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Turkey and Sweet Potatoes
We have been working on a lot of developing at my house. Luke recently got his first 2 teeth and Noah just got his first loose tooth. Luke has been trying to crawl for months but has only ever managed a hefty scoot. Well last night, he officially crawled on his hands and knees while chasing after a football. And Noah has his first flag football game this weekend.
We are busy.
Well, last night, Luke also tried meat for the first time. I have been looking for ways to help him sleep a little bit longer at night because he still gets up 3 to 4 times a night to nurse. Gerber makes all kinds of flavors of pureed 2nd-stage baby food that includes a little bit of meat for some added protein. Luke tried turkey and sweet potatoes and seemed to love it.
I watched him closely for a little while after to make sure there were no adverse reactions, Matt and I gave him his bath, and he went to bed right on time. Good night, right?
Well, Luke wakes up at about 11:30pm, which is normal for him. He wasn’t showing his regular signs of being hungry. He was fidgety and wiggly- basically full of gas. Most nights, if he nurses for a minute, it will help him to pass the uncomfortable gas but that just wasn’t working. So, I did all of my gassy-baby tricks. Nothing worked.
Then, when I decided to just give up and snuggle with him, he let out the biggest, wettest, loudest, explosive shit ever and it made Matt sit straight up in bed. Turns out, Luke’s tummy was not a big fan of the turkey and sweet potatoes.
There was yellowish-brown liquid poop all down his leg, and into the footie part of his pajamas. It was everywhere. We get him onto his changing table and he is still squirming a bit. We peel his PJs off him, trying not to cover anything else with poop (failing miserably as we go along), and get his diaper off.
Of course, as Murphy’s Law would have it, the Diaper Genie is full beyond capacity so we have nowhere to put the poopy diaper and the wipes warmer is out of wipes so we have nothing to clean the poop with.
At this point, it’s starting to be hilariously funny because it feels like this stuff only happens to us. We get the wipes refilled, Matt changes the diaper bucket, I get Luke all cleaned up, applying some diaper cream, and then……. Luke has another massive blowout poop all up my arm, all the way to my elbow. Awesome.
Matt takes over and gets Luke another diaper and cleans him up while I get myself cleaned up. We get him in new pajamas and I start rocking him to get him back to sleep. Next thing I hear is another loud, foul-smelling, wet explosion. This one was mostly contained in the diaper but did seep out a bit requiring another pajama change.
It’s well after midnight now and Matt and I are basically giggling at the absurdity of our situation. We get it! You don’t like turkey and sweet potatoes. No need to make such a big deal about it. Surely you’re done (famous last words).
Luke has quit squirming. Seems like the gas and diarrhea are gone. Luke starts sucking on his hands and showing signs of being hungry. He starts to nurse and I see his eyes close as he falls asleep. I can finally let my guard down and relax. Nope.
Luke proceeds to projectile vomit all over me, my pillows, the bed, the headboard, everything. Then, he just falls asleep. Almost like that was the last thing he had to check off of his to-do list for the night.
Meanwhile, I had to change all of my clothes, strip all of my pillows down before finally realizing that it soaked all the way through to the actual pillow, then had to find a new pillow. I could have changed the sheets but we still haven’t washed the other set of sheets from the last time Luke spit up all over them so I just laid a towel down over the mess and went to sleep.
Luke might be a vegetarian now.
So much spit up
When a kid starts at daycare, one of the things you can most definitely expect to happen almost immediately is that they are going to get sick. The extent to the illness varies but, inevitably, temperatures will rise and someone is going to get puked on.
As I have mentioned, my new baby Luke started daycare about 3 weeks ago. He loves it, I’m still struggling with it- I don’t see that changing any time soon.
[Side note: I can make it all the way to my car now before I start to cry. And sometimes, I don’t cry until I get to work. Winning!]
Well, after the first week, Luke started sneezing more than usual and started sounding like a little pig when he slept. That eventually turned into a drippy nose and runny eyes. He didn’t have a fever and he was acting just as happy as always so, no big deal.
Saturday rolls around, we go through our normal sleep routine of nursing before bed. I swaddle him super tight, kiss him goodnight, and place him in the cosleeper. Matt was down the hall putting Noah to bed and reading bedtime stories.
Luke started to shift a little bit but, nothing out of the ordinary.
Then, out of nowhere, a geyser of spit-up shoots into the air. This giant spit-up fountain is spewing about 18 inches skyward and plummeting back down onto my sweet baby’s face and all over the bed.
A wave of shock and fear falls over me and all I can think to do is shout “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” over and over again as I try to clean spit-up out of Luke’s eyes and ears while also trying not to drown myself in this milky, smelly mess.
Seriously. I have never seen this much spit-up ever. There is no way he drank this much. He had to have been storing this in some secret spit-up compartment for days in order to produce this much. He didn’t even seem all that upset about it. If anything, he had a look of pride in his eyes as I grabbed blankets and burp cloths and rags from everywhere I could think to grab them to clean this mess up. He looked almost as though he did it on purpose to make sure I was paying attention.
After what seemed like forever (probably only a minute or 2), Matt heard my panic and came running down the hall. He, too, was astonished at the volume of spit-up. He also seemed to be more upset that I had just changed the sheets on our bed that morning and the other sheets were still dirty on the laundry room floor (oops!).
Celebrating Small Successes
I’ve written several posts over the past few weeks that I haven’t published because I have been trying to make an announcement. Most of them were too corny, too negative, or too blah to be worthy of my news. So, in my brutally honest fashion…
I’m pregnant.
We are over-the-moon excited about our new family and can’t wait to meet Noah’s new little brother or sister. However, this news has thrown some curve balls my way.
For starters, right at the 6 week mark, the nausea and vomiting started. Everyone said that it would pass. Everyone said that it’s just part of the first trimester. Well, everyone was wrong and I hate them.
I have thrown up every day, multiple times a day, for the past 11 weeks. And just when I thought I had it all figured out (which is code for “I was living on saltine crackers, rice, and Gatorade”), my body would decide that saltine crackers and rice made me vomit.
Let’s just say that I have been really fun to live with and work with.
Now, after rearranging my diet and eating schedule about 6 different times, I am finally on a 3 day streak with no vomiting. I’m gonna count this as a win.
Then, as if the universe was not satisfied with my attempts to thwart its plan to make me miserable, last week, I came down with the noro virus. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had the noro virus but, please take my advice, avoid it at all costs! Screw you, universe!
However, I managed to beat the noro virus without having to go to the hospital, without getting too dehydrated, and without sending myself into premature labor. I’m gonna count this as a win also.
So now, at 17 weeks pregnant, I’ve got a decent-sized belly, I am absolutely in love with maternity pants, Matt and I are selling our house because we need more room, and Noah is beyond excited to be a big brother.
New baby due late this summer… Success!
“My tummy hurts.”
Do you ever have those nights when you just have a gut feeling that you should go to bed early because the night might just be a little more than usual? Well, last night was one of those nights.
We put Noah down around 8:30pm (in his new toddler-bed, might I add). Matt and I discussed staying up and watching a movie or one of the many shows on the DVR that we haven’t gotten around to yet. But, finally, after finishing the dishes and putting a load of clothes in the dryer, decided we were just too tired and got in bed around 9:30pm.
At 11:30pm, I hear that sound come over the baby monitor that every mother knows. It is the shrill scream/cry that bellows “Come and get me right now! I don’t know exactly what is wrong but something is wrong with me!”
After assessing the situation, Matt decides he can handle it alone (he is the designated nighttime respondent after all) and I go back to sleep. About 30 minutes later, Matt screams up from downstairs, “I need a little help down here!”
I get down there to find my sobbing baby boy, completely non-responsive to any regular means of comforting, just moaning and groaning about his tummy-ache, just rubbing his belly and saying, in the saddest and most pitiful voice you can imagine, “It hurts, mommy. My tummy hurts so bad.”
Well, we tried everything. We got him ice cubes- it didn’t help. We got in the bath tub- it didn’t help. He asked me to hold him (except he says, “Mommy, I want to hold you” and it is the cutest thing in the world)- it didn’t help. We got into mommy and daddy’s bed- it didn’t help.
I finally offered to go back to his room and lay down in his bed with him until he could fall asleep. That seemed to sound like a good idea to him so we left Matt in the big bed and headed to Noah’s room. Keep in mind that it is now 2:30am.
When we get to his room, he asked me to sit on the floor first because he wanted to sit in my lap. (Whatever he wants at this point, right?) I get down on the floor, he looks me straight in the face, and just as he is opening his mouth to ask me a question, the vomit comes shooting out at, what seems like, lightning speed. Of course, I do the only instinctual thing that I know every mother does, I put my hands out in front of him, forming a “hand bucket” of sorts, and try to catch the vomit before it gets all over me.
Of course, my hands can only catch a fraction of the vomit. Also, I am screaming to Matt, “Get in here and bring towels- lots of towels!” The vomit- full of hot dog chunks, cream cheese and wheat thins, and blueberries- is everywhere. It is on my feet, all over my shirt, and somehow it made it like 6 feet across the room. It smells worse than any smell I have smelled in a very long time. And, within seconds, it is overflowing my “hand bucket” and spilling out onto the rug.
Then, hearing my calls of desperation, Matt shows up with the smallest hand towel I have ever seen. (Seriously!? A hand towel?!) He cleans up Noah and starts to wipe up the floor. All the while, I am sitting on the floor, hands full of vomit, unable to move for fear that the minute I try to stand up, I will spill the entire contents of my “hand bucket” onto the rug, even further tainting my baby’s room with that rancid hot dog vomit smell.
So I say in a very impatient voice, “Matt, help me!”
He realizes my predicament, wraps my hands up with a towel (only slightly larger than the first hand towel he brought in), and helps me up off of the floor. I walk down the hallway to the guest bathroom only to realize that the toilet seats are down, my hands, full of vomit, are wrapped tightly in a towel, and I have to figure out how to get the vomit from my “hand bucket” into the toilet without spilling it everywhere in the bathroom and without dumping the towel into the toilet (I did not want anyone to have to figure out how to clean that up later).
Being the incredibly flexible person that I am (please note the extreme sarcasm intended here), I lean far enough over to the side so that I can lift the toilet seats up with my feet, careful not to spill the vomit. I then shimmy the towel off of my hands into the bathroom sink, only spilling a few small chunks into the sink. Next, I shake my hands with a ferocity never seen before, getting every last chunk of vomit into the toilet, because all I want to do at this point is get as far away from the vomit as possible.
I scrub my hands about 6 times with every kind of soap I can get my hands on. I then jump in the shower and quickly scrub my legs and feet. I realize I can still smell the vomit on my hands so I scrub them with way too much hand sanitizer. I change my clothes, and go get Noah who is still very sad and pitiful and complaining about his tummy. Now he is also upset that he got his “carpet all messy.”
We go downstairs and curl up on the couch. We turn on Jake and the Neverland Pirates while he sucks his thumb and rubs his belly. Matt stays upstairs to scrub the carpet, Lysol the crap out of the room, and put everything into the washing machine (I can hear him gag several times because, trust me, this stuff was rank).
He looks directly at me, takes the latex gloves off, and says, “Next time, don’t scream for a towel. Tell me to get a bucket.”
Brutally Honest Mom 