athinker

I may or may not have had a child simply to take photos of them. It is seeming more and more likely that is what has happened. Anyhoo, observe: the rare no-necked giraffe-

Daww, in Daddy's Radio Flyer from when he was a kid.
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Re: my living room. After looking at the pics, I feel the need to justify a couple of things.

It was not supposed to be "Cheese in a Can" or "Oh Shit! I'm YELLOW" Yellow. It was, however, painted from a brown faux wood panelling with no less than two coats of (should have been tinted) primer and two coats of "Goldenrod" by me when I was 36.5 weeks pregnant. We'll discuss repainting after everything else in the house gets its first coat. That will be the play/family room, guest bedroom, and office. Also, painting of the plank flooring of the play/family (rumpus?) room and refinishing the guest bedroom floor.

Trim. Now that the floor is finally done, this is biggest on my list of omgmustfixnow. Problems standing in our way: don't know what to do about color/finish and we're poor. Our lack of fundage impacts the fact that we wouldn't have to worry about color if we could afford a nice hardwood and just stain it to match the floor. I want it to look nice, but I also want to buy it before next year. Alas, winter is rapidly approaching and we have to dump a few grand into our HVAC.

My husband has taken up rocketry?  A la sixth grade level home made rockets.  He messed around with rockets and home built rc aircraft when he was a kid.  I guess it is a cheap thrill, and as long as he doesn't build an expirimental aircraft Owen could theoretically drift away in, I am okay with it.  I do sort of worry about all of his googling of "homemade rocket fuel."  That just sounds like something that gets you put on some list somewhere.

Oh well.  I have been taking a million photos of the boy recently.  If fall has no other redeeming qualities, it is a decent backdrop.
 

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Still in denial about it actually being fall, since we didn't really have a summer, but baby boy looks cute with his giant pumpkin. Showing off his mad standing skillz.

I wanted to post a reminder of how giant my child is. Huge. Freaking huge.  He is around 3.5 months old, I don't feel like busting out the calendar to decide how many weeks he is.  I bought him a 6-9 month sleeper this weekend (when I decided it would be easier to to buy him new clothes than attempt laundry at my sister's apartment.) I thought he would have room to grow. HA.  The crotch snap pops open when he moves.  I did the unofficial, weigh me, weigh him with me deal and it looks as though he is around 18 pounds, which means he has doubled his birth weight in less than four months.  His rolls have rolls.  He has cottage cheese on his thighs.  Go boob juice?

And we both hate them. Hatethemhatethemhatethem. Ugh. They say the first two days are the worst. Day three and although he didn't scream when I readjusted them this morning, last night was rough to say the least. His casts made him roll up on his side to sleep, so he had gotten used to sleeping on his side and now with a roughly 12" bar holding his feet apart that isn't really possible. The first night we were both so exhausted from him screaming inconsolably for hours that I just passed out with him on my chest. The next night we tried that, and it worked for about two hours. I honestly don't know how we made it through the rest of the night, but like last night, I know it involved lots of nursing and various sleeping positions. Throw in a couple of scream-until-you-are-purple shoe adjustments and you've got a party. Gone is my self-soothing baby who was glad to wake up at 8 to eat, squirm and kick by himself for an hour and fall back asleep until 11 or noon. It was great while it lasted and hopefully it doesn't take too long to get back in some sort of a groove. After not enough shoddy sleep, he's up at 9.

So, the plan is wearing them for 23 hours/day for the next three months.  At three months we go back and have an appointment and hope there hasn't been a relapse.  If no relapse, we start a gradual step down of 20-22 hours/day for one month, 18-20 hours/day for one month, 16-18 hours/day for one month and finally for 12-14 hours (basically for naps and nights) for two to four years.  I am sure by then it will be old stuff and he'll be as fine as he can be with it. 

I feel the need for a PS- We weren't driving with his straps that low and actually in that picture he was in the driver's seat, which is worse.  Richard had started to take them off while we were trying to flag someone down to borrow a tire iron from when our tire blew after our doctor's appointment.  Of course we were 3.5 hours away from home, knew no one and most people I asked acted like I was going to whack them over the head (in broad daylight, mind you) if they did let me borrow it.  I was thisclose to waking up the baby for sympathy points until a super nice girl offered hers.  $375 later Richard has four new tires though!

1.  I would appreciate it muchly if it would not tornado outside.  Our basement/cellar smells way too bad to spend any amount of time down there.*

2.  How can something so cute and so tiny smell SO bad?  Was it something he ate? Har de har har.  Feeding him kind of puts me in a gas chamber.

*Note to self- have Richard clean the basement.

Seven weeks postpartum.  This has to be the trade off I get for getting a kid that actually sleeps through the night, isn't it?  I'm contemplating which is worse, but really since caffeine makes me ill, I guess I'll take pain I can knock out with Advil instead of sleep I can't find in a pill. 

In more awesome news, I am the reason this is out of stock.  I ordered it with priority shipping so it will be here on my birthday.  I told Richard expedited shipping is kind of like wrapping paper, only better.

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Tomorrow is Owen's tenotomy and I am freaking out just a little. I know it is a minor surgery, but still, it is a minor surgery on my tiny baby. They will give him a local anasthetic, insert a blade and clip his Achilles tendon. I know it is for the absolute best, there is no way he will remember it, but man, we've all heard the myth of Achilles, it was the only place that could kill the guy. Okay, I am being a tad dramatic, I just don't really know what to expect.

All along the doctor has told us we can use a bottle to try to calm him, but so far Daddy's finger or the pacifier we tried last week have worked without having to introduce bottles. Since he is 5 weeks and I will have to return to work briefly anyway, I decided to pump for this visit. We gave him his first bottle this weekend and it seemed to work well, so hopefully it helps. Poor kid can't catch a break, thrush, colic, casting, thrush again, and now surgery. Despite all of that, he still seems to be happy, as long as it is not between the hours of 7-11ish pm.

On another note, we got our previews from our photographer...

 

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At our 20 week ultrasound we were told that he had club foot on his left side. We were also told that there was a greater chance of other birth defects related to club foot, so we didn't talk about that being the only thing wrong with him. Club foot is fairly common and occurs in 1 out of every 1,000 births. Nowadays this is a fairly easy problem to fix with noninvasive means. Luckily when he was born, he was absolutely perfect aside from his foot.

When we found out at our ultrasound, we started reading everything we could. It was overwhelming at first, especially with the extra added hormones of pregnancy. The more we read, the better we felt about our treatment options and the outcome of those treatments. It is common for surgeons to simply recommend surgery, which is largely ineffective, painful, and unnecessary. We decided to go with what is called the Ponseti Method of treatment, and chose to go with a Ponseti certified doctor. Briefly, the Ponseti Method involves the gentle manipulation of the foot, turning it slightly down/in/up/and then out, with a cast placed with each of these adjustments weekly. This is done for roughly six weeks, starting within the first week of birth. After that the doctor decides if a simple outpatient surgery is needed to clip the Achilies tendon (momma sidenote- OWIE, I don't know how I am gonna watch that one). Then two more weeks of casts until the casting is done and the foot looks 100% as normal as it will be. After that he will go into a brace for 23 hours a day for 4-6 months. After THAT he will wear it at night and for naps for 2-4 years. From everything I've read, the casting goes a lot smoother than the brace. I can't imagine he is gonna love that.

So, we started driving the roughly four hour one way drive to Grand Rapids, MI to the closest Ponseti certified doctor at just 6 days old for his first cast. It is a short procedure and as long as he has daddy's finger to suck on it goes well. We discovered last time he likes the noisy saw to cut his cast off more than them removing it by unwrapping the plaster. He is four weeks old now and in his third cast, we had to leave this last one on for two weeks because the doctor decided to go on vacation. This one just ended up more colorful. We carry around Sharpies in our diaper bag for those who want to sign it. Remember Doodle Bears? I joke I have my own personal Doodle Bear, and when people worry about what to write, I remind them they have 6 more to practice on...

We are taking photos weekly, I only have two on this computer so I will update later to add what the actual casts look like later.
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"I am writing you today because your support has never bee more important to the future of Washington University School of Law and its students.
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Most important, your generosity will provide support for scholarships and fellowships at a time when many students and their families are experiencing difficult financial times"

Yes.  When family members are getting laid off, people are losing their homes, and people are unable to feed their children, it is the poor law students I really feel are most in need.  Did I mention Wash U School of Law has a $121 million endowment?  I read it to my sister who heartily lol'ed, seeing as she pays them nearly $2,000/month in student loans.

June 1st, 2008 we took possession of the house that would become our biggest project we've undertaken to date. I look back at the pictures and think of all the times I said I wanted to do this while we were young and dumb and didn't know any better. Mission Accomplished. Truth be told, if I hadn't spent the better part of my teenage years living in the house before it fell into the putrid state of disrepair it had devolved to by the time we were making a decision, I don't know if my bright eyed enthusiasm would have been enough. In my mind, however, I could see how it once was and what it could be with even further improvements. We knew it wouldn't be easy, we knew it would be a lot of work, but knowing these things and living them are two different things.

After the appraisal of the property, where it appraised at roughly 1/3 of the value it had when my parents bought it over a decade ago, on May 31st we dove in. Literally dove into piles and piles of unimaginable filth, disrepair, and godawful stench. That first weekend we were so determined to sleep out there since it was finally "ours" after paying off 6 months of lapsed mortgage and six months after that before my stepfather would finally vacate the premises that we slept in beach chairs on the front porch. The smell inside the house was too overwhelming to be inside for more than 15 minutes at a time, let alone sleep in it. We wised up after that first weekend and brought our tent and pitched it every weekend and tore it down before we left. It would be this past winter before we could sleep inside and even then with no central heat, we ended up crashing at Richard's parents house.

Aside from a handful of weekends, mainly holidays, family obligations, and one vacation, we have spent every. single. weekend. driving the hour down to the farm from our home after work on Friday working through until Sunday night. As a little special icing on the cake, to earn money to fund two mortgages and this project we had opened our home in South Bend to International students studying English in a program at a local University. Working on the weekends was interspersed with trips back up to The Bend to take them to and from their weekend activities and making sure they had adequate food to last the weekend. Oh, oh, and then somewhere in there we decided it would be a good idea to pick now as a time for me to get pregnant. To say life has been hectic would be a massive understatement.

From what I can adequately remember, our accomplishments at the farm in bullet form:

• Tamed the chest high field lawn
• Kept said 2-3 acre field mowed during all of the work
• Cleared trees and saplings
• Cleaned 37 bags of trash from just the downstairs (kitchen, living room, bedroom, dining room)
• Spent 18 hours getting the kitchen clean enough to start scrubbing
• Cleaned small dead animals and months worth of dirty cat litter out of the back porch to begin to attack the stench
• Scrubbed floors, walls, and counters in every room at least three times to try to remove the stench
• Hauled +/- 500 lbs of scrap metal gathered up from outside
• Demoed animal pens on the outside of three buildings, approximately 8' x 8,' 8' x 8,' and 30' x 10'
• Removed two 10' x 10' sheet metal lean-to's off the chicken coop, restoring its original size
• Contracted the removal of the delapidated house trailer
• Pressure washed all of the siding on the house
• Removed four pickup beds worth of trash from two outbuildings
• +/- 20 hours pressure washing/scraping two outbuildings in preparation for priming and painting
• 5 gallons of outdoor primer and 5 gallons of outdoor paint applied to buildings
• Complete roof tear off, down to 50 year old cedar shakes
• BRAND NEW ROOF, installed by my lovely husband, his family, and a contingent of my male friends
• More scrubbing
• Two extended bed pickup trucks full of cat pissy trash removed from the attic
• Packing my mother's belongings she claims to want to keep, but doesn't feel the need to remove from the house
• Systematically emptying every room until only the office upstairs has non-construction related contents in it (see above bullet about my mother's shit)
• Organizing and sorting in the shop to get to a state of first paths to be able to walk through, to semi-organization, to some usefulness
• Tearing down two 4' x 3' bird cages, with years of filth inside
• Finally get to paint, which has consisted of:
  
  • 5 gallons of primer sprayed upstairs to go from yellow and pink to white
  • 10 gallons of Kilz indoor rolled downstairs to cover gawd awful wood panelling in the living room and both bedrooms and fresh drywall in the bathroom
  • 2 gallons of Sherwin Williams Scanda Blue in our bedroom
  • 2 gallons of Sherwin Williams "Oh Fuck, I'm Yellow" or "School Bus Yellow" in the living room
  • 1 gallon of Mocha in bb's room, 1 quart of dark primer, 1 quart of Java
  • 2 gallons of Valspar Ultra Premium Bright White in the kitchen and bathroom
  • 1 quart of Valspar Ultra Premium Promised Land as trim for the kitchen
• Removal of wood panelling and plaster and lathe in the laundry room
• Removal of wood panelling and moldy insulation from the back porch
• Bought corn burning stove
• Complete bathroom tear down and construction, consisting of:
  
  • Removal of wall board
  • Tear down of plaster and lathe
  • Rental of dumpster to dispose of aforementioned plaster and lathe
  • Removal of tile
  • Removal of moldy, rotten plywood subfloor and termit infested wood planks
  • Installation of two additional floor joists, because two joists 18" apart in one room holding up a cast iron tub was not sufficient
  • Installation of new plywood subfloor and two layers of cement backerboard to make it somewhat level and even
  • Complete rewiring
  • Drywall installation, mudding and taping
  • Purchase of new vanity, lighting, toilet, tub fixtures
  • Installation of vent fan and overhead light
  • Purchase and installation of new ceramic tile floor and shower walls
• Removal of a 30' x 30' deck
• I feel I get to list this as an accomplishment- successfully gestate a child to term while working my ever loving ass off

Stuff left to do soon, in bullet form-

• Installation of carpet in our bedroom
• Refinishing of the floors in the living room and bubsters room
• Installation of the toilet, vanity, and shower fixtures
• Buy, paint, and install trim in both downstairs bedrooms and living room
• Run new lines to the sink
• New LP tank
• New forced air furnace
• Uh, MOVE IN 

I am sure I am missing things. Huge things.  I hope I remember them in time to record them, and at least I have taken endless photos of the progress we have made.  We have not hired one independent contractor for ANY of the work mentioned above.  It has been done by our own sweat, hard work, and determination and the help of awesome friends and family.  Richard's parents, brother, brother-in-law, my friend Matt, and Dave have all been indespensible.  In the early days I don't know if I would have found the dedication without help from Matt.  When someone else is out there working on your property it makes it kind of hard to go wander off or take a nap instead of hauling more trash.  Since the first time we asked Dave to help, he has been a machine, even coming out on a week night when we weren't there to begin the tear down of the pool deck.  We are so lucky.

I've heard comments from fellow renovators and annoying bystanders about the toll the work takes on a relationship.  I can honestly say, with all due sappiness, that it really has done nothing but bring us closer.  Working towards a common goal of something we want so badly and seeing such rapid progress has been so rewarding.  We both want nothing more than to be living in a beautiful property in the middle of nowhere.  We are getting so close. I am so excited about the next stage of our life.  So far it has been an awesome seven years of being together and nearly four years of being married.

Who on Earth looks forward to life with a newborn as a time when things settle down?!?!!?  I am not doing ANYthing house related or leaving the house for the entire month of July.  We'll see how that goes.

HE FLIPPED!

No more breech bb.  Now he just needs to stay there, the little booger.

I have decided to allow myself a day of schadenfreude after 8 years of wearing my big girl panties.

If anyone is interested, Rush is on in 20 minutes.  You can listen to it stream at www.wlsam.com.  I think if there is any day ever I could stomach it, it'd be today.  I listened yesterday and had a hearty LOL at how much time he spent talking non-metaphorically about football. On election day. You know shit looks bad when Rush is talking about football. On election day.

YES WE DID!