Random Tash

Tim is on call yet again. Leaving me home with baby and … mouse.

Seriously.

Last night I had another mouse encounter. But this one is still at large in the house. Tim is 99.99% sure it went into the laundry room, but since our bedroom is right next to the laundry room (where we and the baby sleep) i am not reassured. Tim blocked the laundry room off and I haven’t seen/heard the house all day … hopefully Tim can catch it tomorrow post-call.

I just went on Pinterest. I’d probably love it if I had any free time – for now it is just another time suck that I could be better using to read or sleep. Still, it will be nice to go on a bit when I am watching movies with Tim as I get too bored of just staring at the tv/computer screen.

I feel like Tim is always on call. He does 1 in 4 call. It sucks. I miss him.

It was -31 today with the windchill. We stayed home. No way am I going out in that kind of cold, let alone taking a baby out. We have things to do tomorrow and Thursday so I am really hoping it warms up or else I`ll be getting the snow suits on.

I ate a box of stove stop stuffing for dinner. Because I am lazy.

I’m sort of obsessed with Colin and stare at the monitor when he is sleeping. Which isn’t a lot because he doesn’t sleep much. Or else he sleeps on me and I stare at his face directly.

I love (but in a much lesser way than how I love Colin) pretzels, oatmeal cookies, coffee, Pepsi and granola bars.

My car won’t start and it is probably the starter which is expensive to fix. So i was prevented from going to Chapters and spending a ton of money. Does life always even out?

I spend a ridiculous amount of money on groceries but never have anything to eat.

How does one get to take a shower when the baby is too big for his exersaucer which is in the bathroom?

I would really like to be able to pee without someone watching me.

I hate the snow when I am not skiing.

I haven’t skied in over 2 years.

Toys R Us threw up in my house.

Hello my forgotten blog. I fear I have forsaken you for the joys of raising a baby that never sleeps. And who would love nothing more than to eat the computer.

I start back to work 2 months from today. I am trying not to get too upset. I love being home with my baby. I need to remember that I love my job too. The worst part is that C and I have to move away from Tim. I am so happy C will be too little to remember this time. And that we will see Tim every weekend.

Daycare is lined up. Apartment is lined up. Sleep not so much. Me time not so much either. I honestly spend my free time reading about babies, looking at pictures of Colin or talking about him (intermingled with doing chores). I need to get better about taking me time. So I hope to get back to this blog. But I’m not making any promises because if forced to choose I’d rather take a bath with a good book.

As a newborn Colin did the typical poop after/during each feeding thing. So feeding every 2 hours = pooping every 2 hours.

It slowed down as he reached 2 months and became a twice a day thing. At around 3 months he went to once a day. Then, at 4 months, he went to once or twice a week (normal for babies who are exclusively breastfed because apparently breast milk is so perfect it is possible that there can be little waste).

Now, at almost 5 months (tomorrow!), he is back to pooping every second day. And occasionally pooping at night. In the middle of the night.

Col is a silent pooper. His toots are as loud as a grown man and smell disgusting. But his poops are silent and don’t always come with accompanying grunts. Usually they are foreshadowed by some aggressive tooting, but sometimes not.

This means that in addition to getting up repeatedly throughout the night to see if he is still breathing, I get up to see if he has pooped. Meaning, I sniff his butt. Throughout the night. To see if he smells like buttered popcorn. Sure enough, every few nights I find a poop. I’m afraid to not check and have him sit in a poopy diaper all night. Which would make me a bad mother. Which even I know is not true. But would I ever feel guilty. So I sniff his bum when I check to see if he is breathing or not. And I spend time writing a blog post about it.

This is what my life has become.

Someone is finally getting himself some teeth!

After showing teething symptoms for, like, 2 months … I finally feel a sharp edge poking through his gums. Just in time for him to turn 5 months. I’m glad to find an explanation as to why he was up and needing comforting every hour last night. Makes the sleep deprivation okay as long as there is a good reason for it.

I’m at the point where I had to cave and ask the husband for help. Tim typically sleeps upstairs in the guest room because he needs a good night’s sleep with all the surgerizing he does. Would you feel comfortable if you found out your doctor was up all the with a baby?  Probably not. So I tell him to sleep and enjoy it. But lately Col has needed me to comfort him a lot, not just feed. And Tim is not doing a surgery rotation right now. So I asked him to come back to the master bedroom and give me a hand. We’ll see how that goes. His snoring may be worse at waking me up than the baby is …

Whether it was the vacationing for 2 months a year in Florida with my family, or the spending the rest of the year living in Nova Scotia and being surrounded by the water (literally, it’s a peninsula), I’ve always been a beach person.  I have many happy memories walking beaches and collecting shells or curling up with Tim on a blanket in the evening and watching the waves roll in with a cup of hot chocolate. When I was living in Toronto I missed the smell of the salt water. So when Tim was sent to Moncton I was happy to join him knowing that we were minutes away from a beautiful beach – Parlee Beach.

I was really hoping that I would get to spend some of the summer at the beach with my boy – and I have.

He loves looking at the water but shrieks when I dip his toes in it.

He loves the feel of the sand. But not so much the taste.

And he is happiest of all in the sun shelter hanging out with Mom and looking at all the people.

It’s crazy to think that next year he’ll be running around, swimming and building sand castles!

I just bought the Fisher Price Rainforest Jumparoo and it was delivered yesterday. It was super easy to put together and seems pretty sturdy. So far, Colin loves it!

The seat is cushy and Doctor Dad loves that it has good back support. The toys are all within reach and easy to play with. There is also a teething toy that must taste delicious because Colin always has it in his mouth. He actually jumps in it too, which is super cute.

I’m going to put this new toy in the master bedroom (also Colin’s bedroom as he bunks with us) so that he can jump while I clean up the downstairs area. It should be a good distraction for when I am doing laundry, and since our place is a bit backwards and the master bedroom, laundry and full bath are in the basement instead of the main level, it is a nice cool temperature for him to jump in so he doesn’t get overheated.

The boy is amassing quite the collection of toys. Totally my fault, as I can’t resist buying him things. As well as all the toys, he already has 2 bookcases full of books and even more boxes of older-kid books in storage.

In other news, I just opened an RESP for the boy and put in some money to start it off.  I plan on putting in all the government child benefit money I get for him each month, plus extra. And I’ll be soliciting the grandparents for donations instead of toys for his birthday/Christmas/etc. Tim and I have 16 years of university between the 2 of us, so we know first hand what massive amounts of debt look like. And we were lucky enough that our parents paid for our first degrees. I want to be able to do the same for Colin and be able to help him no matter what career path he takes. And if he doesn’t chose to go to university or college than the RESP can be used for future other kids, or rolled into a RRSP for myself. So it is a win-win saving mechanism for us all.

Now that Colin is 4.5 months old we are pretty settled into our breastfeeding routine. Colin is full of personality.  He is incredibly active and expressive (i.e. his super pout). He is also a bit of a diva in that he wants to get his own way – he doesn’t like to cuddle, be restrained in any way, be taken out of the bath before he is ready, etc. And these little personality quirks make our breastfeeding routine very cute and very dominated by Colin.

Case in point:

1.     Colin hates noise when he is feeding. Music, cars driving by, people talking … and especially me talking. If he hears anything loud he pulls off, looks at me, and gives me the super pout. If the noise continues he wails. If the noise stops he looks at me for a few seconds as if to warn me to prevent any future happenings, then goes back to eating. He will not even tolerate me talking or singing quietly to him, let alone talking to others.

2.     Colin likes touching faces. It is one of the way he cuddles without actually cuddling (another way is holding hands while sleeping). Ever since he discovered I would let him touch my face if he did so softly he reaches up and holds my nose or mouth while he feeds.

3.     Colin is a vocal guy. Every so often he’ll pull off and “talk” to me.  I say “talk” because he isn’t making random sounds. He is either letting me know he loves the milk “ah goo”, he is impatient for the let down “aaahhh” or is done “ah”.

4.     Colin is like an abusive partner.  He scratches, punches and “wolverines” me when he feeds.  We actually started calling him “Colin Feral” because it is like feeding a feral cat (a phrase I read from one writer’s Babble post that is so true!). And then he lovingly caresses me with strokes and pats as if to say, “I didn’t mean it Mom, I love you”.

Colin is now 4 months old!

He is doing well – 13 pounds 15 oz and 24 3/4 long. Putting him at 50% for height and 25% for weight.  Bang on considering Tim and I.  And he’s at 75% for head size – me thinks he has his daddy’s brains!

He has mastered rolling from his back to front – which makes tummy time a lot easier as he now instigates it himself. Although sometimes he forgets how to roll back from tummy to back, which he started doing at 5 weeks.  He is also scarily close to crawling – it will probably happen before month 6.  Yikes!

We have also started crib training.  I say we, but I mean mostly me.  I don’t want Tim to help me in the middle of the night with the soothing because he spends his days operating on people and works a lot of 36+ hour on call.  So sleep is pretty important for him.

I won’t do the cry it out, personally, so there is a lot of soothing going on. Colin is doing awesome and has spent the last 2 full nights in his crib instead of in his swing. I should note that his crib is in the same room as us, as is his swing. He goes down at 7 pm and gets up at 7am. There are a lot of feedings at night because he is nursing for comfort.  But I am okay with that for now.  When he is more accustomed to the crib I will work on the nursing for comfort.  The soothing I am doing is holding his hands.  His hands are his kryptonite. If I hold them both my his side he drifts off to sleep.  Occasionally I rub his tummy too.