We Be Illin’

We’re recovering from being sick.  I got a bad cold, and a few days later Jack came down with what I figured was my cold.  He had a runny nose and cough and slight fever.  I thought he was getting better, but after a couple of days he started wheezing a bit and came down with the croup (characterized by a harsh cough that sounds like a seal barking).  Chris went out at 11 PM to buy a vaporizer for his room.

Jack had a rough couple of nights.  Chris and I took turns sleeping in his room so we could comfort him.  I nursed him a lot.  He napped a TON during the day; one day he napped 2.5 hours in the morning and 2 more in the afternoon, which is unheard of for him.  I actually woke him up, figuring he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.  He was still playing and eating ok, but very clingy; he wanted me near him all the time, and I couldn’t even read a book or anything without him becoming very upset.

He started to get better, and then came down with another fever and a rash on the small of his back.  After conferring with the advice nurse, it seems most likely a reaction from the MMR shot he’d had 10 days previously.  Finally this weekend he started to get back to normal.  He still has a bit of a cough, and his night sleeping is a bit out of whack, but I can tell he’s back to his happier self.

After the year of photos, I took a little break and didn’t take any photos of Jack for 2 weeks.  I finally took one on Sunday, of his rash (to document it for the next round of MMR).  I’m sure I’ll get back into taking photos again soon.

One Year Stats

Jack, Zachary, Erik

Jack had his one-year appointment yesterday.  He weighed in at 20 pounds, and is 29 inches long.  Still 25th percentile for both; still short and skinny!  I know he’s short; just look at him standing next to his buddies Erik & Zachary in this photo.  But he looks chubby to me and has been feeling heavier recently, so I was sure he’d weigh more.

This was probably the toughest doctor’s visit so far in that Jack really didn’t want to be examined.  He didn’t like it when the doctor looked in his ears, or opened his mouth, or examined his hips.  And he was most unhappy with the three shots (MMR, which is measles, mumps, and rubella; chicken pox; and hep A).  I nursed him right afterwards though and then he was fine.

We also gave him his first taste of cow’s milk yesterday.  He gulped it right now.

I am still nursing 3-4 times a day; I may cut down to 2-3 now that he’ll be drinking cow’s milk.  Also, we just changed up the bedtime routine slightly.  The last two nights, Chris has put Jack in his PJs, then I nurse him, and then Chris finishes up with the bedtime book and song and puts him in his crib.  Before, I would nurse him with the lights out and then put him to bed and sing a little.  Usually he was still wide awake but sometimes he would fall asleep while nursing.

I figured it would be a good idea to make it not be the very last thing before he goes to sleep, to make it easier in the future when I do decide to wean him, and easier for other people to babysit him.  I have mixed feelings about weaning; part of me will miss it, and part of me will be relieved.  It’s still pretty uncomfortable, and lately Jack’s been using his teeth (not a real bite, just slightly).  I say “no biting” and put him down when he does that and he seems to be getting better, but it still makes me tense knowing it might be coming.

But I’ll miss it, as well.  It is something special between us that no one else has with him.  Still undecided on when I’ll stop completely… I do not have a specific time in mind.

I still can’t believe I have a one-year-old!

Happy Birthday

Jack turned one last Friday (April 10th).  I am still in shock that a whole year has gone by.  It seemed like just yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital, with no idea what we were doing.

We had a small family celebration on Saturday, and Jack sampled his first cake (yellow cake with vanilla frosting).  He liked it fine, but didn’t manage to smear it all over himself.

Before Jack was born, I decided I wanted to take a picture of him every day for the first year, and at the end of the year I’d make a slideshow of the photos and play the song “When You Dream” by the Barenaked Ladies as the soundtrack.  I used to listen to that song and fantasize about someday singing it to my own child.  Now we sing it to him every night at bedtime.

Anyway, we did it!  (Full disclosure:  we did miss four days.  Boo.)  And the slideshow is ready.  I also uploaded the photos to Flickr, because the photos go by quite quickly.  Most of the photos have been posted to Flickr in the past.

I am very happy we managed to get so many photos, but I’m also a little relieved not to have to remember to take a photo every day.  Still, making myself do that meant we ended up with a lot of great photos.  Now, if we have another baby, will we manage to do it again? 

Watching the slideshow, the thing that touched me the most was how many photos there were of Jack with friends and family.  I love that he was able to meet so many people.

The video seems kind of self-indulgent, like the kind of things only grandparents would be interested in, but I thought I’d post it here anyway.

WordPress won’t let me embed the video (!!) so here’s a link:  http://vimeo.com/4123004

And a link to the still photos on Flickr:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpearl/sets/72157616599534581/

Technical notes:  I first tried to create the slideshow in Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0, which has a built-in slideshow feature.  But it was IMPOSSIBLE.  First, there is no control over sorting; it uses “Date Modified” instead of “Date Taken” so everything was in a weird order.  I downloaded some shareware to make the date modified the same as the date taken, but there were still some photos incorrectly ordered.  Then it kept crashing.  And finally, the output wasn’t even very good.

So I switched to Windows Movie Maker, and it was MUCH easier.  The only thing I had trouble with was finding the option to set the length of each photo displayed (it was under Tools–>Options–>Advanced).  After that it was simple.

Flying and Walking

Great Grandma Pearl

We just took our second trip with Jack, up to Washington state.  We flew to Seattle last Friday and met up with my parents and sister’s family, who had flown up the day before.  We did not have a seat this time for Jack, and even though it was only two hours, in some ways the flight was more difficult than the one we took to England.  He’s just waaaaay more fidgety now and it takes a lot more effort to keep him occupied.  I had a window seat (I can’t remember the last time I had a window seat!) and he loved looking out the window, and having the window shade moved up and down.  He also played peek-a-boo with the people in the seat behind us, who had a 1-year-old of their own and were very nice.

When we got to the hotel Friday night I started feeling sick… headache & nausea… so Chris took over and I went to bed right after Jack did.  It was a suite, so we had a bedroom with a door.  Jack slept in the crib in the bedroom.  Luckily I felt better by morning.  No idea what that was about!

Saturday we went to visit Ruth, my step-grandmother, at her assisted living place, and had a nice lunch with her.  Saturday night we went to my second cousin’s wedding.  Chris took Jack into the “crying room” at the back of the church for most of the ceremony.  It was a great little room with a glass window and lots of toys.

After the ceremony, we went back to the hotel and fed Jack and put him to bed.  We hired a professional babysitter, and she stayed there while we went to the wedding reception.  It worked out great.  We got to the reception just in time to get food from the buffet before it was cleared off for the dance floor, and danced all night.  We stayed until 11:00 when the wedding ended.  The babysitter said Jack didn’t make a peep.

Sunday we went to brunch at my Aunt Chris’s house.  She’s 91 but didn’t seem phased by having 20 people over!  After brunch, Chris headed to the airport, and Cindy and family went off to do more sightseeing.  My parents, Jack and I drove across the mountains (it was snowing) to Eastern Washington to see my dad’s mother, who is 95.

The original plan was just to visit and have her meet Jack (who is named after my grandfather, who died when I was 12) but then she fell and got sick and was in a nursing home.  So we had a new mission, which was to move her into an assisted living facility in town, in 2.5 days!  Luckily we had a lot of help from her friends.

It was kind of a stressful visit for my parents, getting her settled in.  Grandma was pretty unhappy with the idea of moving to this place (a few years ago, when she moved from her house into a duplex, said that she would rather die than move there) but when she arrived and saw all her furniture and treasured things in place, she was much happier about it.  I don’t think she’ll miss her duplex after all.

I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked with her, but we were so busy going between the nursing home, the hotel, the new place, and the duplex it just didn’t work out.  Still, we saw her every day and she was thrilled to see Jack.  I’m so glad she met him.

It was an adventure for Jack in that we didn’t bring his food everywhere, but sometimes ordered off the menu at restaurants.  There were very few restaurants (it’s a small farming town) but he tried a veggie quesadilla and spinach Gorgonzola ravioli among other things.  He had a hard time adjusting to the hotel cribs (and let me just complain for a minute about how HARD it is to get a crib.. 3/4 hotels we’ve stayed at didn’t have the crib in our room when we arrived, despite asking for one at the time of reservation AND calling ahead to remind them AND them saying when we checked it it would be there).

But he really rolled with it for the most part.  He napped ON THE FLOOR at my grandma’s duplex (unheard of for him), went to bed late every night, ate at weird times, was hauled all around, met lots of new people, and generally was very good.

On the flight home, they let me bring the car seat on board even though we didn’t have a seat for him because they had a lot of empty seats.  I had an aisle seat and the check-in agent told me to put it in the center seat.  Well, RIGHT before we took off (as we’re taxiing and the flight attendants are doing their final check) a flight attendant comes by and says, “You can’t have that seat there.”  Apparently there is a rule that it must be in the window seat so it won’t block that person in an emergency.  It was too late for me to change seats and he took it away and said we could take care of it later.  I was like, can’t you just install it in the window seat behind me? And he’s like, no, no, I can’t, I don’t know how to do that, and then the guy sitting right behind me just GRABBED it from him and quickly installed it in his window seat.  Ha!

Anyway, he fell asleep on me for the first 45 minutes (!!) and I didn’t bother moving later.  In turns out my mom was seated two rows behind me and had THREE seats, so we could have sat there the whole time. Boo.

It was a long trip, but the wedding was lots of fun and I’m so glad we saw so many people from my family.  One of my other second cousins (the bride’s 1st cousin) was matron of honor, and gave birth a month early:  two days before the wedding.  She still came to the wedding to fulfill her duties!  I was in awe.

Jack has started learning to walk.  He started last week, taking a couple of steps and falling into me, and is practicing every day. He’s going to be 1 next Friday and I can hardly believe it.