Five Month Old Update

Little Boss's favorite cuddly toy.  His favorite toys are all Eeyore (this one, a little Eeyore rattle, and a noisy one).

Little Boss is five months old!  He's growing like crazy and getting huge. Seriously. He wears a mix of 6-9 and even 9-12 month old clothes.  He's not fat, he's just big. He's so long that he doesn't fit the same way when I'm holding him anymore.  When I breastfeed he kicks his legs around by my side, and when he snuggles against my chest now he stretches out everywhere rather than resting in a tiny bundle against me.

He's adorable.

A Story About Poo

Sadly this is a story about Poo as in excrement and not Pooh as in the cute bear who likes honey.

Early the other morning the little boss woke up hungry.  He normally wakes up for a feed between 5:00 and 5:30, so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  I fed him, and then my husband volunteered to burp and change him.  It's turning into a lovely, early morning family moment.

Then he decides to just change him on the bed.  So he starts changing him.  Midway through changing, Little Boss starts to poo.  I mean serious poo.  It squirts everywhere.  You might think from little tiny baby nappies that this wouldn't make much of a mess.  You would be wrong.

Poo ended up on Little Boss and his clothes, all over our bedding (including pillows), all down my husband's arm and side, on my book, on the nursing cushion...  Every time we thought that we'd cleaned it all up, we'd find something else with baby poo on it.

Sometimes baby's are just the most adorable thing on the planet.  Sometimes they're the most disgusting things on the planet.  And sometimes they manage to be both at once.

Just in case you wanted a story about the other type of Pooh, I'll throw that in too.

Princess and Angel both have Winnie the Pooh teddy bears.  In fact, I think they have multiple Pooh bears and most of the rest of the Hundred Acre Wood as well.  As Little Boss was napping (having worn himself out pooing all over our bedroom), Angel tip-toed up to his bed carrying a small Winnie the Pooh teddy.  Very carefully she laid it in bed next to him and then tucked them both in with a baby blanket.  She noticed me as she was tip-toeing away again.  "I'm sharing my teddy," she said, "I love my brother."

As Winnie the Pooh put it, "Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart."   

Little Hands

What is it about little baby hands? 

I love looking at my newborn's hands.  They are so small, but perfectly formed.  He has long fingers-just like his daddy's.  As he's still a newborn, he moves his hands around a lot without having real control over them.  Sometimes he'll punch himself in the eye and then glare at his hand as if to say "What did you do that for?".  To his sister Angel's delight, he wriggles sometimes so that it looks like he's waving at us.  The Little Boss also likes to grab onto my clothes when he's breastfeeding.

The one thing that he does have control over is holding hands.  He likes to hold hands...only he's so small that it's not really holding hands.  It takes his whole hand to hold on to one of my fingers.  In fact, when he was first born he gripped on to one of daddy's fingers and held on with surprising strength.  He likes to fall asleep in my lap or on my chest clinging on to one of my fingers.  I think it makes him feel secure being able to hold on to us.

If you feel like a bad parent, read this to feel better...

So it's an ordinary afternoon.  I'm breastfeeding baby and the girls have been playing a game together.  When Angel disappeared from the room for a few minutes, I didn't think anything of it.  I just figured she was getting another toy for their elaborate game (which seemed to involved as many different toys spread across the floor as possible).  I didn't get worried until she started crying, and even then I didn't think it was anything serious.  I could hear her walking back into the room with me, so I didn't even bother getting up at first.

Then she came in holding her eye.  "I was putting on make-up," she sobbed, "and it got in my eye and it hurts."  I looked at her and realized that she was not just putting on makeup.  She had found a bottle of sparkly nail varnish and had used it to try to do her eye make up.  That's right.  She had painted all around her eyes with nail polish.  Glittery pink nail polish, to be precise.  I did the obvious thing and started screaming for my other half to come help.

It took two of us, the sink, and a lot of wet wipes to get her eyes (mostly) clean.  Let me tell you---nail polish does not come out of eyelashes easily.  Also, stupid sparkly nail polish means that even if you manage to get the polish mostly off, your toddler still ends up with glitter all over them (and potentially in their eyes).  Since she had painted around her eyes, we couldn't use anything like nail polish remover to try to get it off.

Luckily, thankfully, miraculously she did not actually get any of the nail varnish on her eyeball (as far as we could tell). 

Sometimes I feel like I'm really on top of things and a good parent...then inevitably something like this happens.  The funny thing is that I am not a yummy mummy.  I don't normally wear nail polish.  I had just painted my nails for the first time in about six months, and so had pulled out the nail polish from its dusty hiding place in my bedroom.  I guess I'm going back to my normal, nail-coloured-nails again from now on.

Moral of the day: toddlers and nail varnish do not mix...or at least they shouldn't.

Talking to the Specialist

We recently met with the specialist who is overseeing my pregnancy care.  I also have a midwife that I regularly see, and have met with different doctors in the specialist's team.  He's the one ultimately in charge of my care, though, and who will be responsible for the birth. 

This was our last meeting with the specialist before the birth, and we got to schedule the C-section.  Most of the appointment was pretty standard and exactly what I expected (I had the same specialist with Angel and with the ectopic pregnancy, so I'm used to him, plus this will be my 3rd C-section).  One thing he said was completely unexpected though.  He offered, while I was already open on the operating table for the section, to go ahead and sterilize me.

I think that was his not-so-subtle way of saying I shouldn't have any more kids.

Even though we're pretty sure that this will be our last baby, neither my husband nor I really feel comfortable with this option.  I also feel like it was kind of sprung on us without a lot of discussion or information or time to think it over.  We said no thanks.

Have any of you been given this option?  What did you do?

32 Weeks Pregnant & Having Heartburn

Things that give me heartburn:
*bending or leaning over (if standing or sitting)
*changing positions/rolling over (if lying down)
*not eating for too long
*eating peanut butter, oats, mint, or anything acidic (vinegar, citrus fruits, tomatoes, etc.)

OK, that's probably not a complete list, but you get the idea.  I seem to have heartburn most of the time these days, and it gets so ridiculous that it wakes me up at night.  Tums and other antacids seem to be my constant companion.  The problem is that--being pregnant--I'm only allowed to take a limited number of them a day.  So I try to ration them out for when it gets really bad.

If all the old wives' tales (and my first two pregnancies) are to be trusted, this baby is going to be born with a head full of hair.

31 Weeks

Ever wonder what a pregnant woman looks like when she lies down during the last trimester?  This is not, in fact, a beached whale or small mountain range.  This is me at 31 weeks.