November and December flew past!

Well I thought I would be better at this than Brock but I guess life just gets so busy. Fall has gone by too fast. I went back to work on December 1st and I feel like the days have been flying by. Ian is very excited to have me back as his carpool buddy. He and I listen to books on CD while driving to and from school and then have discussions about them. It really is interesting to see things from his point of view. I am having difficulty adjusting to the return. I specifically chose this time in order to easy myself back into the swing. I only have three more days until winter vacation. And with the students being so excited about Christmas, their chaos covers up for my discombobulation.

Oliver is doing well his weight is slowly increasing. He was put on solids and one bottle of formula a day at his four month check up. He only weighed 11 lbs 1oz but he was 27 1/2. He is very tall (95%) and super skinny (less than 1 %). He seems to like rice cereal and I am going to start him on veggies and fruits soon. This is a picture of his first time with cereal. He his doing much better with his head control since starting physical therapy. He last a few minutes before putting his head down on a shoulder now. Here he is also showing off his favorite way to chew on his hand (this is not posed).


Ian has been very independent lately. He decided he was going to make himself lunch one day and produce a very interesting sandwich. It contained peanut butter, Nuttella (chocolate hazelnut spread), and (this is the gross part) mayonnaise. He was very proud of himself. Both Brock and I had a difficult time not saying "Eww". He said it tasted good. I will take his word for it.


As for Brock, he registered to go back to school. He starts at UW on January 5th. He has gotten all of his books and is pre-reading them during the day while I am at work. He is going back to school to finish his philosophy degree and get a degree in teaching. Oliver goes over to Rhona's during the day. It is nice to know that family can take care of him during the day. Brock could take care of him this month but we thought it would give him time to study without have to care for a baby. Oliver can be quite demanding on some days.

October

Oliver is getting bigger and is beginning to reach for things. He is not quite able to straighten his arms and get them up there but he is getting much better. His O/T has been working with his gross motor skills since we no longer need to focus on his latching on. She is not a physical therapist (P/T) but has done that before. Our P/T doesn't begin until the beginning of November and she thinks that's too long to wait to get his muscles to function properly.

His big brother on the other hand has no problems with grabbing his toys . As he demonstrates here, he is never without some small object to take with him out the door to play with. Ian always has some little item or items in his pockets. I have a basket on top of the dryer that I empty his pockets into before I wash them. The basket is over flowing with a myriad of stuff from legos to rocks. Doesn't he look handsome though? He got so many compliments on his tie that he wore it to the hospital to meet his new cousin, Logan. Although he wore it with a t-shirt and holey jeans, he thought he should make a good impression for their first meeting. I will get a picture to show you soon.


Here we are doing some of Ollie's daily exercises while watching his projector (it cycles through smiling stars, moons, sheep, and a cow). We are supposed to stretch his arms and legs each time we change his diaper. He does love watching the pictures go around. He has just started talking to them, too.





Ian's two front teeth have been loose since the end of May. They finally came out a couple days apart right before Halloween. Ian had been hoping that the tooth fairy would bring him a cheese knife like his best friend Jake got (leave it up to our son to be unconventional influenced by his friend). We asked him what he would do with a cheese knife. He thought long about it and decided he would rather have a pocket knife to be able to take camping. I told him to write a note and ask the tooth fairy if she would please leave him a pocket knife for his two front teeth. She did of course. Who could say no to this face?
Halloween was fun this year. We trick or treated in downtown Burien the Saturday before. We go every year with my niece Amanda and nephew Colin. She is almost 8 and Colin just turned 6. We also go over to my mom's and trick or treat in the neighborhood I grew up in, usually. This year was different. My parents had a house fire in the end of August and they are in a rental house while theirs is being rebuilt. So for the first time since living in this house, we went in our neighborhood. It was really nice. There are a lot of kids around here.

If you can't tell what Ian is, that's okay a lot of people couldn't. He is a flying squirrel. He came up with it on his own. I then decided Ollie needed to be his acorn. I made both of their costumes using things I got at the thirft store, except the fur and hat (although I did make the hat too!). My squirrel couldn't actually eat the acorn because of his missing teeth. So he sang all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth all that week, just like Alvin the Chipmunk.

Oliver's first month or so...

Okay, so I left off with Oliver just being born. He was so squished inside of me that we had to wrap him really tight or his legs would flip up. It was very comic like.

So here he is a few hours after birth. He looked like this for the next month, rarely opening his eyes. He couldn't latch properly and wasn't getting enough calories to allow his body to do anything but just grow. In the first three weeks of life he lost 14 oz. We were seeing his pediatrician, an occupational therapist, and a chiropractor. We tried just nursing, tube feeding, finger tube feeding, tube feeding at the breast, and anything else that would work. At his six week check up, his pediatrician said we needed to do 80 to 90 percent bottle feeding. I had been pumping every three hours since day four of his life by this time. Finally in the beginning of September I had had enough. I told Brock that if Oliver didn't get the hang of nursing by the end of September we would be switching to formula. It was a tough decision but I was so sore.





My friend Sara gave me some good advice. First she asked if Oliver could nurse or if he was just use to getting milk faster from these other devises we had to use. She said "Take one day and just nurse and see if he can do it on his own. He will cry a lot so be warned. " It took me a few more days to get up the courage but I did just that and we are nursing fine to this day. I now look at my pump with disdain and know that I need to start pumping again to build up a supply for going back to work.




Brock put up a tree swing for Ian. We wanted to give him something special for when Oliver came and the attention was no longer on Ian. I can only imagine what it would be like to be an only child where grandparents came to see you, to have a brother born six years later and now they come to see him as well.
Ian is a fantastic big brother and loves to spend time with Ollie.







School started way too soon for me. I guess it was that I was sitting most of the summer. Ian was very excited to start first grade and was put into one of my good friend's class. Ian calls him Mr. A. His last name is Aguilar and kind of hard to pronounce for little ones. Even though I am not teaching right now, Ian is still attending my school Renton Park Elementary. It is about a 20 to 30 minute drive from our house. It wouldn't be such a big deal if I was going there everyday anyway but since I am not right now, it is long to drive there and back in the morning and afternoon. It's not as bad as it sounds because Brock often takes him and picks him up. Brock has decided to go back to school full time to get a teaching degree. I have always thought he would make a great teacher. He is no longer with Starbucks. It has been very nice to have him home during this time that I have been. Oliver is more demanding of attention that Ian was and Brock has been helping a lot.




Brock turned 29 this month. We celebrated with both sides of the family at his parents house. It was a nice time.












This is the first picture of Ollie smiling. He is a very serious baby and when he smiles it doesn't last long enough to grab the camera. He does smile in his sleep a lot. Not the best picture but it does show that he is growing or at least his cheeks are filling out.




So that sums up July, August, and most of September. I will catch up in my next post. I don't want to overwhelm anyone with marathon posts.

Rhea's taking over

Hello everyone. I have realized that if this blog is going to continue that I needed to take over. Brock has a tendency to get very excited about new projects but loses his enthusiasm if something new comes along or as life gets too busy.

The last post was way back in April. So I will begin with May to give the updates. May was quite uneventful, at the beginning. I was eager to have Oliver and be done being pregnant. I was feeling great but just having the normal pangs of the third trimester.


Ian turned 6 and had an army party. He thinks that he will join the army as soon as he turns 18. I can't tell him not to but I can encourage him to explore other career paths. Isn't that what moms are for? He had a fun birthday. Brock set up an obstacle course in the front yard and we had a "bomb" range with bean bags and water bottles. Being 30 weeks pregnant I wanted it to be as relaxed as possible. The kids had a blast. I will try to remember to plan something this relaxed for his next birthday.


Things began to change toward the eventful side about two weeks later. I was at school doing some work on the computer and just didn't feel right. I finally called the doctor three hours later. They told me to come to the ER immediately. After five hours of lying on the bed strapped to the contraction monitor I was told I was in preterm labor. They need to make sure that Oliver was doing alright so I had two different technicians do ultrasounds, making sure that all the measurements were right. I was given a shot to stop labor and was about the be released when they let me know he was in the breech position. The contractions never did really stop. I was put on a medicine to slow them and told to stay home and sit. So from 32 week to 39 weeks I was at home on bed rest. At 36 weeks they tried to turn Oliver around but it didn't work. We scheduled a C-section for July 11th.

So June for me was spent on the couch with everything within arms reach, so I didn't get up too often. Ian finished the end of his Kindergarten year at Renton Park Elementary without his mom there. He did okay but was very concerned everyday whether I was going to have Oliver and he wouldn't know. Brock was very sweet and made dinner every night and cleaned the house. He had to finally admit that he didn't realize how much work I do around the house that he didn't notice before. I think this June was the first time he ever used the vacuum cleaner at this house. June seemed very slow for all of us.

July was much different. We went to our friends house in Steilacoom for the fourth and watched the little parade and fireworks. It was nice and not too hot. At this point I had gotten tired of taking the medicine. It was a medicine that blocked calcium from your body. Contractions need calcium to be full strength. So do fingernails and building bones. I told my doctor that I didn't want to take it any more and she said that since I made it past 36 weeks, that would be okay. Contractions came back full force but did nothing. I made two more trips to the delivery section of the hospital to be monitored and checked. The contractions would be stable and hard for a couple hours and then become sporadic again and Brock and I would be sent home. We finally resigned ourselves to just waiting for the c-section.

July 10th came and we were all very excited. I was supposed to check in at the hospital at 7 am for a 9 am surgery. We were dropping Ian off at our friends and stayed to chat for a while. 10 pm came and my cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number so I didn't answer. Who ever it was left a message so I checked it and it was a nurse from labor and delivery. She wanted us to call right away. They need to postpone our c-section. She said that all the beds were full and since my c-section was elective I would have to wait. I told her that I had not elected to have a c-section and had been in labor for almost 2 months by this time. I tried very hard to control my temper and disappointment. They said they would call us in the morning and let us know if we could come in. To make a long story short, if you talk to the right people they will make things happen. I talked to the head of the department and they scheduled the c-section on the 12th a Saturday. They only do emergency c-sections on Saturday. But finally he was going to be here.

July 12 we got to the hospital in the late afternoon and got all suited up. You can see we are all ready to go to surgery. Ian was with our friends and they were on stand by to drop him off so he could be the first to see Ollie. Ian was so very excite to be a big brother he could hardly stand it.


The surgery went fine and he arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon. He was 7lbs 4 oz. Since he was breech and very stiff they estimated his length to be 19 inches. He had lots of hair and I thought he was beautiful. I finally had the completion to my family. I will continue the story on my next post. I hear Oliver on the monitor and I must go get him.

the kitchen project

We painted our kitchen. It seemed like it would be a simple enough thing to do and we've wanted to get rid of our AWESOME blue cupboards for quite a while (like since we moved in) so I decided that last Saturday was going to be the day it began. I had it all planned out to finish late Sunday night. Needless to say, it took a bit longer than that...

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First, we scrubbed up the walls and prepped them for texture. Previously (and I really wish I had a picture of this) the walls had a texture that looked like paint drips evenly dispersed across the walls. They also had a mat finish that seemed to soak up grime. Don't I look fierce!

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Next we splattered on the putty (which, by the way, is officially called all-purpose joint compound for those of you who want to find it in a hardware store without sounding like a yuppie). Rhea found a good way of getting the texture we wanted with the putty knives through a few minutes of experimentation.

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Then we primed it and put a coat of cream base paint on it and I painted it this HORRIBLE color!!! That's actually a glaze. We wanted to show off the new texture with a glaze, but this green turned out to not work so well as a glaze. Rhea came home (not allowed to breathe the fumes, so I kicked her out of the house) and said something like "hmurmnem" - only in an encouraging tone of voice.
I skeptically asked, "What do you think?"
"What do you think?" came her reply.
"I want to know what you think first." I smiled at her and tried not to laugh.
"I don't like it." she said.
"Good, I think it's awful!" I responded.

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So we went to Home Depot the next day and picked out a glaze and base coat from a pamphlet. Three coats of base paint over the split pea soup, one coat of glaze over that, and you've got yourself the makings for inspiration to replace the floor. Oh yeah, the old kitchen faucet broke on Sunday, so we got a new one of those too...

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The floors went down without any major problems as long as you don't count sore knees - man, I'm getting old (probably ought to get a convertible soon).

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And the finished kitchen! Yes, it is dark outside. We're finally DONE!



Here's the cupboards too. All in all, it took a week and a half. Now about that counter top...

Yeast

Ok, so I think I must have a thing for yeast. Sounds a bit creepy when you just say it like that, but let me explain: I get a real kick out of doing things that mankind has done for eons in a really simple way that works without requiring sterility and mass marketing. Like making beer. My beer tastes alright, and it's simple enough to make that a kindergarten kid can assist (in the making, not the consumption - sheesh you guys!). As I do it more, I learn how to make it taste pretty good - at least as good as some of the stuff that people buy because they've been told they'll earn the interest of pretty bikini girls if they do. Anyway, I digress... I like stuff that reminds me that this modern life - including much of the pressure to do everything at lightning speed - isn't how humans have been existing for the majority of our history. So far, the evidence for this fondness includes my hero-worship of Dick Proenneke, my enjoyment of hiking, chess and brewing, and now...

Sourdough Bread Making!!!

That's right folks. I've got a jar full of fermenting flour and water in my office sitting on top of my fermenting grain-based beverage, which is basically flour and water... hmm... It really does make me stop and appreciate this microorganism that has helped us survive as a species for so long.


I suppose in fairness, I should have titled this post Yeast and Grain. In any case, we started some sourdough today. Rhea and Ian followed a recipe like most people use, including packaged yeast and sugar. The smaller jar is my purist version - one that could be made even if you couldn't buy supplies at a grocery store: water and flour. Nothing else. Here's hoping it actually works! Rhea and Ian's should be ready to make some bread with in three days. Mine won't be ready to leaven a loaf for at least a week. We'll certainly keep you all posted on the development of these all-important loaves as they make their way to the oven.



On that note, Rhea and Oliver had a checkup on Monday. They're both healthy, but the older of the two is feeling anxious to have it all over with. The younger wouldn't comment - I asked him and he kicked me in the ear.

From Left: Bread on Beer in the office, Ian is really excited to do some baking, Sadie guarding my Yeast Projects (don't worry, she does an even more enthusiastic job guarding the project Rhea has growing).

Ultrasound

Ian and I accompanied Rhea to her most recent ultrasound. We were quite excited to have Ian there so he could see his little brother. Unfortunately, the ultrasound tech wasn't all that great with kids. In fact, after about ten minutes, she mentioned pointedly that she would require a quiet environment so she could concentrate on a particularly difficult portion of the exam. I may be a bit biased, but I think Ian is a pretty well behaved kid. I don't think he produced any more noise than the casual conversations Rhea and I have grown used to having with the ultrasound techs that we've had in the past. In any case, the exam went well from a medical stand point. Oliver is healthy and growing on track. Ian did get to see the exam as it happened and thought it was pretty cool, even though he found it a bit challenging to discern exactly what he was viewing.