Psycho

Superman had his two month check-up this week. He is now 23" long and he weights 11lb. 2oz. He was in the 5th percentile for weight when he was born. (No one told me that until this week.) He is now right on target for height and weight in the 50th percentile.

We are heading to St. Stephens this weekend. We plan to leave Thursday afternoon and stay with my parents Thursday night. We'll do 4th of July with them (Superman has a new outfit!) and head back home Friday night.

The big kids are at the beach with their mom this week.

Next week is a crazy week for us, so keep us in your prayers. The big kids will be with us until Wednesday afternoon and then they go to their mom. She has something that weekend, so they will come back to me on Thursday night. Hubby is leaving Wednesday morning to go on a business trip. My mom is coming Thursday to help out with all the kids. Then Friday, my mom and III are leaving to go to her house and leaving me with Rosy and Superman. Hubby should be home late Friday night. Then we will go pick III up at Gram Sam's on Sunday or Monday! I may be a PSYCHO by the time it's all over!

Miracle on Portobella Place

As most of you know, when Hubby and I decided for me to be a stay-at-home mom and homeschooler, we made a conscience decision that we would have less income and would have to change our lifestyle. Sometimes this is easy (when the children are playing harmoniously and seem to be thriving in their learning) and sometimes it is difficult (when others seem to have more "stuff" than our kids).



Well, it turns out that having a baby is one of those times when it is tough. I expected my big bill to come from the hospital where you can finance it over a year, but my doctor's office filed on the insurance first so I owe them the big bill. I went in their office last week and found out that we owe them $2200 and they will only finance it over 3 months!!!! Everybody has an extra $733.33 sitting around to pay on a bill each month, don't they? Then, we went to the pediatrician's office yesterday and discovered that they had our address wrong and had not been able to bill us correctly. We owed them $230 from previous visits and $310 for the shots that Superman got that day. Needless to say, these sorts of things are extremely stressful.



Hubby has an attitude concerning these things that amazes me. He told me to do the best I could and not to worry because "What are they going to do? Come and eat us?" Certainly we plan to pay our obligations on time, but news like that out of the blue is discouraging.



Last night I sat down to balance the checkbook and to sort through the stack of mail that had accumulated. In our mail was an envelope from our insurance provider. When I opened it, it contained the escrow refund from our home owner's insurance. We sold our house a few months ago as part of our sizing down initiative, and I had no idea that there would be a refund. It doesn't cover all of the medical bills, but it helps out a ton. Even though we don't have to tithe on it because it is not income, we decided to give the Lord the 10% he asks for as a Praise Offering.



It's amazing to me just how good God is! Everytime He throws a miracle my way, I am surprised by it. You would think that I would remember how much He loves me and would understand that He will provide for me if I am faithful to Him.

Feels Like Home

This past weekend I took Superman and Rosy to my parents' home for the weekend. We had a wonderful time and got to see lots of our family. I think our kids may be the most well connected kids in that town. They are related to so many people that they had 4 Great Uncles and 4 Great Aunts with them at church Sunday. I was related through blood or marriage to 8 of the 10 people in my Sunday School class. Rosy was related to 4 of the 7 kids in her class!

As much as I love going to our current church and sharing with our congregation, there was something very magical about taking Superman to Hubby's and my home church. I walked with Superman to the place where Hubby and I were standing when he kissed me for the last time before we separated for 15 years. I got to see the place where we stood on New Year's Eve 2007 when we found out that we were expecting a boy. All in all, it reminds me of the song that we used at our wedding, "Feels Like Home". We are so blessed that it amazes me!

In other news...it's VBS week. Rosy and III are really enjoying themselves. We went to the movies this afternoon and we saw Nim's Island. It's terrible! I actually went to sleep several times with my head leaning against the stroller.

One Day at a Time

When I first started my blog, I was only going to title my posts with entertainment related titles. After a week or two, I was too tired to fool with that any more and it fell by the wayside. Things have settled down now and so I'm going to try again.

A bit of news about Baby Boy - His new blog name is Superman! One of my real life friends who is also a blog reader asked my mom if we were going to be calling him Baby Boy in real life. I am horrified that my blog might stick him with a very uncool nickname with our family and friends, so I am changing his blog name. In real life, Superman will go by his first and middle names, but I'm swapping his blog name as a precaution. Hubby and I call him Superman because he often stretches one arm above his head and puts the other arm down by his side like Superman in flight.

We have put Superman on a schedule! All of the experienced moms in our church kept asking me if he was on a schedule. I had no idea what a baby's schedule would look like and had no idea how to get him on a schedule. I would just laugh and say that he sleeps when he's sleepy and eats when he's hungry - that's his schedule. Little did I know!

Superman slept during church Wed. night and then took a nap when we got home. He woke up about 9PM. When we tried to put him down at 11PM, he wasn't sleepy. He NEVER went to sleep that night. Hubby had a breakfast meeting that required him to leave the house at 5AM Thursday morning. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and Superman was still crying. He dosed off at some point because he was asleep when I woke up later. I decided at that point that a schedule was necessary. We put him on it Thursday and he did very well. He went down at 11PM Thursday night and woke up at 5AM. He stayed up for about an hour and then went back down until 9AM. This is the most sleep we've gotten since he was born!! We kept him on schedule all day Friday (today) and we laid him down at 11PM. I'm hoping that it will be another good night!

Rosy, Superman, and I are heading to my hometown tomorrow. If you are in our home area, we would love to see you. We'll be at my mom and dad's house, so give us a call!

Fed Ex

Baby Boy is really growing. He now weighs around 9 lbs.

I had to go to Fed Ex today and while I was waiting at the counter I noticed that they had a large, very accurate looking, digital scale. I asked the Fed Ex guy how much their scale would weigh and he told me up to 150 lbs. I quickly took Baby Boy out of his car seat and plopped him on the scale. He weighed 9.75 lbs. which translates to 9 lbs. 12 oz. Of course, he had on socks, a onesie, and a potentially wet diaper so I'm not sure exactly how much he weighs.

He has gained aboout 3 or 3 1/2 lbs. since he was born 7 weeks ago. The doctor said that he will double his birth weight in 6 months. We are well on our "weigh" to meeting that goal.

So, we'll be heading to Fed Ex every month now so that I can weigh him.

One last note on Fed Ex...Hubby is obsessed with the arrow in the Fed Ex logo. He had never seen it until someone pointed it out to him. Now, everytime we see a Fed Ex truck, he is compelled to mention the arrow to me. I had also never noticed it before, but I'm not really excited about it. I'm not even sure that it is there on purpose.

Mini Me

People are often quick to speculate concerning who they think a baby resembles. We pick apart individual features and the overall look and try to find a similarity to someone in the family. It's just human nature.

Almost everyone agreed for a long time that Baby Boy looked just like Hubby, but a few people are beginning to see a slight resemblance to me.

Baby Boy seems to have some of his Dad's behavior. Check out the pics of Hubby's "Mini Me".

Sharp Dressed Man

Baby Boy has recently grown big enough to start wearing some of his outfits that he was given. When he was first born, he had to have preemie clothes, so it is very exciting for Rosy and I to get to look through his clothes and pick out his ensembles.

We saved the outfit from Aunt RoseAnn for Father's Day because we wanted him to have something from Hubby's side of the family to wear that day.

Gram Sam to the Rescue

After a rough start to our week, things improved and then "de-proved" (if that were the opposite of improved) rapidly.

We had a great day Tuesday. Towards the end of my pregnancy Hubby and I went out to dinner to celebrate the sale of our house. There was a nice girl and her baby boy at the table next to us, and we struck up conversation. It turns out that she lives less than a mile from us and she is only working part time. We exchanged phone numbers and she called to check on me several times during the bed rest at the very end of the pregnancy. She and I were able to get together for lunch with the kids at Chik-Fil-A. Chik-Fil-A on Nine Mile Road has a soundproofed play area so that you can see your kids playing, but you can't hear them. I think that makes it the nicest restaurant in town. Baby Boy slept through the whole thing and the two big kids did very well. I was even able to take the whole crew to Target afterward and buy Rosy some new shorts (50% off).

Wednesday was all right. III had a doctor's appt to be evaluated to determine whether or not he has ADD and the whole family gathered for it. The big kids were with us Wednesday night and got to go to church with us.

Thursday, Friday, and the first part of Saturday were great. My mom came to stay with us for a few days. Since I got pregnant last year she has been visiting more. I think she either felt bad for how pitiful I was or she has finally found a route to my house that she is comfortable driving ( no interstate!) or maybe it just helps that my dad is retired now and things can be a little more flexible. When we first brought Baby Boy home from the hospital he didn't really know the difference between my mom, Hubby, and me. He knew that we were all his caretakers. It is really important to me that he be very close to my mom so I whine at her to come visit regularly. I really don't ever want him to go more than 2 or 3 weeks without seeing my parents. It didn't take him long to remember his Gram Sam! His only complaint was that she refuses to breastfeed. He quickly realized that she would hold him constantly and he took advantage of it.

We got lots of work done around the house and it was nice to have a backup during those night feedings when he wouldn't go back to sleep. I was sad to see her go on Saturday afternoon.

The good news is that Rosy and I are taking him to St. Stephens this weekend. I hate that Hubby can't go with us, but as he is a pastor, he needs to be in his pulpit this Sunday. We considered waiting until Hubby could be with us, but I didn't want to wait that long. Soon Baby Boy will get to go back to where Mommy and Daddy met.

I have managed to get lots of cute pics of Baby Boy this last week and will put many of them up on the blog in the next few days. I am working on birth announcements this week and so many of you will be getting pics in the mail soon.

Of course, this leaves you wondering what the "de-proved" part of the week is. The two older children had a series of poor decision making at the mom's house that was stunning in its scope and seriousness. Parts of the situation came to light while they were with their mom and the rest of the story was revealed at our house. We have had to take some fairly drastic measures with punishing both of them. As hubby told me last night - when he signed on for parenting he knew that not all of the seasons would be good. Well, it seems like one of our children is perpetually in a rainy season due to poor choices and it is starting to "trickle down".

But, to end on a positive note, my mom made me TWO blackberry cobblers while she was here!!!

Fire, Mommy, Fire

You can tell by the title of this post that is going to be a rough one. "Fire, Mommy, Fire" were the words I heard at around 7:15 Monday morning. Sunday night was another relatively sleepless night with 4 1/2 hours of sleep divided into two segments. Hubby had to leave early Monday morning to be with a friend who was having surgery at the Navy Hospital across town. At 7AM, I told III and Rosy that I was going to take Baby Boy (who was finally back asleep) to my room and take a nap for an hour. A few minutes later, I hear III and Rosy screaming and beating on my door. "Fire, Mommy, Fire".

It turns out that I had turned on the pot to sterilize some bottles before I went to lay down. Actually I have no idea when I turned the pot on. I think I had been giving Baby Boy bottles and pacifiers non-stop since 3 AM. At some point, the water evaporated and the bottles melted and caught fire. (I'm considering a McDonald's coffee type lawsuit because none of the bottles are labeled "flammable".)

I don't know if I handled it correctly or not, but here's what I did. As soon as I heard the kids, I jumped up and immediately knew what I had done. I sent III and Rosy to the front porch so that I could put out the fire. Thankfully it was still contained in the pot, but it was about 3 feet tall. I ran to the laundry room and grabbed the fire extinguisher. I ran toward the stove and then it hit me. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO OPERATE A FIRE EXTINGUISHER! I know there is something about pulling a pin. Where is the pin? What does a pin look like? What do you do after you pull the pin? These are questions that you want to answer ahead of time. Trust me!

As I stood there with my (useless) fire extinguisher aimed at the fire, I frantically looked around. There was a 2 liter bottle of lemonade on the counter, so I grabbed it and poured it on the fire. Thankfully, lemonade is not explosive or flammable and it put out the fire. Then, it was just a matter of getting the smoke detectors to stop beeping and of getting the smoke out of the house. It took about an hour to get everything back to normal and then I still had to clean the stove area. Baby Boy slept through the whole thing. He spent most of the morning in his bouncer seat on top of the picnic table in the back yard hanging out with Twinkle in her cage and III and Rosy. We have found soot all in the kitchen and tonight we found some in the living room.

Thankfully, my mom is coming Thursday and she and I can work on de-sooting the house.

God is certainly gracious to us and is often watching out for us when we can't watch out for ourselves. I'm thinking that I may suggest a family motto for our family - "We Believe."

Big Days or Big Daze

We are still so tired at our house that we can hardly function at times. I went to have 1 month pics taken of Baby Boy this week and I had to ask the photographer what year it was.

We've had some great firsts this week. I cleaned out Baby Boy's crib and he is learning to lay in it and play with his kick -start musical farm toy and to play with some of his other toys. This has really been his first interest in toys other than the mirror on his tummy time mat. He really seems to enjoy looking at the baby in the mirror.

I finally broke out the video camera this week. I had "prep the camera" on my list of things to take care of in the weeks before he was born, but then he came early and some things didn't get taken care of. We are sad that we missed his first month on video, but we can shoot lots of film now to make up for it.

And, in some very exciting news, Baby Boy rolled over tonight. He was hanging out on his tummy time mat laying on his tummy. Then he rolled to his side and then to his back! Of course, we are very excited!

Our sleeplessness is leading to a Big Daze, but Baby Boy's growth is leading to Big Days.

When the baby cryde

This is a piece of art the Rosy made in Sunday School this week. It says, "When the baby cryde I whende to go get the pacie" There is a picture of me on our love seat holding Baby Boy and of her bringing me a pacifier. As a home schooling mom, I am somewhat concerned about the spelling in the art, but I really love the use of color and perspective. Don't worry about the handwriting - she does her schoolwork in cursive and has not been taught all of her print alphabet. That is a project for this summer.

Rosy is learning to measure water and mix formula, and we are trying to teach her to give him a bottle without a lot of spillage and air gulping. (Baby Boy is about 50%/50% breastmilk and formula now.) She adores her baby brother and is very gentle and sweet with him.

Visit to Gram Sam and Papa Deet

We made this visit back on May 23rd, but I'm just now finding the time to post photos. My mom, Gram Sam, has a Winnie the Pooh pack and play set up for Baby Boy. It's soooo cute!

Magic Carpet Ride

We had our first Sunday at church together yesterday. Baby Boy was well received by everyone. As a new mommy, I have learned an interesting thing about compliments. Even though I think my baby is extremely attractive, he is probably really only as attractive as all other babies. They are all, for the most part, squirmy, squishy, pink reminders of the greatness and gentleness of God. However, it feels incredibly good when people compliment him. I don't value him for his physical appearance, but it feels good when people say nice things. So, I now understand a little of the communication of mom-hood. So, if I didn't tell you how beautiful your child was when he or she was born, I'm telling you now. And, later on, if you have a child, let me go ahead and tell you that he or she will be beautiful.

Rosy and I made an important discovery today. The stroller puts Baby Boy to sleep. We are working on ways to cut down on his marathon feeding sessions. After church today, I fed him before she and I had lunch. We were tired of waiting on him to finish his cuddling session after his belly was full, so we put him in the stroller and took him for a walk. In less than 1/2 a block, he was sound asleep. Hubby and I used this same trick when Baby Boy woke from his afternoon nap. About 10 minutes riding in the stroller and he's out for several hours.

Church went pretty well this morning. We made it all the way through the first service. Hubby was not preaching today, so he actually got to hold our baby for part of the service! We tried to go to Sunday School, but a dirty diaper cut that short. Baby Boy managed to tee-tee his outfit between early service and Sunday School, so many people missed seeing his cute outfit. He only has one formal outfit that fits right now, so I will probably let him wear it again next week. Hubby wants us to go to the second service next week so that crowd can meet him. It is a neat thing to have so many people interested in meeting and loving my baby.

To Poop or Not To Poop? That is the question

Many of you know that poop is my last favorite substance in the universe. If I walk into a bathroom that smells bad, I often say, "It smells like death in here." Conversations about poop can make me gag and almost throw up. Other people changing baby diapers near me can make me sick, and I often did gag when I had to wipe Rosy's heiney. I've never even understood the charm of birthday cards that referenced poop. Well, here I am now measuring my entire success as a mother by what's happening in the diaper.

For a breast feeding mommy, diaper contents are critical. You need a certain amount of poopies each day and they should look a certain way (which looks more like cooked squash than any poop I had ever seen before). We were doing really well until yesterday. We took Baby Boy to our home town Friday and he managed to talk my mom into feeding him tons of formula. He is usually limited to one bottle of formula (3 oz.) at his 4 AM feeding. He is such a slow breast feeder (he can take up to 2 1/2 hours) that we decided to take formula for him to eat during the visit and I would pump milk. This would let other family members give him bottles and would only take about 30 minutes for each feeding. This seemed to work very well! He loved it and would cry for more formula after each bottle. We thought he was on a growth spurt, so we let him have it. I am blaming my mom because you know that grandmother's always let the kids do whatever they want.

Baby Boy woke up around 3 AM Saturday morning and was miserable. We gave him some Mylecon and tried to go back to sleep. No such luck! Baby Boy was constipated! By Saturday afternoon, he had cried and cried. We had rubbed his tummy, rubbed his back, "bicycled" his legs, and any other remedy we could find online. Finally we called the pediatricain and they gave us some hints. Neither of their ideas were pleasant for any of us, but around 7:30PM (22 hours after the last poopie diaper) we had our first poopie diaper. And another at 7:40. And another at 7:50. And that went on for a little while.

Thank heavens for a wise pediatrician and a wise friend who recommended that we use that particular doctor group. We are also thankful that we survived our first medical crisis with no real trauma!

Next post: Our first Sunday at church

2 Weeks Old

Today is Baby Boy's two week birthday! We had a busy day. He had an early doctor's appt. and then we ran one or two errands. The doctor's appt. went well. She said that he is "developmentally advanced" for his age and size. She was also pleased that he is gained back up to and exceeded his birth weight. As a breast feeding mommy, I take that as a personal accomplishment. On the down side, he did manage to pee on his doctor.

We spent the afternoon taking naps and hiding from bad weather. Hubby had a funeral that he needed to attend, but our area was put under tornado watch just as he got ready to leave for the funeral. He decided that I was not really in any shape to be at home alone with the baby in tornado prone weather, so he stayed home with us. Thankfully the weather subsided, but it was nice to have that feeling of protection.

I also packed up the maternity clothes this afternoon because my friend Cinda has announced that she is expecting again. Now these last 8 pounds have to come on off so that I can wear regular clothes again! We will be taking our first trip to St. Stephens with Baby Boy next week because my regular clothes are in storage at my parent's house.

John and I spent some time taking pics of Baby Boy today. The photo at the top is one that I think I will be using on his birth announcement. It really looks good in black and white. We have discovered that Baby Boy, like the rest of this family, is not particularly photogenic. Or, maybe I am just a bad photographer. The blanket in the photo background is a hand knit blanket from Jana, a wonderful lady at our church.

2 AM has gotten worse & world's worst diaper change ever!

For the last few nights, Baby Boy has refused to sleep. He sleeps all day and then wakes up around 1 or 2 AM for a feeding and refuses to go back to sleep until about 4 or 5 AM. Gram Sam came and stayed with us over the weekend to help our with his sleep schedule. We have all agreed that he is too little to just let cry because his cry, at this point, just indicates that he feels insecure. So, we have to pick him up and comfort him when he gets upset. We have tried all different kinds of stimulating activities during the day and soothing activities during the night, but so far nothing is doing the trick. Last night, Hubby and I finally hit on the magic number - 90 minutes. If we rotate in 90 minute shifts, we each get enough sleep to function and we are able to hold Baby Boy without falling asleep.

We have started taking Baby Boy out for daily walks in his stroller (Thanks again to the world's greatest Aunt and Uncle!). Rosy and I get very excited about the excursion, and we love getting him ready for his foray into the world. Baby Boy, however, gets very tired from the preparation and quickly falls to sleep before we've gone 100 feet. He wakes up when we bring him in the house and he always looks confused as to how he got in the car seat and why he's dressed in different clothes. He may never understand some of the things that his sister and I do!

Today I changed a really hideous diaper and managed to let him pee on the floor and on one of his diaper bags! I never knew that baby poop could be so sticky! I thought we were going to have get an SOS pad to clean his butt. And, while I had his feet up in the air and was working on brillo-ing his butt with a baby wipe, he peed everywhere. "Everywhere" includes his own head and face!!! Of course, this required me to stop work on the sticky poop butt and to hurriedly clean the pee off of his face, head, and chest. I eventually wrapped him in a lap pad and hurried to the kitchen to wet a washcloth to further clean the pee. Upon my return to the nursery, I realized that the changing table pad was flooded with pee and some flecks of sticky poop. The only way I knew of to get the rest of the poop off of him was to hold him upright in a semi-standing position and to clean as best as I could. This worked well until he peed again - this time from the standing position and managed to get the floor and the diaper bag. Thankfully, none of that pee actually got on him and I was able to get him to the glider on a lap pad and get a diaper on him! Of course, then I had to get him dressed, collect up all the items that had pee and poop on them, and clean the floor and diaper bag. Let me tell you that life was a lot more simple 2 weeks ago! But, it wasn't nearly as much fun.

Online Nursery

The online nursery link for Baby Boy is our365.com.

Our customer number is 5806-10292. This is also used as the password. In some places you enter it with the dash in place and in other places it is entered without the dash, so try it both ways.

It will also ask for the first 4 letters of my last name.

First Bath

John Stephens had his first bath Tuesday. It was not his favorite experience, but at least he didn't pee on us.

In Just One Week

Time has really flown. This time last week, John Stephens was still in utero and I was in agony. The details of the labor (28 hours with most of it with no epidural or with the epidural at 25% strength) are horrible, but are beginning to fade from memory. I have lost 29 lbs. since delivery. This is also very tiring, but is a good thing. I still have a ways to go with the fluid and weight. I had only gained 13 lbs. through the first of March and then gained about 30 lbs. in the last 6 weeks of the pregnancy.

John Stephens is a good eater and has firmly established that his favorite place in the world is Mommy's chest. We refer to this as "Booby World" and a visit is always his treat after something upsetting like a bath or a diaper change. He doesn't necessarily want to nurse, he just wants to lay down on Mommy. He will give a token effort to nurse if he thinks you are going to move him away. He prefers to eat from his bottles and that works for us. We can keep him on a better schedule and know more about what he is ingesting when we bottle feed.

He is now sleeping about 3 or 4 hours after each good feeding. This is really helping us get through the nights. The first few nights we were home, he cried everytime he was put down, so we had to work in shifts to get any rest.

Yesterday was a landmark day for me. I changed my first ever diaper and then I got to change about 5 more. Also, John went to Wal-mart last night and I kept John Stephens by myself for 3 hours. That was a huge step for us!

My surgery is healing nicely. I hardly ever feel it anymore.

The photo at the top was taken today on his one week birthday.

He's here

I will post more later when we have rested. John Stephens arrived Thursday night, May 1st at 10:31PM. He weighed 6lbs. 1 oz. and was 20 inches long. Thanks for your prayers.

We are at home, but feeding is difficult so we aren't sleeping very much at all.