Yes, We're Still Alive...

Wow- it has been a long time since I have posted anything.  We've all been sick off and on, work has been crazy, we've had a lot of family visits/commitments and I just generally feel like things have been out of control so hence, my lack of blog posting. 

We attempted a trip over Memorial Day; unfortunately, we only made it about halfway through our 10 hour trip before turning around and coming home.  We had spent the night in a hotel and poor Pumpkin had a horrible sounding wet cough all night long.  We were in the middle of Kentucky and the only medical facility open within an hour's drive was the ER.  We took Pumpkin there where he was misdiagnosed with a single ear infection and bronchitis.  They gave him a nebulizer breathing treatment and ordered bloodwork and a throat culture.  Hours later we were still waiting for the lab techs to come and take his blood and do the throat culture.  Finally, they came; the first nurse missed his vein entirely.  She brought in another nurse who had three of us hold Pumpkin down.  She finally got the needle in but was unable to draw any blood.  They generally seemed at a loss as to how to go about taking a blood sample from a toddler.  At this point, I could not stand to have Pumpkin tortured any longer so I put a stop to any further attempts and told them we wanted to just go home to our normal pediatrician's office.  They gave Pumpkin a painful antibiotic shot in the buttocks and sent us with an antibiotic script.  Luckily, we did not fill that because when we took him to the pediatrician at home the next day, we discovered that he did NOT have bronchitis (only post-nasal drip) but did have a double ear infection.  The ER doctor in Kentucky had written the prescription for the wrong dosage as well as misdiagnosing the problems.  Very scary...

Pumpkin is doing much better, except for some sleep disturbances at night, but I believe I am now coming down with whatever started his problems off.  We are supposed to leave for a beach vacation in a week and a half so please keep your fingers crossed that we'll all stay well and enjoy that trip (our track record with traveling with Pumpkin has been very, very poor)!

The Plague (Redux)

It appears that we will never have a week at the Pumpkin Patch where we are all healthy and well.  Last week, I had the flu for about 4 or 5 days and was pretty much out of commission for that time.  Now, poor Pumpkin has been sick for the last four days or so.  He, surprisingly, does not have the flu but does have another lower respiratory infection for which he is taking antibiotics.   He is finally fever-free and feeling better during the day but he is still having some rough nights due to post-nasal drip.  Last night, my husband slept with him in a recliner to help him stay in a more upright position.  My husband seems to have the same cold which must have started all of this for Pumpkin and my nose is now suspiciously stuffy so I may be getting it as well.  Will this cold/flu season never end??

On another note, in honor of Earth Day, we have started recycling efforts at the Pumpkin Patch as I had hoped to do.  I have located drop-off points in our county (since, unfortunately we do not have curbside pickup) and we have purchased plastic storage bins to hold the items at home.  Now, we just have to make sure that we actually periodically take the recyclables to the drop-off vs. letting them continue to stack up here and eventually overrun our house...

I will post more once we are all well and rested again...hopefully, that will be soon!

Death and Taxes

We finally completed our taxes last night.  It had been hanging over our heads for weeks as yet another unfinished task.  We're done and are actually receiving a good refund this year.  It's all thanks to our little tax deduction beautiful baby boy.

Defending the Caveman

I read an article titled "Me Mommy, You Toddler" in Parents magazine about how to help derail your toddler's tantrums, which Pumpkin seems to be experiencing more and more these days.  The premise of the article was to think of your toddler as a primitive being and to try to relate to them on a very primitive, emotion-only level, while speaking a form of "toddlerese".  The article discusses how toddlers are working mainly from the right-brain, the emotional side; when they are completely worked up about something, they are so emotional that initially they can't really even hear what you are trying to tell them.  Basically, if your toddler throws a tantrum, the article suggests that you react with about one third of the child's emotional intensity but try to talk to them on a very basic level, such as: "Pumpkin is MAD, MAD, MAD.  Pumpkin doesn't want to have his diaper changed.  Pumpkin want play!" and to repeat it over and over again until what you're saying sinks into their consciousness and they calm down and you can talk to them in a more rational manner.  Or course, just calmly saying the words is not enough; you are supposed to say them with animated facial expressions as well as any necessary arm gestures for emphasis. Supposedly, the toddler will realize that you DO understand what he is feeling and he will therefore calm down.  We all just want to be understood, right?

Since Pumpkin always has a fit whenever we take him out of the bath and try to dry him off, I thought this would be a perfect time to practice my toddlerese skills.  So when Pumpkin started screaming in anger while my husband was drying him off, I leaned over Pumpkin and started saying things like "Pumpkin is mad, mad, mad"  "Pumpkin no want to get out of bath" "Pumpkin no want to get dried off", etc. Unfortunately, I realized that instead of simply breaking what I was saying into simple words and phrases for Pumpkin to comprehend, instead I was channeling Yoda for my performance.  Phrases such as "Pumpkin towel, no want" and then just random words were escaping my lips.  My husband looked at me as if I was crazy; however, I suppose the proof is in the pudding: Pumpkin stopped crying and started laughing at my performance.  Ok, so apparently he wasn't saying "Wow, she really gets me" so much as he was saying "Wow, that woman is crazy" but, hey, whatever works.

Finding Safer Produce

Ever since Pumpkin started eating solids, we have been trying to eat organic foods as much as is possible, or as much as makes sense.  If the organic produce is available in our grocery store and it doesn't look like it is half-rotten, which unfortunately it often is at Kroger, I try to go organic.  We have a new grocery chain which opened up up a store nearby.  This store doesn't offer a huge amount of organic produce, but it does offer a lot of more locally grown produce and it also has a great store line of other organic products.  Hopefully, I'm not just wasting money but when I look at the ingredients on the organic line of products, I at least recognize the ingredients and do not need to pull out a Periodic Table to try to decipher what chemicals have been added.  Another benefit of the new store is that they have spurred Kroger to start prominently selling reusable grocery bags in our local store, which I have purchased, and I find them to be not only a greener solution but also much easier to use because they are sturdier and hold more than your traditional plastic bags.

If you are concerned about the pesticides in the produce you are buying, you may want to check out the Pesticide Produce Guide which lists which items are most likely to have large amounts of pesticides found in or on them.  I found a reference to it on a blog post on Green Mom Finds, which discusses the many eco-friendly and safer products that are becoming available. 

We're trying to live greener here at the Pumpkin Patch, though we have a long way to go.  We do not have curbside recycling in our community here, as we did in our previous city, so we have fallen off the recycling wagon.  However, we have purchased bins for recycling and we need to start soon since we want to set a good example for Pumpkin.  I'll post about it when we start so hopefully my guilt from letting you all know that we're not currently recycling will spur me to start now.

Spaghetti!!

I finally have the requisite spaghetti covered baby picture of Pumpkin.  I made some homemade meat sauce for him the other night and it was the first time he had long pasta noodles so of course he had it everywhere!  Even after his bath that night, he still had orange-stained cheeks.  It was so cute, it was worth the painstaking effort of cleaning up the high chair seat...

He's still only eating with his hands but as you can tell from this picture, he is at least starting to figure out what the spoon is actually supposed to do...

He has been in a much better mood this past week.  His seventh tooth cut through last night (with I think one to three additional teeth getting ready to follow) and he also seems to be past his latest cold.  I had been somewhat freaking out because he had been very irritable for several days following his vaccinations so of course, I had been worrying about whether or not he was going to have long-term effects from the shots.  Of course, who wouldn't be cranky after 4 shots, a cold and multiple teeth cutting through their gums??  I know I'm not the only mom who worries about these things, but sometimes I do wish that we didn't have quite so much information at our disposal.  Believe me, I can come up with quite enough things to worry about Pumpkin on my own without reading the latest and greatest scientific study!

One Year Check-Up

Pumpkin had his one year check-up yesterday.  He "passed" with flying colors.  I received a B+ since I have not fully weaned him off of the bottle yet and as of yesterday, I was still giving him formula instead of regular milk.  He is on whole milk now and seems to love the flavor of it.  We're down to two or three bottles a day, but this morning we cut out his morning bottle and went straight to a solid breakfast and boy, was Pumpkin ticked off about that!  He was frowning and making protest sounds and pouts throughout breakfast.

The stats:  21 lbs 10 oz in weight, 29 inches long and a head size of 18 1/4 inches (there is a reason I've been referring to him as Pumpkin!)  After starting out at 5 lbs 2 oz, he plumped up to a little butterball around 4 or 5 months but now he's just a lean, yet solid, kid.  As usual, Pumpkin became sullen and angry as soon as we headed back to the exam room and it took two of us to contain him long enough to get his temperature (which he willingly submits to at home).  Of course, I can't blame him since immediately after we were called back, he had his finger pricked for bloodwork for the first time and then got to finish with four shots.  Unfortunately, our normal and favorite nurse, was not there and while the nurse we had was nice, she was EXTREMELY slow in giving the shots.  She would take the cap off of one, give him the shot while slowly depressing the plunger, stick on a Band-Aid and repeat, repeat, repeat.  Our favorite nurse gets all of the shots prepped and ready, then sticks them in one after another so quickly that she's finished before Pumpkin and I even have a chance to react.

I was nervous about the MMR shot as well as the rest of his vaccines, especially after the recent federal government ruling, but our pediatrician, who has four kids of his own, strongly recommended keeping on schedule.  He feels that the rise in autism is due to some environmental factor and he wishes that more research was being done to test for those types of issues, instead of the vaccines. 

As with every other parenting issues nowadays, it seems that we're bombarded with not only a huge amount of information, but also a great deal of conflicting information, which causes so many of us to overanalyze and worry about almost every parenting decision we make.  Luckily, it seems like most kids turn out pretty well in spite of us!

And a Great Orator Was Born...

That's right, Pumpkin said his first word!  Of course it was "mama" (see, those hours of practicing were not wasted!) 

He had been saying "mama" or "mamamamama" for a while now but never in a context where I felt like he was actually talking about me.  However, on Sunday he was playing with Daddy and saw me walk down the hall and into another room.  He started crawling down the hall looking for me and very distinctly said "mama!" 

The next day, I picked him up out of his crib after his now normal non-nap (the morning nap is apparently rather passé now...) and laid him down on the bed for a diaper change.  He was sweetly holding the sides of my face when he again said "mama."  Awwww...it just melts my heart!

Pumpkin is One Year Old!

This past Friday was Pumpkin’s one year birthday. It is so hard to believe that an entire year has passed since our little buddy came into our lives. He has changed so much; sometimes I look at him and do not even see a little baby anymore, just a true little boy. He has grown from a 5 lb 2 oz little “peanut” to a bouncing 22+ pound rough and tumble boy.

We decided to go with a puppy dog theme for the party since nothing brings a smile to that boy’s face faster than either our real dog, Ms. Beagle, or a picture of a dog in one of his books. I found puppy plates, puppy napkins, a puppy hanging mobile, puppy tablecloth, puppy party blowers, and puppy streamers. After spending a small fortune at the party store, I think next year I’ll just buy a few strategic party items and get the rest in coordinating colors at Walmart.

My mom made a carrot cake with cream cheese icing and I decorated it with a puppy dog (which turned out pretty well considering I usually tear off the entire top layer of a cake just trying to ice it). Boy, did that child enjoy his cake…

At first, Pumpkin seemed a little overwhelmed by all of the attention but he quickly warmed up to the party and as usual was completely captivated by his seven year old cousin. Pumpkin received a lot of great gifts from family; but true to form, one of his favorite gifts was a Baby Plays Peek-a-boo book. Pumpkin’s in-town grandparents were in attendance as well as one set of his out-of-town grandparents. The other set will celebrate a second birthday get-together with us in a few weeks. Two sets of aunts and uncles were also here for the celebration. After a raucous evening of birthday fun, he was wiped out and in bed by 7:15 PM (about half an hour after his normal bedtime). The next day he was a WEE BIT grumpy, but we all know what it feels like to have partied just a bit too hard the night before, right?

Terrible Twos??? Try Terrible Ten Months!

The Pumpkin is increasingly having what I can only characterize as temper tantrums. They seemed to really increase right after he learned to crawl. If he does not get his way (Mean Mama won’t let him play with the hand sanitizer) or if I try to do something that he does not want to do (Mean Mama tries to put clothes on him), then he will scream, kick his legs, arch his back, and push me or whatever other irritating person or object is nearby.

I’m at a loss as to the best way to handle my demon child sweet baby. I have tried whispering to him to have him have to quiet down to hear me; this will sometimes work, at least until he realizes that I have nothing really that interesting to tell him. I have tried to turn it into a game by doing call and response screams with him; this does not impress him. I have ignored his actions and screams; not terribly effective but probably the best strategy. Redirecting him to another toy or activity seems to work fairly well too.

My question is…is this indicative of how he is going to be at 2?? I was hoping for a kinder, gentler tantrum like those my nephew used to have. He would silently lie face-down on the floor…not moving, just lying there silently. Seriously, that was his tantrum. You wouldn’t even know he was having one unless you happened to glance over at him. I think he thought that depriving everyone else of his attention was punishment enough for the rest of us (which, in all honesty, it was… he was and is one cute and funny kid). Obviously, the Pumpkin has other plans in store for us…

Christmas Overkill Already

I swore that this year, even though it is Pumpkin’s first Christmas, we would not go overboard. Since he’ll only be nine months when Christmas rolls around and will therefore, be much more interested in the wrapping paper than the actual presents, I wanted us to just buy a few presents for Pumpkin this year. Also, we will be traveling ten hours away by car for Christmas (yes, I know we are gluttons for punishment) and space will be at a premium in the back of the SUV. However, things have already started to spiral out of control. Each time I think we’re done shopping for Pumpkin, I see another cute toy or hear a friend talk about something that their baby loves and I feel the need to get one for Pumpkin as well. Our latest (and most expensive purchase to date) has been the Fisher-Price Laugh and Learn Learning Kitchen. Some of these toys have been recalled but the gentleman in the toy department in Walmart was kind enough to open the box for me while I was on the phone with him and double-check that it was not one of the recalled products. He then placed it on hold for me since they only had one left on the floor. Yes, I have actually even resorted to frantically buying the last available “hot” toy weeks before Christmas. I am determined, however, to make sure that Pumpkin does not learn to expect extravagant gifts or to always expect to have the hot toy of the season. We’ll see how that goes…

On a side note, I’m a sucker for holiday music so I recently purchased Barenaked Ladies: “Barenaked for the Holidays” because I love their collaboration with Sarah McLachlan on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen / We Three Kings.” Sadly, the rest of the album was a big disappointment. I believe there may be one or two other decent songs on there but the rest make you almost wince with pain. So consider yourself warned…

Pumpkin’s Christmas Picture

We took Pumpkin’s photo for our Christmas card today- that was an experience. He was actually very cooperative yet we had issues getting our digital camera to focus correctly. Also, since the camera actually takes the shot several seconds after you click the shudder and then takes multiple seconds to reset, we kept missing the ideal smile shots. All in all, it’s a good photo, however.
We tried to get a picture of Pumpkin with the dog, but of course Ms. Beagle was not cooperating. We were using a dog biscuit as a bribe and she pretty much came through and bowled poor Pumpkin over in order to try to get to the treat. At best, she pretty much ignores Pumpkin; at her worst, she deliberately avoids him (hopefully this is will stay her worst treatment of Pumpkin). It’s rather sad since Pumpkin’s entire face lights up every time he sees Ms. Beagle. Ms. Beagle is sweet but is definitely a very selfish, food-motivated dog. If my husband and I were to suddenly die and Ms. Beagle was trapped in the house with our corpses, I predict within twelve hours she would be noshing on our bodies. You would NOT want to be trapped in an Andes plane crash site with Ms. Beagle…

Kind of Crawling…

Pumpkin has become pretty mobile these days but he’s not technically crawling. He scoots backwards for long distances and can move quite quickly, even though I believe his intent is to move forwards. He will end up stuck against a wall or a piece of furniture until I come to his rescue. He can turn in a 360 degree radius but he does not seem to be making any progress in learning how to move in a forward motion. At least he will stay on his hands and knees for a good period of time; quite an improvement for a child who always screamed as if we were torturing him on the rack every time we would try to give him “tummy time.”

With his new found mobility in mind, we have stepped up our efforts at baby-proofing. We have placed all of the major hazards up and out reach but we still need to install the cabinet latches in some areas and tie up loose electrical cords, etc.. There is a fine line between making your house safe for baby and starting to look at your house as if it was just a large death trap. I’m glad that they do not make giant baby sized hamster balls since knowing me, I’d probably be tempted to keep him in such a bubble.