Thursday, July 28, 2011

What can YOU do in twenty minutes?

Guilty party
I can play "knock, knock" with Quint for a minute and then slide the fish sticks in the oven for 16 minutes. Then look at Hank in the swing closely only to realize that he's had an explosive dirty diaper. He's sitting in a puddle which also shot out of his diaper and up onto the top edge of the swing seat. Start mopping that up and quickly determine that Hank needs a bath. Mostly clean up the baby AND the changing table. Take the baby upstairs and start to run a bath. Convince the toddler that he does not need a bath right this minute and please, please, please get out of the way and (gulp!) why don't you stay up here with Mama and NOT go play in the still dirty swing. Can you close the gate? Uh-Huh! crisis #2 averted. Bathe the baby, dry the baby, dress the baby, set the baby in his crib. Wash hands. Dash downstairs to jerk the fish sticks out of the oven with 21 seconds to spare! Dash back upstairs to fetch Quint, shove him in his highchair (where he can't play in the still dirty swing). Answer the phone! (Com'on, you knew the phone was gonna ring in here somewhere!) Give my sister the short version of the last 16 minutes while cutting up fish sticks and applying ketchup. Hands feel sticky with no telling what - wash hands again. Talk and laugh with Sis while I figure out that the dirty straps on the swing are attached to the swing, and not to the washable cover. Drat! (to say the least) Extract the washable cover from the hard plastic swing and take all icky cloth to the washing machine. Wash the straps as best as possible. Listen to a gruesome tale from the ER via my nurse sister. Agree with her that your big toe is really the only toe you really NEED. Learn that you should put cut off body parts in a baggie with a wet rag and THEN in ice for transport to the ER. It's only teeth that should be put in a glass of milk. Bring clean, swaddled baby downstairs in the bouncy seat. Extract toddler from his high chair since he (for once) ate all of his food before saying "all done!". Notice that my hands are damp with something. Panic, wash hands again, and look at everything I've touched in the last 90 seconds. Take the speaker phone away from the toddler and hang up with my sister. Put my own fish sticks on a plate with ketchup, move baby and bouncy to living room and sit down to eat my lunch.

So what can YOU do in 20 minutes?

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Random thoughts

Wow, 11 days since I last posted! In short, here's the events that have happened that have not really been covered in the blog: (they are not in order)

Mom visited for 10 days. Hubby was out of town for 7 days of that. Cousin 4 has moved in and seems to have fit seamlessly into our lives. Mom, the boys and I went to the zoo, and to see the train display at a local botanical gardens. Mom went on a motorcycle ride with Cousin 4. The boys, Nina, Nina's granddaughter and I went to a bouncy house indoor playground, had a blast, and managed not to paralyze ourselves due to overexertion . The heat wave has driven us indoors, for the most part. I realized today that Quint hasn't gotten really dirty in 4 days - a crime for a boy of nearly 2! Hank had his 2 month checkup and is a healthy, normal little boy.


Super Hank!!
The boys together.
Mom (AKA Nannie) is taken for a ride!
Hank looking more like Hank than
like a startled frog.
Quint and Nannie at the train display.
Nannie and Quint on the zoo carousel.
We rode it a total of 8 times.
Nannie and Hank.
Give us a wave, Hank.

Hank now weighs 11 pounds! He is fully within regular standards, but is taller and slimmer than Quint was. I had noticed this on some of my favorite baby outfits. Hank is outgrowing them vertically, while they are still baggy around the middle. He smiles a lot while he's on the changing table. He coos a lot. He has what his doctor is calling colic several nights a week. I thought it was due to virtually any strong spice. But last night, I had some wonderfully spicy chili (garlic included!) with no ill effects for little Hank. So maybe I can stop eating only the blandest of foods.

My quest for bland yet yummy foods has prompted me to try cooking some simple yet delicious meals. I've recently roasted a whole chicken and served it with green beans, flaky biscuits, hominy, and a berry-yogurt dessert. The three men I fed this to raved and raved about the meal. Cousin 4 made us all french toast for supper recently and it was the first time I'd loved it.

Quint has, just today, been really verbal and has strung together several words to make near sentences. "Chocolate milk yummy!" was the cutest. He probably used 20 new words today. These are words that I knew he knew what they meant, but he had never actually said them. He talked of coupling rail cars, which he calls rail trucks due to Thomas the Train. I also think he was saying "shunt" while playing with his little train today. He would say this while shunting a couple of cars to the side. He LOVES his little plastic train set. Yet when the little cars derail and lay on their side, he seems to panic! It's as if he thinks someone is hurt or hurting. Perhaps the over-personification of Thomas and friends has its' downside.

Really random and detached thoughts - one sentence has nothing to do with the next. I have to do a load of baby laundry every other day. We've managed to clean out the dryer vent (an annual cuss-fest) without any actual cussing! I try to only go to the grocery store twice a week now - not that I need that many groceries, it just seems harder to put off a cheeto deficiency. I bought 376 diapers the other day for $50.45 - that's about 16 cents a diaper!! I've cooked several meals lately for the four of us with plates for about $4-5.00 per meal. That's for the whole meal, not per person. ($3 chicken, 35 cent hominy, 70 cent green beans, $1.30 flaky biscuits.) I am awesome!! Yet I've had some trouble with depression due to my lack of exercise due to the heatwave.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Having a moment

Hubby is out of town this week. My mom, Nannie, is in town to help me with the boys. Here's a conversation that happened yesterday with Hubby.

Hubby: Hi Honey, have you got a minute to talk?

Me: Not really, I'm having a moment.

Hubby: What's wrong?

Me: Nannie took Quint for a walk to give me a little break and I thought I'd slap another layer of polyurethane on these tables. I managed to flick polyurethane on my glasses, forehead and freshly washed hair. I think my glasses are stuck to my face. And Hank just woke up and started crying.

Hubby: I'll let you go! Call when you can!



So instead of a peaceful few minutes with a sleeping baby, I basically took a bath in mineral spirits. I got all the polyurethane off my glasses pretty easy. I put mineral spirits on a paper towel and rubbed it all over my arms, face, and after a moment's thought, in my hair. Then I washed my hair with hand soap at the kitchen sink. All of this while bouncing Hank in his bouncy seat with one foot. Then I made myself some honeybutter as a consolation and called Hubby back.

Opps, Hank is awake. Thus end of blog!

Monday, July 11, 2011

Watching the children and the garden grow....

OK, so we don't have a garden. But I've always liked that line in a song.

It always amazes me when you notice a child's growth from one day to the next. When Quint was a baby, there were some days that you'd pick him up and think, "wow, you weigh more than you did yesterday". Once I heard three people say that about him on the same day, and they hadn't heard each other say it.

Now, Quint is a barrel chested little boy and there are some days I can tell that his barrel has expanded from the previous day. His chest will be deeper from sternum to spine. And usually, within a day or two, a bunch of his shirts don't fit.

Yesterday, Hank had an obvious chest growth. All of a sudden the barrel of his chest is thicker, and at the same time he chunked up a bit. He was wearing a white onesie and when I put him to bed, I swear that thing was looser than when at 10am the next morning. He filled out his onesie overnight. And no, it wasn't a diaper that needed changing. There's more meat on his little arms. So maybe Hank is going to turn into a little chunk like Quint was. I'd really like that. I like fat babies.


Quint had a large first today! He wanted to wear his underpants for the first time. He wore them for about an hour, which ended with an accident, but he stopped the accident, went to the potty and finished up. For 22 months old, I count that as a great success. Here he is showing off his Thomas the Train underpants.

Nannie arrives tomorrow which will be a fun week of trips to the zoo, the train show, the park, the library, all those places that I can't take Quint by myself. Once Hank is content sitting in a stroller, then maybe things like the zoo can work with just one adult. Maybe.... but for now, we have to wait for Aunt D or Nannie or Nina to come to town.

And here's a video for Aunt J and chids. I call it confession time.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Laughing baby

Little Hank is about 7 weeks old and is giving us reactionary smiles quite a bit now. Especially at 4am when they are needed the most. The really cute part is that we've caught him laughing some! I'll hear a funny little noise and look down at the bouncy seat to find him smiling. Then he will belly laugh again and smile again. Priceless! It will be very hard to catch on video though. The whole thing usually lasts about 15 seconds.

I hope this is an indicator that he will have a positive outlook on life in general.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

the fallout...

While my sister was in town, she held little Hank nearly constantly. As she says, she was sucking all the lovin' out of him via repeated kisses on the noggin. She left on Thursday. Guess what Hank wanted all day Friday... he wanted to be held constantly. So Friday was just LOOOOAAAADS of fun. So much fun, that I asked my hubby to come home early to rescue me. Hank was the baby who never slept and never hushed either. Once Hubby got home, we could at least take turns holding the baby or visiting with the quiet and sweet son.

The very good result was then when he finally DID go to sleep at around 11pm, he slept straight through the night until 5am when I woke HIM up to relieve the amazing milk pressure. Then he went back to sleep for three hours. He's six and a half weeks old!

I looked it up and Quint did that at eleven weeks. Of course this with Hank might be a fluke.