Merry Christmas!!!

I haven’t had much to say lately – I don’t think anyone is interested in me just gushing about the little guy all the time. He’s army-crawling now. Yesterday I picked him up from daycare and he crawled to me. He started his heavy breathing (that means he’s happy) as soon as I walked in the door and then I knelt down and he came right to me. I was almost crying.

Breastfeeding is coming to a close. I slowed down pumping at work after W was 6 months in November and now I don’t pump at all. I’d been hoping to keep up nursing at night and in the morning, but I can tell my supply is dropping. Plus W is not interested in nursing so much anymore. He’d much rather look around and see who could be in the room. I’ve had to tell M to stop talking sometimes because W loves to look at him.

W’s been eating all sorts of food. Avocado, bananas, sweet potatoes, green beans, peas, pears, carrots. The poop colors have been amazing. I’ve been making his baby food. I never thought I’d be the type to do this, but it’s cheaper and so frickin easy. Even for a lazy bum like me.

I am over the moon excited about Christmas. We took W to see Santa and I thought my heart would explode. He was wonderful and gazed at Santa during the pictures. I loved watching the kids in line – they were talking about what they’d say to Santa and they got to put their letters in a mailbox that had gusts of “snow” blow out when they opened it. It was magical. I can’t wait for W to start understanding the season.




AKD at Little Footprints had a wonderful giveaway and I won (I’m pretty awesome). I feel like I know her in real life, so this is extra special. Her prize was to donate to the March of Dimes in honor of an angel. I’m so proud that my little boy will have this done in his name. Thank you, AKD, for being so generous. You light up my days when you post and your daughter is a beauty!

Little boy surgery

I’m back at work after two days off to help W recuperate from his circumcision. My poor little boy. I had some moments of self doubt. Were we doing the right thing? Would he hate us for the pain? Would something terrible happen to him during this mostly cosmetic surgery?

To review – We had decided to circumcise before going in for delivery. The OB told us she wouldn’t do it because of the twisted parts. The pediatrician told us about the problem and that it wouldn’t be a big deal and recommended a urologist for the surgery once W got older. I went in to see him at about 4 weeks old. The line on the back of W’s penis was not straight. It went up slightly crooked (let’s say it’s at 6 o’clock) and then veered off to about 4 o’clock when it got to the head. From the bottom of the head to the top it went from 4 o’clock back to 9 o’clock. That part was the problem. Everything else was fine. He could function normally. The urologist told me that he would do the circumcision once W was 6 months old. We scheduled it for Nov 8th because W is a pretty big kid and we wanted him to be healed before the holidays.

We arrived at the hospital at 6:30 am. W was in a great mood. He smiled at the nurses and played with his sample breathing mask. The anesthesiologist gave him a sample one to play with so he wouldn’t be afraid when she gave him the real one. I thought that was a great idea. We were so worried that he’d cry because of the hunger, but he was just fine. After a little bit of prep, I carried him into the OR. The mask came out and he breathed in it for about a minute until he kind of went limp. He wasn’t asleep, but he was. Then I was sent out to the waiting room with M. I cried. The nurse said it would be about an hour.

90 minutes later, the doctor came into the waiting room and pulled up a chair. He got a piece of paper out and drew us a picture of a penis. Now, this was a stressful time and I still had to keep myself from giggling. So the picture showed everything he did and he wrote out care instructions in crazy neat handwriting. The picture showed stitches all around the head and stitches going up a little and down a little where he kind of re-aligned the line. It’s still not perfectly straight, which is fine with us. We weren’t looking for perfect. We just wanted mostly normal.

About 10 minutes after that, we were called back into the recovery room. W was already awake and was crying loudly. I ran to his room and was able to nurse him right away. That calmed him down! He had an IV in his neck (he’s too pudgy for them to be able to get a regular IV in there. They tried.) We went home with a prescription for Tylenol with codeine and a recommendation to buy lots of KY jelly.

The care is to wipe him as normal then cover the entire penis with KY jelly at every diaper change. He gets sponge baths until Thursday and then soaking for a week after that. He can’t be in the exersaucer or baby bjorn or bumpo or anything this kind of uses the crotch to support him.

His penis looks awful. It is swollen and purple with tons of tiny stitches. He has no idea. He is playing and laughing and being wonderful, just like normal. He seems to dread being on the changing table and gives a little cry when we wipe him down. He’s on standard Tylenol and we never used the strong stuff.

I got through my first surgery on my baby. The whole time I felt like running into the OR and taking him home and not circumcising him. But now I’m glad we did it and he won’t have to worry about this in the future. He’s back at daycare today and doing great. I’m glad that it’s over.

Parenting Manifesto

Lots of my blog buddies are talking about their parenting styles. This made me sit down and try to define mine. I don’t think I subscribe to any one theory completely. If I need to define myself, I would say I’m a “What to Expect the first year” parent. I keep up on a few development books and apply what I like. I listen to podcasts and read blogs and discussion boards. I do research everything, thanks to a job in front of a computer. And I’m not bashing anything or anyone. If your kid is happy then you’re doing it right. No, wait… if your name is Farrah or Amber and you’re on TV, you are doing it wrong. (While we’re on the subject - Maci, girl, you are going to be a success story. And Caitlynn, I want to hug you. Your mom is mean. I have no idea how you came out so good. Keep at it. I’m sorry to tell you this, but Tyler is a pussy.) I mainly wrote this all out so I can look back when W was older and laugh at myself or pat myself on the back. Or even (hopefully) to remind myself of everything when we are doing this a second time.

W does not have a schedule. He has a routine, but mostly does whatever we think he wants to do. For the first month or two he fed on demand for as long as he wanted. I eventually started pulling him off after 20-25 minutes because I was so sore. He now eats every 3-3.5 hours for about 20 minutes at a time. We do go longer in the evening, sometimes he’ll be napping and we’ll realize that’s we went 4 hours or more without feeding him. Then he’ll start crying when I’m pulling my shirt up. Like we reminded him that he might be hungry. Other times he’ll try to nurse from M after just an hour or so. He’s been sleeping through the night since he was 2 months old. I do wake him up/dreamfeed around 10 pm. I’m not sure if he needs it, but if it ain’t broke…

Naps are just whenever he seems like it’s nap time. We shoot for 3 a day. He’ll get more if we drive somewhere. He doesn’t like to sleep with anything going on. He will drift off if we put him in the pack and play, but not in his crib. He doesn’t like to go to sleep if M is holding him. He can fight sleep with M for 30 minutes and then pass out the second he’s in my arms. It’s because I’m boring.

Daycare also doesn’t have a schedule. Once he moves to the walking room they do have structured naptimes and meals. I’ll keep to that on the weekends to make life easier for all of us.

I wear him if he’s really fussy. But I can’t do it a lot. Sometimes I think it’s better to let him fuss for 10 minutes while I do my chore and then cuddle. Most of my chores are laundry and washing bottles. I can’t do either of those with somebody pinching my neck and slobbering on me (not always the baby). I use a Baby Bjorn and a Babyhawk. The Babyhawk is cuter and was great when he was tiny. I use that around the house. The Baby Bjorn is better when we’re out because we can get him out in seconds and M likes it. We’re lucky to have both.

W goes with us almost everywhere. We take him out to dinner. We take him to the grocery store. He goes to parties. We started doing that as soon as I could leave the house. We’re trying to not be “those parents” and only take him places where kids are appropriate. Last weekend we went out to dinner and talked about going to a place we really like with awesome crab dip. Then we talked more about the slow service and the crowd, so we opted for our neighborhood pizza place instead. We take him to the “fancy” places on weeknights (but not that often… the cost of daycare means the pizza place is better for the budget).

W is in a daycare center. He still knows I’m his mommy and he isn’t sick all the time (actually, just a few colds… but flu season hasn’t hit yet). I'm kind of defensive about this because I live in a SAHM community. I got a lot of pity looks when I said he would be in daycare.

I use disposable diapers. I wish I used cloth and I have tons of excuses. The main one is daycare. I just switched to cloth nursing pads. I should have done it ages ago.

I don’t care if W sees TV. I don’t sit him down in front of it, but if he’s in the room with a huge TV, he’s going to see it. And he likes watching football. I try to keep him engaged with toys or read to him when we’re watching it. If I’m doing chores, I have him in the kitchen with me. This will evolve as he becomes mobile.

W isn’t circumcised, but for all the wrong reasons. He has a twisty thing going on and will have surgery in November to fix it. Even if weren’t planning on circumcising, we’d have it done to correct the twistyness. I’ve gotten advice from everyone about how to care for the little guy and most of it was wrong. I even started doubting myself. Once I consulted a Hopkins urologist about it, the comments stopped. I’m pretty neutral about the whole thing. I think that by the time W gets to school, both ways will be acceptable. M wanted it done, so that’s what we’re doing.

We don’t co-sleep, but I understand it and sometimes wish we did. I’m a light sleeper and I’ve been known to act out my dreams. I once pinched M so hard that he cried a little. I was trying to escape from something in a dream. M will startle in his sleep and roll onto anything. I don’t want to subject W to any of that. Plus I like to cuddle with M! We do have family time on weekend mornings. W eats around 6:30 and stays in bed after that. I’m just drifting in and out of sleep at that time and it is a great feeling to wake up and see that drooly face smiling at me.

We don’t cry it out. I say this with an asterisk because we’ve never needed to do it. W rarely cries, so if he is crying at night it’s because something is wrong. We’ve had screams in the middle of the night that went away with a few minutes of cuddles. I have trouble getting myself back to sleep and I’m 30. I can’t expect my 5 month old to do it. I don’t always rush to him – this is where the video monitor comes in handy. Usually he’ll wake up and look around and find his thumb and go back to sleep in a few minutes. Other times, he’ll wake up and find his thumb and stay awake. I can watch him and decide if he needs me. I like that. I’m a new breed of parent that hovers over the kid on the video screen. One night he was making loud sucking sounds and wouldn’t go back to sleep, so I was watching him and thinking about going in to rock him so that I could get some sleep. I noticed his sleeve was covering his thumb. I snuck into his room and released the thumb. All was well!

I guess this opens up another thing: I have a thumb sucker. And I'm proud of it. We sleep.

And of course we don’t have any type of discipline right now. He punches me in the face all the time and pulls my hair and pinches whatever he grabs, but you can’t yell at him for that. He just wants to get close and put my face in his mouth. And really, if I give in and let him pull me in for the slobber fest and lose some hair… it’s so worth it.