The Chemist's Chronicles: 2015

I'm still plugging away, plodding very slowly actually, at recapping the past 15 months. It takes me weeks to build up the motivation, then 10 minutes to throw together the post.

Basically, June was quite similar to May. We were tired zombies but BB was a cute cute cutie!! If I had not been so dang sick from the mastitis, and so incredibly tired-hemorrhaging is a beast to recover from-things would have been perfect! Yes, it's like I just can't resist throwing in a plea for sympathy. I'll probably do that up to about the year posts and then I'll get over it :) Even with my health problems things were pretty amazing with out little BB. Owen was just a few months into working at Qzzr so his work schedule was crazy but BB and I would go on walks over at the parkway in the morning before it got too hot (so like crack of dawn) and at Wheeler Farm in the afternoon. I have to laugh because I would walk for about an hour, and the distance I would go I can now easily walk in like 10-15 minutes. Yikes, recovery is rough. By about the end of June BB started getting on a good schedule and we had a good routine. I think BB slept about 18 hours a day and I might have been up there pretty close to that. I'm out visiting Lauren and baby Charlie right now (post soon to come) and it's so funny to see how Charlie makes a little peep and it freaks her out-I was so totally like that. BB never cried and if he even fussed it was like the world was coming to an end I would get so worked up. For the month of June BB was still sleeping in our room, getting up about twice a night, napping great during the day, we discovered the amazing swing-that is the best investment you can make, and ran the vacuum for hours at a time :) I don't know if I mention this in the past post but BB for like the first month would peep out of all of his diapers (bc his idiot parents did not tighten them enough). So we were changing him into different pj gowns like 5 times a day. If he ever even got a drop of spit up on his shirt (he was not a spitty baby much) we also changed his clothes. My older sisters would just look at me in disbelief and just say, just wait a few months, you are not going to change over that amount of spit up then. There were a few terrible explosions (one on the green couch on a towel comes to mind) but my neighbor introduced me to oxiclean and all was well. Today Charlie had an explosion and now there is a mass washing of bedding going on-we had our share of those. I suppose we had very clean sheets :)

BB's nursery. Thanks to Fred and Kristy for the wallpaper! :) Scraping all the texture off those walls really paid off. :)

I so loved the Kissy Kissy outfits, they are soooo soft :)

We were such tired zombies. In fact, I barely even remember the first several months of BB's life!

I'm pretty sure this was the day BB met Shirley, Johnna, and Mckenzie. As previously mentioned, that was the first shower I took while home alone with the beebster bc he spit up all over me :)

This was the party that Elissa told me about burping BB :), love this outfit

The day BB met Pud. He was sleeping with his arms out like this for a long time :)

BB wore these pjs from Tina B. forever bc I loved them so much! Eventually they turned little shorts. This blanket is from Elissa's mom's store.

BB and Gideon :) I think Gideon was about two weeks old. These two are 6 weeks apart and, naturally, will be best friends for life. :) BB also loves Jamo-kneeling above-he calls him Ben Ben. :)

Tiny baby owl hat from Elissa :)

This is prob the first pic (one of only a few for the first several months) of me and BB, I should have taken more!

One of my first outings with BB was to babysit these guys for like an hour. He was prob 6-7 weeksish. I was so overwhelmed trying to feed him that I did not see Xanadoo writing all over Erika's checkbooks :)

I love tub photos :)

Loved this onesie from Katelin-she helped host a nautical baby shower.

He has had the most amazing cowlick from the day he was born.

I did not realize (I'm writing this in Aug 2015) that we started TV (see Ipad in the background) sooooo early!!!! Aaaaahhhhh, BB is doomed!!!!!!!!!!!! We are loser parents sometimes. :) He used to like nursery rhymes on youtube during tummy time. This is also his "once, when I was a little girl" (quote from O's grandpa) dress. I always laugh that he had this purple sleeping gown-it was actually for boys I'll have you know. It was super soft material so he wore it all the time. Plus, I love those gowns, so easy to change them.

Oh my word he's such a jolly baby!!!

Prob my first (and only) selfie. This was BB's first time looking in the mirror. He loved it, but ever since he has had very little interest in mirrors. (I thought babies loved them?). I suppose he is too busy to be vain. :) (It's hard to write comments without my emojis these days, this should have a smile with the tears coming out).
PS this has become my uniform. This summer I even have a tan line where my exercise pants end. My sisters and I have been laughing about it all summer-the terrible uniform of my black pirate t shirt and pants, but seriously, I need to spruce it up. If I'm going to get such great use out of it I should step it up and go to lulu lemon!

BB loves to be outside. I used to sit in the porch with him outside when he was fussy and he just loved looking at the trees. When O would come home from work sometimes we would sit outside and eat dinner (on the front porch, weird of us but the back yard is tooooo sunny, I have umbrellas this year though) and it was just quite theraputic for us tired zombies. I would look around the neighborhood which looked just the way it had before I had BB and think how crazy that everyone was just living their normal life and this wild thing-having a baby-had happened to us. It was quite comforting to think that one day you feel totally normal about it all :)

Trying on his blessing outfit-have you ever seen anything so adorable!?!?!? Erika was holding him and he promptly burst into the biggest crocodile tears after I took this-I have no idea why, but its funny because he has this thing about crying really dramatically whenever Erika is around. :)

We went to church! I thought I better get back to the primary piano. I got sick again with mastitis though and other than this week, the blessing week, and one or two other weeks BB did not go back for a long time-well, he started going the third hour to YM with O. We would rotate who stayed home the first hour, then O would stay home the second hour, then take him to YM. Actually, I think last Sunday was his first time going to the three hour block after this (that would be Aug 2015)!

Tummy Time! We seriously lived on my bed, good thing its at least a king, for the first 6 months of BB's life. We hadn't had the main floor painted, did not have furniture on the main floor (other than the kitchen table and the green loveseat), and, the basement has yet to be redone. It was a lovely room to hang out in but I'm sure loving the living room these days :) glad we got that all finished!

Loved this outfit!! I got this for him at our Girls Vegas Trip before he was born :)

Benny is here! I started this post when Benny was born and just wrote a few notes each week. Now, 15 months later, I'm trying to get back into blogging so I can organize all of BB's photos. So I'm now going to very roughly recap months 0-15.

Born: May 2, 6 pm ish

For several weeks after coming home I was sooooo upset that I (a) had not taken many pictures in the hospital (though fortunately other people took a few, which proves that people came to see me even if I was sailing so smoothly on pain killers I can hardly remember), (b) did not straight away put up a picture and an announcement on facebook, and (c) I did not ever get to go to the hospital cafeteria, order pizza, or get a celebratory Dr P. or D.C. Sadness (a) is actually real, sadness (b) is very much ridiculous (don't worry, we eventually put up an announcement on facebook :) ), and sadness (c) demonstrates that I was quite extraordinarily obtuse going into this whole thing.

So, onto fabulous BB!
Sunday evening: we arrived home. We could not get Benny to eat (all he wanted to do was sleep) and we were petrified!!!! We ran around like crazy people all night long, called the doctor at about 3 a.m. (he told us to.... give him a bottle :). That never occurred to us! Also, I have no idea why it did not occur to me to call Liz who was no doubt home baking cupcakes or something wild, night owl that she is. Why though does the hospital make you feel like giving a baby a bottle will ruin them for breastfeeding forever? All in all, worst experience yet has got to be the first evening home-killer scary!

Monday morning: we race to the pediatrician. Dr F. thinks O and I are the most high strung parents in the world and tells us to take a nap. :) At least we got slurpees, a breast pump, and wingers sticky chicken finger salad on the way home. Benny slept all day and my pain killers were so effective I thought perhaps this was all going to be fine. hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Monday afternoon: Elissa came over with encouragement and helpful tips on breastfeeding. I was all jazzed and ready to go, but quickly became panic-stricken when things went downhill that night. We returned to the bottle. (Should have stuck with that bottle. There's always next time I suppose.)

Tuesday: We were loving those tiny bottles :) However, we decided to once again try the breastfeeding thing. Amazingly enough, my neighbor (did not know her super well at the time) texts to ask how things are going and lets me know she is a lactation specialist. We enlisted her help immediately and would never have gotten back on track without it! (though now looking back perhaps I would have been better off staying off track...) She came over several times over the next two weeks to help us out. (people-on the internet just kept saying, if you are having problems breastfeeding, don't give up, just keep trying! This is soooooo not helpful)

After about two weeks I looked like an 80 year old ex-playboy bunny (I had this super saggy stomach and the most ginormous bosom imaginable). It would have been hilarious had it not been so (a) incredibly painful, (b) awful looking (dressing a large chest "modestly" = uniboob), and (c) downright depressing. I'm going to need some serious plastic surgery to repair me to a normal looking human. Now, 15 months later and post breastfeeding, I can barely contain the skin that hangs down to my belly button. My sisters laughed when I told them swimwear is simply indecent on me these days. Jokes on them as two of them have just had kids. In short, I do not relate to those people who post all these articles about how amazing and proud people are of their real post baby bodies. One eyebrow goes up and the other goes down when I see those articles.

Week 1-2: At first I was holding BB at night while he slept. Consequently I got rather little sleep myself. Then I had my first taste of mastitis on Mother's day (about a week I think) (I'm sure I'll do an entire post on poor me and mastitis). We also tried to put BB to bed in a pink little bassinet we borrowed from Boo (O felt awfully bad for BB in that pink little thing). At about week 2 BB started sleeping in a bouncy/wiggle chair in between O and me in bed (good thing we have king bed, still very uncomfortable though!). At about week 6-7 we busted out the swing (should have started with that!). He loved the swing and slept there (we just turned on white noise and it would take 2-5 minutes to fall asleep) until about months 3.5. By then he started getting tall so we moved to the pack and play in our room. For about the first 4 months BB slept in our room and we kept the bathroom light on so we could just peek over at him and make sure he was OK all night long. Looking back, I'm not surprised we were (and still are) such exhausted zombies. :) Week 2-7 BB woke up about 2:30 am and 6 am. He would sleep one long 6 hourish stretch at night starting at about 8 or 9 pm. Then he would eat about every 3 hours during the day. At month 2ish the pediatrician told us to just do a cry it out. It took one night, BB cried for about an hour (I sat in the bathroom and let the water run I was so distraught!) and after that slept great. However, with the constant mastitis I started having to get him up to eat at night. At month 6 I stopped breastfeeding and we did the cry it out for a night again. We then had a few weeks of good sleeping on BB's part. Then were hit with the flu and nonstop colds/ear infections/teething/who knows what else for months 7-10 and BB generally got up once a night. :( (at about a year we did the cry it out again, fortunately it only ever takes one night of about 1-2 hours of off and on crying, and BB has been sleeping through the night since ever since. He goes to bed at 6:30 and gets up at 6:30-rather hellaciously early. Lets just say no one calls me angel of the morning.)

Back to week 2:
We got two week pics and I could not even stand up for more than 15 minutes at a time during the session. O was on his phone with some work thing and the photographer had to keep moving BB bc I had collapsed in the corner. I'm sure he thought we were weirdos.

At this point I could not think of any songs to sing BB except for twinkle twinkle little star, She'll be coming round the mountain (I read a funny article about how dads don't help much in the labor and delivery stage except sitting around singing that song so it was stuck in my mind), and then all sorts of cowboy sort of songs, like someone's in the kitchen with Dina, I've been working on the railroad, etc. Once I heard O singing the ABCs to him and I thought, "thats a goodie" and added that to the repetoire, along with Baa Baa black sheep (the song we always sing when he goes to bed). Finally, BB started watching youtube nursery rhymes at a few months old and I learned all the normal songs (albeit with a few grammer errors and an accent) to sing.

I wrote a quick note to myself that I love the newborn stage!! I must have been on drugs. :) I do however feel sad that I missed BB's first couple of weeks when he was soooo teeny tiny and sleepy. I barely remember them. I was so exhausted from hemorrhaging I guess. I also wrote that when he sleeps I miss him and want to pick him up and hold him up. I still feel that way. :) My tiny tyrant. :)

Week 3-mastitis again. I have no emojis on my computer to express the terribleness of mastitis so this will have to sufice. :(

Memorial Day: First smile. He was wearing a onesie with a little fish sewn on it (from Lauren and Theresa Dahle) and it took about 10 smiles to believe it was real!

About 4 weeks: at a family bbq-Benny was fussy and I could not figure out why. Elissa picks him up and gets a bunch of burps out. For some reason, I had never burped him. That seemed to help his fussiness. :) Also at week 4 BB spit up on me one day, majorly. Shirley, Johnna, and Mackenzie were coming down to see BB and so I was forced to take the first shower while home alone with BB. That was great! BB loves the sound of the water so after that I would sit him in his blue bouncy chair while I showered or had a bath every day. Nice to have a few minutes of self time!

After 4 weeks of hanging out in bed (thank heavens for my mom-how do you have kids without one!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!) I sort of rejoined the world of the living and took BB on a few painfully slow walks at the parkway. I seriously did hang out in my bed all day. I would go down the stairs-all 4 of them- once each evening and gather up all my snacks and a huge cup of water for the next day and then would hardly get out of bed at all-baffling that this was real. I would not believe it if I had not written this while it was happening! Luckily for me, BB, named Po at the time, was a super sleeper.
Though there were a sprinkling of goodish days, I felt pretty much awful for the first year. For the first 5 months I could only wash my hair every other week! Having kids is quite the killer experience. 15 months later I still look at people with more than one child and just blink... blink..... blink.... in amazement!

BB's umbilical cord finally came off. He loves the tub! We have very few activities so we did a bath every day.

Week 5 1/2: Started crying (had not done much of that before). It turns out he was tired and he HATES being rocked or held when he is tired. My mom said this was just like Jordan. When he is tired he we would just put him down in his bed and he was so much happier. Ever since discovering this BB has been a pretty happy lad, on the worst days he cried about 10 min (spaced throughout the day). Even better, one day Erika was getting ready to show her house and we rushed over to help her get it ready. I was vacuuming and he felt right asleep. Vacuum turned off and he woke back up. Turns out, BB loves the vacuum! We started running the vacuum at our house for hours at a time. It was quite brilliant that we could turn it on and he would fall right asleep, but a bit of a pain to have it on forever. I tried sound machines and recordings but nothing was like the real thing. Extra good thing that my mom has the same vacuum in Idaho. Whenever he would wake up at night, we would just turn on the vacuum and he'd go back to sleep. At some point I ended up weaning him off it but it was probably at like month 8 or 9. :)

Week 6: Benny got a name! I think it took us 6 weeks. For all that time we just called him Po :)
BB's schedule at this point is eat (takes about 45 minutes bc he is a lazy man eater and falls asleep while eating), read nursery rhymes for 15-20 minutes, then sleep until 3-3.5 hours from when he last started eating. Most of the time he lounges around with one knee propped up, opens his mouth, closes his eyes, and I feel like a little satyr, fanning him with palm fronds. We've taken to calling him T.T. (Tiny Tyrant) bc we run around and do everything he wants while he sits in his chair and glares at us. Sometimes he looks at us like "I'm going to sleep but don't you dare think of relaxing".

Week 6.5: I felt like I had a real turning point here. I started figuring out BB's schedule which helped quite a lot. This was also when BB started cooing and really came out as a social butterfly. He may look like my doppelganger but he is O to a T in some things!
At this point I actually started thinking one day (not one day soon but just one day) I might actually recover. that thought turned out to be premature :)

hospital pic

hospital pic, they gave us that cute hat :)

first pic

hospital visitors

ride home from hospital. So tiny!! We forgot to get him dressed so they just let us take home the hospital t shirt. We were loser parents at the beginning :)