Feel like a Real Housewife

Do you watch Bravo TV? I'm addicted to a lot of the shows, but one in particular is on my DVR a lot! The Real Housewives of name the city...I watch them all

Well, I'm having a Camille moment - Last week and this week, our nanny has needed to take half days and let me tell you, it is hard! I feel silly saying it, but seriously taking care of Natalie and Philip is a lot of work! On a normal day we don't get out of our PJ's until noon and yesterday Natalie stayed in her pj's ALL DAY.

One blessing has been our new baby carrier, the Ergo Carrier, which allows me to hold Philip all morning while playing with and chasing Natalie around the house. We only stop playing every few hours so I can feed Philip. I figure if I was going to be making a career change which involved being a full time stay at home mom we would eventually get into a routine which would involve getting dressed before noon on most days and maybe even leaving the house.

Swimming

The past few Sundays my parents have been taking Natalie swimming. She LOVES it!

Last Sunday it was really snowy, but they are such good grandparents that they dredged through the snow to take Natalie. Well, you might wonder what one should wear swimming when it is cold and snowy...

This is what my fashionista decided on. (plus the hat and coat mom insisted on)

yes, I think she is posing

The Plan

So, we have been on the "plan" for 7 days. One week and multiple doses of medicine later...

A N D...

We might be on to something here! So far, Philip seems do be doing much better. He is happier after he eats and fusses less at night, which is making all of us happier too. We have also discovered that he had/has trouble falling asleep on his own, but if I can rock him to sleep before he gets overtired, he is much more agreeable. In addition to all of this, he has started to smile, which makes all of the lack of sleep, rocking, bouncing, singing, etc. worth it.

For now, I'm not going to try the final step of the plan, dairy elimination; although, I did buy a bunch of soy milk at Costco only to find out that most kids with a dairy allergy also have a soy allergy too...oh well.

Who knew

Who knew that babies cry? I know I have a daughter and we added a son, so you would think I would have a leg up on this whole parenting thing, but there are days that I'm lost in the weeds.

We are over 5 weeks into this baby business and I still don't feel like we things figured out. The only thing I know for sure is that he really likes mom. I seem to be the only person who can calm him down, which is really nice, but at the same time really hard!

I finally trusted my mothering instinct (after reading many many online articles on everything that could be wrong or causing him to cry) and took Philip to the doctor. Turns out that he has thrush, possibly acid reflux and maybe (you know, for the cherry on top) an allergy to cow's milk, which is in my breast milk because I eat dairy ALL THE TIME. The doctor put us on a 2-3 week plan. He said we can combine week one and week two (which we are doing) so this week we are trying a few things. First is the medicine for thrush, which involves not only a dose of medicine that we rub in his mouth, but also a cream that I rub on my boobs (tmi?) to combat the thrush on both fronts. In addition to this, I'm sterilizing everything that goes in his mouth and will continue to sterilize everything until the thrush has left the building (which I hope is within a week). In fact, today I picked up some baskets to keep in the kitchen, one for the "needs to be sterilized" baby stuff, the "sterilized and ready to use" and one for his medicine.

The second step of week one (or if we would have waited, week two) is medicine for acid reflux. When Philip was born the doctor mentioned that she thought he might have some reflux, but by his second week check up he was gaining so much weight that she said it probably wasn't something to worry about. Well, skip to present day and I'm now begging for medicine. So, he is now taking a twice-daily dose of zantac and a once daily dose of prilosec. Yes, they actually make these medicine in "baby version". We hope to see improvement

Now, on to the third step. The doctor said that it is possible that the thrush is causing Philip pain and that is why he has been fussy and if it isn't that, it is possible that it is truly acid reflux; however, if in a week we aren't seeing any improvements I'm to start "phase three". This is the step in the plan that I'm dreading...It is the "TOTAL dairy elimination". You see, although no one (that I know of) on my or Phil's side of the family has an allergy to milk, there is a chance that Philip does and the fact that I drink milk or eat dairy and it is getting into my breast milk and upsetting Philip's tummy.

Now, to know me is to know how much I LOVE cheese, milk, and basically anything dairy, so the thought of having to give up dairy for the entire time I'm breastfeeding is a not-so-tasty pill to swallow. It is also breaking my heart to think that it is something that I'm doing that is causing Philip discomfort. Every time he cries I think "this is because of me". To top it all off, I'm producing too much milk, so much so that poor Philip gags when he eats...so I'm now working on tricking my body into not thinking it needs to produce so much milk.

Seriously, if it isn't one thing, it is another. With Natalie, breastfeeding was so hard in the beginning, but then that is all she wanted. With Philip, breastfeeding has been a breeze until now when we realize that we have all these other issues. Parenting is totally a guessing game, just when you think you have things figured out you realize that every baby and every situation is different. Add to that all the pressure we as parents put on ourselves and other parents. I remember thinking, when Natalie was little and never fussed, what is wrong with those parents of fussy babies? Well, now I know there is nothing wrong with them. I'm going to try and put less pressure on myself and project less judgement on others; here's hoping I can.

So lucky you found me

This post is a day late, but this week I'm playing stay-at-home mom to two children and WOW is it exhausting and time consuming! The only reason I'm posting right now is because my mother and father came over to help me take care of the kiddos.

My super sweet husband sent me an email yesterday morning that said "I'm going to order the new bed" the new KING size bed. If you remember from a previous post I explained that the solution to our sleep "crisis" would be a king size bed. Well, that sweet husband solved the crisis and ordered the bed. It should be delivered in the next few weeks and hopefully we will all get more sleep by then. Of course, Murphy's Law suggests that by the time we get the new bed set up, Natalie will no longer want to sleep in our room and Philip will want his space too...but I'm glad we have it just in case ol' Murphy is wrong.

What a Valentine's day gift! On top of that he came home with a card for me that was super sweet...and said exactly what I needed it to say. Because forgot to pick up a card for him or make him one, here is my electronic card.

Phil, I love you, love the life we have together and am so excited for what the future holds. I'm so glad you found me :)

Bouncy House Madness

Last weekend we were all invited to attend a birthday party for the son of one of my friends. The party was held at a place called Kangaroo Zoo. Basically it is a giant room that is full of all these giant inflatable bounce houses and slides. Natalie was in heaven!

She was fearless and climbed even the biggest slides in the place, even when I (the over-protective, worried mom) was saying, "Are you sure you should climb that...maybe just the small slides..."

climbing the slide ladder

on her way down

Jumping on the inflatable crab

Giant slide teeth

Bottom of slide

Family of four

We had some family/newborn photos taken before Philip turned two weeks old. Kirstin Roper took the photos and we couldn't be happier! I love that they were taken in our home, and I think show how we live and who we are.

Here are a few of my favorites. We had over 500 photos to choose from, so it was hard to find favorites!

And here is the post Kirstin did on her website: http://kirstinroper.com/blog/?p=1206

One month

We have made it to the four week mark!! And, knock on wood, things are starting to fall into more of a groove. For the past few weeks, Philip has shown signs of what the doctor called "a form of colic" in the evenings, which really meant that he liked to be held, walked, bounced, etc. As long as you were moving and he was in your arms he was fine. It also meant that he seems to have more gas in the evenings, so feedings normally resulted in a lot of burping and a lot of tooting. There were nights I thought I had reached my breaking point and after not sleeping much at night, mornings were harder and harder and crying seemed to be part of my daily routine. BUT, things have started to turn around! Philip is less gassy at night, which means he is in less discomfort, which means we are all in less discomfort. We also (finally) moved the crib out of Natalie's room and into Philip's room, and although he has never spent the night in the crib, I'm hopeful that will happen eventually.

Philip is a good eater. I seem to nurse him about every two to three hours, even at night - which is really hard. My life is now broken into two hour chunks of time. I think, "what can I accomplish in the next two hours", or "holy crap, it's already been two hours?" One great thing has been the fact that he will actually take a bottle. After the fiasco with Natalie never taking a bottle we decided that we should get him on the bottle early, and keep giving him a bottle every day so he would continue to take them once I went back to work. Lucky for us, he loves to eat and has taken to the bottle (again, knock on wood).

Because he is such a good eater, he is growing like a weed! I've already started to put away clothes that he doesn't fit into. Nothing that says Newborn on it will fit him, so does that mean he isn't still a newborn? Any way...to give you an idea of his growth, when he was born he weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces, when we left the hospital he weighed 7.10, two days later he was 7.12 and one week later he was 8 pounds 15 ounces! A pound in one week? Phil weighed him about a week ago and he tipped the scales at over 9 pounds. So, growing like a weed! I fully expect him to out weigh Natalie soon :)

Here are photos of him, taken at the one, two, three and four week mark.

One week

Two weeks

Three weeks

Four weeks

Now, I'm off to nurse my sweet boy