My Wonderful Husband

For several months now our water pressure has been just a little less than the norm and Jacob has suspected a leaky pipe somewhere.  The other day he saw a wet spot on the ground – in our driveway, no less – and started digging.  I walked outside to find the above scene.  The hole ended up being about 2’x4’ and he stood nearly to his knees in it by the time he quit digging, but still no pipe and the wet spot disappeared.  It made me think of a kid trying to dig to China or maybe pretending to be an archeologist and I had to laugh and snap a picture. 

As it turns out he later remembered that the hose had been stretched across the drive before he rolled it up to mow earlier in the day, so it must have had a leak in the hose there!  Too funny!  He did, however, dig up 2 large, very nice limestone rocks that we can use in landscaping, so that is good :)

So, while it seems like I’m poking fun of him (which I am to an extent), it got me to thinking about how much he does around here and I’ve been remiss in snapping photos of those things and acknowledging them.  He is incredibly handy and saves us tons of money since he’s usually willing to at least try to take care of any problem.  Sometimes I have more faith in him than he does, though, and he steps out of his comfort zone to take on problems.  I’m proud to say he is usually quite successful.  I have a very talented husband who I’m convinced can do most anything.  I’m lucky to have him and I have to remember not to just take his abilities for granted.

Now if we could just find that leak….

(In his defense, he has found many leaky pipes with this method, so his thought process was perfectly legit.  He recently saved my Grandfather quite a bit of money since he randomly found a leak when walking through his yard.  Unbeknownst to Jacob, my Grandfather had received a large water bill for a house that is not even inhabited and he was preparing to call the city and complain, but my fabulous husband caught and fixed the problem!)

Blueberries For All!

It is only 10 a.m. and this has already been a great day!  I’m hoping it continues as I try to be productive for the rest of the day.

For starters, I got to go to bed last night after a wonderful hugging and kissing session with Josiah and Jacob.  Josiah loves to give multiple tight squeezing hugs and showered us with them and lots of kisses last night before bed.  It turned into one big family hug with each of us giving lots of kisses.  I’m sure it would make you roll your eyes to see, but it is wonderful to experience!  I did have a twinge of guilt to not include Elijah, but he was sleeping and probably would have been smothered anyway.

And now the big news…Elijah slept for 8.5 hours last night!  Not only that, but when he did wake up he was very peaceful and cooing, so I got to snooze and take my time coming fully awake.  That’s the best!  Who knows what will happen, but I’m hoping it is the start of a new trend. 

Then we had apple cinnamon pancakes for breakfast.  That is one of my favorites!

After we were ready we headed out to go blueberry picking.  We went to Monteocha Gardens just down the road from us and it was perfect!  We went at 8 a.m. because we were worried about sweating to death, but this place was mostly shady, which was great because I was wearing Elijah in my Moby wrap.  I think Josiah ate his weight in berries!  In fact, we cut our visit shorter than we might have just because we couldn’t get him to stop eating!  I’m a bit concerned about how his GI tract will respond and I think we’ll skip his Miralax dose for today, but he had such a great time!  He loved it far more than strawberry picking.

       The first picture is taken after he ate a green one.  He quickly learned the dark blue ones are better!  The second picture is of our sly guy after being told not to eat anymore.

 

Here’s a little more about Monteocha Gardens just in case you are interested: it is open everyday from 8 a.m. - 8p.m and if you go early (and probably late) you will enjoy picking in the shade.  The brochure claims they are organically grown, but I think the only reason this claim can be made is because they don’t do much to manage the grove (is that the right word?).  I find that to be nice, but some people may prefer it to be perfectly maintained.  There were so many bushes that this place could never be picked out and it wasn’t busy.   There is an old lady that sits in her gazebo and hands out buckets and weighs berries.  She will offer to give you half the berries you pick if you leave half for her to sell.  If you go north on SR 121 and go right when the road splits (onto 231) and right again at 156th Ave, it is about a quarter mile down the road on the right.

Elijah is now fed and in bed, so I should get busy!

Two Months Old!

Elijah hit the eight week mark on Saturday and technically turns two months old today.  Jacob always thinks it is funny to count age in weeks for so long. 

This is the first picture of a smile I was able to get.  How come their eyes always look funny in pictures where they are laying down?

By the end of the first month, I felt like I knew the little bugger, but halfway through the fifth week, I think he was switched out for a new one.  I had to re-figure him.  At four weeks I had started giving him Mylicon at each feeding and it was working beautifully, but suddenly we were having troubles again and we had to troubleshoot.  I think we are under control again.  Also, I had been trying in vain to have him nap without being swaddled, but I had to give up my denial and accept that he just does better with it.  I had wanted to avoid this so that I don’t have to wean him from it later, but I value my sleep and sanity.  I try to give him at least one nap a day without it so I don’t have to start from scratch later.  He does pretty great being put down while awake.  Good thing because Josiah doesn’t like to give me up for long when it comes time to putting Elijah down.

He does great with tummy time!

In spite of some craziness in these past four weeks, Elijah has been doing quite well.  He has made two trips to the pediatrician for “sick visits” and yesterday was his routine 2 month checkup.  His first sick visit was for dual eye infections secondary to his clogged ducts.  I can manage to put eye ointment in nearly any animal, but a 5 week old was a challenge!  Thankfully they cleared up nicely.  I’ve still been working on the clogged ducts.  The right eye is great and the left is nearly resolved.  The second sick visit was last week for a little head cold/sinus infection that I gave him.  Bad mom!  Josiah got it, too.  They’ve both managed it better than I did.

Tough guy!  We were outside enjoying my new porch furniture.

Elijah now weighs 11 lb 15 oz (50%), is 23 inches long (50%), and has a head circumference of 38.8 cm (25%), so he is growing nicely.  Good thing because he’s not much interested in eating half the time.  It drives me a bit batty, I must say.  Those percentages make me laugh just because they are so different from Josiah’s.  I wonder if anything about them will be similar?

While at the pediatrician today, Elijah got his first two shots.  He cried quite a bit.  He was nearly asleep by the time they came in to do it and he always gets a little emotional when he’s tired and tends to overreact, so he held true to that!  Poor guy!  We had a few extra tears, a mild fever, and one dose of Tylenol throughout the day.

    Josiah wanted Jacob to put Elijah on his rocking horse.  He shares well when it is his idea.

Along with this two month mark comes the big interactive smiles (which he’s been doing for awhile) and the start of cooing.  Unfortunately I don’t have all day to sit in front of him, but I do take the time to get and enjoy as many as I can!  He is trying desperately to become a thumb sucker.  He catches it every now and then for a second, but usually can’t separate it from his other five fingers!

How do you choose just one picture of such a cutie???

This two month mark is also my signal to start getting ancy about sleeping through the night :)  Since he’s been a little under the weather, things have been a bit random, but he had been in a nice pattern of waking only once around 2:30 a.m. to eat and poop and occasionally again at 4:30 or so to poop after which he could just be appeased with his pacifier.  He was slowly dropping that second waking.  He is now getting back to that point and went 6 hours the other night – which I think is technically “through the night”, but 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. just doesn’t seem like it to me!  Hopefully soon we will get back to the one waking, then none!  Though I have to say he really seems  to be hungry for that feeding, so I may have to accept it hanging around for a bit.

Gettin’ smothered with love!

Funny thing…at Josiah’s appointment at Shands last week I was telling the resident that Elijah sometimes (pre-Mylicon days) stops nursing and kicks his legs while fussing before pooping just like Josiah used to.  In order to say this I pointed over at the stroller containing Elijah.  Jacob was between me and the stroller and the resident looked at me seriously and said “HE kicks his legs when he poops?”  I didn’t catch her confusion and said yes, but Jacob realized she thought I meant him and corrected her.  We had a good laugh!

Frustrated Yet Hopeful

So…our appointment wasn’t quite all we hoped it would be.  We got exactly what we wanted and exactly what we didn’t want all rolled up into one.  (Never happy, huh?)

First off, we kind of felt like they didn’t really hear us out when discussing Josiah’s history and symptoms, but instead had in mind what the problem is and tailored it to fit.  Now, I have complete confidence that they know more about it than us, so we’ll trust their judgment, but perhaps more explanation, better answers to questions, or just feeling like our explanation of his symptoms was more considered would help to ease our minds.  At the same time I’d like nothing more than for them to be completely right.

What we wanted was for them to have a good idea of what the problem is and an easy recommendation for treatment  to start immediately.  We got that.  Unfortunately it was for something we (meaning the pediatrician and us) had already pretty much ruled out, making us feel a bit skeptical and needing more confidence.

So, what’s the big verdict?  Constipation.  Go figure.  Really?  Is that why he tries to poop constantly but only has success once out of 25 tries?  Excuse my sarcasm, but we already kind of knew this though we didn’t call it this by name because he can produce and often does frequently (sorry, TMI?) he just does so abnormally.  The assumption was that there is an underlying cause because he willingly eats a great diet, drinks plenty, and has no qualms about trying to go.  That underlying cause is what was concerning us.  The frustrating part is that they are trying to stick him in the category of those kids who purposely withhold thereby causing constipation.  That was the one thing that we said going into it that if that is what they said then we wouldn’t be able to accept it easily without some sort of great explanation or proof because, from what we have gathered, it just doesn’t fit.  But what can you do?  The treatment is fairly easy, so why pass that up when the alternative may be stressful diagnostics?  Anyway, there are a whole list of reasons that we aren’t sure he fits the picture and many unanswered questions, but I won’t go into that.

The new plan of action is to try giving him Miralax.  Duh!  (That’s what we feel like.  Get all worked up just to try an over the counter medicine.)  We’ll also do a few very minor changes to his diet, though they even said he eats such a good one that there isn’t much we can do there – which leads me to wonder how we got here to start with if there is no underlying cause.  We will be elated if such an easy fix actually fixes him, but frustrated because we could have tried this months ago.  We even talked about trying Miralax before, but opted not to because as I said, he does produce regularly.  They gave an explanation of why this is possible that I won’t go into since it you may think it’s gross.

Now we wait.  We started his new plan already today.  If he’s not showing improvement in about 2 weeks, we call back.  Otherwise we have a recheck in 6 weeks.  We are just concerned that if there is no improvement, we’ll be that much farther behind.  Also, the doc mentioned that “We can get him to go.  That’s not a problem.” which led us to wonder if we’d just be masking that underlying cause.  Oh well, I guess the goal is to get him comfortable and if we do that, great.

Maybe we are just worried overprotective parents who have had too much time to wait and get overly worried to have faith in a simple fix.  Yet I do hope it works and we can avoid further diagnostics.  That would be an answer to prayer and I guess this is just a test of faith because I’d prefer more reassurance that the weeks of waiting and today’s appointment weren’t a waste.

Like I said, frustrated yet hopeful.

Ironically, we grabbed lunch after the appointment and shortly after getting home we realized that our lunch and our intestines were having a disagreement.  So now how do we tell the difference between Miralax effects and our lunch???  Life is never boring!

(This got really long.  I love blogging.  It lets me get things off my chest.  Thanks for listening/reading.)

At Last!

Tomorrow is the BIG day!  We’ve been practicing great patience waiting for Josiah’s appointment with the pediatric GI specialist at Shands and it is finally here.  We aren’t really expecting this to be the end of his ordeal, but at least we hold hope that it is the start of the road that will get us there.

Here are some pictures or our big boy playing in the sprinklers Jacob set up to water the yard the other day.  We have well water so it always comes out COLD and he was visibly shaking the whole time, but insisted he wasn’t cold and played for hours!  We made him go in and out of the sun to warm up.  He looks sick, doesn’t he???  (Said with sarcasm.)

 

Please pray for this appointment and all that it may entail in the future with testing and possible treatment.  Pray that it goes smoothly and Josiah handles it well.  He’s not fond of going to the doctor.  Most of all we want to see our boy be healthy and free of pain and anxiety.  It would also be nice if we could resume a normal life free of diaper rash and pooping stress!  It is amazing when your 2 year old goes through more diapers in a given day than your newborn and each change is a struggle because it hurts him to be touched.

Happy Birthday To…

Savannah!

We celebrated Savannah’s 4th birthday on Saturday with a family party at Gram and Deda’s.   We had a good time, ate too much food, and had fun watching Josiah and Savannah play.  Elijah enjoyed himself by sleeping the majority of the time.  Everyone loved holding a sleeping baby, of course.  While it was rainy and windy there, we apparently missed quite a storm here at home since many people were without power and we have LOTS of tree damage.

Savannah and her Daddy make her cake together every year.  Um…at least it tastes good.

After the party we headed to Granny and Papa’s for a visit.  Josiah loves going there because he gets to enjoy being the center of attention while Granny and Papa dote on him and satisfy is every wish.  Again, Elijah slept through most of it, but I think his grandparents enjoyed seeing him since they hadn’t had the chance since he was born.  Unfortunately I didn’t even break out the camera there, but trust me, Josiah had fun.

Sunday night and Monday was a period of detox.   And after 2 days of free play and few rules to follow, Josiah became uncivilized.  I felt like the only word I knew was “don’t”.  “Don’t throw large toys in to the tub or splash Elijah in the tub!”  “Don’t scream inside!”  “Don’t stand on your toys!”  (The tall walk behind toys with wheels.)  “Don’t ram your toys into the furniture or people!”  “Don’t play in the cat’s water!”  “Don’t hit the wall with the rocking chair!”…and the list goes on.  Luckily he recovered pretty quickly.

Extended Mother’s Day

My Mother’s Day was more of a weekend, thanks to Jacob.  It started out with him making me and Mom a WONDERFUL breakfast on Saturday consisting of Belgian waffles, chocolate chip muffins, bacon, and eggs.  It was yummy!  He even cleaned up the mess.

Then we were off to the museum where we visited the History of Florida Cowboys exhibit that we have been meaning to go to.  This was the last weekend of it, so it was our last chance to see it.  And yes, I did want to go.  It wasn’t Jacob’s thing.  My family history is wrapped up in Florida history since my first relative to settle in Florida did so in Sarasota in the 1840’s.  It was a great exhibit and even featured people we know/knew or who were friends with my ancestors.  Cool stuff.

The rest of the day was filled with lunch at McAlister’s Deli, naps for the boys (“boys” – that’s fun to say!), and some home projects for me and Jacob.  It was a good day.

Mother’s Day itself was a bit tiring, I must say.  It was great because we dedicated Elijah to the Lord at church.  Fittingly, Elijah’s middle name, Corban, means a gift from God dedicated back to Him.  This was a little extra special because a few of our friends were doing the same and since the whole point is that the people around you support the effort to raise your child up in Christ, it is great that the friends that our kids will hang around believe and live similarly.   Afterwards we spent the afternoon visiting with family and later we ALL took naps (nice!), but the day wore me out because it was filled with tired kids, Josiah struggling with his issues, frustration, and stains on every single article of clothing I put on!  I was glad when everyone was finally asleep that night, but sad that that was about 11pm.

I forgot to bring my camera all weekend, but I did get these of some fun times from Mom’s camera.  These three were running circles around a tree at Mom’s house in a mad race.  It was entertaining!

Later, when they were swinging, Savannah started saying “Yeehaw”, but Josiah is not familiar with this.  He does know what sound the donkey makes, however, so he turned it into “heehaw” and soon they were both saying it with glee!  I think my son must be the only kid that brays like a donkey with delight :)

He loves this wheelbarrow!

Also, I had my 6 week postpartum checkup on Monday.  I could have told them so over the phone, but they confirmed that I’m doing just fine.  When Dr. Million walked into the room, she asked how everything is going.  I replied that it was good, but busy and she said “Yeah, they don’t tell you that 1+1 is greater than 2, do they?”  I got a kick out of that.  Then I got a little lecture about maintaining weight while breastfeeding, which I don’t foresee being a problem like it was with Josiah because I can’t seem to get Elijah even interested in eating.  The big bonus to this appointment was my 2 hours outside the house without kids!

Playtime With Josiah

Lately Josiah gets extremely dirty every time we let him out the door!  This is what he looked like by the time I finished watering plants the other day.   

Jacob brought some of his childhood toys home from his parents’ house for Josiah to play with.  He LOVES them!

He has also discovered that water continually drips out of the hose (yes, Jacob needs to fix this).  We couldn’t resist turning it on for him.  After playing in it for awhile the other night, Jacob came in and says “he now knows how to drink from the hose” – like he was surprised.  Hmmm…I wonder who taught him that…maybe the same person who taught him to jump on the bed?

  

One of our neighbors brought us gifts for each of the boys when Elijah was born.  Josiah got a Mr. Potato Head and he thinks everyone has to wear the glasses.  I turned around the other day to find this: It was ok with him to share the glasses because it was on his terms, but when I put one of these rings (below) in Elijah’s hand, Josiah could hardly stand it and was itching to steal it away.  Nevermind that we have a million of these.  We’ll have to work on sharing down the road.

And another picture just because he is cute.  This little man is going through a growth spurt.  He literally nursed for an hour and a half last night before we just gave him a 4 ounce bottle to try to top him off!  He’s already a chunk – just look at those cheeks!