Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A new entry in the "most ridiculous baby item" category

Procter & Gamble has announced that they're going to be launching a line of designer diapers. Cynthia Rowley has designed a line of 11 different patterned diapers that will be for sale at a major premium.

Are they kidding? No, strike that. Are they INSANE?

They say they're planning to sell a box of two dozen of these super-duper ladidah diapers for about $15.99. That's SIXTEEN DOLLARS FOR TWENTY-FOUR DIAPERS. Really. That is complete and total utter insanity. Know why? Well, of course, I'm going to tell you why. Newborns can rip through as many as a dozen diapers a day (a bad day, granted, but still). Older babies might go through five or six, maybe more, depending on how many are messy and how often they pull the old "poop in a fresh diaper" trick. So if your baby uses six diapers a day, you will use up a whole pack of those designer diapers in four days.

Also, hello, most babies are wearing clothes over their diapers most of the time. So the only time you would even see these designer diapers is if the baby is only wearing a diaper. That's all fine and all, except that I always dress my child before I leave the house. (Yes, we've all seen those mothers wearing muumuus in Wal-Mart with their babies dressed only in a saggy diaper. Fine, whatever. I don't aspire to that.) So the only time the fancy label would be visible is when I'm home alone with my child! So wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose of putting overpriced designer diapers on your child, which is to impress other people with your taste/spending power/utter stupidity?

Ah, but what if you genuinely just like the pattern on the diaper, you might be asking. After all, one of the patterns is supposed to be madras plaid, and we all know how I feel about madras plaid. I love it nearly as much as I love seersucker, which is evidenced by my children's wardrobes (and er, my own. One day I'm going to convince David to wear madras plaid or seersucker. It may take a long time, but I am going to try really hard.). But if you really like madras plaid, as I do, why not just buy a pair of madras plaid shorts or bubble for your son or a madras plaid dress and matching diaper cover for your daughter? You know, things that you can wash and they can wear again? Ragsland and Kelly's Kids have tons of this stuff. If those cost too much--and please, if you think those cost too much but are willing to fork out $16 for 24 diapers, you clearly need to reexamine your spending priorities--then check out Old Navy or even a consignment sale for the gently used stuff. I once bought a darling Ragsland john-john outfit for William at a consignment sale; it was madras plaid, still had the tags on it, and cost all of about $15. That's a dollar cheaper than those diapers, and he wore that outfit at least ten times, and Andrew will wear it one day, too.

Sheesh. Just when you think you've seen it all, they come up with something even weirder than you thought you could imagine. But I think it's hard to top designer diapers, particularly designer disposable diapers.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Like I needed another challenge

Oh yeah, William threw up this morning.

Apparently, the universe decided that I needed another challenge or something. I apparently had gotten too adept at managing two young children on one foot, so the universe decide to throw me a curveball. Or maybe a Tim Wakefield knuckleball.

Except that unlike the pitch from the Red Sox pitcher, I had no idea this was coming. William told us this morning that his tummy hurt, but we figured that he just needed to go to the bathroom. I started wondering if something was wrong, though, when he curled up on the sofa and quietly watched "Sid the Science Kid" and "SuperWhy!" without uttering a word, even dozing off a bit. Then, he asked me to turn off the TV, and he rolled over on the couch and went to sleep. Very very uncharacteristic of him, as we all know.

A little later, he woke up, sobbing and feverish. I cowboyed up and dragged myself up the stairs to find the thermometer and some medicine. But while I was doing that, I heard William cry out, then heard a patter of feet, and then...SPLAT. He had made a valiant dash for the bathroom but didn't make it all the way there.

And let me just say, I feel safe in assuming I'm the only person I know who has ever had to clean up a large pool of vomit off the floor while balancing on crutches. Does anyone remember that old kiddie game show "Double Dare"? Well, if you do, consider my little feat an example of a prime Double Dare Physical Challenge. I finally got a crying William to drag a footstool over to the center of the hall and used that to clean up the mess. Then I hobbled over to the kitchen, stuck the can of Lysol into my shirt (which I had tucked in, so it would act as a makeshift pocket) and then Lysoled the heck out of the hallway, bathroom, and anything else in the vicinity.

William was just pitiful, poor thing. You know how he has kind of a sparkle that lights him up? Being sick just extinguishes that light. He goes from being bright and shiny to just wan and gray. It breaks my heart.

Oh, and did I mention the nosebleed he had, too?

A friend came by to drop off a casserole (God bless her) around noon and made a Walgreens run for me. A dose of Tylenol later, and William was feeling much better. In fact, he went from being an inert lump in a pile of towels on the sofa back to a normal little fellow almost before my eyes. Actually he sat next to me, almost a dead weight, for awhile so the medicine could sink in, and we watched a landscaping show on HGTV. Then the Tylenol kicked in, and he popped up and demanded a popsicle, then some crackers and a banana.

His eyes are brighter this evening, although he's not 100 percent yet. But he hasn't thrown up again yet, thank goodness, and he's in good spirits. Hopefully he'll have his sparkle back tomorrow...

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A four-year-old and a four-month-old

Guess who turned four months old today.

I know, I know, it's so hard to guess. That's right. Andrew James Wyckoff. Four months old. These four months went by so quickly, much faster than my pregnancy with him did.

I can't provide all the vital stats on him yet. We're not taking him to the pediatrician for his four-month well-baby check until next Thursday. But I can say that he seems to be thriving. He's all round and chubby and pink and, as I always say, delicious. He's a happy little guy, except when he's hungry, tired, or bored--and who can blame him for getting a little grumpy in those situations? I get grumpy when I'm hungry, tired and bored, too.

Andrew loves his big brother, too. When William kisses and hugs him, he usually
grins a big toothless gummy grin...well, until William gets too enthusiastic. I guess this is the sort of thing that makes second children tough. They have to survive their older siblings. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard other parents say, "Oh, don't worry about him/her. He/She's got an older brother." Like, enough said. I guess it's a universal thing.

I promise to try to do better about posting the little developmental things about Andrew as we go forward. I know I haven't done as much of that with him as I did with William. But I really am going to try. For example, Andrew is trying so hard to roll over onto his tummy these days. He gets all the way over on his side, all curled up into a comma, and then he hangs out. Meanwhile, we all wait with our breath held, waiting to see if he wobbles over onto his stomach. Usually, it would only be a matter of about a half centimeter before he would tip over, but he just hasn't given into it yet. Maybe soon. In the meantime, he's just teasing us. I'm glad that I did write down all the stuff that William did, because there's no way I'd remember enough details to be able to compare.

Monday, June 21, 2010

How are we going to do this?

Well, here I am.

I'm home alone with a broken ankle. Okay, I'm not totally alone. Andrew is here with me. But Mom went home this morning, and William isn't due home from summer camp for another two hours. Andrew's great and all, but he's not really much help around the house. It is All Me right now.

It's a little scary.

Here's my set-up: I'm sitting in the big arm chair in the family room, with my foot propped up on a pillow on the ottoman. Andrew is sitting in the Peg Perego stroller next to the ottoman. He's not a big fan of having to hang out in the stroller, but it reclines, so it's his only option for getting a nap right now. I can't stand up and lift him in and out of the Pack'n'Play or the swing, so the stroller is it. I've got the laptop here, with the house phone and the cell phone next to me. On the advice of my friend Kimberly, Mom bought me an apron with deep pockets, so I can carry things when I'm crutching around. We put a plastic tub of diaper-changing supplies behind my chair, so I can get out and change Andrew on the floor; I've got a footstool back there, too, so I can hopefully get up and down by using that. I can push the stoller into the kitchen when I'm on crutches, as long as I don't get too ambitious or move too fast. And I think I can get down on the ottoman and get Andrew out of the stroller and down into the bouncy seat by the coffee table. This will be much easier once I can put some weight on my foot, but I think I can manage until then.

Everything's just going to be a little more time-consuming and complicated than it usually is.

Whew. I remember feeling a little bit (okay, a lot) of cabin fever after I got home from the hospital after having a c-section. A few days at home, and I was ready to get out again. I have now been inside my house for almost a week. I've actually been housebound longer than I was when I was post-op then. Because at least then I could go out and get the mail. I'm not about to navigate our front stairs on crutches. So, here I am. It's miserably hot out there, so I guess I'm not missing much. I'm feeling a little guilty because I had hoped to do all this stuff with William this summer, to make up for lying on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet for so much of last summer. But this summer, I'm just stuck in the house.

A couple of friends have offered to come by tomorrow to visit, and I'm going to take them up on that. Mary Clare actually offered to come by early this afternoon, but given that today was her first (half) day back at work after finishing maternity leave, I really wanted her to go home and be with her family. I think I can make do until Diane brings William home. Then we'll wait for David to come home from work.
Tomorrow will be another adventure. It will be my first day without Mom here to help me get up and about. We'll see how it goes. What's really scaring me is the thought of next week. Next week, William doesn't have summer camp. He'll be home all day with me and the baby. It will be me with my bum leg and the baby who can't sit up by himself yet but weighs at least 15 pounds and my bouncing-off-the-walls four-year-old. Good times, huh?

I'm still feeling grateful that I didn't have to have surgery, and I'm still relieved that Andrew didn't get hurt. But I'm starting to worry about how long I'm going to have to stay off my right foot...how long I'm going to have to do all this. If I knew it wasn't much longer, I think I could feel better about coping in the short run. As David said, we know this is temporary. I just don't know how temporary, and that's the problem. Y'all know me. I like to have a Plan. Plans need more definite paramaters than this. You know, like an end date. This is my OCD kicking in, I guess.

But hey, at least Andrew finally fell asleep in the big stroller. Hopefully we can make this work...at least until we don't have to anymore.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Baptism photo

Photo of the boys from Andrew's baptism!

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Didn't they all look so handsome? I am very proud of my boys. Please note that William is holding the special candle that they gave to us from the baptism ceremony. No, he didn't get to hold it until after I blew out the flame.

I'll post more pictures from the baptism when I can. My foot hurts because I can't keep it propped up when I'm using this computer, and it's been a long day anyway. Also, I need David to chaperone me while I crawl up the stairs, and he's ready for me. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel like sitting here at the desk and posting some more photos.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

My first (and hopefully last) broken bone

I would like to encourage all of you women out there to start working on your upper body strength immediately. Go to the gym and do some triceps exercises, or get some cans of soup and start doing biceps curls at home, or better yet, start rowing. Or all of the above.

Why? Well, you never know when you are going to have to drag yourself up a big long flight of stairs. Multiple times. Like for instance, the flight of stairs in my house, which has 17 steps. Seventeen tall steps.

That's how I'm getting back and forth between the first floor and the second floor of my house these days, thanks to a broken ankle that has severely curtailed my ability to get around. As in, I can barely get around at all. I've got a big heavy boot on my right foot but I can't put any weight on it, so even with my crutches, there's only so much I can do. Heaven forbid we have any kind of emergency while I'm in this state.

Let me start at the beginning for those of you who haven't heard the story yet.

We had Andrew baptized on Sunday at our church here in Nashville. It was wonderful. My father-in-law, who has been ill, was able to be the presenting elder for Andrew, and it was Aaron who carried his baby grandson out into the congregation during the service. William walked down off the stage and joined them to help introduce Andrew to all the church members. The sight of Aaron carefully navigating the center aisle with Andrew in one arm and holding William's hand with his other will surely stay with everyone who saw it for a long, long time. The pastor who baptized Andrew leaned over to me and told me what a beautiful image it was. It really was. We're not allowed to take photos in church, so I stared as hard as I could to burn the image into my brain. Since Daddy baptized William, it was really nice to have Aaron involved in Andrew's baptism.

Afterward, we had a family luncheon at our house. After dessert, David passed Andrew over to me so I could go feed him. I took Andrew, turned around and fell over the open dishwasher door. Trying desperately not to fall and slam Andrew's head into the counter, I somehow managed to twist and contort and fall to the ground with him in my arms. However, I managed to twist and contort and break my right ankle on the way down. Scared to death that I'd catastrophically injured my son, I screamed and cried in hysterics. I pulled Andrew away from my chest, and I saw that he was wailing, which I dimly registered was a good sign. David took Andrew and examined him, while I remained on the floor and....well, freaked out about Andrew. Others immediately got ice for my foot and propped it up on a pillow. When we saw how swollen my foot was and I couldn't put any weight on it, we realized it was time to visit the ER.

Long story short, I have a spiral fracture of the right distal fibula, or a frature in the smaller of the two leg bones down by my ankle. The ER doctor put a boot on it and sent me home with instructions to elevate it and stay off of it. A subsequent visit to an orthopedist yesterday resulted in a new, better-fitting boot...and instructions to elevate my foot and stay off of it until I go back for another appointment in about two weeks.

So I'm more or less immobile. Right now I'm sprawled here on a chair in the family room with my booted foot propped up on a cushion. My friend Del posted a line from "A Christmas Story" on my Facebook page today: "Randay lay there like a slug. It was his only defense." I can't even tell you how much I feel like Randy right now...only without the heavy snowsuit. My poor mother is now waiting on me hand and foot, almost literally. I can hobble around on the crutches, but I'm not very good at it, and I've also managed to strain a couple of muscles in my chest from the effort and bruise the insides of both arms from the armrests of the crutches. Also, I can't get myself up and down the stairs except by sitting on my bottom, like a hesitant toddler, and dragging myself with my arms. It's slow and awkward. I'm trying to only make the round trip once a day so as not to completely wear myself out. (Hence my instructions at the beginng of this post.) Taking a shower is also an adventure. Mom's out looking for a stool or chair we can put in the shower so I don't have to stand on one leg and try to wash my hair. It's one thing to pretend to be a flamingo on dry ground; it's a whole other thing to attempt to do it in a slipper shower, you know?

Anyway, the good news is that I won't need surgery on my ankle. I won't have to worry about feeding Andrew formula from a bottle for a few days while taking pain medication for the surgery, either, which was actually much more of a concern for me than the actual going under the knife part. He's had exactly one bottle in his whole life, and he's never had formula, and I was dreading the thought of having to introduce both at the same time to him. Longtime TPinaP readers will remember the, um, adventures that we had in getting William to take a bottle when he was a baby, and I just couldn't imagine doing that right now with Andrew, not when I'm already a little stressed out from my injury. So I'm trying to get by with plain old Motrin or Advil for pain relief instead of a narcotic as it is, so I won't have to pump and dump. (If you don't know what that means, just be glad. Anyone who's ever uttered the phrase "there's no use crying over spilled milk" has never tried to pump breastmilk, let's just say that.). Most of the time, it's okay. I asked David last night if it was normal that my ankle was hurting, and he looked at me like I was nuts. "Um, yeah," he said. "You have a broken bone!" Heh. Yeah, that's right.

The challenge from here on out is going to be trying to be a mom. I can't walk. I can't drive. We're not sure when I'll be able to do either, but it'll probably be at least a few weeks. I might be able to put my foot down for balance in another week or so, but we don't know for sure. It will depend on how fast I heal and what I can tolerate. Diane is going to help as much as she can, and a couple of friends have also offered to help out when they can after Mom has to go home on Monday. What I could use is a dumb waiter. You know, one of those devices in old hotels and houses where you can stick something in a little compartment and then lower it up and down on a pulley, almost like a mini elevator for your stuff. I could put Andrew in that, and lower him down to the first floor in the morning and then up again in the evening, while I haul myself up and down the stairs with my arms. (I'd better get some fabulous arm muscles out of this.)

Or a magic wand would be good, too.

This is my first broken bone, incidentally. Hopefully, it will be my last!

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Quick photo of Andrew being adorable

Seriously, how cute is this picture?

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I know! Andrew adores being changed, weirdly enough. You put him down on the changing table and he just lights up. He wriggles around and smiles and giggles. So I snapped this picture right around the time that David was getting him ready for bed the other night.

Isn't he just delicious? Andrew, I mean. David's pretty cute, too, though.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Nighty night? Not so fast...

So. Tired. So. Freaking. Tired.

I read an article a couple of months ago that said that people who don't get enough sleep have a harder time losing weight. The threshold was something like seven or eight hours of sleep per night, on average.

Ha HA! I laughed so hard at that, I nearly fell of my chair. When was the last time I got seven or eight uninterrupted hours of sleep? I'll tell you. It was about a year ago. Because once I became pregnant, the All Day-All Night Ugliness set in at about five or six weeks. And that meant that I was nauseated and/or puking at night. And then, even after that lessened (read: got a little better but did not go away entirely), I had to get up and use the bathroom four or five times per night. And no, that's not an exaggeration. That lasted throughout the whole pregnancy. Then I had, you know, the baby. That was in late February, and well, here we are. No wonder I'm not able to lose the rest of this baby weight. No wonder these pounds are stubbornly clinging to my hips and stomach and waist--and well, everywhere, let's be honest--no matter how many miles I log on the treadmill at the Y. My body's too stressed from exhaustion to let go of the pounds.

Now, to be fair to Andrew, he did sleep through the night a few times. He's done it at least eight or nine times, in fact. It wasn't reliable at all. You couldn't predict it. But after a couple of rocky nights in a row, usually he'd throw in a really good night, just to keep us from completely going insane. The trouble is, he's not doing it anymore. About ten or twelve days ago, he started doing this horrible multiple-times-per-night-wakeup routine.

It goes something like this:

Andrew goes to bed in his crib, approximately 9 p.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying, approximately 12:15 p.m. [Last night, it was 11:40. But I digress.]
Jennifer or David stumbles down the hall to give him a binky and returns to bed.
Andrew wakes up again, crying, approximately 1:30 p.m.
Jennifer and/or David attempt to rebink him, which lasts approximately 20-30 minutes.
Andrew objects again, around 2 a.m.
Jennifer nurses him.
Jennifer puts him down in his crib again, around 2:20 a.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying because he's spun himself around in his crib and now his head is wedged up against the crib side, approximately 3:30 a.m.
Jennifer spins him sideways and rebinks him for good measure, then flops back into bed.
Andrew is mad again, 4:45 a.m.
David and Jennifer both wake up and hope that he stops crying on his own accord. No such luck. One of them goes in there to deal with him.
5:40 a.m.-ish, Andrew's ready to eat again. Often, he's also mad that his feet have gotten stuck in between the slats of the crib rail.
Jennifer nurses him from the comfort of her own bed, and they fall asleep together.
6 a.m. David gets up and gets in the shower.
6:10ish, William makes the first of a half-dozen entrances into the room to see if everyone's awake and ready to talk to him.
The baby stays mostly asleep until about 7 a.m., then begins wiggling incessantly.
William continues to pop in and out, slamming the door loudly after himself.
Jennifer finally gives up the ghost and stumbles downstairs for a Diet Coke, between 7:15 and 8 a.m. depending on when she has to get up anyway.

Sephora is now selling Yves St. Laurent's vaunted Touche Eclat concealer. I saw it yesterday. It might be worth the $40, frankly, to cover up these ginormous dark circles that are now taking up half my face.

Everyone keeps telling me that this, too, shall pass. Yeah, it's the mantra of all exhausted mothers of new babies. I just wish it would go ahead and pass already! I remember when William was a baby and still not sleeping through the night, and another mother told me that she dearly loved her baby, but she'd love him a lot more if she didn't have to see him so much during the middle of the night. And I knew exactly what she meant. I'm sort of feeling that way myself right now. I loooooove Andrew. Want to eat him up with a spoon. But oh, I'd love it if he'd give me a night off here and there...