Mom's the Word!: January 2005

Monday, January 31, 2005

No balls allowed!

Sigh.... it looks like another beautiful day on the Monterey Peninsula. Perhaps after jeff comes home for lunch, Travis and I will go to walk around the mall. We have a great outdoor mall here. All the stores are open around a courtyard-type landscaped walkway. It's really nice.

Anyway... we went to Carmel yesterday. It was very sunny and pretty. A lot of the shops are closing or have closed! Rent must be through the roof there.

Travis slept most of the time, and we got sandwiches and ate at the park. The sign outside the park had dogs with the line through them, and a sign that said, "No skateboarding, biking, frisbee playing, or ball-type games in the park"

WTF? I understand the no dogs thing... although Carmel is one of those places that has restaurants where you can eat outside with your dogs, and some even have doggie menus. Also, Doris Day's hotel The Cypress Inn allows you to stay with your dogs, and they have doggie beds, and doggie treat bags each night. But, no pooches in this park.

What's with the no frisbee playing or ball-type games?? Jeff joked that if you even engaged in a game of "pocket pool" you'd be ejected from the park. That prompted a string of humor, us bouncing funny things off each other... like saying if you HAD balls, you had to leave the park. And this little girl was learning how to ride her bike on the grass in the park with help from her mom, and Jeff said "That's it, I'm calling the cops!"

Travis woke up, smiling... and then he got the hiccups. Only one cure... to feed him.
But, I decided that if we couldn't play frisbee, or "ball-type games", then breastfeeding in the park may also be out of the question. I opted instead to nurse Travis in the car... LOL!

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 11:33 AM 0 comments

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Giggle pie

In the last week Travis has started to laugh... he's really ticklish! It's the most adorable sound I have ever heard! He also moved into size 2 diapers last Saturday. (Still a little big, but the Swaddlers tabs overlap... making it so much easier!)

He's started sleeping through the night... good and bad, since I wake up leaky and painfully engorged every morning. I DO feed him in the middle of the night since I always wake up to pee around 3 or 4am. But he stays asleep while he nurses. And he doesn't wake up to eat anymore at all.

In the evening around 9pm he gets super-fussy. He wants to lay on the couch alongside me and nurse like we do in the big bed. Once we do, he's perfect, and falls asleep. But the other night we were @ Jeff's Grandma's for dinner during that time, and he was SO mad. So, he's getting his routine down.

We finally returned the Blue Jean Teddy crib set Jeff's mom bought us. It was cute, jut not "us." We bought a baby Pooh one instead. It's SO cute... now if only baby boy would nap in his crib....

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 11:06 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Suck my Inaugural balls!

I am quite aware that shouting "Get over it, losers!" out of my car window just now at the unwashed, hippie, Kucinich-loving, drum-beating candle-light vigil-goers with the anti-Bush signs wasn't exactly compassionate conservatism at its finest.... but since I really wanted to shout out "Four more years, bitches!" I may still be a compassionate conservative yet! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 5:56 PM 0 comments

It's been a week?

I am listening to Travis babbling in his crib over the baby monitor as I type this. He's only actually EVER slept in there for 10 minutes, and it was the other day. I couldn't resist taking a few pictures... and well.. you know the rest. I want him to get used to napping in there. I put him down a few minutes ago, he was asleep, but woke up as soon as I put him in the crib. I think it's the downward-falling motion associated with placing him in the crib. The mattress is at the highest setting, and the side rail is down, but it still happens.

Anyway, he's not fussing, just talking to himself... so if he gets to the point where he's upset, I will go rescue him.

He's trying to poop again, I think. He didn't poop all day yesterday... which is not unheard of for a breastfed baby. Their bodies digest the elements in breastmilk very well. So well, that sometimes there's nothing left to eliminate. Well, he's making up for it in spades today.

He pooped 3 times so far. And they were all great big diaper fillers. "Assplosions" if you will...

I made Chinese chicken salad for lunch. It was yummy! The recipe is a new one, from my new cookbook. (I bought the Semi-Hommade Cooking cookbook by Sandra Lee.) It's a great book. I highly reccommend it. I bought it on eBay, of course... and paid about $10 less than Amazon's price. :)

We bought a new bed this past weekend. A very yummy, very expensive Spring Air. It rocks! We've all been sleeping very well

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 3:14 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 16, 2005

I'm famous on the internet!

One of my photographs I took last year was published online as the Picture of the day for today, Jan. 16th. Cool, huh? :)

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 10:44 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Sigh.

think Pod People have abducted my sweet little baby boy. For the last few days, it's if he's been replaced with the cranky-butt fussy monster. Poor thing.... sigh. I try not to take it personally... not when I go to feed him and even though he's obviously hungry, he screams when my nipple enters his mouth. Not when I sing to him, cradle, rock, jiggle, and sway with him and it still doesn't help to calm him. Not his swing, or the mobile, or music, or swaddling, patting his back... or anything I try... I know he's sleepy, cause he's rubbing his eyes and clawing at his face and ears, but he won't go down for love or money.

I wonder what's going on? It started out being only in the evenings, and today escalated to most of the morning. Thankfully, for the last hour he's been asleep in his swing. And an hour or so in my arms... I was terrified to put him down once he finally drifted off... for fear he would wake up again and the cycle would start over. What finally worked, you ask?

The "Growing Minds with Music" 3 cd set Jeff's dad sent him... on the Nature Sounds CD, there's a tarck called "Mother's Sound" it's a pretty song, instrumental, interspersed with a mother's heartbeat. Immediately after putting that song on, he started nursing... he was asleep within 5 minutes... wow! Looks like I've found the secret weapon!

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 2:51 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 09, 2005

2 months down....

Travis turned 2 months old Friday. Ahhh... my aching body! Seriously... no one tells you that the most stress on your joints isn't pregnancy, nope, it's not even labor and delivery... no way. It's the first few months of carrying that new little booger around everywhere. Mu little booger is pushing 14 pounds right now, and every muscle in my body feels it. Of course, starting off with bilateral Carpal Tunnel doesn't help matters any...

Yes, I have the Bjorn-type carrier (he hates it!) and the sling (a little better for him, but still reaks havok on my shoulders) I have two types of breastfeeding pillows (a custom-made "Boppy" type, and a My Brest Friend - wtf is up with the name on that one??!) but breastfeeding 8-10+ times a day combined with the constant holding, carrying, swaying, bouncing, squatting, and the picking up and putting down motion, not to mention carrying his carseat up 14 stairs to our apartment... well, that's all just a pain in my achy arms, shoulders, back and neck.

Of course, he's worth every snap, crackle and pop in my poor bones, though!

On another front, we got his crib assembled last night. (Not that he's going anywhere yet... except for naps we still want him to sleep in bed with us for a bit...) And we put the Winnie the Pooh Mural in Minutes up on his wall. Even the mobile is installed. (But, I had to PUT IT TOGETHER!!!) What's with that cheap-ass "Made in China" stuff anyway? It's beginning to look more like a baby's room and less like a storage facility.

Travis has decided he won't drink my pumped milk from the bottle again.... sigh. And he is beginning to not like his swing while he's awake... don't know why... it looks SO comfy. He sit there and whimpers these little fake- cries fussy little things, and then eventually the real cries appear, and continue until he is scooped up and into our lovin' (sore) arms.

Umm... yeah, that's about it... oh, yeah... we finally got our DVDs unpacked. We moved in here oh.. the 25th of October... so that's a new World Record in lameness. Our CDs are still packed, though... we're obviously taking it one day at a time...

Going to do 16 loads of laundry soon.(You THINK I'm kidding?)

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 1:20 PM 0 comments

Monday, January 03, 2005

Family...the ties that bind

MMM. Cookies. I am making yummy Double chocolate chocolate chip cookies right now. My apartment smells wonderful!

This weekend was nice, albeit rainy.

Saturday we met at Jeff's Grandma's house for the re-uniting of Jeff's mom and sister.

It was great! A little akward where his mom and Grandmother are concerned, but we expected that.

Travis was the star, of course. his Auntie Sarah loved holding him, and his Grandma Laura was in love with him, naturally!

It was like Christmas all over again! (For Travis!) They brought: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Pat the Bunny, and Guess How Much I Love You books, a plush Pat the Bunny Rabbit with crackling ears, a musical elephant plush that will attach to his crib and when you pull its trunk it plays "Talk to the Animals" from Dr. Dolittle, a jean jacket, matching overalls, socks, and turtleneck (all 6-9 months) from TCP, Gerber onesies, hats, and side-snap undershirts, a changing pad, changing pad cover, a BLue Jean Teddy crib set and mobile (we are returning for Winnie the Pooh) AND a Pottery Barn Kids CHANGIGN TABLE! It's the white spindle one with the baskets underneath.

Can you believe all that? They also brought (for us) a nice Babyprints frame with a spot for his footprint on one side, and a photo on the other.

Jeff, Travis, and I are going to go visit them in a couple of weeks or so. (It's a 3 hour drive)

Also, his sister Sarah is looking into college at UC Santa Cruz. That would be wonderful! It's only 45 minutes away. She has applied there, UC San Francisco, and Cal Poly. They don't send acceptance letters until March. She was already accepted into Mills College with a $12,500 a year scholarship. So, I doubt UC SC will be a problem for her to get into. Her father died when she was 7, and she has aver $100k in a trust. She has access to all of that $ for college, or she gets a lump sum at 18, 25, and 30. It would be nice if she had $ left over after her education is paid for, because she could buy a car, and such.

She's grown into such a nice young lady... the last time I saw her was when she was 10. She's 17 now, and very mature for her age.

Yesterday Jeff talked to his father in NH for the first time in 15 years. They had a nice 1 hour conversation... I suspect he will be coming out here eventually to reunite, and meet Travis and me.

posted by T.J.'s Mommy @ 3:08 PM 0 comments

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