Month: December 2010

nine months

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

Dear Theo,

You are 9 months old today.  And do you know what you did last night, on the eve of your 9 month birthday?  You crawled!  It’s funny, before I had you I always thought there were definite moments when babies did things.  Like I thought you would start smiling one day and then smile every day.  I thought the same thing would happen with your laugh, saying “da da,” rolling over, clapping on command, sitting up, et cetera.  But you have this way of teasing us and making us wait.  When you first smiled (not a gassy smile, but an I’m-laughing-because-my-mommy-is-working-her-butt-off-to-make-me-smile smile), it was the most exciting milestone we’d met up to that point.  I was SO excited!  Then you didn’t do it again for about 2 weeks.  Then not again for another week.  Now we just make eye contact and you smile.  I love it.  The same things happened with all of your other milestones.

You’ve been up on your knees for a month or so now, rocking forward or moving your knees (but not your hands), then falling on your belly.  It works, because you make forward progress that way and when you get close enough to something, you just start rolling to it until it is in your grip.  Well, last night, Peezy Brown, you moved the knees AND hands at the same time about 3 or 4 times and you really made some progress!  We are so proud of you!  Now, to say that you’re crawling isn’t to say that we’re chasing you down the hallway just yet, but you are definitely making progess and getting there.

Your cats…you love, love, love those crazy animals.  If only they would love you back.  They will one day, but right now they don’t like how you grab and pull their fur.  Ouch!  I wish I could lock up the look on your face when they walk by and put it in my pocket to pull out for a rainy day, because it never fails to make ME smile.  When will you stop finding the greatest joy in the smallest things?  I love how you love our pets.

Peezus, you love your food.  You are starting to think baby food is for babies, and that’s probably our fault.  Last night you ate turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner.  Not pureed and out of a jar, either.  You love to eat whatever you see us eating and you sure know the difference if we try to slip in some baby food.  You love macaroni and cheese, green beans, applesauce, shredded cheese, tomatoes, any kind of meat, beans, and oatmeal.  That’s not all though, you love anything we give you off of our plate, but especially if we let you feed yourself.  You’re getting pretty good at using your pincer grasp to pick up small items.  Sometimes, when you’re getting full, you just take the food and get it deep in  your fist and smoosh it up because you like the way it feels.  That works out wonderfully when you’re sleepy, because that food all over your palm inevitably ends up on your ears, eyes, and in your hair. 

You are kind of funny about sleep.  You go through a lot of stages.  Sometimes you are easy to put down for a nap.  Sometimes you like to sleep in my arms and other times you are too restless until I lay you in your crib.  A lot of times we can kiss you good night and lay you down and you never make a peep.  Other times you cry and cry for me and it breaks my heart but I know you’re okay when I go pick you up and you start lauging right away, as if to say “Gotcha!”  Sometimes we get you up and bring you back out into the living room again so we can steal some more kisses and time with you, but we usually try to stick to your bedtime routine so you don’t get too confused.  Lately you’ve been crying for a few minutes when we lay you down and it  makes us both really sad.  We sit in the living room with the monitor, making sad faces and asking each other “don’t you think I should go talk to him/check on him/see if he’s okay?”  One thing I can say for sure is that you have slept through the nights far more nights than you haven’t and for that, we are soooo grateful.  I hope your little brother or sister takes after you!

Every day with you is so much fun and I don’t know if anything or anyone has made me feel as happy as you do at least a hundred times a day.  I love you more than anything, sweet baby, and I always will.  Promise.

Love,
Mommy

too many doctors

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

This week is full of doctor-y stuff.  Wednesday I have my 16 week check up (already?), Thursday is Theo’s 9 month check up (does he get shots for this one? I’m a bad mom and can’t remember), and Friday I’m having surgery.  Boo.

I’m expecting my 16 week check up to go like this:
1. Sign in
2. Wait
3. Pee in a cup
4. Wait
5. Get weighed and have my blood pressure checked
6. Wait
7. See the doctor so she can listen for the baby’s heartbeat and tell me to come back in 2 weeks (if I want to) to find out the baby’s gender (or wait until I’m 20 weeks when my next doctor’s appointment will be scheduled
8. Leave after spending a total of 5-10 minutes with the doctor, but an hour at the doctor’s office

I don’t know what to expect at Theo’s appointment Thursday.  I am excited to see how much he’s grown.  It’s been 3 whole months since he was weighed or measured!  But about the shots?  Does he get them this time?  I really don’t know.  I guess I’ll give him some Tylenol beforehand, just in case.

Surgery? you ask.  Yes.  When Theo was 3 or 4 weeks old I noticed a small, hard spot in my breast and asked about it at my 6 week check up.  Doc didn’t like it so he sent me to a specialist.  They say it’s either a lactating adenoma or a fibroadenoma.  Either way, it has to come out.  They’ve been monitoring it via ultrasound every 2 months and it hadn’t changed much at all.  Until I got pregnant, anyway.  It was 2.0cm and now it’s grown to 2.5cm in 3 short months. 

It’s rare.  When I win the lottery, I win big. 

Basically it’s a solid, benign tumor (we hope).  I was hoping to wait until I was done nursing Theo to have it removed.  They told me to have it taken care of before I got pregnant again because hormones tend to feed them.  Apparently so.  Well, I wasn’t done nursing when I got pregnant so obviously I didn’t have a chance to get it taken care of.  I could have had it out while nursing but breast feeding with an incision on my boob didn’t sound like a fun time so I was okay with waiting until Theo was done, provided that it wasn’t growing.

Now I’m not so comfortable waiting.  Not only is it growing rapidly now, I still plan on breastfeeding baby #2 for as long as possible (up to a year).  I’m not okay with waiting until May of 2012 with this unknown mass in my breast.  The surgery can only be done during the 2nd trimester so it’s now or never.  Well, May of 2012.  Long story, huh? 

The procedure: Friday morning I will go to the doctor’s office and they will use a local anesthetic to numb the area where the incision will be.  Using an ultrasound, they will insert a wire to mark the spot where the mass is because they have a tendency to roll around during surgery and they want to make sure they get the entire thing out.  After the wire is in, I go to the hospital where the surgery will take place.  It should last no more than 1 hour and I will be under “twilight” anesthesia, where I won’t be unconscious, but I won’t remember anything either.  Fine by me.  There is a slight risk of miscarriage (less than 5%) due to the procedure or the anesthesia, I guess, but it is very unlikely.  They will monitor the fetal heart rate to ensure that the baby is fine.  The mass will go to pathology for a biopsy to make sure that it isn’t malignant and I will go home and sleep a whole bunch.

Eek.

~C~

19 days til Christmas!

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

What a wonderful weekend.  It was half busy and half lazy.  Often times, my favorite weekends are the ones where we never leave the house.  Or barely leave the house.  Never is a bit of a stretch to be honest, I’d get cabin fever.  But with that being said, I despise the cold weather we’re having right now and even more, I despise the bottoms of my jeans getting wet from walking through snow and wet parking lots…blech.  I’d rather stay in my dry, warm, cozy home!  Anyway…

Friday I went with my m-i-l and met my mom and sister for the Judds concert in Louisville, Kentucky.  It was wonderful.  It was like no time had passed.  I couldn’t believe clear and pure Wynonna’s voice was.  I had so much fun.  I think we all did.  Saturday morning my m-i-l and I drove back home.  I dropped her off and hurried home to see my 2 favorite guys in the world, who I had missed tons.

They were both pretty happy to see me and as soon as Theo went down for a nap, we started scurrying to get all of the Christmas decorations out.  We knew we had about a 2 hour window to get as much done as possible.  Wrong.  He napped for about 30 minutes.  So I got him up, put on his cute Christmas shirt from Old Navy, and tried to snap a cute picture for our holiday cards.  Bust.  I hate my camera.  Hate hate hate hate it.  Low light pictures are awful.  No flash is not even an option.  Anyway, I have to try again.  Maybe we can get one of him outside in the snow or something.  He loved the lights and the ornaments but he didn’t really speed things up or keep us on task.  We were able to get some stuff done…enough that we knew we needed to make a trip to Target for more lights.  We never replaced the ones that burned out last year.

So we took a break and got some quick and yummy dinner from Quizno’s (I got the Chipotle Turkey Flatbread Sammy…mmm) then went to Target.  I couldn’t resist buying Theo a little tree to sit on top of his dresser in his room.  It was too cute with the miniature ornaments I found.  It will be his night-light until after Christmas.  He likes it too. 

After Theo went to bed we finished decorating the tree and putting out other various and assorted decorations.

Sunday we had some pancakes for breakfast and Theo made up for Saturday’s short nap by taking an extra long one.  Meanwhile, we laid on the couch enjoying our Christmas decorations and catching up on DVR’d shows for almost 3 hours.  Ahhh.  Those are the times I missed when Theo was a newborn.  I thought we’d never have any time to sit and do nothing again.

I could get used to weekends like that.  Too bad we’ve barely started Christmas shopping and the next 2 weekends will be jam-packed with scurrying around to get everyone’s gifts (including Theo’s…haven’t bought him the first thing yet!) 

~C~