger in my voice. he didn’t get a spanking, he didn’t even get a timeout. MOMMY got a timeout. and that was fine. jman got to spend a little QT with himself in his bedroom shortly after. i put him in his room with his toys and went away. he played and then napped. i stewed and then napped. when i woke up all was forgiven. this, however, will not be a trend that we will be continuing. the “naughty spot” is all warmed up and ready for action if he EVER tries that again.

thursday was mostly better, but he was still so tired. thursdays are soccer practice days and this was the first time i was going to be on my own at soccer with j and c. i drove all the way to the soccer field and almost didn’t get out of the car. i knew j was still tired, but figured the show must go on. i strapped c into the carrier in the front, the o2 slung over my back, and j on my hip. we were off. the first 45 minutes were fine. he was his usual happy man self and cheerfully went about kicking the balls and attempting to pull down the coaches shorts. yeah, that’s not embarrassing at all… around the 45 minute mark though he was melting faster than an m and m in your hand. (i don’t care what hersey says… m and ms melt in your hand too, damnit) i have to give the kid some credit though. it was 85 degrees and humid and he did hang on about 10 minutes longer than the rest of them, but you can only listen to so much crying going on around you before you crack under pressure. with about 20 minutes left in the practice, ALL of the kids were flopping about crying, screaming, and running off the field. the coach looked as if he wished the ground would open and swallow him up. i felt pretty similar. im fairly certain that practice ended about 10 minutes early that day. i don’t think a single parent was sorry. i have never seen parents scramble to the car with their kids so quickly. ever seen cockroaches when you turn on the light? now, imagine those same cockroaches high on crack. that, my friends, was us, the parents of the lil kickers.

big j is home with me this weekend. i am hoping the parental reinforcement will do me and my sanity some good. so far this morning j has disappeared into the kitchen to retrieve a beer, banged on the piano, and twirled in place until he got so dizzy that he fell down. i think i am headed to target to get a baby pool. if the weather is going to be 90 and sunny, we are going to take advantage. and by we, i mean me. i will get a suntan. i will get a suntan. i WILL get a suntan.
———–

and God bless eh-mo, amen.
05
JUL
2011
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by meaganmoving in Uncategorized

my son started praying with us lately. in other words, every night when we used to pray before bed or at meals when we would pray over our food he used to be silent (or rifling through the goodies on his plate, or picking his nose, or doing whatever toddlers do. he is a mixed bag) anyway, when his grandparents were here he started saying his prayers too. they go something like this:

“eh-mo, eh-mo, eh-mo, eh-mo. eh-mo, ahhhhhhh eh-mo” (eh-mo = elmo)

i really don’t know what elmo has done to require such emphatic, constant, and vigilant prayer but i am pretty sure he has gotten himself in some deep shit. let’s all take a moment of silence for eh-mo.

*moment of silence*

speaking of moments of silence, the family all packed up into the truck yesterday and headed to greeley, co to stay with my cousin and her husband for the 4th. our whole intention behind the trip was to ensure that we were in town and in position for the 4th of july parade in downtown mayberry greeley. apparently it’s totally cool in greeley (not only cool but encouraged) for people to lay claim to their parade spots weeks before the parade happens. my cousin went down a month or so ago and staked off a little square of land for us for the parade.

we mississippians are typically a bit skeptical that people would honor any kind of stake in the ground situation before a parade. i mean, hell, we have mardi gras parades in mississippi that are so thick with people that you end up miles from where you started and you would swear that you didn’t even pick up a foot. the tide of sweaty, drunk, old rednecks dressed like they got drenched in purple rain and gold leaf just move you right along. anyway, surprisingly when we got to our designated spot the stakes still stood. there was however, a family of folks that had parked their backsides in our spots. the couple next to us (incidentally rednecks, but they were colorado rednecks so i am assuming that they come from a tree that at least has one branch and have a good dental hmo) told us that “those peoples gots to honor that. you jus’ tell ‘em. theys gots to move” we complied because classy redneck or not, we decided that ignoring their advice would get us run off the parade route on this most patriotic of holidays. and we all know that no one and i do mean no one is more patriotic than a redneck. except maybe a drunk redneck in a dollar store american flag t-shirt and that, folks, is precisely what we were dealing with.

anyway, the situation was handled amicably. at least 3 of the 4 people plopped in our section spoke english and the thankfully i only know enough spanish to have caught on that the 1 that didn’t speak english was not pleased. to what degree of not pleased i do not know. i wasn’t too worried about it though because i am pretty sure that our new redneck friends could fashion a shiv from a tree stick and they’d have our back. truthfully though, this little town is so quant and mayberryesque that i really did think “i’m sure the cops would sort this out for us” ha. it’s not like they have better things to do like glittering up their horses hooves or putting glitter weave in their tails. oh wait, damn. that’s exactly what they were doing.

“i lead the pigeons to the flag”

and last but not least, i would like to point out that jerry took the opportunity of us watching the bachelorette tonight to give his 8 week old daughter her first life lessons on dating. yes, yes i know that she doesn’t have control over her eyes or head, or well, any part of her body yet but daddy wanted to make sure she knew exactly how a lady it to behave. here are a few of the gems: 1. never kiss on how first date. 2. all the people on that show are going to get mono. 3. don’t date a douchecanoe.

you are welcome.

——-

this was a loooonnnnnggggg day. it started with me waking up from a horrendous nightmare (i will spare you the details) at 5am to a daughter sleeping in her bassinet with her damn cannula on TOP of her nose instead of in it. i had a picture to show you of her and her cannula, but wordpress decided to bust my balls and have an error on the image page. i guess ill have to try that again later. anyway, after that dreadful nightmare i decided i might ought to just get up for good even though it was 5. little handsy mcdrew tugging at her nasal cannula while i was peacefully slumbering quietly suffering wasn’t really helping with my relaxation. somehow i got clara tucked back into her straight jacket swaddle as was able to go back to sleep for an hour and a half-ish. and that is when i woke up to fire truck sirens in the next room. about 2 seconds after i heard the fire sirens start, a firefighter carrying a small wailing labrador busted through my bedroom door. i turned around to see what was going on to realize that a) it wasn’t a fire truck siren. it was my son losing his damn mind and b) it wasn’t a firefighter busting through my door. it was my husband already exasperated at the wailing coming from the sleep terrorist that he was carrying. and i was hoping that my day would improve from my 5 am wakeup. aw, hellllllssss naw.

the day did not improve. as a matter of a fact, it went rapidly downhill. i glanced into my sons mouth at breakfast and realized that he is getting 4, yes ALL 4 of his canine teeth at once. if you think a teething baby is bad, try a quadruple dose of teething toddler. not only is he in pain and pissed about it, but he is mobile and can make poor tickle me elmo feel his rath. poor tickle me elmo. how much do you think it cost for sutffed animal therapy? im pretty sure i owe it to eh-mo to let him see a therapist to talk it out.

in addition to the teething terrorist (artist formerly known as sleep terrorist) screaming at the top of his lungs a better part of the day, i determined yesterday that sister has a milk allergy. damn you bessie. damn you. i recently uped my iced caramel latte intake as a survival strategy, but in a cruel twist of fate it turns out that uping my milk intake gives my daughter brutal gas. sure, because i am super mature its hilarious when something so loud and startling comes out of something so small the first couple times. after a few rocket blasts i realized that she was in serious pain. also, she started crying hysterically which tipped me off. i stopped my milk intake immediately, but her stomach hasn’t quite recovered from the milk od ive been subjecting her to since sunday. so, she cried. and she cried and she cried. and then she cried some more. (also, at some point today jack beamed her over the head with a large plastic boat and she unleashed the crying beast). so, one guy is crying and one gal is crying. the most awesome part of it all is that they also like to set each other off. one starts crying and the other one joins in the symphony for no other reason than just to give their ma a hard time.

so, like any good mother who is at her wits end, i look to the medicine cabinet for treatments. motrin for the boy, mylicon for the girl. but you can’t stop at one dose. oh, no. no you can’t. you have to keep it coming because you absolutely do NOT want to relapse into the horror that was before the medicine. i stared at the clock all day. i didn’t want to go over the next dose by one single minute for fear that things would start back up again. don’t get me wrong… the crying didn’t stop because of the medicine. we still had a rough day but at least there were brief moments of figurative butterflies and running through fields with my golden flax haired children that made me remember why i decided to be a full-time sahm. besides, today i would have been too embarrassed to let my son go to daycare. at least when i am at home with him i am the only one subjected to his bouts with crazy. all i can say is THANK GOD that we don’t remember teething, or baby gas, or getting bonked over the head with our siblings toys. it’s hard to be a baby.

oh please oh please oh please oh please Lord please let my child’s teeth come in quickly and if i swear to never ever drink milk, eat cheese, eat ice cream (*slight crossing of the fingers behind my back*), or consume any kind of dairy outside rational amounts used for cooking will you please let Clara’s tummy not hurt? oh and world peace. amen.

yeah, here is that pic from earlier. thanks for making it be out of context now wordpress. thanks a lot.
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a little bit of good press…
13
JUL
2011
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by meaganmoving in Uncategorized

alright, I feel like I owe my kids some good press.

awesome new tricks:
my son goes #1 on the potty before bath time every night. after he goes he stands up and screams “I did it! I did it!” and then does his little naked dance. it’s the cutest thing ever! i will get this on video and I will post it. In other news, he is talking up a storm. he can say a couple of 3 word sentences (i.e. I did it!). He is also mastering manners. he says “please” after almost everything which sometimes bleeds into the first word. The latest example: “up-plea” it sounds like uppie when he says it fast.

sister can stand up on her own with just me steadying her under her arms. no, she isn’t pulling up on things nor do I have intentions of entering her in the baby olympics. i guess it’s just cool to me because we had to do a little physical therapy w/ jman to build up his leg strength. baby hamhocks just comes by it natural. she is also smiling all the time now. im so thankful God blessed me with happy babies.

———-

hot.
17
JUL
2011
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by meaganmoving in Uncategorized

you seriously have to have a PhD in computer programming to be able to work this damn thing. (thing = blog setup. thing is the international word for any word that you are searching for but that you cannot find at the time due to extreme cases of mommy brain. i.e. “jerry, can you hand me that thing?” or “i was going to go to that thing and do that thing, but i forgot about that other thing”) but i digress. i was trying to make it so that my domain (whatever the Hell that is) would just be meaganmoving.com instead of meaganmoving.wordpress.com. i lost the whole kit and kaboodle when i tried changing it though. i was really going to be pissed if all my musings were deleted off the face of the planet. how else am i going to embarrass my children when they are grown. jeez. come on now, blogspot, get your shit together. oh wait, this is wordpress. well, wordpress you come on too.

last night my baby guyman fell asleep on his daddy’s shoulder at 5pm. we were all air high fiving and air dapping because we thought he would lay down for a little nap and then we’d be able to watch gnomeo and juliet when he woke up. you are damn right we had an exciting saturday night planned. turns out that homeskillet was plum tuckered because when we laid him down at 5 in just his diaper to sleep, he stayed asleep until 615 this morning. we figured out around 830 or so that he wasn’t going to be waking up until morning. we couldn’t decide what to do with putting him in pajamas. do we risk waking him at 830 to put him in jammers and have him be up until midnight or just let him sleep in his diaper and not turn on the air conditioner. like any lazy responsible parent, we opted to just leave the sleeping baby lie. NEVER wake a sleeping baby, not even when he is in a 4 hour old diaper and not even when he donts gots no clothes on neither.

jerry and i went to bed at 10 or so and our thermostat read 81. yes, 81 in the house. as i was laying there trying not to pass out from dehydration from my sweating i said “it’s so hot it reminds me of buckner” (buckner= camp buckner which is where cadet field training takes place. this is what we do after our freshman year at west point. in other words, if they didn’t make us miserable enough to be in full-on depression mode by the end of the first year, they want to kick off our second year with a bang [literally… a lot of bangs]). now i have most of my west point memories pushed waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy down into the darkest corners of my soul, but i got laughing hysterically last night thinking about how effin’ hot it was out at buckner that year and the shear ridiculousness of it all.

first of all: we were separated out by companies. each company had a section of land in the greater buckner area where they had bays for each of the 4 platoons. they guys from the platoon got 7/8ths of the bay and the girls got the other 1/8th. obviously, these measurements are imprecise. just go with it. there was a door separating the two and each side had our own bathrooms. that bathroom just so happened to be my bunkmate. literally, i was like a yardsticks length from the toilets. everytime someone went to the bathroom in the middle of the night i nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of the toilet flushing (which was damn near directly in my ear). it’s not a wonder to me now why i REFUSE to flush the toilet in the middle of the night. jerry won’t do it either for fear that ill fashion my toenail into a shiv and give it to him good. no jury would convict me.

my sheer proximity to bathroom germs was the least of my problems. i told jerry last night “i swear to God that’s the hottest i have ever been” jerry was doing his initial training that summer and he told me last night “it was the hottest summer on record”. nooooowwww, jerry doesn’t have a habit of lying, but “beast war story-wise” having the hottest summer on record would propel your badassness. just saying. anyway, because we slept next to the boys side of the bay, it was a military camp situation for chrissakes, and victoria’s secret doesn’t exactly have pop-up shops in the middle of the woods–our night attire was our physical training clothes. that doesn’t sound so bad except for that it was so hot i would have preferred to sleep in nothing but my sass mouth and what God gave me. we have established that one side of my bunk bed was the bathroom. the other side was a big metal locker. at night, i would get so hot i would try to flatten as much of my body against the metal locker as possible. i am sure i looked like some strung out tree frog. and can you imagine the site the bathroom goers saw when they were headed to use the facilities? seriously, ridiculous.

what you don’t know is they have something called the “million dollar minute” during our training where they basically shoot every damn big gun they can get their hands on. it’s a display of military chest beating in its purest form. oh wait, did i mention that they divide the some odd 1000 of us in half and do it twice!?! you mean to tell me that they spend approximately 2 million dollars in 2 minutes and these aholes can’t make it happen with some window air units? JUST SAYIN.

in other news, we did a little swimming today. my son kicked it off with a swimming party in the kitchen this morning around 7 am. he is obsessed (like, we might be having to get him on my strange addiction) with putting his hands or feet or whatever he can manage into the dogs water bowl. this morning he stomped his foot into the bowl and flung the entire contents on the floor. i was pa-pa-pa-pissed. before jerry could make it around the corner to put this fool in timeout he flopped himself onto the floor and started doing the breaststroke. yes, the breaststroke right in the middle of my kitchen. i didn’t want to laugh, so i turned around and just about bit a hole in my lip. he breaststroked all over the kitchen. jerry tried not to laugh too, but it was genuinely hilarious. we finally gave up and just decided to capture it on every form of media possible. see video: just kidding. wordpress is bustin’ my humps again. i’ll edit it in later.

after he breaststroked all over my kitchen, we promised him we would let him swim later this afternoon. and we did.

———

call me crazy. no really. go ahead and call me crazy. this is the one time it’s a-ok and I won’t go all mississippi ghetto on you or start a fued the likes of which the hatfield and mccoys could have never seen coming.

why crazy? there have been many days during my life since clara arrived that I thought “I could totally handle 3″. i am by no means done being preggo and our family is not complete (God willing), but I had planned on not even starting to attempt number 3 until after my 30th birthday. I turn 28 in 1.5 wks for reference. I just love being a mommy so much that I had *almost* convinced myself that we should try a little sooner…and then today happened.

clara is still on o2 and I’d like her off asap. it’s not that we aren’t used to it or that she is suffering in anyway. personally, id just like to put her in a baby carrier and keep her with me all day. as it stands now, she is a gold-medal contender in the baby swing olympics as she has had plenty of pratice. her doc would not sign off on another o2 test until he saw her and he had exactly 1 set of back to back appointment slots in july. (c 2 month, j 18 month). the available time slots just so happened to be RIGHT SMACK IN THE MIDDLE of naptime. Lord help me. knowing full well that things could go downhill real fast, I just made the appointment and hoped for the best. I hardly slept last night for worrying about the tantrums (Re: explosions) that would make icelands volcanos look namby pamby. me and the big JC have been extra close today because I prayed and prayed that all would go smoothly and I would have to handcuff my child to any discount office furniture to get him to cooperate.

it all started out really well. both the kids were dressed cute and I had a genius idea (*pat on back*) to ask Jack to help me push the stroller. um, how effin adorable was I with my matching kids and my toeheaded son pushing his bowheaded sister in her stroller? I was feeling good. J even said “up-plea” (up please) to me while I was filling out papers. I picked him up and he flirted with the receptionist and I was high on the hog. when I was done we walked into the waiting area and from thin air appeared a little girl (about 8 years old) named grace who took a liking to my most precious and well-behaved son. he was so adorable I couldn’t stand it. he was well-mannered and respectfully and I was thinking “I got this” when the nurse called us back. this IS a cautionary tale: don’t ever for one second get cocky about your parenting. emotional karma will sneak around a corner and kick you straight in the junk before you know what hit you. and that’s exactly what happened.

I don’t know if he could smell the other childrens’ fear or if I was sweating pridefulness, but the minute we stepped into the exam room, my child lost his damn mind. the nurse mercifully helped me undress j so I could concentrate on c. we had to practically drag him caveman style to the nurses station to get him weighed. sometimes I swear he can read. without bothering a single other button he kept pushing “off” on the scale and laughing. after the 3rd attempt, I held his hands and this fool flung himself backwards at the velocity akin to space mountain at Disney. mr. rico suave from before was thrashing about clad in just a diaper and screaming bloody murder. WTF? I’m sure my face was as red as a tomato and even though he was the one in a diaper, i was the one who was caught pants down. the whole tantrum probably lasted maybe 10 seconds, but I will swear to it that in that ten seconds they had enough time to turn up the heat and for me to get pit-stains.

I won’t go into the rest of his bad behavior bc at least the rest of it was behind closed doors. the FIRST thing I did when I got home though was make a massage appointment if that’s any indication of the expertise with which my son misbehaved.

my massage started at 645. it had 3 stages: stage one (aka the stage where I thought the lady was going to snap my clavical like a wishbone), stage 2 (aka the stage in which I got so relaxed I’m pretty sure I drooled on the chicks foot) and stage 3 (aka the stage where I really had to poot but didn’t want to poot in the closed up room so I laid there and clenched my butt cheeks really tight for the last half hour). remind me not to scarf down my dinner before a massage. that’ll really ruin the last half. I probably should have just let it rip and left a bigger tip.

and I’ll leave you with my favorite quote from the appt. the doc said “she’s perfect. she has no neck, but really she is perfect”. sad, but true

**edit: i feel like my neck is bruised ALL over today. that lady worked me over good. also, clara gets to do her o2 trial. crossing my fingers and toes**

——

im blogging so i wont be binging
21
JUL
2011
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by meaganmoving in Uncategorized

i make no qualms about the fact that i am a stress eater. i have been really trying to get a grip on my stress eating since i have had clara. mostly because i want to be a good example for her when she grows up. i don’t want her to see her mom binging every time the going gets tough. tonight is pretty tough. i would rank it easily in the top 5 most stressful days (or nights) of my life.

tonight we are doing clara’s oxygen trial for a second time. the first time we did the trial she was under 88% O2 saturation for more than 30% of the night. no beuno. baby’s under 6 months of age typically do this thing called “periodic breathing” basically, they take a big deep breath to get a lot of good oxygen in their lungs after they have had a drop in oxygen. last time that is what got us. i can tell by looking at the spo2 monitor that she is doing it tonight too. last time she would drop down into the low 70s when she was doing the periodic breathing. tonight (so far) we have only had a handful of times that she got to the low 80s, but mostly her sats are going from 96 to 88/87 when this happens. i hope that this trend continues. we are only 1 hour into the trial. 5 to go. i haven’t the foggiest what i am going to do to keep myself busy that doesn’t involve eating the rest of my caramel cake, but i’ll give it my best.

the last time we did the trial i wasn’t in full-on basketcase mode because i didn’t really know what to expect. i just stared at her for 8 hours and watched the numbers on that little machine jump around all over the place. jerry took the machine back to the O2 place the very next morning so that they could download the results and get them to my doctor. the doctor called at about 430 that day to tell us that clara didn’t do well. i am pretty sure at that exact moment someone reached into my chest and ripped out my heart. i mean it’s not like she was any worse off than she was when we started, but i wanted her to be all better. i dont exactly know how i managed to put a magical time frame on her wellness, but in my head that was time enough. you just want so much for your kids to be “healthy” and although she is healthy, i want her to be able to be tube free like a normal kid.

admittedly, i get a little jealous and frustrated when i see people who have kids straight away who get to come to the room with them after the birth, get to come home with their parents, and don’t have to get a nicu stay. i am 2 for 2 on nicu stays. i often times wonder what is wrong with me that i have had 2 kids and both required nicu stays. this gorgeous little cutie even upped the anty because she came home with oxygen. i know that she won’t go to kindergarten with her oxygen and that she will have to get it off sometime, but right now it just feels like its going to be forever. **she dipped into the high 70s one time (77 to be exact) and i nearly burst into tears just now**

i am not putting her through a whole night of catch up breathing if she starts dipping into the low 80s and high 70s often. i’ll just put her O2 back on and turn the monitor off. she deserves to be able to get a peaceful nights sleep without having to catch-up breath all night long. to me she is perfect, i just wish her lungs would get the memo.

i really don’t know what else to say. i am choking back tears. at about this mark last time is when she really got into a deep sleep and the periodic breathing became really pronounced and her numbers got back. it appears as though history is repeating itself. i’ll be sure to keep everyone posted.

i need to go padlock the fridge. *sigh*

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i keep trying to write but my girl is giving me binkie shout-outs every 30 seconds, so i keep having to erase what i have written and start over because my writing looks like an incoherent stream of bad autocorrects.

well, let me see… what has happened since we last spoke? oh yes, thats right! my boob jewelry is down one piece of jewelry of her own.

i’ve got no chin, but i’ve got no cannula either! boo-yah!

hooray for being off oxygen. i am thankful that she is off for a LOT of reasons and the fact that i won’t have to stress my way through any more overnight studies is definetly one of them. holy crap. seriously, that is mind numbingly stressful. she got hooked up to a pulse oximeter and it had little red numbers that jumped around to tell what her pulse oxygen level was. i would try not to look, but i pretty much just stayed fixated on the numbers all night. like seriously, crazy person fixated. anytime the number dropped below 88, my heart would stop dead in my chest. i think i was cumulatively on more hours holding my breath that night than the entirety of plebe swimming. bob and travel. bob and travel.

anyway, that whole ordeal is thankfully over and sister is tether free. tether free is the way to be. there is only one problem. i CANNOT stop looking up her nose. i literally haven’t been able to look up her nose from the minute she was born. now i can and it’s all i do. its hair free and rather unremarkable, but its fascinating all the same. i am so strange.

so yesterday i was feeding clara and texting at the same time. dangerous, i know. especially for someone who can’t walk and chew gum simultaneously. clara got all chuck norris on me and kicked my iphone into my glass of iced coffee. i’m still a little fuzzy on the details of how this happened, but all i know is my iphone took a little swim. at first i thought it was going to be all good and then i realized when my mom called that i couldn’t hear a damn thing. a phone without the ability to talk is kinda useless, so yesterday i had to get a new one. i wasn’t terribly disappointed because i had been eyeing the iphone 4 and my phone was due for an upgrade, so i got the upgrade price. i guess i could have put it in a bag of rice for a couple of days to see if it would pull the moisture out, but that would involve being without it for a few. yeah, not going to happen. im addicted and i admit it. i had to sync it to my computer when i got home and i was quickly reminded why i hate syncing my iphone. it took me 1.5 hours just to download the updated software. say whhhhaaaaaaatttt? i had just bought my phone 1 hour before and my software wasn’t the most up-to-date? i can tell you with certainty that this is the first and last time i will ever be updating my software for this phone. i also had to transfer my pictures. 5300 pictures, 3 hours, and 1 dinner prep, consumption, and clean up later i had all 5300 pics on my new phone. i am sufficiently armed to bore the shit out of whoever asks about my children.

so yeah, the iphone thing took up most of the day. we also went to lunch yesterday for what i am pretty sure will be the last time until both of my kids are 5. by then though i plan on having 2 more who are about the same age as these two though, so i guess i’ll get to really be surprised what restaurant food tastes like again when these two are old enough to go to college. the good news? i am turning into one hell of a martha stewart. i am really quite surprised at the amount of food out there that is rip-offable. the other week i made chicken and dumplings that were JUST like cracker barrel. only they were better because there was no threat of my son throwing cornbread at the table next to us and somehow that just makes a meal more enjoyable, you know?

today i suffered from another migraine. i had never had a migraine before and frankly thought that people were being a little wimpy when they said they were laid up from a migraine. …and then God shook me really hard until my teeth were rattling around in my head. no really, i feel like i was shaken really really hard. it feels like when you were a kid and you are on the zipper at the fair and some drunk carnie pulls the brake too abruptly. like, you are already sick to your stomach from all the twirling and then your brains get scrambled by your head slamming back on the cage. it’s really quite dreadful. it extra sucks because you can’t just walk it off or be distracted by the intoxicating smell of funnel cake. these migraines are legite and i’d really be happy never to have another one. it’s especially a bummer because when i am having a migraine my eyesight goes really fuzzy. it’s like being drunk, but without the fun of the buzz and plus nauseating pain. what bullshit. so today, if i ever silently made fun of you and your migraines… i am sorry. karma is.a.bitch.

headed to bed now to read my book. my friend told me about janet evanovich’s stephanie plum series. i am on book 3. i set a goal for myself on january 1 to read 6 books for pleasure this year. i finished my 6th book last night. 4 months to go and i am halfway through book 7. yay me!

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its my birf-day in 1.5 hours. I usually get real fired up over birthdays, but I already got my present of 1 very awesome kuerig coffee maker. amazing! one of the cool things about my birthday is that i share it with a couple of friends. I also share my birthday with a soon to be 28 year old who was born weighing in at a whopping 16 lbs and some change. in addition to being of gut busting proportions, this baby sumo wrestler was born in the room w/o a doctor. yes, this small toddler was delivered by nurses. I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but I’m fairly certain this ladies blood curdling screams has something to do with the fact that I am an only child.

speaking of children, my little j has started an interesting habit. for all intents and purposes of explaining his behavior we will call it a “war cry”. this child is all little boy and sometimes he gets a determined look on his face and goes charging off to do destruction or to just be naughty in general. now, I am pretty sure I’ve got jackenese figured out, but every now and again he slips in a word that I *think* sounds like something but it’s not even in the ballpark. Lord help me, I hope that’s what we are dealing with here. well, when j goes charging off to naughty-town he screams his “war cry” which just so happens to be a very shrill noise that sounds an awful lot like “tittttyyyyy!”. now, I’m not denying that the Army taught me some colorful language, but I can tell you with the utmost confidence I’ve never said titty in front of my son. that word makes me cringe…so don’t try pinning this on me. besides that word has 5 letters, not 4. also, if you know saint Jerry, my husband, you’d know jack didn’t go hearing that word from him either. I do not know WHERE he heard it or if it’s even what he is saying. I do know that it’s just a little funny and it does make one heck of an expletive. go ahead, the next time you stub your toe or lock yourself out of the house, just scream tiiittttyyy! you’ll be laughing so hard you’ll forget what got you to sayin’ it in the first place.
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Jesus. God. help me.
03
AUG
2011
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by meaganmoving in Uncategorized

after yesterday I was prayerful that today would go better. I don’t even want to get into yesterday. I have TTSD (Terrorist Toddler Stress Disorder). let’s just say that I sent a few smoke signals up yesterday that today would be better.

this morning was pretty good. Clara got over whatever drama it was yesterday that was making her need to be dining at the breastaurant nonstop. the weather was nice and jack kept saying “oupsite” (outside), so I put everyone in their swim diapers and out we went.

I really have no idea what swim diapers are good for because 5 minutes into our outside adventures, Jack had a very wet thong and Clara sharted and poop went running all down her legs and onto her chair. since we were at the baby pool, I stripped her down and dipped her butt-neked into the baby pool. I wiped her off and the cold water shock helped her remember how hungry she was. I couldn’t very well leave my 19 month old playing alone in the pool outside while I went inside. (don’t even tell me that I could bring him inside too bc that would have started world war drew). so, I did what any person desperate to have a good day would do… I picked up my naked baby, pulled down my tanktop and fed her. I have no privacy fence either. these are desperate times.

after swimming, j napped and c ate for 3 straight hours. in the meantime, I was phone accosted by a terd telemarketer. at one point he said “you aren’t going to hang up on me are you? I didn’t peg you as the rude type.”. I might not of been the rude type before but that sure turned me into one.

jack woke up in prime form from his nap. I thought babies were the ones who were supposed to scream non-stop. I have a 19 month old who obviously has one very loud and pissed off demon living in his vocal cords.

events of this afternoon: he told me he was hungry. I took him to the fridge and let him pick his food. he picked rice. I gave him some and he picked up his bowl and placed it on his head like a hat and then started screaming a shrill window bursting scream. (he did continue eating it though. he just started picking the rice out of his hair like monkeys do lice. keepin’ it classy) next, he asked me for a sip of water and poured a just opened bottle of water out on the couch. then, he walked to the bookcase and pulled off every single book. I looked up from feeding Clara when I heard pages of books being ripped. is there a destruction stage before the terrible twos? this is either a stage or I’m going to have to keep lighters and scissors hidden from him until he goes off to college. he also tried to use his sister as his step ladder today. I caught him before he got moving to good on that one. it’s like I can see his little naughty wheels turning under that thick skull of his. right now he is jumping on the couch for the millionth time today. I continually tell him he will hurt himself and he doesn’t listen. I’m sure it’s a metric shitton of fun, but I’d really rather not have to deal w/ a full-body cast.

please tell me that this is just a boy thing and that I didn’t sign up for this twice. Jesus. God. please help me!

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