Baby Bears

I love this video, it comes from someone else's blog. I really had to laugh:

Baby Bears

Shopping

We had to make a late night run to the store to get Carter more of that nasty Soy Milk he loves. I decided to try out the race car cart. He really enjoyed it. I apologize in advance for the poor quality pictures, my little camera just doesn't take great low light shots.

I just LOVED this face he made. I couldn't resist posting this picture:

Big cheesy smile. Not the face he made when I chastised him for chewing on the steering wheel.

Vampire Baby

Carter has started to give open mouth kisses. He doesn't get that he's supposed to close his mouth. Nor does he try to use his tongue, which I am thankfull for. Today, he went to give me a kiss and I turned my head. His open mouth got me on the neck. He closed his mouth and bit me. ON THE NECK. I am a little afraid now that he will bite my lips. Scary!!

Soy Milk

I have been having some health problems - again. In and out of the hospital with kidney problems. Nothing to worry about. However, they have to keep upping my meds. They get stronger and stronger every time I go in. I cannot breastfeed when I am on the meds. I have been pumping diligently, and dumping it down the drain. As soon as I got off my last round of drugs, I got a cold. Stuffy nose, sore throat, ect. . . Between the drugs and my weakened immune system, my milk supply has been pretty low. We have had to supplement with whole milk.

Carter doesn't seem to mind, he'll drink anything. However, he is starting to get sick. He has blown out of his diaper multiple times in the last week, and he has thrown up twice. Orangish bumps have begun to appear on his cheeks and his back. I am worried that he may have a milk allergy. He has been drinking it for over a month, and we are just now having problems.

When I presented this to David last night after he got home from work at 10:30 he decided that we needed to switch over to soy right away. So, off I went to Safeway at 11:00 last night to buy soy milk. I don't even know if the milk is the problem.

Does anybody have experience with this? Am I doing the right thing, or do you think it is because we have all been sick?


Since I am asking for advice: does anybody have suggestions for a dog that is afraid of the heater when it comes on? Our dogs sleep in our spare bathroom, and there is a heater vent in there. When it comes on they wake up and whine. It is really frustrating at 2:30, and 4:30 in the morning. I have tried moving them out of the bathroom in the past, but I don't really have anywhere to put them now that Carter has taken over his own room.

Pumpkin Patch

We took Carter down to Spooner Farms in Puyallup/Orting today. He was GRUMPY!! These are the best pictures we got. They look like he is smiling, but the sun is really in his eyes. We are just REALLY good at getting that shot at just the right moment:

Carter with daddy, thinking he is finally leaving:

Carter and me:

He LOVED the duckies. The kids got to race duckies via water pumper things. It was like the bath for him - with the splashing water and the little ducks. He screamed when we tried to leave this activity. All he wanted to do was sit at the end and splash in the water:

You may see this on our Christmas card. I am hoping to get a picture where he is smiling, but no luck today:

He just likes Grandma & Grandpa more I guess:

Here is what he was really like:

He didn't cry the whole time, only when we tried to set him next to those yucky pumpkins.

My Garden

This year I finally got to grow a garden. I have been trying for three years, and it has just not worked out. I did 98% of it by myself. I spent an entire afternoon in May weeding and shoveling a compost/fertilizer mix that David picked up for me . It looked like this:

I planted Peas, Carrots, Sweet Onions, Beans, Green Onions, more Sweet Onions, multiple varieties of Peppers, Potatoes, and Strawberries.

Most nights, I went out slug hunting with a toothpick:

David bought me a watering system for my birthday, and a Topsy Turvy for Strawberries for Mother's Day.

My garden produced about 18 Carrots (plus a plethora of mini, one-bite versions); lots of beans and peas; about 16 strawberries; 10 potatoes large enough to eat, 10 the size of a marble, and 2 rocks that we thought were potatoes; 10 Sweet Onions that have all molded in my basement; ZERO green onions; and the Peppers are still thinking. I have quite a few, but it is really past the season, and they are all still green. Mostly they are being eaten alive. Grrrrr.

On a side note, I also harvested 24 Asian Pears from the tree out back - nothing compared to what it produced last year.

My goal: to make baby food. He wouldn't eat the beans or peas, but he ate all the carrots. He was too young to eat the strawberries. We harvested the potatoes last night so it is too soon to tell. And the Onions, well those were a total loss.

But it was a lot of fun.

Toys

Carter is still a pretty small guy. We went to playgroup last week and someone asked me what size he was wearing. When I checked, I realized that he was wearing a six month shirt - and it fit him great. This brand runs a little small. I bought this shirt at a consignment sale a couple weeks ago, it is 12 months. The white around the bottome is his under onezie, not a trim on the shirt. The sleeves, however are part of the shirt. Way too small. My goodness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have started cleaning the floor in the morning and letting the babies play on the hardwood. It has been going pretty well. I pull some toys and strew them about and they crawl around and explore. I don't let them play with small balls on the floor because those roll under the couch and are lost for a time; then they are covered in dust rabbits because they were covered and spit and rolled through a couple bunny compounds. Yuck. This time I left the toybox lid open and decided to let them pick their own toys for a change. I didn't take out the balls, however, thinking that the chances were so slim they would be chosen. I was wrong. Two balls were the ONLY toys Carter pulled. He was content with that - banging them together and throwing them. They are MIA right now, and I will have to move the couches to find them later.

This is Carter stuck in the toy box. I know I am a bad mom - I grabbed the camera before I grabbed the crying child. He is flailing his legs in the air. He kicked Lydia in the head after this picture. Then I had two crying babies. He was pretty upset. I think he was looking for more balls, because I don't see how he fell in so deep with the toys at that level. I guess he's just a little top heavy.

Grading Papers

So, this post is not about the baby. If you want to read about him, skip this one.

I help David as much as I can because he takes on so much extra work so I can be home more with the baby. Sometimes I wonder if he would be better suited for stay-at-home-daddy-hood. Then I remember that he chose to be the working one when he decided not to support me through pharmacy school. Then I don't feel so bad.

Anyways, I try to grade his papers. I took auto shop . . . a LONG time ago. I need help on the vocabulary words, but I manage pretty well. I enjoy it because I get a good laugh. Some of these kids are hilarious. I don't know if it is because of their lack of knowledge, or the fact that they just don't care. Here are some stundentisms from their homework (spelling errors are theirs):

• Contamination: When fluids get contomineted
• Contamination: Where chemeicals are mixed in a bad way.
• Capacity: The amount you want to put in something.
• UTI - Universal Technical Group (It is supposed to be Institute)
• UTI - Universal Technition Instituted
• UTI - Uniseral Technacl Institution

I had multiple variations of how to spell Universal Technical Institute, and I even had one kid say that it was ITT Tech instead.

Sometimes I laugh at the "Things I Learned Today". The really funny ones happen when a student does something really stupid in class. I find myself asking David "how did _____ learn _____ on Friday?" or "What did you catch ______ doing on Thursday?" a lot.

In this group:

• Wheels hurt when they smack my face
• How not to take an air filter out
• Learning about diff cars
• Never remove the radiator cap when the cap is on. (huh? How do you get it off?)

The child that made the last entry copied it incorrectly from someone else's paper. I found the correct version on another paper while searching for this one to post here on my blog. The correct answer states that you should not remove the cap when the car is on. I would not have caught him cheating if I wasn't going to put it on here. As a result he got a zero, and the other kid got half credit for letting him cheat. I don't mess around with cheaters.

Picky Eater?

So, I take back most of what I said about Carter and his pickiness. All of the sudden he will eat just about anything. He gobbled down the broccoli, and doesn't balk at anything green. He will eat just about anything now. With the exception of my noodle creation. I think it is because I didn't put enough "gravy" in it. He is getting large bites of large chunks. I will have to work on that.

He is getting into things now. This is him crawling under the rungs of the chair that I put in the doorway to block his entrance into the dining room:

He put the toy in there, followed it, put it out, then followed it out:

Here he is being silly:

So, the Davidism for today:

Last night as we were trying to fall asleep, David turns to me and says:

"Sometimes I hear the clock in the bathroom and think it is the dryer."

Can anyone explain that to me? It reminds me of Brittany from Glee.

Pasta Stars

One of our babysitters gave us some Gerber vegetable/pasta/chicken meals. We tried them out. Carter LOVES them. They are on sale for $1 at Fred Meyer right now. I decided to try to make my own. I did, and Carter won't eat it. But, it is really yummy. I figured I'd post my recipe:

6 oz pasta stars (they came in a 12 oz box, I used half the box)

12 oz peas & carrots (12 oz bag from the frozen section),

16 oz low sodium chicken broth a (I used half the 32 oz box)

15 oz corn (from the can, drained)

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (3 for a meatier meal)

Flour - to desired thickness

Boil the stars according to the directions on the package, and then some. You want them to be complete mush!! Cook chicken breasts thoroughly then chop into teenie tiny pieces, set aside. Heat broth up in a pan and add flour until you reach your desired thickness - you want it to hold your concoction together. When pasta is tender, drain and pour back into pan. Then add vegetables & broth. Heat until warm all the way through.

Makes 9 servings of 6 oz each. I filled 4 ice cube trays, and poured one serving in a dish. Since my tray holds .75 oz per cube, I figure a tray is 2 servings (by Gerber's standard of 6 oz.). However, I usually only use 4 cubes of fruit or vegetables that I make. I popped the ice cubes out when they were frozen and saved them in baggies to use at my discression depending on how hungry he is that day.

By my calculations, I spent $ .50 per serving. I could cut that down by using what we already have from the cannery, and using rice instead of pasta stars.

****UPDATE**** Carter will not eat it at this thickness. I have to mix it with Yam mush. I recommend mixing in some mushed up Yams or other mush to get it to go down easier.

Happy Due Date

Carter would be a year old today. We went to the park with our playgroup. It was not a park for little kids. It was fun, with lots of grass - but none of the kids could play on the toys very well. There were no slides, and no swings. It was all balancing and climbing toys. There was this HUGE rope thing. It was an octogon (kind of like the old steel ones at a lot of really old playgrounds), and you could climb very high. Carter grabbed one of the ropes and would not let go. I let him hang like a monkey for a while before setting him in the center. It was kind of like a basket or the kids that fell:

This is his "Buck-Tooth buddy with the Buck-Tooth Dinosoar Shirt" picture. The dinosaur has buck teeth, and so does he. We are just missing the googly eyes.

More Medicine

Lydia loves Carter. She cries when they are playing and I pick him up. She throws an absolute fit when Carter is playing at her house and it is time for him to leave. Yesterday when David picked him up she held on to his car seat screaming. She was inconsolable after they left. I was talking to David about it later and made a comment that she has some pretty severe separation anxiety - but only to Carter.

Then he says "You know, they make a medication for that." I didn't know that. He said: "Yeah, but you have to be careful, it also causes heartburn and Diabetes" he went on to list the side effects: "Diarrhea, high blood pressure, and heart attacks."

All those commercials on TV have totally desensitized us to the severity of side effects.

Yuck!!

Carter is still mostly eating mush. He is not a fan of chunky foods. He ate a green bean for the first time today - not that I haven't tried before. He won't touch anything squishy or slimy, let alone put it in his mouth. He gives the greatest "sour" face (pictured below). I made applesauce this week and tried to not liquefy it. I thought I would feed him chunky bits. He has never spit anything out until now. He will usually choke down the bite I fed him, and then refuse any more. With the apple chunks he pushed them through his lips and held them there until I removed them. He is very polite about it. He can't eat peaches because he actually does vomit, he WILL NOT eat Broccoli, peas, or Green beans. I know that by this age he should be feeding himself. He is just not interested. He will self feed on Cheerios, and after weeks of trying he will now put a goldfish cracker in his mouth!! But gags on those little yogurt melts that the kids love. What a weird kid.

I was telling David about how he poo-poos the chunks of apples I tried to give him. His response: "Lisa, he poo-poos everything you give him."

Thanks for twisting my words David.

Domestic Partner Socks

Carter was helping me with the laundry today. We were sorting whites. He LOVES his burp cloths. He doesn't care if I'm wiping his nose - as long as it is with one of these. He will stop crying when he sees one coming - no matter the reason.

So, I was mating socks and explaining to Carter that when two socks are married they like to cozy up to each other in the drawer. I showed him how they go. David interrupted me to say that our socks cannot be married the way I "mate" them because I am putting two boy socks together and two girl socks together. If they were truly to be married, I would need to put one of mine with one of his - and that just would not be convenient. Therefore, our socks were not married. We determined that they are in domestic partnerships. So there you have it: in our house, our socks are living in domestic partnerships for our convenience.

He thinks something is super funny in this picture:

He left it on until I took it off. He is so funny.

Our Little Drug Addict

Blu is not feeling well - she has constant ear infections. I was stressing out trying to find her ear medicine. It is an ointment in a tube, the tube is in a little box with the prescription label on it. I told David that I couldn't find it. When he came home from work he spent 15 minutes searching for it. He usually leaves all that stuff to me. Not wanting to discourage him from helping me, I didn't want to ask him why this was so important to him all the sudden. I approached the subject lightly.

He felt it was very important that we find the medicine so Carter didn't get into it. I reminded him that it was fairly safe from Carter getting it. David said that Carter could possibly chew through the box and the tube.

"Prescription drug abuse is very common in kids now a days - I see it at school all the time. We don't want our son starting so early."

Where does he come up with this stuff?

Vortex has never had a medical issue. He is a healthy little hairless doggy: