Noah turns two!

Dear Bug,

What a year you have had! On your birthday last year, we held a subdued party for you. You had a tube in your nose and didn't have any cake at your own birthday party. It made me so sad. In the year since, you've conquered feeding therapy and shown everyone just what a turnaround looks like. 

You've incrementally improved healthwise while at the same time made leaps and bounds developmentally. The number one thing that stands out about you is your verbal ability. You put together sentences with prepositions and participles, and leave the rest of us saying "did he REALLY just say that??" You're a delight to talk to, because you so readily express what's going on in your little mind. You ask a lot of questions, and you answer our questions as well. 

You are a big storyteller, just like daddy. There are alligators, hyenas, and barracudas EVERYHWERE. You love lions, Lion King, and Brave. You like to play with cars and your play food in your kitchen. You enjoy playing with Nathan, but sometimes you guys egg each other on just a bit too much. You do love him dearly, though, and express concern for him all the time. If Nathan is hurt, you always ask him if he's okay, and you always give genuine hugs and apologies when you hurt him. 

You have an incredible sense of humor, and you particularly love irony. You like Dr. Seuss and any books that have wordplay, which makes me happy. You love noises and are an expert imitator. You often ask "what's that sound?" and if I ask what you mean, you'll imitate it exactly. 

You also like active play- you're enjoying swimming, gymnastics, and you love to play basketball. You have quite an arm!

Unfortunately for the rest of us, you're still a really early riser, but most of the time you're sleeping until 6:45, which is at least manageable (except when you are at grandma's, in which case you get up around 5:30). 

You have kept us really busy over the past year, but now that we're past the biggest hurdles we are really starting to have time to slow down and enjoy life with you. It's a blast. You are a huge personality packed in a little body, and when your blue eyes sparkle and your nose crinkles as you smile, nothing else matters. 

Happy birthday bug, we hope it only gets better every year. 

Happy 4th Birthday Nathan!

Happy birthday, big boy!
This is the first year that your birthday has been a Big Deal to you. You were looking forward to it for weeks, and when it finally arrived, you positively glowed. You told us that you felt different- could jump higher, stand taller, and could finally sleep all night in your own bed (you chose a consequence for yourself too- if you don't stay in your bed, the baby gate to your room will be locked). You continue to be a sensitive and honest soul, and we've really seen you start to care for your little brother, even though you have your moments. You also are really attuned to Noah's trials, and you can explain all of his feeding issues and therapy sessions to anyone who asks. You even know his medicines and will remind me if I forget to give a particular one. You actually seem to love all things science/medical, whether Noah-related or not. You like listening to your heart with my stethoscope, and I taught you how to take your own pulse. You like to explain to people how the body works- lungs, heart, kidneys, blood, you name it. 

The one thing you are resisting is learning how to read. I'm not sure why. You know and can write all of your letters, but you just don't seem interested in learning how to read for yourself. I don't think you realize that learning to read would open a whole new world for you (and keep us from being able to keep secrets by spelling in front of you). 

You are still a very emotional person, but you've learned to self-regulate a little better. At school you are consistently in green. You choose your friends wisely, hanging with your best buds Izzy and Alexa, and avoiding trouble at all costs. You're doing well at school, although we still have to send lunch on some days because you won't eat the school food. We just got your VPK paperwork the other day, I can't believe it's already time to think about that! Really, when you went from three to four, it really did feel like you grew overnight. I'm not sure where exactly the time has gone! At any rate, happy birthday big boy, here's to a wonderful year full of discovery and growth!

Happ birthday bug!

Dear Noah,

You are our little bug. I have not blogged all of your milestones, but they are seared in my memory. Even after only 12 short months in this world, you have developed a clear and strong personality. You are fiercely independent and single-minded when you want something. Even your pancreas has a mind of its own. You used to be able to command us with your eyes; now you simply point at what you want and then look at us as if to say "well, what are you waiting for?" You test your limits by touching something that you aren't supposed to and then looking back at us for a reaction. You also assert your independence with your refusal of bottles- but only at home. If Miss Marilu or Miss Iris offer you a bottle, you accept it. For family, not so much. That's why you have to have that tubey, you silly boy! If only we could explain to you that you're making your own life difficult! In spite of all the poking and prodding that's been done to you, you've been able to keep your sweet and playful nature. Your smiles are the best, hands down.

We know that you don't like doctors or fluorescent lights, but what DO you like? Books, for one. You have, for several months now, been picking out books and crawling madly across the room to us so that you can be read to. We read "Bubbles, Bubbles" over and over and over again, but we don't mind at all. You also have an appreciation for art and photography that astounds me. Wherever you go, you want to see every picture that is on the walls. You even provide commentary on ones that you particularly like. You love all things musical, especially Kindermusik. I know that I can make you smile by playing the "Our time" song, and usually you even hum along. In a few weeks, you and I will be starting a new Kindermusik class, just the two of us. I can't wait!

You have a great vocabulary for a one year old- you can (when you want to) say mama, dada, jada, nae-nae, and the best of all: "uh-oh!" I think that your comprehension far exceeds what you can communicate, so one day I expect the floodgates to open and all of your thoughts will spill out into words. 

I love the giant grin that you give me in the morning when I come get you out of your crib, and I love how you come pull on my legs to be picked up. I hate that we are having to subject you to so many tests, but we really need to figure out what's going on so that you can GROW. I would be lying if I said that the past year has been easy, but I will say that it has been a joy to be able to spend so much time with you from when you were born through May. I'm glad to see that you love your school and enjoy it, then I don't feel so bad about leaving you. Sometimes you make huge changes (grandma calls it going through a door) in just hours, and that is just awesome to watch.

I know that we will look back on this summer a year from now and it will seem like so long ago that life was so tough. I am hoping that come December we can celebrate your birthday with an actual birthday cake- I've saved your candle for you. For now, drink your milk and GROW so that we can ditch that tube and do even more fun stuff.

Love,

mom

Sitting up

Over the past few days, Noah has been working on sitting himself up from a lying down position. This morning he was doing it constantly, and just now I saw him on the baby monitor sitting up in his crib :)
He's been working on crawling but mostly prefers to sort of fish-flop around. This means he can now get into Nathan's toys, so I've had to confiscate a few. He puts EVERYTHING into his mouth, so I have to be really vigilant. Last week, I found one of Nathan's little letter stamps inside the pack-n-play, which, according to Nathan, jumped into the pack-n-play all by itself. Amazing, lol.

Noah's update

Noah is weaned. 

Let me back up. As I'd mentioned, I had been trying to get Noah to start taking bottles during the daytime in order to prepare him for day care. I had originally planned to pump bottles for him, but pumping has yielded little return, and to be honest, my time is too valuable to be spending 20 minutes hooked up to a pump to only get one ounce. For this reason, we tried formula bottles and my plan was to just nurse in the morning and at night.

I had limited success with sending him to my mom's- the first overnight he did okay taking bottles, but the most recent time he more or less went on strike, only drinking 3 oz. in a 27 hour time period. I tried giving him bottles too, but he had largely refused these and on one particular occasion vomited the entire bottle onto me immediately after drinking it. A week later, when he repeated this performance after eating some homemade yogurt/granola/banana smoothie, I began to suspect that I was seeing a pattern. I definitely wanted to get things figured out before he starts day care- I was scared that he would throw up there while he was in his crib and no one would see it happen, among other things. I called the doctor the next morning and believe it or not, they squeezed me in just an hour after my call (with my favorite doctor, too!). The doctor listened very carefully to all of the details (the vomiting had happened only three times in his life, but I just had a mother's intuition) and my strong family history of allergies. She advised me to use Nutramigen formula (free sample, thank goodness!), which is hypoallergenic, and gave me lab orders. The doctor also expressed some concern at his progress on the growth curve- he had fallen off yet again, I believe down to the 10th or 5th percentile. She said that sometimes this happens as they begin to crawl, but suggested that we cut back on solids to encourage more nursing. He LOVES solids and was readily eating 8 oz. per meal, so little wonder that he didn't do much nursing. 

It so happened that I already had a lab appointment that same day to do my drug test for school, so I just added a second appointment for Noah. Sadly, taking blood from an infant is far more difficult than when you or I get our blood drawn, as their veins are buried under a nice padding of pudge. They had to stick both arms and do a lot of digging. :( He cried so much that he broke out in hives all over his face (he does this when he cries a lot). 

On Wednesday, we finally got the call from the nurse with the results, and my (and my mom's) feeling that he was allergic to something was confirmed. He is highly allergic to dairy, and moderately allergic to dog dander (Jason is in serious denial about this part). We could continue with the Nutramigen, but I thought since it smelled nasty, it probably tasted nasty too, so we might have better success with soy. After two days of trying to decide what would best serve our collective needs (and having a massive battle of the wills with Noah), I decided that it would be less confusing to Noah to just do bottles 100% of the time. In addition to the allergy issue, his lack of weight gain had me thinking more seriously about whether he was getting enough milk while nursing. He's so laid back that he rarely acts hungry so maybe he hasn't been getting enough all along. Going to bottles will allow me to measure his intake and maybe gradually increase it as well.

At first, he would only accept the bottle while sleeping. Oh, and let's not mention the amount of money I've spent on every. single. kind. of bottle and nipple out there. I actually ended up ordering from Amazon the nipples that look like his pacis. They arrived, and lo and behold, they are a proprietary size that didn't fit any of our other bottles. I ended up having to ask a BabiesRus employee to test a bottle (of course the most expensive bottle known to man) with water from the water fountain and the paci-nipple. 

Anyways, today was better and he took 3 solid bottle feedings plus a little more. I noticed immediately that his diapers have been WAY heavier, which may be an indication that he was indeed getting shorted at the breast. Now I have to stop eating whatever I want, since I won't have the calorie burn of breastfeeding, but I've also heard that quitting will cause your body to let go of a few "emergency storage" pounds, so we'll hope for that. 

Lucky for me (unlucky for my dad and brother), I was raised in a household with VERY allergic people, so I know the drill. Jason will learn the drill (as he started to today when I made him completely wipe his hands and the steering wheel in my car down after eating nuts). We just can't take any chances.Allergies often occur together, and the blood test can have false negatives. So it will be touch and go for a little while. His next appointment is May 8th for his 9 month visit, so hopefully we can figure out next steps and check his weight gain at that time. 

What have I done?

Well, pre-school stress has kicked in. The stress of anticipation, for me anyways, is always worse than the actual "stressful" event. This week I attended CPR class and a meet n greet with some of my cohort, and I'm a somewhat sickening combination of excited, nervous, and stressed out.

Interestingly, there's been a distinct shift in my body's ability to handle stress. When I was working, I was in a constant state of stress response/arousal- cortisol flowed through my veins as much as oxygen did. Now, when I get a jolt of stress, it feels totally overwhelming. Not in a panic attack kind of way, but in a whoa, what is this strange feeling my body is having kind of way. I would say it took a good 4-6 months for the stress-y feeling to leave my body after leaving my job, but now I'm going to have to re-acclimate to that. I almost feel as if it would have been easier had I not left work, since now I'm going to have to get used to stress and a fast paced life once again, rather than just moving from one high-stress thing to another. I can see how it would be difficult for a stay at home parent to return to work, just for this reason.

On the one hand, I'm super excited about all of the stuff I'm going to learn. I'm completely satisfied with my decision to do the accelerated BSN @ UCF, because my cohort is made up of people a lot like me- same age range, similar life experience- so I don't feel like "the old one" in my class. They also seem to be a pretty smart, reliable, and congenial bunch; people I can actually count on throughout the program (I have trust issues when it comes to study groups and group projects, because a lot of times things aren't up to my standards).

On the other hand, the thought that keeps scrolling through my head like the news ticker on CNN is What Have I DONE?!?!? I left a perfectly good, well-paying job to pursue something that I THOUGHT would be my passion. But what if it turns out not to be? What if this was all a huge mistake? The rational side of me says, well, if you don't like nursing just go back to whatever it is you were doing before. You didn't have to trade in your M.M. for this degree, and you can still use the old knowledge in your brain. The money thing will work itself out. Also, when my brain says What Have I DONE?!?!, and I really think about it, I've done a lot of good stuff:
- learned to REALLY relax
- spent more time with my family
- vastly improved my relationship with my husband
- taken advantage of an irreplaceable opportunity to spend QT at home with my boys, teaching them and watching them grow

And now it's time for the next chapter. Deep breaths.

What Nathan learned at school this week

When Nathan and I are in the car, we like to play a game we call "put on your listening ears." Basically, we just take turns making up stories. Nathan's almost always involve a dinosaur, alligators, little boys, and some kind of vehicle. On this particular day, the story ended like this: "and the car was on the sidewalk and then the dinosaur ate the cow. AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." He learned the pledge of allegiance at school this week :) I would have never known, since every time I ask him what he did at school he says "nothing." LOL