B's Baby Blog.....and maybe some other occasional crap

July 4th Fireworks & self imprisonment

2011-07-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

Tonight is Carlisle's fireworks display. They are kind of late for our kids but we stay up and watch them anyway. Our friend Brian was having a little get together in Harrisburg so we all ventured over there around 7ish and Mike & I drove separately because he was going to see some other people after we left. I left around 8:45 to get home by 9:30 for the fireworks. The first ones started as we were unlocking the door to the house. Isaac was sooo excited so we rushed in, threw everything right inside the front door and ran upstairs and went to the balcony to watch.

We have to kind of cluster into one corner which isn't terrible but I thought that maybe if we went up to the 3rd floor and looked out the window it might be better. We ran up but I suddenly realized it wasn't as good. We scurried back down and I don't know which one of us did it, but we closed the door. I didn't think anything of it until Isaac said he just wanted to watch from the window of his room. We tried to open the door....but of course it was locked. This is not a balcony that has stairs attached. It is an extension of the neighbors balcony though and I was hoping they were a)home & b) could hear us banging on the door. They could not (or weren't there).

I tried to tell Isaac that as soon the display was over one of the neighbors would walk by and we would get them to come in the save us. I wanted him to enjoy the fireworks while we waited but he has been a bit obsessive lately (about all sorts of things) and, needless to say, he couldn't enjoy himself and was getting quite stressed. Following what his thought process was is quite hilarious really. He first realized he had to pee. In any other situation he could wait but of course here....he was desperate. I did what any good parent would do and let him pee off the balcony. Then he started talking about how we were going to have to sleep out here but we didn't have beds. What would we eat? At this point we were only 'stuck' about 4 minutes or so.

My thought process was more along the lines of "this is the perfect scenario for a movie because who doesn't have their keys or a cell phone on them....only people trapped in horror movies". Issues with the whole movie angle are that we were only on the 2nd floor, had neighbors everywhere, it was the middle of balmy July and we had just gotten home from eating a bunch of food. Also, we were only trapped for 10 minutes so all of those elements would have to be 'modified' for any sort of movie adaptation.

I got them to focus as least on the grand finale a bit but Isaac was also manic about me holding Rosie and how she wanted to lean on the railing a bit to see better. It didn't matter that I was her mother and had an iron grip on her, he was still freakin'. Mere moments after the last fireworks exploded, my neighbor across the street rolled up and as soon as she got out of the car I shouted "Ivy, It's Brenda...I have locked myself on the balcony and I need you to break us out....I'm not even joking". I see Ivy & her husband almost every day and say hi to them but we have never hung out and she has never been in the house (at least since we have bought it). She is definitely going to get a care package from me. We had also talked about having a backyard movie night with a projector sometime, which must now happen.

As soon as we were set free, we called Mike and the kids relayed their view of the event to him (even Rosie...."Fireworks...Isaac crying...sad"). I am writing this while sipping my rum and coke and I will probably go watch some mindless tv now. I'm such a loser.

6 year old baby

2011-06-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

Isaac just finished kindergarten on Wednesday & I wasn't aware that his summer camp didn't start until Monday so I have had him at work for 2 days now. He is generally good but he does have that 6 year old obnoxious thing going for him though. Yesterday, he didn't get really pissy until he got home. We were going to to to the water park in Memorial park but the rain only allowed us to be there about 5 minutes so he just cried & cried. I hope this crying phase ends soon because it's not very attractive and drives Mike & I positively mad.

I figured that part of it was that he really needed a nap because he was kinda of bored at work with me. I put the idea in my head that I would try to get him to nap today. He got back from lunch and was whining incessantly about no one helping him to play legos. I pulled him into my office and tried to get him to nap in between his wails of crying. We could hear the people out in the media center so I decided to put on some music that might help him sleep. I put on Iron & Wine's 'Creek Drank The Cradle' which was the main album I played when he was a baby and I would rock him to sleep in his room.

No matter how mad I was at him that he was being such a brat, it still kind of choked me up sitting there with him patting his back listening to this album. I know I have officially become a complete sap but I don't care. It's happy & sad at the same time when you have a certain piece of music that is so entwined with a memory that fluctuating between glee & sorrow can happen in a matter of seconds. I don't want to be back at the time when he was a baby but at the same time, it's sad that I can't relive it.

He is finally sleeping on the couch in my office and hopefully this will last for a good hour. Let's hope no one calls my office phone.

St. Patricks day is for adults

2011-03-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

When exactly did St. Patricks Day mean that I had to put a huge effort into another lie? I don't mean to gripe about it, I think it's sweet that kids believe in leprechauns and all but before you just talked about them and their little pot of gold and stuff and that was it. No hoopla or anything like the other holidays. Not anymore. Isaac came home today and told us how they made a leprechaun trap at school to catch one. Then of course he insisted on making one at home too. I had to find him a box and we decorated it and sat up near the door. He talked about this non-stop from when he walked in the door from school to when he went to bed. Sure it's sweet......and super annoying.

His excitment was dear and all but now, after he goes to sleep, we need to play the "look what happened while you were sleeping game" again. Only this time you aren't exactly sure what he is expecting. Obviously, I can't produce said leprechaun for him. He mentioned that they are hard to catch so I thought that maybe I could just beat up the box a bit like he really struggled but somehow got away. He also said that we would know he was here because the milk would turn green. Great, I can't wait for my cereal in the morning now. Thank god we were at the end of the jug. I was also told that they leave foot prints. I'm trying to figure out what I can use that will clean up easily to achieve the clue that they came by for a visit.

I'm guessing he is expecting something cool from the leprechaun but they are greedy little shits so I told him there is now way they will leave any gold or anything so sorry. But really, what am I supposed to do here? I think I have some gold glitter so I guess I'll just pepper that around the house and hope that he thinks it's positively magical. I'm sure he will loose a tooth next week just to piss me off.

Sick lady

2011-02-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

So, I have been out of work for the past 2 days with a sick little lady. It's just a bad cold but goodness it can make a small child so miserable. Her face is a mess and all she has done has been watch tv. I haven't been able to shield Rosie from the TV as much as I did with Isaac because he watches a bunch of shows. What I do find interesting is that she only recently seemed interested in watching shows and she only likes 2 really. What are they? Sesame Street? no. Blues Clues? no. ICarly & Ren and Stimpy? Yup. She will just say icaree, icaree over and over and the other show is simply titled Simpy. Really, I love both of these shows so I am ok where her choices.

Patriotic little guy

2010-10-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went to my first high school football game since I probably graduated high school. It was a fun time with a few people I work with and family. Isaac & Rosie had a great time and were very well behaved. We left at half time since it was already way past Rosie's bedtime. Mike stayed to watch the rest of the game with our friends. We got home and right after we walked in I heard Isaac half singing something and I asked, do you know that song? Did they teach you it in school? He said yes so we stood together in our living room on a Friday night at 8:30 and sang the star spangled banner together. (He got most of it). After that, he continued on and said the pledge of allegiance. It was adorable.

Famous on Noggin+Halloween google search

2010-09-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

I have had a flickr account since before Isaac was born. As of today I have posted 1860 photos. Overall, I blend into the rest of flickrdom without anyone really noticing silly pictures of my family or the bread that I bake. There is one exception to this though and it has to do with this picture of Isaac in the doorway with my DIY Noggin inspired Halloween decorations. More people have favorited (15 to be exact) it than any of my other pictures and it has been viewed 2014 times as of today. I wondered why this was exactly so I did a google search with just the words Noggin & Halloween. My picture comes up 5th on the front page. I'm not sure why this would be because Noggin has lots of Halloween awesomeness but the best is their Halloween song/video that they play each year in between their shows. I'm just honored that I can be in such great company I guess and that a sweet little picture of Isaac is seen by so many people.

Potty training continued

2010-09-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned, Saturday Rosie peed in the potty. On Sunday, I took off her diaper and realized it was still dry after a few hours and tried her again. She didn't want to sit so I let her get up while I got her a drink. I was in the middle of filling up the water jug when I realized she just peed on the floor. Oh well, I'm obviously out of practice and should have known better. I'm still learning too I guess. Later, after she ate a big snack, I asked her to try to poop. She sat on the potty for a minute or two and then she got her focused look on her face and wouldn't you know it, she indeed did do it. I was thrilled. This morning she woke up after 12 hour completely dry. I sat her on the potty and she peed immediately. This is awesome....except for one thing. I just realized that at her day care, because they don't have a potty in her room, they say they can't take her out (the bathroom is 2 feet across the hallway. I can't comprehend this. I understand that they probably thought that the little ones in that room wouldn't be potty training right when they moved over last month but they are in that room until next August. How could they possibly think that they wouldn't be potty training after a few months. Isaac didn't potty train until 2 1/2. We tried at 2 and he freaked out. He acted like he was sitting on a seat of razor blades. Of course we held off at that point. I had heard that girls are much easier to potty train and that you can try earlier but she isn't quite 16months old. This is sort of crazy to me. I know that it might not stick and kids will sometimes do well and then not so well for awhile but this makes me hopeful.

Commence Potty Training

2010-09-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

We just got back from the park and I went to change Rosie's diaper because it had been a few hours. I realized that it was almost completely dry so I thought I would just try her on the little potty. Within 30 seconds she had peed. This is awesome.

First day of Kindergarten

2010-09-01T13:11:00.001-07:00

I have ignored an entire summer and feel just terrible for it but I'm going to try to get back on the blogging saddle again. Tomorrow is Isaac's first day of Kindergarten...well sort of. He technically went 2 days ago for a shortened day but since they have a big class, they split the class into 3 and each group went one day. This way they have more individual time with their teacher and she was able to get to know the students better. His teach is Mrs. Hagg....yup, what an unfortunate name right? She's very nice and she seems like she is a veteran teacher so hopefully she has no problem controlling a class of 23 that has more boys than girls. Isaac had a good time on Monday but of course when I asked what his favorite part was his answer was "the playground". Oh well, boys will be boys. During the first few weeks they still have something called SMART time. It's some sort of acronym for something that no one could ever remember and why they don't just call it nap time is beyond my comprehension but that's public school for you. Isaac took a 20 minute power nap that day but I am hoping he will soon get away for naps completely. He has been getting up in the middle of the night recently again and bothering us up to 4 times a night with insignificant things like 'there is too much light in my room' or 'I don't like my bed'. Hopefully lack of a nap will make him rest better when I need to rest too.

I had to go to Isaac's Kindergarten orientation last week and sat through one of the worst powerpoint presentations ever. I work with instructional technology and love it and there are so many ways to use technology that doesn't require you to post all of your notes that you are going to read on a slide. Oh...and did I mention clip art should really be destroyed. Ok, enough of that. One good bit of information did come out while watching said awful powerpoint though. The head of the PTA came up and said "I know most of you think I'm just going to come up here an ask you for money, but I'm not. In fact I will never ask you for money". The hell you say? Well, Hamilton is sat smack dab next to the carlisle fairgrounds where they hold car shows about 10 weekends out of they year. These are super well attended from people all over. The PTA coordinates to have parents and teachers volunteer for a 3 hour shift to park cars in the school's parking lot. That sounds grand but how much money could that really bring in you ask? Brace yourself. They say each weekend brings in between $6000-8000. Holy shit. I guess that means that students don't need to buy any paper or pencils or school supplies except a backpack. Teachers get little stipends of money they can do what they want with and sometimes they even let other schools use the lot on a car show so they can make money too. That is just beautiful. Damn socialists sharing the wealth;0

Isaac's big day

2010-05-05T04:14:00.000-07:00

Today our little man turns 5 years old. It has been an incredible experience to raise him and I'm so happy we chose to have him when we did. I love being a young parent. He has been the perfect big brother to Rosalie....making her laugh and just enjoying having her around. Some kids have jealousy for their siblings but Isaac doesn't seem to have that trait. I am truly blessed with my family and I am so proud of the little boy Isaac has grown into. The next few days will be kind of crazy. Tomorrow I pick up our soon to be new dog hopefully. His name is Gator and he is a bully with scoliosis so he used a little cart to run around in. Friday I will make Isaac's ice cream birthday and get everything else ready for his birthday blitz. Saturday after commences the rock n roll birthday extravaganza. Sunday we take Gator back from our trial weekend and then I have my radio kids come over for a end of year celebration. Whoa. It's gonna be a bit tiresome I feel.

One quick note on a milestone Rosalie hit last night that I would be happy if we never experienced. That would be pooping in the bathtub. This time though Isaac was bathing with her so as soon as I saw it I had to rip poor Isaac right out of the tub before the islands started to migrate out. I think he may be a bit scarred and I'm not sure he will ever take another bath with her ever again.

Feeling loved

2010-04-30T17:09:00.000-07:00

Well, things have turned around completely since my last post. Isaac made a full recovery from his tantrum hell and has been positively excellent. Like i said before, I have no idea what causes this and then what turns him around. I'm just happy that it has ceased. In fact, both of my kids have started something completely opposite from being a terror to me and that is that they are now completely clingy. This teeters between the line of sweet and annoying at any given moment. It really has to do with what I am trying to get accomplished at that second. Rosie just wants held and that is a normal baby thing so fine. Isaac though has started having some sort of issue with being alone. I mean he will follow me everywhere. I can't even take Rosalie up stairs, put her in her crib, turn around and come back stairs without him bounding up the stairs before I even make it to her room. It's fine, but once again, I'm hoping it ends soon and he goes back to normal.

Rosie has been getting big and started walking about a week before her 11 month birthday. She has also been making these funny little faces like she is surprised and is saying "Ooooooo". She was eating breakfast today and accidentally whistled while making that face. It was hilarious because she was caught completely by surprise. She surprises me every day:)

oh how I hate whining....and tantrums too

2010-03-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

Last summer, Isaac went through a hellish time when he would loose his shit when he didn't get his way. It often surfaced when we would be at the park and we would try to go home. Even if we gave Isaac a heads up with the standard you have 10 mintues, 5 minutes it didn't matter. Once we gave the final "we have to go home" he would have the biggest tantrum... in front of everyone in the park.... often while it was just me and him and Rosalie in the sling. This meant that I couldn't really carry him or pull him because he could pull me down (seriously) and of course this could hurt Rosalie too. The park is about 2 blocks from our house and it was like a 2 block walk of shame for me. I refused to be the person who lost control and screamed back at him (it happens rarely...but does happen...like today) and occasionally we do smack the backs of his hands but again, I won't do it in public. I did grab his wrist with force but nothing damaging but then he would just dangle himself and I would just have to let go so he laid on the ground. Some how, after a month or 2 of this type of thing happening at the park and other locations, he finally just stopped and has been great for about a year now. When he was younger, he would throw fits like this but as he got older and we were able to reason with him, things seemed to get much better. Mike and I made sure we were consistent with punishments which are generally taking away fun things or toys and using time out and giving him the you have til the count of 3 to calm down sort of thing. Over the past year, these things have been working.....until about 2 weeks ago. He is back with full force. It has been a daily occurance for the past week and Mike & I are losing our minds with fury. For instance, Sunday he freaked out because he didn't want to stop playing his video game so we told him that if he couldn't calm down he couldn't play until Wednesday ( he usually can play every other day). He didn't stop so we kept adding days until he couldn't play until Friday. So, today is Friday and the day care was closed so he played for a while this morning and then we had a play date at Fort Letort park. We had never been there before and it was quite impressive in it's size. It isn't that close to our house so we drove to the other side of town to get there. We had a great time and he was even good about leaving without issue. We got home, ate lunch and took a nap. When he got up he ate a snack and asked to play his game again. I said he could play for a short while (20 minutes). He got upset when 20 minutes were over and started to push the envelope again so I had to say he won't play again until Tuesday at this point. He did calm down quicker than other times though. Isaac, Rosalie & I were outside and I was raking leaves and Isaac said he wanted to go to the park. I said that after I was finished we could go to one of the ones close to our house. He said he wanted to go Fort Letort again. I said no, that we were only going to one that we could walk to. He freaked the f&*k out in our backyard. Neighbors from blocks away I'm sure could hear him. I ended up carrying him into the house because he refused to walk. I put him on time out in the kitchen & I walked out to get Rosalie and he came back out so I had to hold Rosalie & pull Isaac into the house. He walked part of the way but basically went limp on the back porch and I literally had to drag him into the house. This may make me a bad parent but Mike wasn't home and this was not a child that you could reason with. Once I got in, I had to walk around to close all of the windows so it would muffle the sounds that the neighborhood could hear. He continued to scream for a full half hour. He was on time out but it didn't matter. Nothing worked. I told him that we could have had a good time at a park but because he wouldn't listen and cried like that, we didn't get to do anything. He then changed his tune and said he wanted to go to any park. I told him it didn't work that way and when he acted like this, he didn't get to do the fun things he wanted. This set him off again for another 20 minutes. He finally calmed down and was great the rest of the night but the damage was done. I don't want to make it sound like it only has to do with video games because it doesn't. He has freaked out at bed time when we read the 3 books we said we would but then he insists he needed to read another or that he didn't read book by himself. This has also set him off for 10-15 mintues. I don't know what to do. He is not like other children that will calm down after a little while. When he does this he has endurance like nothing I have ever seen. We will continue to be consistent with our parenting but feel free to give me some advice here because I don't want to duct tape him to a chair but I started to contemplate it today.

Playing catch up

2010-03-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I have been so bad at blogging since Rosalie was born but I feel bad about it. So here I am, trying to make sure I don't forget about all of the great mile markers she has passed in the past few months. Right at the beginning of the year she really started to babble a lot including dadadadad. Mama has been introduced but it doesn't come out that often yet. Generally only when she's eating and that is more of a mmmammmmmammma sound and of course it isn't really me:( Oh well, it will come in time I suppose. Rosalie started crawling on Feb. 4th and has been motoring ever since. She almost immediately started to pull herself up too and cruise along furniture. As of last night she started to stand up by herself without holding on to anything. It doesn't last that long but she has held it for 8-10 seconds a few times. If she doesn't start to crawl soon I would be floored. She is still the most bubbly, happy little girl that I have ever seen but her slightly annoyed side has also shown up a bit too. Now she screeches when she doesn't like the food I give her or if she is hungry for more of something. Most of her yelling involves food and it's just strange actually seeing her get upset. Also her perfect sleep pattern has been disrupted as well. Since she can pull herself up, she will wake up occasionally like she always did when her pacifer fell out but now she stands up and wakes herself up more. Usually she will still fall asleep but sometimes I actually have to rock her back to sleep. I have never had to rock her to sleep, even when she was an infant. She would drink a bottle, fall asleep and be in her crib without issue. It's just funny that the first time I had to rock her to sleep wasn't until she was 9 months old.

On a better note though

2010-02-05T18:31:00.000-08:00

Well, after my long winded post bitchin' about my week I thought I would try to redeem myself with some good stories about the kids. Last night Rosalie started to crawl. She has been trying for a long while now and would kinda crawl backwards but she now finally has a forward motion down! She is also pulling herself up and her favorite thing to do is look at the fish tank and smack the glass to scare the fish. Poor little fishies. Isaac has also been doing some new things. He has been trying to spell words. He started out with the standard fare like cat & dog but then jumped right into star wars and tonight he learned Hulk. So he can spell them and write them. I figure I'll get him to learn the words he's most interested in. He may learn to spell the word kill much earlier than most kids but at least he will be able to write out "Luke killed Darth Vader". He makes me so proud.

Whatta week it has been

2010-02-05T17:49:00.000-08:00

3 weeks ago Rosalie had an eye infection and then it turned into an ear infection so she was put onto an oral antibiotic for both of them. Actually, she had had an eye infection at the beginning of January as well so she has seemed to have had an almost constant eye infection for the past few weeks. As soon as she finished the last of the antibiotics last Friday she got a cold of some sort by Saturday morning. She was just a constant waterfall of goop out of her nose. It was terrible and she was just so drippy. She seemed fine otherwise though, just tired and sick with a cold virus. As the night progressed though she just was getting to be very unhappy and squirmish. Usually when she doesn't feel well or is tired, she will calm down when you hold her but she was really starting to cry uncontrollably which isn't like her at all. As it got later she just kept getting worse until she was constantly crying and after an half an hour I called the doctor. I had already given her fever & gas meds so I had exhausted my options of at home remedies. It took them a while to call back and in the end I opted to go to the hospital because I figured that was the only other thing the doctor was going to tell me to do. She finally fell asleep in the car and when she woke up at the hospital of course she was all smiles. Obviously one the meds had done a bit of good but I really wanted to make sure that her ear infection hadn't come back and that I couldn't verify without a doctor's help. Since the following day was Sunday, I wasn't going to be able to get her into the office until their emergency office hours at noon. That was going to be too long if she was still in pain so I decided to stay at the ER and have her seen. That night I met the biggest prick of a doctor. He came in and I told him what the issue was but that she seemed to be feeling better. I told him of my concern with her ears and by now her eye infection was starting to come back ....again. He took a look and gave her ears an all clear sign and said she just had a bad cold virus and that it would pass. He then proceeded to give me a sermon about how babies are over medicated in this country and how if I was in Germany they wouldn't give me any meds for her and in France they would give me a script but tell me to hold it for a week unless she still was sick and that most people never had to fill it. If there was an article in newsweek about the over medication of children in America I'm sure I would find it fascinating but at 1:30 in the morning on a Saturday in the ER I was about to tell the doctor to cut the fuckery and just treat my daughter. So, in the end, we went home empty handed and I had to call the pediatrician in the morning and she called in something to the pharmacy for us. She also asked for the doctors name and was going to send him a terse email and article describing the differences in treating babies & adults in modern medicine. She was so tired once we got home she was able to sleep the rest of the night.

Sunday she was miserable but not screaming so things were looking better. Monday came and although I was hoping for a healthy baby, I felt she just wasn't good enough for school so I kept her home with me. Tuesday I thought she seemed better but was still a snotty, drippy mess and she did go to school. Monday night she had started to cough and by the time I picked her up on Tuesday she was a hacking machine. She had one coughing fit on Tuesday night and actually threw up a bit because she chocked. Otherwise though, she seemed ok in the scheme of things. But come Wednesday morning I was trying to be honest when I dropped her off at school by telling them that she had coughing episode and threw up a bit. That's all it took. They refused her. Don't get me wrong, I understand a day care has policies for a reason but in my mind it wasn't throwing up because she had a stomach flu or anything, it was because she choked. Obviously, I misinterpreted their policy. So, Rosie came to work with me. I made it about half the day until she just was bored of my office and insisted we go home. That night she slept really well and I took her to school and all seemed well. As soon as I got back from lunch there was a message telling me she had diarrhea and had to go home. They told me if she was on antibiotics (which she was) and the diarrhea came from that (which it did) I could get a doctor's note and she could come back the next day. I took her back to my office again so I could attempt to get some work done. I called the doctor's office and asked them to fax a note over to the center so I wouldn't have to haul the child to the doctor's just to pick it up. I went to the center this morning with 2 kids in tow and my fingers crossed that the doctor's note was waiting for me. I was there before 8am so the director wasn't there & the secretary was somewhere else because I couldn't find her. I finally found the office manager and asked about the note. She checked the fax machine, director's office and the secretaries desk and finally said that if it came in yesterday they would have dropped it off in her room. So, down to the infant room I went. Sandy was working and when I asked if she had a note for me, she gave me this sweet blank stare and said sorry but she didn't. With a feeling of defeat washing over me I picked up Rosalie, turned around, left the center, got in my car, drove to the doctors office and gave the attendant my pathetic story. I didn't want to accuse anyone because I didn't know who failed me....but someone did. They found the note in her file but also pointed out that it was faxed yesterday. So, back to the center I went. I handed over the note and my daughter and got to work an hour late. As soon as I got there, the office manager called to say that the director had in fact dropped the note off in Rosie's room yesterday with the other teacher and wasn't sure what happened. About an hour later, that said teacher called and left a message on my voice mail saying she left the note for Sandy but guessed that some how the cleaning lady had moved it under some clip board or some shit and in turn gave the perfect ending to a perfectly stupid week. Thankfully I was able to make it through the day without any more sick calls from the center and now we are all home on this lovely snowy night. I don't think I would feel so bad if there was anyone else in my office who has kids and needs to leave work when they are sick. There isn't anyway to anticipate it and I know they understand but I'm sure it can build some resentment if it persists. Everyone was very supportive but I have a guilty conscious all the same. Here's too a better upcoming week!

2010-01-26T05:55:00.001-08:00

Here I am testing one more time. Maybe this will make me post things more often even if it is in bite sized pieces:)

Mobile Blogging

2010-01-26T05:50:00.001-08:00

Now that I have a new phone with a keypad I finally set up my mobile blogging capability so this my first test. Of course I won`t be writing much this way . It might be better for twitter.

A movin' and a shakin'

2010-01-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

I feel quite bad that I have neglected my blog so much during Rosalie's first year. I was much better at blogging when Isaac was a baby. About a month ago in mid December Rosalie started to sit up by herself. She is starting to pull herself up onto her knees and seems to be on a fast track to crawling but sometimes these things stall for a while so who knows. I thought that month ago she was going to get her first teeth but time has pasted still no fangs. Oh yes, I said fangs...just like Isaac. His first 2 teeth were the canines and he was just cutest little vampire so I can't wait to see Rosalie with her's too. I have realized that knowing while you have a baby that you will no longer be having anymore is sometimes a curse. Mike and I decided that a family of 4 was perfect for us and I haven't changed my mind on that. What becomes apparent to me know though, unlike when Isaac was a infant, that I try to cherish each moment with her more than I could have known. It's to the point that it makes me a little depressed sometimes. I understand why people are so fascinated with babies, especially when they have older children. Babies of course are wonderful no matter what but once you know you are no longer having any more, you realize there are parts of your life you can no longer have again. Do I want Rosalie to stay a baby forever? Of course not. Do I wish the age of 4 months to 9 months could last a year or 2? Maybe. There is an innocence and sense of curiosity in that age that is unlike that of a toddler. The joy a baby experiences from new things and the absolute eruption of laughter when something amuses them is awe inspiring.

I have loved nursing her and have been going to see her everyday at lunch time to feed her. It is a wonderful time out of my day but I am torn at the same time. It is also the only time of the day that I can go to the gym and have a tiny bit of me time. I still have a day to change my mind but I think I am going to start going to gym at lunch. I can of course go to the day care when I need to get my Rosalie fix (yes, I need her more than she needs me obviously). I'm sure I could try to get up even earlier and go before work that has never worked out for me but lunch time I can fit it in just perfectly. I'm not sure if I am going to fully wean her right now or just nurse her in the morning and at night. I guess it all depends on how my body acts with the decreased amount that she is eating. As she gets older, it is less of a relaxing experience though because now any sound stops her from eating so she can investigate. This doesn't matter if she is nursing or eating a bottle but it just becomes a bit trying when you know she needs food.

I will try be better this year at blogging more and chronicling the good and yet sometimes bad adventures of being a mom of 2 amazing, amusing and adorable children.

Oh what a sweet little man he has become

2010-01-02T19:22:00.000-08:00

Since Rosalie was born, I will often tell people what a great and easy going little baby she is. In that same breath, I will mention how Isaac was the complete opposite when he was born. I don't mean for this to sound like we don't love every minute we have had with that little boy though. He was such a handful and could really push us to our limits. Mike and I would strategize how we should attack our parenting so we could counter his stubbornness and strong will. Mike and I will now comment to each other how incredibly sweet and good he has become. Sure, there are still days when he pushes our buttons....but you have to remember...he is only 4 1/2. Isaac can get so excited these days over the simplest things and his excitement is sweet and genuine. He loves the idea of birthday parties (or birsday parties as he pronounces it). Today for instance he asked at 10am if we could bake a cake for dad's birthday (Mike's birthday is Oct 14th). He talked about how we could make a chocolate cake and put bananas and cream and onions and squash in it. Isaac helps me cook & bake often but he is obviously mixing up which ingredients go where. I told him we would bake a cake later and he went on to plan all of the things we would need for the party which included decorations, cake, candles but strangely no presents were brought up. Mike and I take turns taking a morning nap on Saturdays so Mike was laying down during all of this. When he got up, Isaac told him we had a secret but he couldn't know about it. Isaac is terrible at keeping secrets and his idea that it is still a secret if you whisper it to the person, even if it is to the person whom the secret is for. So, low and behold he whispered the party plan to mike and then recited all of the things he was going to put into the cake which differed slightly from the original recipe but a recipes can always be modified, right? He then took the blanket off of the couch and laid it on the floor like he does when we have picnics (we have random, indoor, winter picnics too) and was getting things ready for the party. Isaac and I were planning to go out after nap time to ice skate with friends (it was a first for both of us *see video) so I told him he would have eat lunch and take a nap and after we got home from skating we would make the cake. He was good and did all of the above. We got home and proceeded to make dinner and eat. Around 7pm though he said "we forgot to make the cake". Mike responded that it was ok and we would just do it another time. I felt bad though because I had promised him and put it off all day and he had been so excited for it. The oven was still hot from dinner so I figured it wouldn't take all that long to whip up a cake. I decided on cupcakes because they would bake quickly and we could cool them and ice them for the 'party' before bed time around 8ish. Isaac came down from getting his shower so he could help me take them out and ice them (we did the quick cooling method by sitting them outside on the porch in the 20 degree whipping wind for a few minutes). I didn't want to waste too much time making the peanut butter icing for all of them right then, I figured I could do the rest after he was in bed. Isaac iced Mike's cupcake with straight up peanut butter. I thought this would be just fine but Mike asked, "what kind of icing is this exactly?" once he got it. I told him peanut butter and I think he understood just by my look that it's from your son and you should love it. Isaac also had wanted to put some sort of candy on top of it and any would really do in his mind so I found a chocolate coin that he got from preschool when they were learning about Hanukkah and he placed it strategically on top of Mike's cupcake. Finally, Isaac iced his own cupcake and sat there at our kitchen table and started to eat it. He was quiet and was enjoying the simple pleasure while just gazing at his cupcake as he ate it. He didn't pay much attention to his mom sitting next to him gazing at what a wonderful little man he is. Then, a few bites in, he stated while still looking at his cupcake "this is the best birthday ever"..and then kept eating. When ever people feel bad for parents because they see a kid acting up in a store or just misbehaving and think "I'm so happy I don't have kids" they don't get to sit in the kitchen before bedtime with their son and understand that the simplest moments are some of the ones you end up cherishing the most and all those bad days just melt away.

Some videos for your enjoyment

2009-11-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

Nothing special really...just her cute face.

Detours to the woods

2009-10-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

This weekend Mike had an overwhelming amount of school work including a 3-4 page paper, two 2-3 pages essays for a take home test and he has a physics test first thing tomorrow morning. He also worked on Saturday from 10-4. All of this combined meant he needed a lot of time where he could work and not be bothered. He did go to school for a little while today but I decided to that I would try to find things for us to do so I could keep the kids out of the house. I have found that the website 'Central Penn Parent' is the best resource to find cheap or free things for kids to do. Our itinerary included the Little Buffalo Festival on Saturday in Newport, Perry County and Garden Harvest day at Kings Gap state park outside of Carlisle on Sunday. Both of these sounded great. Little did I know though that it would be such a bitch getting to both of them. Newport is about 20 miles away straight up route 34. 34 is in carlisle and it is in Newport so you would think it would be straight shot. I really must not pay much attention to signs because there are signs all over Carlisle saying that a bridge is out on 34 and that you need to make a detour. The problem is that if you pay no attention to these, you end up driving about 2 miles or more until you actually hit the bridge that is out. The signs never say what other road to take, they just say, follow this detour. It detours you to route 74.....which I can pick up a block from my house. Also, there are much shorter ways to get back to that road than what the detour signs follow but since I didn't know what road they were taking me to, I simply followed their path. Oh, and it was also a car show weekend and I had to go through that traffic twice on 34. Finally, the route I ended up following took me at least an additional 6 miles (I'm being conservative here) but I truly feel it was closer to 8-10 miles. It was the biggest pain in the ass. I will say at least the destination was nice. Little Buffalo's main attraction is free music all day. It has a small crafty, artsy area of vendors a nice free form art area for kids where you can create all sorts of stuff for free. It's located in Little Buffalo state park so the scenery is just lovely.

On to Sunday...I mapped the route to Kings Gap online but I have never been there before. It showed it was a little less than 15 miles which seemed just fine to me. The first 11 miles were cake but then you turn onto the Kings Gap road which takes up you the mountain 4 miles. This is actually a much nicer road than many I have been on in state parks so I'm not complaining about the road itself. My issue is once again my own fault. On the way home from little Buffalo my low gas light came on. This light is very touchy and can often come on when my tank is just a hair under a quarter of a tank. I really wasn't too worried about it and had planned to find a station on the way to Kings Gap but there ended up not being any. It wasn't until I was climbing the mountain and my tank was showing as E that I started to get more concerned. I still knew it wasn't actually empty because the gauge is always off when all of the gas goes to the back of the tank. My real concern started when I saw the traffic jam. Yes, a traffic jam on a mountain road that isn't exactly a 2 lane road. There is no way to turn around either...one side was a wall and the other was a cliff so no dice. I actually had already seen a car that went off the road farther back. It feel into a deep ditch and was at a 45 degree angle. It took probably a half hour to go 3/4 mile. I seriously started to shake at the thought of being stuck on the mountain with a gigantic line of cars in front & behind me. Finally, the end was in sight. I was pretty sure I wouldn't have enough gas to get me down the mountain let alone to another station. I found a state park ranger that was directing traffic and I pleaded my case to him. He was obviously too busy to actually help me but told me to try to find this other ranger guy. As I walked up the road I realized this was not a normal park. We were at the top of the mountain and there was a mansion & a whole assortment of other buildings. There were areas of grass too so I realized that they must have lawn mowers up there and in turn, gas had to be somewhere on the grounds. Just at that moment the other ranger was walking down the road and I stopped him. I told him my sad, sad story and he found a small can of gas in a nearby shed and gave me about 3/4 gallon to get home with. Woohoo!! Finally, I could relax for a while. The place is very lovely but not set up to deal with that amount of cars. It also only had this thing from 1-5pm. I'm hoping that next time they do it they expand the amount of time that it is open. They had neat things like how to make apple butter and cider and how to pull dried corn off of the cob. I will do it again next year but I will be more prepared.

All in all, the festivals were lovely and I learned my lesson when it comes to preparing more for my outings. I was ready with everything the kids would need at least so they were very good. The other thing that I realized is that I don't go out in the woods anymore. It's quite sad really. I used to go hiking all of the time but now I often just want to relax during the weekends. I think that all of the driving is what makes me want to stay home. I don't want to go through these driving issues ever again but I do think I will find a date in the next few weeks to just go out in the woods with the family and enjoy the lovely fall weather. It will not be at a festival though, I want less people and less cars around me next time I venture out.

Time goes by

2009-09-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

Today is 7th wedding anniversary. Technically we have been together 11 years but of course it's almost like those years don't count when you are talking about an anniversary. I don't think this way but the marriage years I guess hold more of an importance than the ones leading up to the big day. Rosalie turned 4 months on Friday. She has her 4 month doctor's appointment on Wednesday. I can't wait to see how big she has gotten. Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary from when I found out I was pregnant with the little lady. It's so funny how you can have a baby home for such a relatively short while and still not understand how you lived life without her. Life is good...but i'm sleepy....so i'm off to slumber for a while.

Recap

2009-09-17T17:20:00.001-07:00

I wish my excuse for not blogging was because I was lazy but unfortunately, it's just because I have been so busy and it just slips my mind. So lets recap. I went back to work almost a month ago on August 19th. It has been fine being back at work other than the fact that I miss my lady dearly. I think in a perfect world I would be able to work half time so I could still work at a job that I love and spend more quality time with my family. I go to see Rosalie every day at lunch time though and nurse her so it is the best part of my day. I get to break away from what ever type of hectic morning I may have had and just spend an hour with her giving her something only I can give. I'm happy i didn't give up on nursing since I am finally all better and no more mastitis is in sight. YAY! Rosalie has been getting more active lately and is enjoying laying on her back under her play gym. She just lays there cooing and yelling at her toys....it's beyond cute. I have some videos that I will post soon. About a week ago we stopped swaddling her because she was getting to big for the blanket. She has been sleeping so well with the swaddle I actually wasn't too concerned that should would wake up because she was so used to getting so much uninterrupted sleep. She usually sleeps from 10:30-7 so I can't really complain. She did have 2 nights where she woke up a bit and I thought she was about to really wake up fully so I gave her her pacifier and went back to bed. Mistake. She then did what Isaac used to do and that was wake up every time the pacifier fell out of his mouth. That was the reason we took his pacifier away from him at 10 months old. Althought at the time I thought this was the right answer I realize now that he still got up & we would feed him. If you remember what he looked like at a year old you will know that he probably had too many midnight feedings for a while. Anyhoo, Rosalie has been fine as long as I don't make this mistake. If she does need a pacifier I give it too her to calm down but I stay awake until she no longer needs it and I take it away from her so I too can have a nice night's sleep.

Also this week she started to roll over from her belly to her back. About 2 weeks ago she really started contorting when she was on her back and I thought she was going roll over that way first but I was wrong. I'm not really concerned if she does any other these things 'early' or 'late' (as some people think) but it does amaze me when I see her do something knew. I love to watch her face when she rolls over and she is happy yet perplexed at the same time.

On a final note, I turned 32 on Tuesday. I don't usually feel older on my birthday but I have to say that this year I was feeling a bit old. Rosalie had one of those night when she was up a bit more than normal and by the time I got home I was exhausted. I never take naps on weeknights but I ended up sleeping for 40 minutes when I got home just to function. We had a nice low key night but I was just feeling a bit old due to my negative amount of energy. Don't worry though. I had a good birthday weekend. Mike and I took the kids to my parents on Saturday and we went to Messiah College to see Iron and Wine. It was lovely as always and we were able to hang out with some friends without the kids in tow.

All in all, I must say that I am very blessed in so many ways. I have been thinking lately about how my life is so wonderful and I should really say it more often ( as long as it doesn't jinx me). I have a great family, job & friends and despite all of the pre-baby, pre-move stress back in May, everything has worked out just wonderfully:)

The End of an Era

2009-08-08T03:58:00.001-07:00

That was the title I gave to the blog I wrote when Gus went to live with another family. Yesterday really was an end of an era in our home though when we had to put Gertie down. She was diagnosed with Cancer back in May and has been on Steroids ever since. She actually was quite energetic and seemed rather healthy for the past 3 months on the meds. In the past 4 days her health plummeted. Her breathing sounded like a percolator due to the giant lumps in her throat. Her snoring could rumble the house. The real issue came when she would barely eat, drink or get up. She would have a few slurps of water but she really wasn't eating. We would put one of her meds in peanut butter so she would get her to eat it. On thursday, she seemed to feel a bit better once she took the pill. She was getting around a bit better but still not eating much. I started to have second thoughts about taking her because I thought she still might be ok for a few more days and I didn't want to take her unless I felt it would be better for her. I kept the appointment and figured I would just decide Friday morning. Friday came and Gertie simply wouldn't walk. If she would walk, she would just fall over. She made it to our back porch and tried to go down the 2 steps so she could go to the bathroom and just fell right down them. I knew that this was the beginning of the end. We had told Isaac that morning that he needed to say goodbye to her. We didn't say she was going to die but that she was really sick and needed to go to the hospital and wasn't going to be coming back. If he asks, I will tell him that she died but I just couldn't bridge that with him at that point. I have been good at not letting him see me cry and I'm trying to keep that up. It's really hard though. Isaac doesn't remember a time without her. When he came home last night he didn't really notice that she wasn't there. Isaac will often pretend to be different super heroes and he will assign names to the rest of the family as well, including Gertie. Last night he was assigning names from the Incredibles and gave Gertie a name as usual. We told him again that Gertie wasn't coming back. Each morning when Isaac gets up, he gets in bed with us. This morning he did that same thing and gave Mike and I hugs and said "you guys are my best friends & Gertie is my best friend too". I told him again that Gertie wasn't coming back and he said "I know, Gertie can still be my best friend though". That's when my tears started. I hid them from him as best as possible but this whole thing is really, really rough for me. We got Gertie a month after we got married. She was our first child and we showered her with all of the love we had. She was great with our kids when we had them. I never was concerned that she would turn on them like some dogs do when a new baby comes home. I'm hoping that I become more stable soon because crying multiple times during that day isn't really healthy and I just need to start feeling better. I did make one interesting realization from my blog post about Gus though. Both Gus and Gertie left us exactly 2 months & 12 days after the birth of our 2 children. At least they both got to meet our other kids before moved on. I'm especially happy Rosalie got to meet her. We weren't sure of that when she was first diagnosed. All I can say is that I miss that little girl and I hope she is happy wherever she is.

Healing up, eating well

2009-08-07T06:45:00.001-07:00

So, I am fully healed from my awesome bout with Mastitis again. I'm still on antibiotics but am feeling better all around. I'm not throwing in the towel yet, but I may start slowing down a bit. Rosalie has been taking a bottle for a few weeks now but only with breast milk. I had tried formula a few times and she flat out rejected that idea. This was made abundantly clear by her high pitched screaming and her arms flailing about. I complained to my sister about this and she said that WIC recommends using lactose free formula for babies that won't take formula since it is sweeter like breast milk. I'll be damned if that didn't just work. This way, I can get her to take that formula and then mix it with normal formula over time so she gets used to the taste of other formulas. Isaac was great because he would drink any type of formula. Many moms have told me that their babies will only drink one kind of formula but I don't agree completely. Rosalie will only drink one kind right now but if you introduce other flavors over time, their palate adapts and they become more agreeable. It's the same thing as when you feeding them baby food. Of course babies don't want to eat green beans but you have to keep trying it until they do. I don't want a baby that will only bananas for a life time.

Sleeping through the night

2009-08-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

Rosalie slept a whopping 8 1/2 hours straight last night. This was a really great achievement but was tarnished by the fact that I again have Mastitis. I got it yesterday and it was much worse this time around. Last time it was brutal pain but this time the pain wasn't as bad but since I basically am brewing an infection I had a fever and flu like symptoms. I was exhausted & achy & overall felt really sucky. I guess this was due to the fact that I have been pumping milk much more this last week so she could take bottles more often. It must have opened up a area to allow bacteria to get back in. Its kind of interesting that I stopped nursing Isaac right around this time because he was a terrible breast feeder. He would detach all of the time and it was just such a bad experience for both of us. Rosalie has been really good at it but since I have so many issues physically it again is not are really great experience. I thought we had cleared the major hurdles and were doing really well. Since she was now taking bottles, I figured I could continue pumping and nursing her over lunches & keep her from having too much formula. I'm not saying that I am planning on throwing in the towel yet or anything but I don't know if I can handle another bout of Mastitis. I completely understand why many women don't last a week at nursing. It is truly a labor of love.

Success!

2009-08-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

I think we have finally gotten Rosalie on the bottle. Yesterday we gave her the bottle twice and both times she ate about an ounce without fussing at all. Today, she took 1 1/2 ounces in the morning and then drank a 4 ounce bottle over the course of an hour in the evening. She ate 2 1/2 ounces right away which blew me away then another 1 1/2 and finally the last half ounce just before she went to sleep. Also, the evening bottle was given completely by me. Woot!! I'm starting to relax and know she will be ok at day care. I can't take her unless I can feel completely comfortable that they can take care of her just as well as us.

2 month appointment

2009-07-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

Rosalie just got back from her 2 month appointment. She was all cheery for the doctor, smiling and cooing away. She is 10 lbs 4 oz and is 21 3/4 inches long. They were very happy with her growth. They said she is in the 30th percentile for height & 40th for weight & her head is a good size too (mean her brain is growing, . I think she might be a smidgen taller than what was recorded because she moved when they were measuring her and I think it might have made a small error. No worries either way, I'm 5 foot 1 inch & my mom is 4 foot 11 inches so she will have good company if she is a short one:) She was so very sad when she got the 3 shots though. It never gets easier seeing your baby in such pain. You just need to cuddle with them for a extra long time afterward to try to make them forgive you....it worked!

Sometimes it's good to have a full time student as a husband

2009-07-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

For the past 3 years I have been the main breadwinner in the household. Mike has been a full time student and part time retail employee. This has been totally cool with me because he is getting something much better than the full time manager job that he had been working. Of course he was making good money, especially for not having a degree, but he would have had to stay in retail to sustain that income. We have been doing fine financially for the most part except for all of the times our cars have died over the period of time. (More on that later in the post). Since we moved into our new home, we became aware of a program in the borough called the Facade Improvement Program. It's based on the north side of town, outside of the historic district where houses need more of a face lift. It will pay for half of a project if the project costs $5000 or under or you can get them to pay for 90% up to $5000 if you are in the qualifying income bracket. This is where it is nice have only one full time income in the household. A few weeks after we moved here I got all of the info around that they needed and submitted an application. I was hopeful that it would be approved but I wasn't sure. First of all, our house doesn't really look bad. It's a 3 story brick house painted blue. There are a few areas that aren't really great looking but there really isn't a lot of chipping, just a bit of a faded look. I asked that they paint the brick, trim & add window boxes. I also asked to change the chain link fence out for wood but I didn't think that was allowed...I tried for it anyway. On Saturday we got our letter telling us we were approved for the 90% payment on painting the brick, trim & adding window boxes. No fence, Boo! OH well, YAY for paint! So, this rocks that we can get this done before Mike graduates and our income (hopefully) increases. Right now I am trying to decide on colors. Any ideas are appreciated. I like color but not so much that the neighbors think it is an eye sore of course. I have been traveling around town looking for houses that are similar to ours for ideas.

Now on to the other financial story. As I mentioned above, we have gone through many a car since Mike quit work. They don't give loans for cars under $7000, which is what we usually buy. We have in the past gotten a credit card with 0% interest for a year or bought it on a card and then just transferred the balance to a 0% interest free one. This has actually worked out quite well for us. When we sold our house in May we ended up with a good lump sum left over which allowed us to pay off the rest of our credit card debt. We definitely had a few thousand left on it and I was getting a little worried because the 0% was expiring in May. If we didn't sell our house, we would have had to play the flip game again but I didn't have a deal lined up. So of course I was very happy to just pay everything off. I then closed out the account too. I got one last statement that ended up being only interest because I guess it had already started accruing in May. The actual amount wasn't that crazy, it was the interest rate that blew my f*&king mind. I don't recall ever having a late payment during the year we had the card so I'm not sure if this interest rate is one of the ones I have heard about where companies are just jacking the rate for no good reason or if it was because of a late payment. The other interesting thing about this is that we just got our credit scores so we could buy our house and I have an excellent credit score so it wasn't because of that. Either way, this interest rate is criminal. Brace yourself. It is 26.99%. Yeah, that's what I said, 26.99%. Unbelievable. Thank god I actually paid it off otherwise we would have probably had to sell another home just to pay that damn thing off. We have never been advocates of using a credit card but you need to to keep your credit score up. I have a Upromise card that helps to pay off my student loans and I only use it for big things that I can pay off so I accrue pay back. If you are interested in knowing what big ass bank gave me an interest rate of 26.99%, it's Bank of America.

A little less than a month left

2009-07-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

Rosalie is now 8 weeks old and will be a month on Saturday. I have to go back to work on August 19th. This summer has been amazing so far. When people have babies, generally they talk about how wonderful it is to have them but the sleepless nights and crying wear them out. Since Rosalie has been so incredibly calm, this summer has really just seemed like a true summer vacation. In America, people look at Maternity leave as a time of bonding with your baby of course but I think people also see it as just getting the baby prepped for the mother to just go back to work. Once the baby is sleeping better at night and the mother can relax and enjoy the time with the baby even more, they have to go back to work. With Mike working minimally and Rosalie so chill, I have barely had a bad moment all summer. I do have to prepare to go back to work though. The good thing is that when I go back we will be ramping back up for the semester so there won't be a lot of downtime. Maybe this would be a draw back for most people but it will allow me to hit the ground running and get right back into the flow of work.

The only real concern I have right now is getting her more used to using a bottle to eat. She has been nursing exclusively since she was born. We have given her some bottles but she REALLY doesn't like them. Generally you have wait until she is furious with hunger and then she has eaten up to 2 ounces but once she is feeling a bit better she will continue spitting it out and crying until I give in and nurse her. I have tried multiple bottles and nipples including Avent, Nuk & Dr. Brown's. Isaac ate off the Avent ones with no issue at all. I just recently tried the Dr. Brown bottle and she seemed to do better on that one. I'm planning on trying at least one bottle a day with her and hope that she shows more interest. If it doesn't start to get better I will have nurse her even less and give her the bottle more until she gets mad enough to eat from the bottle when she is hungry. I can't send her off to day care until she is prepared to eat without me around. I will be able to nurse her at lunch time but of course that won't be enough so she better get better with the bottle soon. It's interesting that most women are more concerned with "nipple confusion" when babies end up liking the bottle better than the breast but I never thought of the reverse being a problem.

Our little gymnast

2009-07-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

Ever since she was born she does something that is very different from Isaac. She will arch her back to the point that she would be close to doing a back bend if she could put weight on her hands and feet. Often when we pick her up from sleeping she will do it while she it in mid air. Yes, everyone says how you need to support a babies head but in this case, she is actually pushing her head all of they way back purposely so you don't put resistance pressure to keep it in line. Last night I realized she not only liked to arch her back but she also liked to do it so her head is upside down. She was laying on my lap with her head on my knees when she pushed her legs off my belly and her head side back past my knees. Basically, she arching her back over my knees and her head was completely upside down. Sure, you play with babies and sometimes playfully swing them in different directions, even upside down, but I never thought to just leave the baby in the upside down position. Rosalie was positively loving it and she would stay that way for a minute or 2. I kept bringing her back up not because she was upset but just because I didn't want her to get upset. I'm guessing she likes it because she was inverted in the womb and it is something she remembers.

Rosalie has also gotten much more interested in putting weight on her legs. We balance her on a table and she is super happy. She is getting stronger each day and her personality is coming out with more smiles and coos.

Yesterday we had a great day. It was the end of Summerfair in Carlisle and there was a little craft festival on campus. At the festival there was an agility dog show that Isaac and I enjoyed. They also had a magician that at least he enjoyed but Mike and I thought was very lame. We were planning on going the the children's fishing derby in the morning but had not purchased a fishing pole for him. We had been promising him that he would go fishing that day so I went out during nap time and picked up a kids fishing pole from Target. We had some basic issues with the line but was victorious enough to get it working so we could go out to the Letort for a quick bit of fishing. We were only there for a little more than a half hour and of course didn't catch anything but Isaac was happy. It has started to rain and we were planning on going to the Bluegrass on the grass festival on campus. By the time we got there the rain had stopped and it because a beautiful day. We enjoyed the rest of the day there with some friends and an army of small children that Isaac could run around and play with. One of the best things about the day was that it was all in Carlisle and we could walk to almost all of the things that we went to. Moving to this town has already been so very rewarding. I'm happy we came in the Summer so we can get instant gratification by being able to take strolls all over town in the lovely summer weather.

To swaddle or not to swaddle

2009-07-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

As I have written about recently, Rosalie has had a few good nights of sleeping. The other nights tend not to be as good because she breaks out of her swaddle and wakes herself up. I wasn't sukre if it was the breaking out that woke her up or if it was just her having her hands free in general. When ever she naps, we don't swaddle her and she sleeps fine, sometimes up to 3 hours. When Isaac was a baby, we had not only swaddle him, but he also needed a pacifier to sleep. That became are real thorn in our side because as slept, the pacifier would fall out of his mouth and he would wake up multiple times at night because of it. Last night we decided to test if Rosalie could sleep in just a sleeper instead of being swaddled. Lately she has been really awake in the evening and she was quite alert up until about 11pm and she fell asleep after eating. I put her in her crib soon after and she seemed to be sleeping soundly. For some reason i couldn't fall asleep quickly last night. This was probably a blessing because at 11:50 she was awake, arms flailing about. This is when i told mike I was turning on the light so i could changer her into a onesie and swaddler her TIGHTLY. She was back in bed by 12:10 and slept until 4:30. She ate and was back asleep by 4:45 and slept until 6:30. This will have to do. I was doing some googling about when to stop swaddling and the answers (from parents) are all across the board. The only expert opinion i really found said that babies start moving more in their sleep at 2 months so swaddling might actually wake them up instead of keeping them asleep. I will test out a sleep occasionally to see if she can stay asleep but really all that matters is what will keep her asleep for the longest period of time.

Isaac started at his new day care about a month ago. I had known that it was a good day care but I have to admit I am surprised at how impressed I am by it. Each week they have general topic that they base their lesson plans around. They also give the full lesson plans to the parents. This includes art projects, particular books they will be reading, field trips and other play activities. A few weeks ago they learned about the jungle and then about trains. During train week they went on a field trip to the Trout Gallery on campus to see their exhibit on train art. This week is pirate week and Isaac is in seventh heaven. When I stopped in to pick him up yesterday they had another permission slip for a field trip next week. I'm guessing next week's topic is space because they are going to the planetarium on campus. Holy shit that's awesome! I have worked there for almost 7 years and I still haven't gone to the planetarium.

more sleeptime

2009-07-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

Rosalie slept super well last night. She slept an astounding 7 1/2 hours straight. Isaac actually was the child that woke up last night. He was up at 3am to go to the bathroom. He was back in at 5:30 and crawled in bed with us. Rosalie then started to make little noises again & I didn't want Isaac to wake back up so at 5:50 I brought her downstirs. She didn't actually wake up until 6:30 & Isaac & Mike didn't get up until 7:30. It was a good morning in the Landis household.

Last night we noticed Rosalie had a bit of a goopy eye. We called this morning but the doctor was only taking emergency visits. We are able to take her in tomorrow morning at 8:30 for a quick check up. Otherwise she is just fine and cheery like usual.

Sleepy lady

2009-07-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

Rosalie has been sleepy ever since she was born. She is getting even better at sleeping at night though. Two nights ago she slept for 4 1/2 hours straight and last night she slept from midnight to 5:30am. I can't recall when we moved Isaac out of our room but I think Rosalie will have to move to her room soon. Even though she slept well she still made little grunts and noises that woke me up at 3:00, 4:00 & 5:00 thinking she was getting up. She is trying to break out of her swaddle and makes the noises as she struggles. I also can't recall when I stopped swaddling Isaac but if keeping her tightly swaddled will allow her to sleep that well, we will continue to do it for a while. A random side note about waking up in the middle of the night is that I have been waking up with positively stupid songs stuck in my head. Many of them are the result of watching too much tv because they are songs from commercials. The stupid "let me be myself" song from the geico commercials, Freecreditreport.com songs and the worst one by far is the Hollywood Casino song ("It's a Hollywood Night!"). Ugh! This morning I changed things up though and had "Gloria" stuck in my head. Not the good Van Morrison/Them song, the Laura Brannigan version:(

I realized this week that if I worked at most other places, I would have to go back to work next week. She will be 6 weeks on Monday. This just seems so crazy that I would have to start her at daycare already. She is much more lively these days (when she is awake) and we are starting to see a bit of her personality come out. She definitely is different from the madman that Isaac was as a baby. Her eyes seem to be changing to a light blue. Isaac's eyes are hazel just like mine and I have always hoped to have a baby that gets Mike's blue eyes. She is cute as ever but has a case of baby acne so I am hoping that it clears up soon since it detracts from her real beauty.

Today is the day!...or it was supposed to be

2009-06-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

Today is was the day Rosalie was due. I can't believe that there was a possibility I would have had to wait until today to have her here. She has continued to be such an amazingly wonderful baby. She is still sleeping really well and she is gaining weight. She had a 2 week appointment last friday and she had made it back up to her birth weight plus a few ounces at 6lb 13oz. She won't go to the doctor again until she is 2 months.

There are a lot of differences between when I had Isaac and now with Rosalie. Mike was working full time as a store manager in York when Isaac was born. He worked 44 hours a week and had about a 45 minute commute each way. He worked evenings and 3 out of 4 Saturdays a month plus one Sunday. We did try to find a full time job for Mike this summer but it didn't work out. He is working a few hours a week at the music store. This means that he is home most of the time with Rosalie and I. Isaac goes to preschool each day. It has made me aware of how incredible of a thing paternity leave is. People tell you how crazy it is when you bring a new baby home and that is true but it doesn't have to be that bad if you have more help. Having the dad at home is the most obvious help but it is rare that a father gets to stay at home with a newborn. Even though Isaac was a huge handful, I usually was fine with him while I was home alone with him. On a few occasions though, I remember having a day when he would just cry or I would just be exhausted and I would just break down from the stress. Rosalie is a much more laid back baby but even if she was a handful, I have someone else here to help take care of her. I am nursing her so I have to take the lead in some areas obviously but otherwise Mike and I take turns taking care of her. It allows us to takes showers and naps and feel human. I am very grateful that things have worked out so well for us with this little lady. We are able to truly enjoy each and every moment we have off with her.

Not quite 2 weeks in

2009-06-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

I meant to write a post at Rosalie's one week birthday but of course, I missed it. Oh well. So, this little lady is amazing. She slept almost constantly for the first week. She has slowly become more awake and we are actually quite excited about this since we get to interact with her instead of just watching her slumber. She has been excellent at sleeping at night too. 2 nights ago was the worst night because she was up for a whopping 2 hours straight. Usually, she wakes up every 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours at night to eat and it takes between 20 minutes to 45 minutes to feed her. Most nights I have to get up with her twice but occasionally, depending on when she went to sleep, I have to get up with her 3 times. She still sleeps after dawn though so usually I go to bed between 10 & 11pm and finally get up for good around 9am. It's really not so bad. Isaac has been getting up between 6:00 & 6:30am and Mike takes care of him and takes him to preschool. He then comes back and goes back to bed for a little while as well.

The real problem this time around has been that I got Mastitis from nursing. This is hella brutal pain to work through. Of course I kept feeding her to keep it from getting worse and so my milk supply didn't dry up. I was able to get on antibiotics on Tuesday and am feeling much better again.

The other interesting piece of news is that Rosalie has already gotten confirmation that she can go to the Dickinson Day Care in August when I go back to work. It took Isaac 4 1/2 years to get in and it took Rosalie a week. This really is all because Isaac got in and she is riding his coat tails in (he starts there on Monday) but still, I didn't expect to get confirmation this quickly. The other interesting thing is that they offered a start date of August 17th. I'm not sure if it was just a coincidence or if they actually mapped out my back to work date but she starts the week I need to go to work. This doesn't sound strange to most people I'm sure, but in the past people have gotten into the day care weeks or months before they need care and they will simply pay to hold the spot. That is how hard it is to get into the day care. I never would have gone that far and paid out a ridiculous amount of money just to have the spot. Thankfully, this time around I wasn't put in that situation. This will be super nice because it is only a few blocks from our house and it's right on campus. I will be able to go over at lunch and nurse her. I used to ride my bike to Isaac's day care at lunch time. This was fine, but I had to roll past that exit to 81 and it was a little nerve racking. This will be much more convenient for all.

Rosalie Neko Landis

2009-05-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

4 years ago I started this blog in anticipation of the birth of our son Isaac. I chronicled most of his big and many of his little milestones. I have been rather bad at keeping up this blog over the last year as he gets older and I got busier and forgot to blog. I'm going to start back up again now though since our daughter Rosalie was born yesterday. I figured I told the whole story of Isaac's entry into this world so I will go ahead and tell the story of Rosalie's entrance as well.

Anyone that has talked to me over the past 9 months has heard me say that I was going to have this baby early like last time. Of course, in reality, I could never say that definitively but I think it helps to keep focused on what you really want. My due date was June 12th but I was aiming for the first week of June. I had called June 3rd and mike had called June 6th. Neither one of us expected a May baby again though. I had 3 weeks of vacation to use up at work before I started maternity leave or else I would have lost it. I was due to go back to work today (5/26/09) and over the weekend I mentioned to mike that it would be awesome to have her on Monday because it would keep me from having to go back to work. When I had Isaac, I had been at my boss's retirement gathering the day before and people were asking me when I was going to have the baby. I told them I was aiming for tomorrow (05.05.05) because I didn't have anything else left to do at work. I did have Isaac that day and I had Rosalie on 5.25.09. I guess I just need to choose the day that I just don't want work anymore and those are the days that my children are born. It also doesn't hurt if it is a holiday. Isaac had Cinco De Mayo and Rosalie has Memorial Day (even if it does change from year to year).

For the past few weeks I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions. All these really consist of are my stomach muscles tensing up. There is no pain or anything. This changed over the weekend though. Saturday night I had a few contractions that felt more like PMS cramps but nothing major. These continued all day on Sunday but never increased in severity and never found a rhythm between each one so it became consistent. I woke up Sunday night at midnight for a bathroom call (my bladder was about the size of a pancake so these are frequent) and had a contraction at that time. I was able to fall back to sleep for an hour and woke back up at 1am and went to the bathroom again. I realized I was having more contractions. I went back to bed and started to time them. I counted for about 45 minutes and they were coming about 5 minutes apart. The midwife had told me at my last appointment that when they get to that point I should call. I called the midwife and she told me to take a shower and drink a lot of water. If it was false labor, things should start to slow down or feel less severe and if it was real labor things would start to progress. Things didn't slow down but I did have 2 contractions that weren't quite as intense. I'm not one to exaggerate so I told the midwife this when i called her back. She said I could either walk around a bit more to see how things go or come to the hospital and get checked out. I told her I wanted to come in because I needed to find out if this was it so we could get Mike's mom to run down and pick up Isaac as fast as she could get here. I think the midwife really thought I was in false labor and I don't think she was eager to come in in the middle of the night. I left for the hospital at 3:06am. People have found it funny that I drove myself to the hospital but really, what other choice was there? The idea was to keep Isaac asleep so we could keep things low key until we had confirmation. I only had one contraction in the car. It certainly wasn't enjoyable, but it was manageable to continue driving (slowly) through town.

When I got there, the nurse checked me and I was 3 cm dilated. The midwife had originally said that they would check me and contact her so she could come in and check me as well. The nurse told me she spoke with the midwife and she wanted to wait an hour and have me walk around and drink water and see if I was actually progressing. I thought this seemed rather ridiculous since i was already at 3cm and my contractions were getting more intense. Even the nurse said it certainly looked like I was in true labor....I said that I agreed. The nurse left and I walked around my room for about 10 or 15 minutes working through the contractions that were getting very uncomfortable. That was when my water broke. I called the nurse in and told her that my water broke and that I wanted an epidural and I was pretty sure the midwife had to get in there for that so she had better hurry up and get to the hospital. I remembered from when I had Isaac that from the time I asked for an epidural until I actually got one, was about an hour and a half. I thought I would put my request in as soon as possible so I wouldn't miss the window for the epidural. My water had broken within an hour of arriving to the hospital. When they checked me again, i was already at 5 1/2cm so I was progressing rather quickly.

I called Mike and had him get a hold of his mom so she could pick up Isaac. She made it down as quickly as she could but Mike wasn't able to get to hospital until 6:30am. I had been going through some rough contractions and had thrown up once. I was able to get my epidural a little bit before Mike got there so he never actually had to see me in my prime of pain. At 7am Mike asked when I thought I would have the baby. I told him that the way things were going, I would guess before 7:30. He seemed a little shocked at that guess. By 7:10 I told the nurse they needed to check me again because I was feeling a lot of pressure and thought that she was ready to make her entrance. She confirmed that I was 10cm and the other nurses got things ready. The one nurse mentioned that she likes to encourage women to 'labor down'. I guess this is just for women who have epidurals and it just allows the baby to make it's way down just by letting the contractions do the work and not pushing until you really feel the need to. I thought this sounded fine except for the fact that I was already feeling the need to push. After she took another look she decided that was the case. I had heard the midwife mention something about being in room 4. I thought she had another mother to work with but Mike told me later that she was actually napping until things progressed more and she was needed. The nurses were going to have me push a little to get things started and then get the midwife I guess. I think they underestimated how ready I was and how good at pushing I would be. After pushing through 2 contractions they basically told me to stop and that they had to get the midwife because I was that close. This is not something that you can easily tell a woman who is pushing to get a baby out. I found it funny (in retrospect of course) when I saw the face that the midwife gave when she saw just how ready I was. She barely had time to put on her gloves and catch the girl. I guess they had to wake her up and that this was the first thing she sees when waking from a nap and entering the room. So, in the end, I was in labor for 6 1/2 hours total and wowed people with the speed and got this girl out. I pushed for less than 10 minutes in the end.

Rosalie Neko Landis was born at 7:27am 5/25/09 at 6lb 11oz & 19 1/2 inches long. Although I love my son dearly, I can't be happier that Rosalie is nothing like he was as a baby. I'm wowed at how incredibly relaxed she is. She is so chill that we haven't even had to give her a pacifier (whoa!). She sleeps all of the time. I realize this will most likely change a bit when she gets home but still, it is amazing to me. She hardly ever cries unless she is getting changed or is really hungry. We waited to have another baby because of financial reasons but also because we couldn't imagine trying to raise 2 children with Isaac's intensity at the same time. We figured if we waited until Isaac was 3 or 4 he would be able to better reason with us and would have less fluctuations in his mood as he did when he was little. He has grown into an incredible little man that is super excited about his little sister and he will be such a great help. I finally get to bring her home tomorrow and it will be the first day the whole family gets to spend together in our new home. I can't be more blessed by having such an amazing family and such a perfect new addition to the Landis crew.

Hard Choices

2009-05-05T18:26:00.000-07:00

Mike and I got Gertie from the Bulldog rescue right after we were married. She was 3 years old at the time. I had always grown up having a dog and it was crushing to not have one while I was in college. I was so excited to get Gert home and see how she would fit with the family and she didn't disappoint. Gert has been with us as our family has grown. We had our other bully Gus for a year but had to give him to the bull dog rescue soon after Isaac was born. Gert was always great with Isaac, even when he was just an infant. Isaac loves that little lady just as much as she loves him.

We always knew that bullies don't age as well as other breeds. 12 years old is pretty old for a bulldog. Gert will turn 10 on May 26th. A few weeks ago I noticed some lumps under her throat. Even though I used to work in animal hospitals, I didn't think much of it. I have seen lots of old dogs that get fatty lumps on them as they age. A few days later though she started to make a coughing sound and we took her to the vet to get her checked out. The vet said there was good news and bad news. The good news was that it seems it hadn't spread yet, but the bad news was that she most likely had lymphoma. We set up a biopsy appointment for a week later. When she went in they said they had already found some more swollen lymph nodes that weren't there a week prior. I knew this wasn't looking very promising but I was hoping the biopsy would give us some hope. They called us tonight to tell us that she has one of the worst kinds of cancer, lymphoma sarcoma. They said we could go with the chemo which is a 2 year treatment that would probably cost between $4,000 & $5,000. This of course isn't a sure fire win and with her age, there is a chance it could weaken her and put her in more jeopardy. The only other option is to continue her on the steroids to keep the swelling down and make sure she stays comfortable for a while. This treatment would give her 3 to 6 months as a guess. I just feel overwhelmed trying to figure out what the right answer is. I want to do what is best for her but all of this comes at the worst possible time. We are buying and selling houses and our new baby will be here in a month or so. These other things are of course great things but they have all been clustered all into a month and my stress level is a bit more than I need right now. I'm hoping Gert will surprise us and give a good fight. I really want her to meet Rosalie when she comes home.

He Got In!

2009-04-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

Isaac will be 4 on May 5th of this year. He has been on the waiting list for the Dickinson Day care since I was about 4 months pregnant with him. I will admit that when he was 2 they did call to give him a spot in the summer but Mike wasn't working and we could save $1500 by not having him in day care. Since then, they have called twice to offer the most ridiculous times that he could go. They were something like Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Who needs child care at only those times? I of course turned them down. Suddenly yesterday I got a call telling me that yes, after years of waiting, and bitching and moaning (to myself mostly) he has been offered a full time spot starting June 8th. I'm still flabbergasted that it has actually happened. They don't use normal names for rooms like toddler, 2's & preschool. Instead, he will be entering the 'bunny room'. I have no idea what the bunny room has to offer but whatever. So, in the next 2 months, we will sell our house, buy a new house, move, have a baby and Isaac will get a new school. I'm not sure what else I can change in my life but I'm hoping this is the last one. All of the changes are really cool so I am not complaining, it's just a lot to keep in order in my packed little brain.

I'm back

2008-12-04T17:42:00.000-08:00

Oh blog, how I have neglected you. I don't know why it has been so hard for me to blog this fall. Work has been kind of crazy and I just shut down when i get home and don't want to put much effort into writing anything...even as simple as a blog. oh yeah, and I'm pregnant so it's the closest thing to narcalepsy that I have ever encountered. I could sleep at any moment usually. Often, I get home and cook and eat dinner (mike cooks too sometimes) and then maybe watch a minute of the news. By the time 7pm rolls around, i'm generally dozing off on the couch. I'm hoping that my energy levels pick up soon. At first, i had really bad morning sickness (but it was all day) and it was more like car sickness. This meant that i had to eat all the time. that did go away but i probably gained an extra pound or 2 and the fact that i am tired and haven't been going to gym isn't really a good combination. I'm hoping that after the semester is over and things calm down I will be able to visit the gym more often again.

Now on to a funny little story. Today, I picked Isaac up from day care and we were driving to the store. We drove past a big pine tree covered in lights. Isaac says, "that's a Christmas tree!...Santa will get me a skateboard". Isaac has been talking about getting another skateboard and at this point, he only really thinks of Christmas as presents. We had just come out of a store and had given some money to the salvation army for their buckets. I gave Isaac the money and he put it in. I told him that money goes to people who don't have as much food and money as we do so we try to help out. So, when Isaac had made the statement about the presents again, I just told him that Christmas is one day and one that day we get presents but we celebrate it for a whole month. I said that Christmas is giving to people who need help and going to the parade and making things for people and putting up decorations and when we baked cookies at mimi's house. Isaac said "we made christmas cookies?...Can we make christmas hot dogs? and christmas bread? and christmas macaronis? At least he isn't thinking just about presents anymore.

Wow, I'm behind!

2008-08-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

Jeez, I used to be so good at blogging. I always had something to say, even if most people didn't find it that interesting. Often throughout my day I think to myself, wow, that would be a great story to blog. But then a few days pass and I feel like if the story hasn't happened really recently then it's old news and not worthy for my blog anymore. I guess I just have to be more proactive about my blogging.

I have one good Isaac story to share. Isaac is fully potty trained but still sleeps with a pull up on. He wears underwear all day long, even during naps. He is usually very good about using the potty but before we go out anywhere, i prompt him to use his potty and he always does. Mike and I have been taking bike rides in the evenings. We ride a few miles and then on our return trip we stop by the park to let Isaac get some exercise too. He runs around, testing out each slide and swing. He makes new little friends and has grand old time. When it gets close to the time when he needs to leave, we tell him 'You can go on 3 more slides and then we have to go'. This works out nicely because he knows that the end is coming and he is braced for it. He also gets a little more play time. One night, Isaac was going to go on the last of his last 3 slides. He chose the really big one and got to the top of the landing and looked down with a face that was a mixture or fear and confusion. He was frozen like a statue. I yelled up, 'Isaac, what's the matter?'. He blurted out so fast that it sounded like only one syllable 'I Pooped!'. The funny thing is that he still seemed to be in the process because he stood there motionless for an extra second or 2 before he regained movement. Mike ran up and picked him up. Unfortunately, this park only has port-a-potties. I have seen the inside of the these a times already this summer with Isaac so it was Mike's turn. Thankfully they have a handicapped one that has some extra room in it. Mike was able to get his undies off and clean him up and dispose of the soiled item. It was such a sad yet funny situation and as soon as he was clean Isaac acted like nothing happened. It's good to see he can easily bounce back from embarrassing situations. I hope he will always be that tough.

Adventures in Flooring

2008-06-16T12:52:00.001-07:00

Since mike has been gone, i have been keeping busy by working on a bunch of projects. My main focus was to sand the dining room floor. I had planned on stripping it the first week he was gone and I made a point to call the one rental place to make sure it would fit in Mike's car. (at this point i still hadn't gotten my new car....They were waiting on a catalytic converter that was on order....or so they thought....in the end it was a big 'miscommunication' with the parts place. Anyhoo, i have my station wagon now). The guy at the shop said it would be fine in the sedan that i own. I went over early on a Thursday morning after dropping isaac off at daycare and went to the counter. I first noticed that the man was very large and in very poor health and could barely speak without heaving in a breath. I told him i had called and wanted a sander and that they said it would fit in my car. "you have a hatchback" he belted out in a gruff tone with a painful breath. "No, they didn't say i needed that" was my response. So dude number 2 comes out from the back (the gentleman i spoke with on the phone). He was short with a gray ponytail and a red bandanna tied around, Willie Nelson style. Unfortunately wasn't as bright as Willie Nelson. He came around to investigate the capacity of my trunk (the car). He went on to say "that isn't a very big trunk" and "you can't fit very many bodies in there" and I barked back "it isn't a very small car" in a slightly annoyed tone. In the end i said I would just come back next week when i have my new car. In the end, i went to a different rental place where they have literate people working there.

This past Thursday I finally was able to get a belt sander and an edger and strip the dining room. So many people had told me how hard it was that my hand was shaking a bit when I started the machine. Usually, I am very confident about these things but people really made me start to question myself. In the end, the belt sander was cake to use. Sure if you leave it on the ground running, you will put gouges in your floor but I don't care about making things perfect, i just want them better. The floor in the dining room had seriously been like a barn floor. The previous owner had stripped most of the floor once but hadn't finished it and the floors had no polyurethane and just looked old and worn. This way, anything that I did to them would look better than what it had. My only issue was using the edger sander. Either I was doing something wrong or the machine had an issue because I put on a new piece of sand paper and would start it up and within 30 seconds it would start rubbing somehow and leave dark burn circles in the floor. I ended up giving it up and just taking the long route of using my hand sanders. I still could have worked longer on a few more spots but I needed to get most of this done when Isaac wasn't around. Also, I forgot the damn cable guy was coming that day and he took up about an hour an a half of good sanding time trying to diagnose an issue we were having.

Jumping ahead, I had planned to keep the wood a blonde color by first putting down a sealant to retain the color. I didn't know what this was called and thought I would rely on my handy local hardware store. They of course gave me the wrong product which I didn't realize until I had put it on 7 boards. This is when i had the realization that I was going to end up stripping my living room the following week since i now have to rent the sander again. I decided to just go ahead and finish up the boards that didn't need another sanding for now. I bought a quart of an uber expensive polyurethane blend that dries in 2 hours and doesn't smell. I put the first coat down on Friday while Isaac was a school and it was ok to walk on it by the time he got home. I had an different type left from the previous owners that said it too was fast drying but instead took 3-4 hours. I decided i would put one coat on before I went to bed, section off the room from gert and by morning it would be ready. Wrong. I came down the next morning (saturday) and i found it to be VERY tacky to the touch. I realized I was going to have to keep both child and beast off the floor all day. I put chairs in front of the rooms because Gert is afraid of everything and I knew she wouldn't try to slip past and Isaac..well...i was just hoping for the best really. About half way through the day I was upstairs and heard Isaac downstairs. I can usually tell just by sound what room he is in. I could tell he was no longer in the living room. I bolted down the stairs to find isaac in the middle of the dining room. He looked and said "look at me" with a smile beaming from his face. I screamed at him to get off the floor and got him in the living room. I looked at the floor and yes, i could see a few little foot prints peppered throughout. Once again, what can I really do so I will live with imperfections. The rest of the day progressed without issue and I was sooooo happy for Sunday morning because the floor would be dry and we could walk on it again. We would no longer have to go outside to make it from the living room to the kitchen and vice versa. As I walked down the steps Sunday morning, I already knew what I was in for...I could smell it. Yes Gertie, my neurotic dog braved her own fears to slip past the chair, into the dining room just so she could shit on my brand new floor. Spitefull eh? Thankfully the polyurethane did was it was supposed to and protected the floor from her retched feces. I finally put down the last coat of polyurethane last night (the super fast drying stuff) and now it is functional again. Although it seems that after telling this story I would never again try to refinish floors again but the truth is, with all of the issues and imperfections, they look really good. Also, it's such a learning experience so the next floor will be much smoother...or at least it better be.

2008-06-01T18:47:00.001-07:00

Today Mike left for Japan. Isaac stayed with Mike's parents this weekend so we were able to hang out with some friends Friday before he had to leave. Saturday morning we did all of the last minute stuff and then headed down to DC late afternoon. Mike was flying out of Dulles at 7:10 this morning so there was no way we would drive him down the morning of the flight. I haven't been able to talk to him since he left but for a minute because his flight was late getting into San Francisco so he had to run to catch the flight to Japan. As I write this he is still in the air, 7 hours into his 11 hour journey. He got some meds from the doctor that are supposed to help knock him out, so I am hoping that it worked for him because that is a hell of a flight to be awake for. I also figured this would possibly help get him on Japan time if he slept all day today on a plane. There is a 13 hour time difference between here and there.

It was funny that up until he left I never really let it sink in what it was going to be like without having him around. It's not that I thought i wouldn't miss him, I just didn't really think about how I would feel. I have been planning lots of house projects while he is out just because I will have a lot of time on my hands. I focused mostly on this part of him not being here verses the empty feeling that I would have. It was interesting, because I walked Mike out to the shuttle that was going to take him to the airport from the hotel, gave him a kiss and said goodbye. I then started walking back to the room and I got that little choked up feeling in the back of my throat like when you are about to cry. I didn't, but it was just a gut reaction I guess. Mike and I had a long distance relationship for the first 2 1/2 years. We would drive 2 1/2 hours back and forth from Selinsgrove to Indiana (PA). It was always so sad when we would have leave each other. Of course we got as used to it as we could but this is by far the longest we will have been away from each other since that time. I also think the strange part is that I know I can still see and talk to him online but it's a totally different feeling when you know you can't just pick up the phone and call whenever you feel like it. We have to have predefined times to call either early morning or late at night. I know we will get it all worked out soon but it's something very strange to get used to. Every time that one of us goes away I always think of a Phish song called 'Lengthwise' because it's only lyrics are 'When you're there, I sleep lengthwise, and when you're gone, I sleep diagonal in my bed'. Goodnight sweetheart.

2008-05-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

I just got home from Mike picking Isaac and I up because my car has officially kicked the bucket. I knew it was coming, the garage said there was something wrong with the valve train and it was too expense for me to justify fixing it. It kept running though so i just decided to drive it until it died....which it did...today. I was hoping it would last until Sunday because mike leaves for a month long Japan trip and I could just drive his car. None such luck of course. We are trying to figure out what to do now. I won't be buying an expensive car by any means and i'm just not sure if i should do it before he leaves or try it while he's gone. That of course is interesting because how do you drive to the dealer and then buy a car and leave with both when you are only one person? I wonder if any of my friends have a passion for car shopping?

2008-05-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was such a lovely day. I am taking an extended vacation from Thursday the 22nd to June 2nd (well...that's the day I go back to work). Mike is leaving June 1st for his month long trip to Japan. Oh yeah....for those of you i forgot to tell....Mike is going to Japan for the month of June (I guess some of those people i had forgotten to tell were my parents and sister...oops!). Anyhoo, Mike had to work yesterday and I took Isaac to daycare so I could have some time for myself. Isaac has been waking up earlier and earlier because those damn birds outside are chirping at the crack of dawn (and that is getting earlier too of course). He got up at 6:30 or so and I ended up taking him to school a little after 7:30. I then went to the gym not realizing they didn't open until 8 am since the students are now gone. I hung out by the fish pond next to the gym admiring the coy until they opened. I usually go to the gym over lunch but am pressed for time so I only get 30 minutes on one of the machines and then shower and run back to work. Yesterday i was able to do my 30 minutes plus abs and then some strength training on the machines downstairs. It was great! I took a shower and then went to the Target complex in town. I had to return something at Target and had a coupon for 50% of one item at Michaels (yay for glue sticks!) and then i realized i had a $10 gift card for Kohl's (also in the complex). I usually wander about aimlessly not knowing what to buy because I don't want to spend much more than the free money that is on my card. I did the really girly thing and found cute little undies on sale and actually bought something for myself. I've been trying to lose all that winter weight I gained and thought it was an incentive if I wanted to look better in the new items that I purchased. Then I traveled down the sidewalk to Petsmart and got an algae eater for our fish tank (it was starting to look pretty gross!) and made a final stop at the Dollar Tree for all of the bullshit that i never realize i need until it is presented in front of me in really cheap form.
Although i realize to most people this stuff is boring and an everyday type of thing, but it was so nice to me. I often take Isaac with me when i go out to stores or if i leave him with Mike I am always trying to get back fast since there is a good chance Isaac is melting down for him or something. I'm always on some sort of schedule and it was so nice that no one needed me and or cared how long I was out and I was able to relax. I ended up coming home around noon and then ate lunch and took a 2 1/2 hour nap. YAY! It was just glorious.
Although i will miss mike while he is gone, i have a lot of vacation to use up and will be taking off every Thursday and Friday in June but Isaac will be going to day care. This means i have a lot of these types of days to look forward to over the next month. I won't always be out shopping, i have a lot of projects i want to work on but even these are enjoyable for me because I can accomplish something while still having time to myself. I love Mike and Isaac but having time alone is something that I don't always even realize how much i need until i get the time to have it.

2008-05-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

Isaac started potty training somewhere around January. He has been doing great since then and we really haven't had any poopy diapers to change in a long while. He still would pee in his pull up occasionally but as long as you kept prompting him to use his potty, he would stay dry. I realized though that he used the pull up sometimes because he was playing and didn't want to stop to go potty. 2 weeks ago we decided to start him in real underwear. Over that weekend he had an accident or 2 but otherwise did really well. The first few days at day care he also had a few accidents but he has been accident free for a whole week now and it is glorious! We still use a pull up at night because he doesn't really wake up to tell us he has to pee yet but that will come soon I'm guessing. Seriously, this is such a liberating feeling of not having him in diapers. The only thing that is a change is that when we go out, we need to know that there is a bathroom accessible so he can go if he needs to. Summer festivals should be interesting, but hopefully we can just make him go before we go out and then be in the clear for a while.

2008-05-03T06:14:00.001-07:00

My co-adviser at the radio station has an inside connection at the Whitaker center in Harrisburg and often gets free tickets to shows to give away on air. Davis has a love for Bluegrass so he often gets tickets in that area but had gotten me tickets to see Ani Difranco earlier this year. Mike and I saw that Steve Earle was coming to the Sunoco Performing Arts Center and I thought that this might be the kind of show Davis would end up getting tickets for anyway. I simply said to him that if he gets any tickets to keep me in mind. It seems he went out of his way to request tickets and got Mike and I tickets in the 4th row. He also got himself some tickets in the back of the place but ended up not being able to go so he gave us those tickets as well. We 2 took friends of ours and went out on a chilly Saturday in April.

The Sunoco Performing arts center is a lovely building with balconies and a mezzanine. This is the kind of place where you sit down for the whole show but it is a very comfy place to see shows. Mike and I were very excited about how close we were. Little did we know that we were in the 'pit' so to speak. This location at any other show would be where there would be a lot of people crowded into the small area and possibly some crazy moves would be thrown in a dancing sort of way. We of course didn't expect any of this at this show and no, it didn't happen but I have never been closer to a fight breaking out than at this show. In case you don't know who Steve Earle is, he is technically a country artist but not the twanged up, backwoods kind of country that usually comes to mind. He is more folky in some ways and has more of roots rock kind of feel. He is also on the HBO show the wire as the NA sponsor to Bubbles (he is sooo awesome).

Anyhoo, back to the fight scene. So, part of the way into his second song this geriatric, bitter fellow in the front row turns around to the people sitting right in front of us to the left and yells at them that he came to hear Steve and not them. This kind of threw me off because a) he started yelling at them while Steve was on stage singing and b) because i didn't hear them singing and they were right in front of me. I have been at many shows where people are full on belting out the words to every god damn song (Dave Matthews) and I did hate it but this wasn't what that guy was doing. The song ended and we just brushed it off as a strange occurrence. Steve played his 3rd song and once again, i didn't hear anyone singing along. Right after steve finished that song, this f*ck in the front row turned around again and screamed at the people behind him to shut the f*ck up and then there was some indecipherable yelling between them until dude up front finally turned around and shut up himself. Steve is such a stand up guy because he just sort of looked down at the dude from the stage with a puzzled sort of look and then just returned to playing with out saying a word.

So, you would think that this was the last of our adventurous evening in the 4th row but no, not yet. There were 4 guys that came together and were probably in their early 30's in the row in front of us. They had been drinking...and probably smoking something (at least that's what my deductive reasoning came up with from the 'scents' coming from their direction) but otherwise didn't seem to be rowdy (well one was but we will get to that later). The guy right in front of us was wearing a leather cowboy hat and seemed laid back for the most part. This guy had an aisle seat and part way into song 4 he leaned out with his cell phone in hand to take a picture. He did lean forward a little bit too but I don't believe he touched the person in front of him. Instead, i believe he just got into the peripheral vision of the guy in front of him. I guess this was enough to make the guy loose it because he jumped up, flipped the guy's cowboy hat off of his head and stomped out without another word. It was quite funny because the dude couldn't figure out where his hat went to exactly and looked for it for the next 2 songs ( it was under his friends chair in the end). The dude that stomped out was with his wife and it wasn't until another whole song had finished that she finally got up to find him i guess. They had 3rd row seats and yet never came back during the rest of the show.

The cowboy hat wearing guy's friend that was sitting up to the right of us was the one that was truly drunk and obnoxious. He never got in any fights but he deserved a good beating by the end of the show. He was the kind of guy that would just scream out "STEVE EARLE" in the middle of song to show his love, nevermind that fact that all eyes should be on ...wait for it....Steve Earle obviously. He would clap manically in the middle of songs and was just an overall annoying guy.

So things were seeming to be normal as shows go for a little while until Steve got a bit political. He said that he wasn't a republican or a democrat... that he was far left of democrat. He spoke of how the upcoming election was really important and how he wouldn't give an endorsement for a candidate because he didn't want to soil their reputation by associating himself with them. After a bit of this, some d-bag up in the balcony screamed out "you're a pussy". Once again classy old Steve Earle didn't even acknowledge it and just went on to play a song. Everyone thought that the moment had passed but right after he finished the song and the clapping had stopped the dude screamed out "you're still a pussy".

Wow. That's about all I can say. It was one of the strangest and yet best shows I have ever been too. Steve played almost the whole thing by himself with just a guitar and a harmonica. It had a very Bob Dylan feeling to it...or at least what Bob Dylan used to sound like and should still.

2008-03-14T18:54:00.001-07:00

I can't wait for this family to get well again. Mike has been the only one (so far) that hasn't thrown up in the past 2 weeks....and that includes gertie. Lets start out with Gertie since she was the first one. I guess it was probably 2 weekends ago when Gert got it started. One evening I gave Gertie a baby carrot as a snack and after she ate it, a few minutes later she kind of coughed. I thought this was strange but i just figured she inhaled it as usual and it just didn't sit well with her. Maybe this was all it was but in retrospect, it looks like it was a glimmer into what would come the next day. The next morning I fed her and after about an hour, she threw up. I felt really bad and let her outside in case she was still feeling bad and went on to clean up her mess. She came back in and to make a long story short, she threw up 10 times total that day. Since we have had Gertie, she has made it a ritual every 2-3 years to eat something she shouldn't. At first it was her own toys and then it changed to isaac's after he was born. We would always take her to the vet but each time it would end up passing without issue but would end up being about a $100 bill for the vet. This time, i just decided to wait a day and see how it went. I massaged her belly occasionally to make sure it didn't hurt her and just let it take it's course. It wasn't until the following day that i finally found 'it' in her poop. What 'it' is, i still can't figure out. It had a lot of string in it and a little metal ring and a small bright yellow plastic piece attached at the end. Like i said....i have no idea. Point is though, she made it through it no worse for the wear.

Now lets jump to this past weekend. Mike was playing a battle of bands in Williamsport (they came in second) so we thought that my sister could just have Isaac stay over that night so we could come home and go out to a party at our friend's house. She was very nice and said that we could just pick him up in the afternoon sometime so we didn't have to rush and get up early. I got tired early (12:30am)after such a busy day and found a cozy spot at our friends house where i could get some shut eye until mike was ready to go. We finally got in bed at home around 2:00 but it was daylight savings night so it was actually 3:00. 8am rolls in and our phone rings. My sister apologized for a calling first thing in the morning but said Isaac woke up and threw up. I knew i wouldn't be able to go back to sleep even if he was in good hands so I got up and started the 2 hour drive north to pick him up. The funny thing is, he didn't get sick again and other than sleeping really heavily, he didn't show any other signs of being sick.

Lets jump another 2 days forward to Tuesday. I go to work and eat a scone about an hour into work. As the morning starts to progress my tummy gets a bit rumbly and I don't feel so hot. The last time i 'waited it out' at work when i felt sick, i ended up throwing up in my car so I decided to not repeat that and I was on my way home by 11am. I went to sleep for 3 hours and felt much better but unfortunately also felt very hungry...so I ate a soft pretzel and a small bowl of cereal. That was my downfall. After 2 hours I couldn't hold it down any longer and finally purged my system of all food. Thankfully, that was the only time I had to get sick.

Finally this brings us to last night. Isaac was great all day and went to bed without issue. Around 9:30 we heard him crying and I could tell he was upset. Mike went up to see him and then I heard him say "Oh No Buddy!" in a sad sort of way and then he called me upstairs. Isaac had thrown up all over himself and the bed. He said "I made a mess" and "my belly hurt". I could almost cry. He looked to sad. We got him in the tub and cleaned him up and after a little work finally got him back in bed. He was much better today and didn't throw up but had diarrhea throughout the day. I really hope this is the last of it and Mike doesn't get sick. I don't know how much more puke I can handle witnessing.

2008-02-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight was a big first in the Landis family. It was our first show together. Mike was playing at Dickinson tonight and for once they weren't the headliners so they actually played early. It was early enough for Isaac to come out and see them. Yesterday, I stopped at Lowes and picked up noise reduction headphones (like an air traffic controller) so Isaac could enjoy the show without damaging his ears. I was scared he wouldn't keep them on but in the end, he just kept them on his head without any issues. We brought along Isaac's toy guitar because he likes to 'rock it'. It has buttons instead of strings but it's really just the motions that he does that makes it so good. He seriously has rock star moves. We had such a blast. Isaac and i stood right in front of the band and he wore his guitar the whole time while his dad played. Some kids took pictures so I will post some as soon as I can get my hands on some. Although the band got a lot of attention, Isaac was basically Night Train to Terror's hype man, keeping the crowd engaged. By the end of the night, he was exhausted. He is usually asleep no later than 8:30 and tonight the band didn't finish until 9:30. He was knocked out on the car ride home and finally fell asleep in his own bed around 10. He was so very good tonight and I am so happy we got to have an fantastically fun night with the whole family.

2008-02-26T18:42:00.000-08:00

I actually got a request for this, so here is the long awaited potty update (you were on the edge of your seat...weren't you?). The dude is doing a FANTASTIC job of using his potty. I can't remember the last time I had to change a poopy diaper. He still uses his pull ups a bit more at day care but at home, he is usually naked from the belly down. This makes him realize he doesn't have anything to fall back on and he basically never has an accident when he is pants-less. He just knows he has to use his potty so he just runs over to it. He has one in the living room and often just sits there and watches tv while hanging out on the potty. He gets very proud of what he accomplishes and pulls us over to show us. We then try to clean it up and he often tells us he has to do more so he sits for a while longer. At first I thought he was just making it up but often he really does poop more. When i said before that he was very resistant to using the potty up until now, I wasn't exaggerating. He made it seem like the worst torture ever. I know kids get potty trained at different ages but I truly believe he wasn't ready until just now. He really took too it very easily once he decided it was something he wanted to do. So my word of caution to parents of kids still in diapers, don't rush them. Even if other kids their age, or even younger, are getting potty trained, it doesn't mean yours is. My goal was to have it completely potty trained by 3 and I think we are well on our way to a diaper free world for us!

2008-01-26T07:36:00.000-08:00

It finally happened. Isaac finally, willingly, used his potty this morning.....4 times. Usually I ask him if he wants to try to use his potty and he says no and it just becomes a big tantrum if i try to make him. This morning I tried, as I have tried countless times before, to let him go free, diaper-less. I put a shirt and sweatshirt on him and pulled his socks up so he hopefully wouldn't get too cold and just sat with him and watched some tv and drew in coloring books. He was sitting on his potty but wasn't doing anything yet. He went to the dining room and was on a chair and said he was going to poop so I swept him up and dropped him on his potty. He still didn't go at this point but we sat and watched some more tv and after a little while he stood up, looked in his potty and said he pooped....and he had...a little bit. I knew there was more so I asked him to sit down and try again and a little more came. I cleaned him up and praised him and yes, gave him a cookie. About a half hour later after playing for a while, he sat down on the potty again. About 5 minutes later he stood up and said, mom, i pooped again. And this time he had done a lot. I cleaned him up again and barely had time to put the potty back when he said he had to go again. I sat it down and within 30 seconds he stood up and said he pooped. He hadn't, instead he had filled it with pee. I was about to take it away when he wanted it one more time and he pooped just the tiniest bit more. That's right in about an hours time he pooped 3 times and peed once, all in his potty. I couldn't be happier. It seems so many kids at his school are already potty trained and i was starting to worry. Don't worry, i didn't give him a cookie every time, just the first one.

2008-01-24T05:15:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the Forum in Harrisburg and saw Ani Difranco. My co-advisor at the radio station (WDCV-FM) got some tickets to give away and he gave me a pair. A friend of mine loved her and had me listen to her "living in clip" double live album around 10 years ago. It was an amazing album. I later tried listening to her studio albums and I found they lacked much of what made here live album so good. Truthfully, i don't think have ever listened to a full studio album from her so many of the songs she played I wasn't very familiar with. That was just fine though because she puts on a show that you can enjoy even if you don't know all of her music.

The Forum is a nice place. It was obviously built for orchestral performances but that just makes the place great for live music in general. The difference between the Forum and other venues is that people tend to just sit down for a folksy show like this instead of stand up and dance. It isn't a big place but it has a lower section and an upper section split by a large walkway. We got our seats on the first row of the upper section (lots of leg room) on the far left side. It was nice there because you could still see quite well (there was one more section farther left that no one was in) and really we were by ourselves...that was, until that ballerinas fluttered by. I had seen them out of the corner of my eye, in the walkway a bit to the right. I'm guessing people in that section complained so they moved down where only my friend and I were sitting. There were 3 of them and the one was putting on a full interpretive dance in ballet form to each song. The other 2 were less engaged but still popping up on there toes and flailing their arms about. I have been to jam shows before where people really "let loose" to the music. What I found so funny last night was that these 3 girls perfectly illustrated the variations of dances at hippie/jam shows

The main girl was the one that was the free spirit and just didn't give a shit who's space she infiltrated and just really wanted to show that she was one with the music. She was also the one that I was hoping would fall down the stairs in the middle of her big twirling sessions. The other girl was able to dance and feel confident but seemed to realize that she might be pissing people off if she blocks everyone's view (she was correct in this assumption). The last girl made me laugh the most though. She was the one that didn't have the self confidence to "let go" and be one with the music like her friends. Instead you could see her analyzing her friends moves and then watch her try to mimic it, kind of, in a more choppy, robotic way. You could almost hear her inner voice going, "i'm free, i'm loose, no really...I am".

A little over half way through the show i leaned over to my friend Tara and said "if mike were here, he would have tripped that girl by now....and i am getting desperately close to doing the same".

2008-01-13T12:31:00.001-08:00

Today is my Dad's 60th birthday. I was watching headline news today and realized it...and about 2 seconds later, i realized that meant i forgot my mom's 60th birthday 2 days ago on the 11th. Sorry again mom. I was all sorts of sad when my 2 best friends from high school forgot my 30th birthday this year and now I went and did much, much worse. I guess it just goes to show that you shouldn't really get that upset about things when you might commit the same offense (accidentally) down the road.

Today is also the 9th anniversary of me quitting smoking. I quit right before they added bigger taxes onto cigarettes. I used to be able to buy them for between $1.75 and $2.10. I thought more than that was a crime. I had tried to quit by decreasing my intake but that just never worked for me, it ended up being an all or nothing and i did it cold turkey with out any help. Mike followed suit about 3 months later. I haven't had a single puff since then.

On a different note, Isaac really is resisting potty training. He likes the status of sitting on the potty...that is until he has to actually go. That is when he starts to scream for his diaper and gets really upset. I have tried all of the positive reinforcement but that didn't work. Now, i am simply trying to bribe him. I know that this probably isn't good but it is how you train dogs to do tricks and I now think of Isaac using the potty as the biggest trick of all. On the weekends, we often let him go pants-less for easier access when he needs to go. The problem is that we might not catch him before hand and like yesterday, he might just decide to pee all over the floor...oh yeah....and on a couple dvd cases too>:( Well, we just have to keep trying but I'm hoping he starts to get better at this soon.

2008-01-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of 2007 I wrote a post recapping my savings spree from the year. I thought I would give another recap this year too. Only 2 of the places I shop at give me a formal total so the other ones i have to guesstimate. Cvs shows i saved $269.16. This is very close to the same amount from last year. Giant shows I saved $888.81. Weis is most likely the same because I made about an even split this year between the 2 places. Rite aid doesn't keep my total but i make out like a complete bandit there between regular sales and their fantastic rebate program so i would guess I saved about $400 or more there. None of these include my coupon savings so i would add another $300 or more in coupon savings as well. So, in total, i probably saved between $2500 and $3000 dollars this year. It takes a lot of research to achieve it but it is worth it in the end.

2007-12-28T18:26:00.001-08:00

So, a few weeks before Christmas, Mike was working and driving over to the bank to get change for the store and some 75 year old woman ran a red light and ended up totaling his car. He was fine, but we had just gone through the hellish process of getting a new car a year ago and weren't planning on doing it again any time soon. But things of course happen. It took a little while to get the check from the insurance company and it was too busy before christmas so we went car hunting this week. The good thing is that with the internet we can search around somewhat without freezing in car lot after car lot. We ended up in Dillsburg and after we couldn't find the original car we were interested in that we found online, we decided to go to the next lot down the street. Dillsburg is right on route 15 and has a concrete divider down the whole area and doesn't allow u-turns. This means you have to get into turning lanes go down a road, turn around and get back on 15. This means you are at the mercy of the turn signal and if you miss it, you wait a whole cycle again at the light. This leads up to the main reason I am writing this story. I was driving and was in the lane to turn. There were 3-4 other cars ahead of me and they were taking their sweet ass time turning and I was figuring i was going to get stuck. I was complaining aloud 'come on, move it' in my annoyed voice. I would like to stress that I didn't swear, not even a baby one. A second after I stopped complaining (because I realized I was going to make it through the light), I heard Isaac in the back seat say f*ck. And he didn't say it quick and short, he kind of elongated it as if to make it more painful for me to hear. I think the worst part is that neither Mike or I swore preceding his potty mouth (but I'm not saying that word doesn't grace our lips sometimes). He just knew the proper time and placement for that word. Mike and I have been curbing our swearing greatly but obviously he has picked up on it. So, for the past too days we have been constantly saying "oh sugar!" when we are mad in the hopes it will rub off on the child.

2007-12-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

Although my mother remembers differently, I don't think I ever had strep throat before, until this week that is. I woke up Monday morning around 2am with a lymph node the size of cherry tomato in my throat and the feeling that it had been rubbed with sandpaper. I fell back to sleep until 4 and then it was inevitable, I needed a pain killer. I finally got back to sleep at 5:30 and was up by 7. Other than the throat, i didn't feel too bad so i went to work and made an appointment for later that day. As the day progressed, i started to go downhill fast. I picked up Isaac, when to the doctor and then the pharmacy and went home to collapse on the couch. For the next 2 1/2 hours i transitioned between chills and sweating and I ached all over. Finally the antibiotics helped a bit and I started feeling better as the night progressed. I felt well enough to go in the next day but the doctor said i would still be contagious so I was ordered to stay home. Mike took Isaac to day care and I was home alone.

Home alone, as in now other human was in the house. I suddenly realized that i truly couldn't remember the last time this happened. Don't get me wrong, I go to conferences every few months and i get to stay in a hotel room all by myself, but it's not home. Also, Mike and I occasionally take a day off together but there is something so nice about being home alone in a completely quite house. I slept in a bit but then i just sat in my pajamas all day, watching tv and making Christmas presents. It was glorious. I think I will schedule these days for myself more often.

2007-11-12T19:20:00.000-08:00

Before Isaac was born, Mike and I discussed how we would approach certain touchy areas of parenting. One of them is how to handle the avalanche of violent toys that are out there. Many people don't have an issue with toy guns and knives but I don't like the thought of Isaac having these as something he wants to play with. We decided to keep these away from him and asked family to do the same for us. The toy companies have other types of water toys that aren't guns so it's not like I am planning on keeping him isolated from everything.

Although Mike and I had a master plan in place, we realize now the error of our ways. Isaac owns the movie the incredibles. It's a fun movie about a family of super heros. Overall this isn't a problem, they use their special powers, not weapons, to fight crime. There is one scene in the film though when the super hero accidentally falls into a jewelry store and triggers the alarm. The police come, draw there weapons and say "freeze". It's seems like such a simple element in the story doesn't it? It only lasts a matter of seconds but it was enough to find a place in my son's brain. He now uses just about anything that could resemble a gun to point it at you and say "Freeze". He has a little drill in his tool box that has now become a gun. He builds guns out of legos. He even bit off parts of his bread at dinner tonight until his bread resembled a gun and then he pointed it at me and said "freeze" of course. I tell him it isn't nice to point guns at people and that it can be dangerous and such but the damage has been done. I will continue to try to change my son back to the innocent little boy that he was, but I'm not so sure it's going to work.

2007-11-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last night was Halloween and we had an absolute blast. First of all, I would like to mention that Isaac has been wonderful lately. A few posts ago I was crying about how he was just a royal terror but he has made a complete 180. He has been cheerful and silly and has been really using his "words" much more lately. He is expressing himself verbally more and I think that is making all the difference. For instance, last night he accidentally slipped and spilled the water he was drinking. It splashed up in his face a little and I think it startled him more than anything. He did cry but he didn't go crazy. He just seemed like he was upset but was verbalizing it by saying through the tears "I spilled the water". He was over it in a matter of a minute or so but often he would just scream until you got him more water. I love this change in temperament.

Now, back to Halloween. Isaac was a robot (which we got lots of compliments on) and he just had the best time. Since we live downtown, we put chairs out front and sit out with rest of the neighbors to give out candy. Mike took care of the first shift while I walked Isaac around the block. We went to a few neighbors and got some candy but really were only out for about 15 minutes or so. After that, we all just hung out in front of the house and Isaac gave out candy to people. He would say "here go" (because we had been saying here ya go) or "pick one" (because i kept telling him to "pick one" when he was trick or treating). He kept taking candy to the little neighbor girl Summer and she would in turn give him some back. He would also sneak candy from our bowl into his bag of course. He felt like he really had status with his bag. We would spin around in circle with the bag still attached (I had to make sure he didn't hit any passers-by with it of course). Our neighborhood skateboarders were out in full effect and Isaac was just rallying them on. In turn they gave serious compliments to his costume and he of course felt very cool.

I wish it could have lasted longer because we just were having such a great night. I know next year will be good but I think that he is probably at the best age for halloween right now. It's before he has gotten too greedy about candy and instead found the most fun in hanging out with us and the neighbors and giving instead or receiving. I truly love that little boy more each day.

2007-10-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

Isaac pooped in his potty for the first time today! He hadn't pooped all day long and Mike and I heard a little "noise" from him and i realized he was pooping. I checked his diaper and there was just a little bit there so I ran and got his potty. I took off his diaper and he sat down pooped a little bit. I realize he didn't do it because he asked for it, but he has continually sat on his potty and done nothing. This way, I am hoping that since he did successfully use the potty and received a waterfall of praise, he will be more interested in trying it again. I will say though that after that, we put on a new diaper and he pooped more in that. Then we changed that one and he did even more in the next one. He pooped 4 times in 20 minutes. I think he was saving it up all day for us.

2007-10-04T05:46:00.000-07:00

So, Isaac has been a real handful lately. I have been trying to come up with the right approach to get his temper under control but I haven't found one. I am ashamed to admit that for a little while I was definitely a yeller. He would just do things to push our buttons...and it would work. These were things like having a cup of water and I could see he was about to dump it. I would sternly (not yelling) tell him not to do it and he would do it anyway, just for fun. This would then make me mad and I would probably yell at him.

I have been using the completely opposite style lately which is saying things sternly but almost quietly so he has to focus on what I am saying because if he wasn't paying attention, he couldn't hear me. This sometimes works, sometimes not. I picked up a Nanny 911 book for free somewhere and was leafing through it and found that most of the things we are doing as they say but are still having some really trying days. Yesterday was one of them. Isaac only had an hour and 15 minute nap so I am guessing he was a bit sleepy. He just wasn't happy with anything last night. He would cry at anything at all. Often, there wasn't even a reason for it. He would just come over a cry...I mean wail uncontrollably. He would freak out because he wanted something and I wouldn't give it to him. These things included crackers, apples, bubbles, a skateboard and I'm sure there are other things on the list. He would just have a tantrum so I put him on timeout. I would get down at his level and try to talk to him to calm him down. I tried to get him to "use his words" but he would just screech. I would then walk away for a little while to see if he could calm down by himself.

Anyway, nothing really worked yesterday. By the time he went to bed, I was exhausted. I was in bed a little after 10. I keep hoping that we get past this very large hump in the road soon because it is very draining. I love Isaac very much but parenting is a hard job and I am always concerned I'm not doing it right. I try to get better but when we have a day like yesterday, I just feel like a bit of a failure.

2007-09-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

So, I got to meet Vint Cerf today. For those who aren't big time geeks, he is vice president at Google and his title is, get this, "Chief Internet Evangelist". He basically invented the internet, no..it wasn't Al Gore after all. He created TCP/IP which is the main underlying protocol that makes the internet work. He was honored with the Priestly Award at Dickinson so he was on campus for a few days and my department got to meet with him to have an informal Q and A session. Not only is he a genius, he is also a really nice, down to earth guy.

2007-09-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

So, today is my 30th birthday and for the first time, maybe ever, I wasn't carded at the liquor store. Do you think this may be sign that i actually look 30? I have always prided myself on the fact that I can still pass for a high school student. Oh well, I guess i have to strive to look like a college student now.

2007-09-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

So, like I said in my last post, I will write this post to sing my praises for the wonderous invention that is freecycle. Freecycle is just a Yahoo listserve that you sign up for and post things you want to get rid of for free. Then other people email that they want your free crap and come pick it up. It's really nice because a. you can get rid of your stuff without packing it up and lugging it to Salvation Army b. you can find all sorts of great free finds for yourself as well and c. you are keeping tons of stuff from otherwise probably filling up landfills. I have been a member for just over a year probably and have obtained wonderful finds. It is a bit of a sport though because most things go to who ever emails first so when i see something come up that i want my fingers are flying across the keyboard as fast as i can go. Sometimes i get it, sometimes i don't. My biggest let down was when someone put up a canoe, yes a canoe, and i didn't get it. People put up mostly everyday type things like household stuff, clothes, toys, outdoor equipment and furniture. Sometimes though, they put up the craziest of things like motorhomes, cars, hot tubs and pool tables. It's just that people want to get rid of something and people are willing to haul it away so it is a perfect match.

Freecycle was a perfect match for me because we have been very financially conservative since mike quit his job. We are always trying to upgrade things in our house to make it nicer and increase it's resale value but I can't invest very much to improve it. I also frequent the free board on craigslist to see what else is available. Craigslist is a free online classified listing for certain areas. Harrisburg has one and that was where I found all of the bricks i needed for my patio for free. I never figured out exactly how much it would have cost me if i had purchased them brand new but i would guess it would have been over $500. In the end, my patio wasn't exactly free since I did buy $25 worth of sand to lay down as a base and in between cracks but it was a steal in the long run.

One of my other best finds came when i posted a wanted ad on freecycle. Although it is frowned upon when you post many of these, an occasional wanted ad is fine. I had created new flower beds around the patio and needed some plants. I actually just posted i wanted some shrub starts from things that self populate like lilacs or forsythias. Only one woman contacted me and said she had a plant (singular) that she would give me. One day mike and I had to go run some errands so I just had mike and isaac come along because i thought it would only take a minute. I had recently posted that i had some catnips plants available and this woman had emailed she wanted some of them so I almost felt like it was going to be a fair trade. When i got there, i found the most beautiful, enormous house with fantastic landscaping surrounding the entire house. There was no lawn to mow, just huge clumps of flowers everywhere. She had a gorgeous coy pond with giant coy in it. She came out and for the next hour allowed me to tour her yard and gave me one of everything she had. It blew my mind and still does. She gave me black eyed susans, lavender, mint, chocolate mint, some sort of lemon herb, lilies and many, many other flowers I don't know by name.

So here is a sampling of what i have gotten off freecycle and craigslist for free over the last year or so:
Range hood, ceramic tile, paint, polyurethane, railing for our balcony, around 700 bricks, wheelbarrow, playstation 2, sink and vanity, shower doors, children's bike trailer (so isaac gets pulled behind a bike), kids kitchen set, patio set, 50's kitchen table, clothes, park bench, plants, trees, 12 foot long sections of bamboo, 2 mint condition stroller travel systems, tv's, washer, baker's rack, bathroom towel bars, piano music , old fashioned lawn mower and I'm sure there are many other items that i just can't think of right now.

2007-08-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

Isaac loves to draw and we often dump a bunch of broken crayons (they were whole until Isaac got a hold of them) on the coffee table and let Isaac draw pictures on whatever scrap paper we have lying around. Mike and I were sitting on the couch watching a bit of tv while isaac drew when we both saw the same thing at the same time. We looked down at Isaac and realized he had shoved a crayon up his nose and then proceeded to move his head around on the paper so he could draw with it. I like to think of this experience as showing of my son's creativity and imagination...yeah, that's the story i'm going to stick to because the other option isn't quite as cool sounding.

2007-08-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

Owning a home is a great thing but it is also an eye opening experience. People told me that there is always something that you will have to do to your house once you buy it and that it is more work than you think. I have come to find that this is true but it is also often self inflicted. It's not like it is always a project to fix something that is actually broken but instead it is just to improve something you don't like. These are the projects that can always wait but still linger in the back of my mind until so many of them build up that I feel like I'm eyeball deep in projects.

Last week I took a week off work because Mike was finally finished with his summer class and there were 2 weeks before classes start at Dickinson. I can't take off the week before classes start so I thought i would take of 2 weeks before. We didn't have any plans to go anywhere because we are trying be conservative financially. I figured i would relax but also work on some long overdue home improvements. The first plan of attack was a fact finding mission. Although we have lived here 3 years I only noticed this summer that there was a very musty oder that was appearing in our kitchen sometimes. It smelled not just like an old basement, but an old basement from a horror movie where something terrible is sure to live. At first i thought that somehow water must be leaking from the bathroom upstairs and maybe making plaster behind the cabinets moldy or something. My detective work used the most primitive of tools, my nose. I basically jumped up on the countertop and started putting my head completely in cabinets and breathing deeply. I was surprised to find that the upper cabinets actually smelled fine. I did notice that the side of the kitchen that had the oder was near the stove top so i started smelling around the bottom cabinets. Bingo! That was most definitely the location. I found the smell was most potent near a big cabinet that has all of our pots and pans and a big drawer that had many of my cleaning supplies.

Thinking back, I remembered that when we originally moved in, I had put my baking goods in that drawer. Soon after that, I found that we had a mouse or 2 on the loose and I put all food in upper cabinets instead. The discovery I was about to make would make it perfectly clear why that drawer was so accessible to little critters like that.

I knew (or thought I knew) that the pots and pans cabinet had a secure bottom to it so I thought I would see what I would find when I pulled the drawer out. What I found was a 2 foot by 1 foot hole in the wood panel under the drawer. Then, I found a 1 by 1 foot hole in the actual floor that just went directly under our house. I kind of just sat there, staring like a mouth breather at this ridiculous hole in my floor. We don't have a basement under this section of the house so I am guessing the tool that owned the house before us needed to get to the pipes or something and just sawed through the floor. In reality, I am fine with this, it's the 'not covering up the hole thing' that i have the problem with. I then was on a frantic mission to find boards to cover these 2 holes and finally got it all put together...or so i thought.

A day or 2 later I was in the pots and pan cabinet and I noticed it still had a faint smell in it. I then looked at the bottom and noticed that there was in fact a separate piece of wood attached to the bottom. My recent discovery in the drawer next door led me to believe that they did fix the hole in the cabinet, but not the hole in the floor that was beneath it. I was right. Once again i found a foot by foot hole in the floor that went straight to dirt. So i finally fixed that one too. There was one more squared foot just inside the doorway from the dining room that had always been there and we had never really fixed. They basically cut out a hole (once again, i am guessing to reach the pipes) and then tried to attach the floor back on top in a really half assed way. So, while i was at it, i did my best to fix that one too. That section is still a bit uneven but not near as dangerous as before.

So after i fixed all of these god forsaken holes in my kitchen I then went on to do the actual "fix up" projects i had planned for the week. I put in shower doors, a different vanity and sink and new floor tile in the bathroom. I also laid down new tile in the kitchen. Although we don't have a lot of money to fix up our house, I am quite good at working with what i can get and a little thing called freecycle is the best thing i have ever found. I will tell you all about it next time since this post has already gotten out of control in length.

2007-07-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Isaac has been such a terror the past 2 days. I feel bad for Mike because he is with him all day and only gets a small break when he goes to class at night. Usually, Isaac has his moments when he is bad or whiny or mean or rude but usually it's not all day and not 2 days in a row. He has been picking up gertie's water dish and spilling it all over the place. He has been making spit bubbles with milk and drenching his shirt. He nearly melted down today when he had to hold my hand to cross the street. He throws books down the stairs. It's really just a bunch of trivial stuff but it adds up. The other day was one of the worst though. He went out and picked up a turd from the yard and threw it on the kitchen floor. I had just cleaned them all out of the yard and it was the only one there...but he found it...and brought it to me. This was definitely not my shining moment as a mother. The bad part about all of this is that when i put him on time out...i think he likes it. He just sat there and talked to me. It was everything i could do not to laugh..but i held my ground. I guess this is what they mean by the terrible twos.

2007-07-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of bummed. Mike and I have been discussing having another child for a while now. We kept going back and forth on when to have it and I really wanted to have a baby so there would only be 3 years between Isaac and his sibling. I had Isaac in May because it would allow me to have the summer off with him and that is my down time for work anyway. We were planning on attempting to follow the same model this time so i was hoping to get pregnant in the next few months. Unfortunately, I had a reality check and realized that having a baby right now is not a wise thing for us.

Mike is transferring into Dickinson in the fall and up until now, we have always had great luck with manipulating his schedule so he only goes 2-3 days a week so we can have Isaac in part time care. This helps a lot financially since mike isn't working and child care is so expensive. Mike registered on Monday and we have to make sure he takes all the required courses he can during the semester so he can fill in some electives over the summer. We are trying to get him through as fast as possible so the financial strain doesn't last as long. Dickinson doesn't have as many options for when classes are offered as HACC due to it's size and because most students live on campus. He's going to have to go to school M-f with classes spaced out through out the day so Isaac has to be in care full time. This alone isn't a huge problem but it made me realize that a schedule like this will be the rule verses the exception. I started to do a little math and realized that if we had to have 2 children in child care full time it would cost us $16,000 a year. I even looked into how much money you can make and still get partially subsidized child care and I am out of the income bracket that qualifies. I know that this may sound like i shouldn't have any problem paying for child care but $16,000 is $16,000 and it is a hell of a lot of money no matter how much you make. People say that having children is expensive but I will debate that to a point. Paying for child care is expensive and it is expensive because there is no way to make it any cheaper. There is no such thing as a sale on day care. Sure children's clothes and diapers are expensive but you can find diapers on sale buy one get one free and yard sales, thrift stores and old navy's clearance racks allow you to outfit you child with awesome threads for just a few bucks really. The same goes for toys...but not child care.

When mike quit his job, we tried so hard to prepare for the financial change. We paid off all credit cards, and his car. We saved a good sum of money in the bank. 2 months after he quit the engine in his car blew up. I won't go into the details because you can read all about them here from a previous post. Needless to say, we ended up spending around $8000 with the price of a running vehicle and all of the work done on his dead one to try to get it working. Throughout the rest of the year, I put $700 in my car for a gas tank, $1000 for termite prevention, $1000 last month to get my car inspected, $500 for brakes on mike's car and the list goes on. We really did expect some extra expenses would occur over the time he was unemployed but we just didn't realize it would smack us in the face so much in the first year alone.

The main thing here is just how much i was looking forward to having another baby, soon. I know we will still have another one but we will put it off for at least another year and then evaluate our situation again. I know some women complain, but I truly loved being pregnant. Sure, i complained at the end about my feet swelling and stuff but I had a fantastic pregnancy and was so excited to go through the 9 months again. I wanted Isaac to be close enough in age to have a really good bond with his sibling and i know that age isn't the only deciding factor, it is an important one though. I wasn't sure if i was going to actually write a post about all of this stuff but it has been bothering me all week long and writing in my blog is usually therapeutic. Unfortunately, as i write this i'm feeling sadder....so I think i'll stop here.

2007-06-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

Finally, we have succeeded. Last night Isaac went to bed and only cried for 20 minutes. I put him back to bed and he went right to sleep. He did get up at 4:00 but after a little while, he went to bed again without us in the room. And tonight was the most beautiful moment. I read him Green eggs and ham, turned out his light and told him to go to sleep. He cried for a moment before i walked out the door but never got up and didn't make another sound. He is now asleep. I seriously could do a cartwheel right now.

2007-06-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

I saw Bob Dylan last night in Hershey. I must say, I was very underwhelmed by the whole experience....I would go as far as saying i was let down. I love old folky Bob Dylan. It's incredible stuff but that was not what i heard last night. First of all, let me say that i am all for artist freedom and creativity but to butcher one of your own songs to the point that you almost can't figure out what song it is....well...that's a different story. He played "it ain't me babe" and "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" early in the set and in my book they were beyond awful. the only way i knew the song was after i listened to the lyrics for a minute because the music gave me no indication what so ever. It's like he moved his music out of the folk realm and into the "adult contemporary" section. He has a big band with him that "jazzed up" most of the songs. On the first 4 songs he sounded like he may be dying...really. His voice was raspy and froggy and although it works well on Tom Waits, it's not so good on Bob. Lay lady lay isn't a good song and he didn't make it any better this time. I did like "like a rolling stone" and "all along the watch tower". Both of these songs were changed up some but still enjoyable. I would say that "All along the watch tower" sounded a little bit like a Santana song which was much better than the jazz/blues pop sound that backed most of his songs for the night.

I'm going to see Built to Spill next month and I'm hoping to be wowed by that show because this on left me hangin.

2007-06-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

He finally went to sleep at 10:15 and didn't get up until 9 this morning. It took him an hour and 15 minutes to fall asleep last night but i am hoping that each day it will get shorter until he just goes willingly. I can't even fathom that this will happen but I am hoping for it.

2007-06-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

So i decided to try again tonight and he has endurance that no human can match. He has been letting out blood curdling screams for about an hour now. I go in every 15 minutes or so just so he knows i haven't abandoned him but otherwise i keep my distance. I would like to mention that this was the method that our doctor told us to follow and she mentioned that whatever Nanny 911 does is probably right too. I found this very interesting that she would mention Nanny 911. I have seen the show and have no gripe with their methods, I just found it funny that it was actually referenced by the doctor. I'm guessing they aren't getting any sort of kick back for the plug or anything.

So anyway, the child has been screaming for over an hour and although i am very, very tired of it....i won't give in because that means he wins. I have never been a very competitive person but when it comes to a challenge like this, i take it very seriously.

By the way, when he got up this morning at 4:40am, he didn't end up going back to sleep until 11:15. Yeah, he got us back really good didn't he?

2007-06-23T03:39:00.000-07:00

So, yes i did succeed in getting him to bed without being in his room. He was asleep by 10pm. What i failed to envision was that he would take his anger out on me by getting up at 4:40 this morning. I ended up sitting outside of his room because i thought it would be a better idea than trying to make him go to sleep by himself. I figured that would take much longer. I was up with him for about 45 minutes until my patience ran out, i shut the door and laid down in bed. He cried, but not that hard so i thought he would eventually give up. I was wrong. At 6:20 i finally gave in and took him downstairs, realizing that he was not going to go back to bed. It's 6:42 and i am hoping for some sleep today at some point. Curses!

2007-06-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

Want to know what i am doing right now? I'm trying to get isaac to sleep without sitting in his room so he can see me. If you have read any of my previous posts chronicling the process we have to go through to get isaac to sleep then you are fully aware of how long this has been going on for. We had been so good when he was in a crib. We would lay him down and he would cry for maybe 5-10 minutes and put himself to sleep, but not anymore. Now we must be in his line of sight until he falls asleep. Bedtime isn't that bad because he is usually asleep in 10-15 minutes but when he wakes up in the middle of the night he can be up for 2 hours and that means we are up for 2 hours. It is ridiculous and it must have an end. For the past week and a half or so we have been slowly moving farther away from his bed until we were sitting outside his door. We no longer say anything to him after we tuck him in so there is no positive of having us in the room. So tonight, i planned on sitting in the hall until he went to sleep but he kept poking his head up to make sure i was still there. After about 15 minutes i grew tired of the situation and have been listening to him cry for about 45 minutes. Mike is out tonight so I figured it was as good a time as any to try. I did laugh a minute ago though because he started crying for dad...like that was going to make a difference. Dad's with me on this one kid. Right now it is 9:41pm and I am hoping he is asleep by 10:30 and worst case...he has to be completely exhausted by 11 I would guess. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. At least i have the computer outside his room so i can just mindlessly browse around.

2007-06-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

Mike was going to record with his band in Lewisburg today so I went along to visit with the fam....especially dad of course for father's day. I dropped off some more baby gear for deenie but otherwise didn't have a big agenda for the day. I knew mike would take a while so Isaac and I just hung out at the house with my dad while my mom worked. Around 1:15 Isaac and i were both getting sleepy so we took a nap. I woke up after about an hour and a half and at the 2 hour point i went in to get Isaac. I noticed he felt quite warm but it was over 90 today and the room we slept in didn't have an air conditioner in it. It wasn't overwhelmingly hot but i thought maybe isaac had a blanket on him or something. Soon after getting him up, i took him to get mike and we made a quick stop to say hello to a friend for about a half hour before getting on the road. Isaac was quite unhappy and whiny while we were there and I just thought he was still a bit tired and hot. Even though he already had a 2 hour nap he slept all the way home for an hour. As soon as we got him out of the car we noticed he was really hot so i gave him tylenol. he was just miserable, letting out these pathetic whimpering cries, almost like it took too much energy to really cry hard. He sat on my lap for about 20 minutes, nestled against my chest watching tv, looking like he could fall asleep at any moment. Our air conditioned downstairs died today so I mentioned we should go upstairs and get the extra one from the closet so we could keep it cool. It's quite the hefty item so i gently sat isaac on the chair and I didn't even put my foot on the first step until i heard Mike oh no buddy! Yes, the poor little man threw up all over himself and the chair. I felt really bad because then he went "oh no" like he did something wrong. Of course this wasn't what mike meant and he didn't say it in a mean way but it was just sad to hear him say it. We took him upstairs and bathed him and he started feeling better of course. He threw up most of his meds so i gave him a small dose to help keep the fever down. After bath, he started requesting food since he really hadn't eaten since lunch or before. I gave him some bread and cereal and part of a banana. Around 8:30 he asked to go "night night' and i took him up to his room. He had been wearing only a diaper so i put a tank top on him and sat him on a chair. I wanted to give him just another small dose of tylenol just to make sure his fever didn't come back. I gave it to him, turned around to sit down the bottle, heard a cough sound, and turned back around to find he threw up again on himself and the chair (a different one from before). Finally, after another bath and another load of laundry, he went to bed and we are hoping for a restful nights sleep but who knows what the rest of our evening holds.

2007-06-06T07:10:00.001-07:00

Just got to pittsburgh for my layover and found that they too have free wireless. Pittsburgh just made my short list of airports i like to fly into/out of.:)

2007-06-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

I'm currently sitting in the Harrisburg airport waiting for my flight to Indianapolis for the New Media Consortium Conference. I love flying out of this airport because it is so small and you can just fly through security. It's other perk is obviously the free wireless internet. Nothing is worse than waiting in an airport with nothing to do and nothing wastes time better than the internet. I found a flight that left early enough so i will have some time to run around the city before the conference but the flight wasn't so early that i had to wake up before the sun. The only real problem with the day so far is the shit mus-ak they are playing over the speakers in here. Thank god for ipods.

The conference i am going to is fantastic. It's a group of people that like to stay on the cutting edge of technologies that can be applied to the classroom in creative ways. I have been to other types of conferences where it aims to give something to all kinds of tech folks and not just ones that support faculty in their classroom technology needs. Those conferences seem very cold to me because a lot of upper management are there most of them have lost their creative juices long ago. I like to hang out with people who still get excited about getting in the trenches and playing with the programs and not just talking about how it will increase productivity.

I ended up waiting until the last day of the "early bird" pricing to register for the hotel and although they said all was well, I got a call a few days later telling me they overbooked it and they needed to bump me to another hotel. This irritated me because part of the conference is in the original hotel and the other part is on the IUPUP campus near by. The new hotel is 8 blocks away but they said they would shuttle me back and forth. It wasn't until yesterday that i actually looked at hotel website and then i realized that the new hotel is smack dab downtown instead of the out edge like the other hotel. SWEET! My only gripe with last years conference in Cleveland was that it wasn't in walking distance to much of anything downtown. They took us to the Rock and Roll hall of fame but i never really got to see the city. I'm sure i could have take a bus or something but I like to walk usually. This time I am downtown and getting in about 5 hours before the opening reception tonight so i can meander through the streets to see the city.

2007-05-31T12:48:00.001-07:00

A few months back I posted a story about a little boy that we knew that is friends with my nephew Jalen. His name is Isaac and he was 5 and diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. This happened in August and he had chemo and radiation throughout the fall. In december they did a rescan and found that tumor was still growing and there was nothing else they could do. Isaac went home to live out the last few months that they gave him and all seemed doomed. As months past, he went off his steroids (although he gained about 25 pounds) and went off all other meds except pain meds. His head didn't hurt anymore but his feet and hands and back hurt very much. They figured the cancer had spread to his spine and other parts of the body. They didn't have him rechecked for months since there wasn't anything that could be done but since the pain in his feet was so bad they decided to go back to hershey to have an mri done. Yesterday the most amazing thing happened. His MRI came back completely clear. He no longer has cancer anywhere in his body. They think the pain is an after effect of the chemo, radiation and steroids and they will be treating him for it. The doctors think it was a delayed reaction to the chemo as to why the cancer is no longer present. When i originally heard about Isaac i was just crushed thinking of how a mother deals with knowing her son is going to die. I do believe that amazing things can happen some times and this story proves it. Thanks for all of the hopeful thoughts you all sent his way....I'm sure it made a difference.
Cheers
Brenda

2007-05-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Thursday was Isaac's last day of day care for the rest of the summer. He will start back up in late August when Mike goes back to school full time. Mike is only taking 1 course this summer and it is a night course 6-7:30 M/T/Th from june 4th through August. This will allow us to save a bundle of cash by not paying day care fees. We pay almost $100 every week for just 2 days of care. It's better than the $160 we were paying for full time infant care at first but it still is a big blow financially.

Isaac started day care when he was 4 months old. He went there full time 5 days a week while Mike and i worked. This past August, mike quit his job to go back to work so he was able to take care of Isaac 3 out of 5 days. We worked out his schedule so Isaac would only be there Tuesdays and Thursdays. This actually worked out great. I realize a lot of people have severe issues with children going to day care but I think it can be really great for kids so young to socialize. I'm happy Isaac doesn't have to go full time anymore because i like the balance we have created between family time and time at day care. Mike has to deal with some days when Isaac gets bored at home but that is just the nature of the beast. It is getting better of course because the weather is improving and they can be outside a lot now. I felt kind of bad on Thursday when i picked him up because i know he loves his little friends and will miss seeing them. He has also become quite the ladies man. The other day when i picked him up he gave another little girl a goodbye kiss. It was too sweet for words. He did the same thing at his birthday party with his friend lilah (a pic of that will be coming).

The only other item of interest i have to say is that Isaac has officially picked up his first swear word. Mike and i have been trying to do better but it is really hard to give up all of them. We have scaled down on using the f-bomb as much but shit just seems to roll right off our tongues when something bad happens. Now, Isaac will be watching the movie Cars and a car will wreck and he will say Oh No!....shit. Yeah, we are trying to change it to shoot but if we make too big of deal about it I think he will just say it more and more. My problem with not swearing is that i try to find things to say that i can say all of the time and not feel like a total dork. For instance, i don't want to say something only around Isaac that just seems super corny and then still swear full force around friends all of the time because inevitably i will mix up the 2 situations at some point. I've come to simply use the word "curses" half of the time. I can say it with enough anger that it almost makes me feel like i swore without the terrible echo coming out of my son's mouth. I do simply say "poop" in non-angry moments which still seems dorky but I don't mind that one. Anyhoo, hopefully he will un-learn it or at least not say it as much. Maybe this will be our summertime project.

2007-05-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

I finally upgraded to flickr pro so all of you can now view all of my pix from the very beginning.:)

2007-05-12T20:07:00.000-07:00

This year i will be turning 30. Don't worry, i'm not all that worried about it or anything but I did start to think that i shouldn't be so complacent in my daily life. Of course i have a very set schedule with work and family and such but i still want to make sure I don't get too boring. Since i work at a college, i can take free classes(but they don't count towards any grad degree because our school doesn't offer them). In the past I have continually tried to take German. I took 4 years in high school and couldn't retain shit so i thought i would try again and still couldn't retain shit. So for the time being i gave up on that and decided to try something i had never ever done before. I decided to play an instrument. I have never took music lessons...not once. I have a passion for music but suck at making it. Mike can play plenty of things but not me. I always loved the piano and thought it would be great to play so i thought i would try that one.

I signed up for piano 101 and took it with just 3 other students. It wasn't as tough as i had anticipated but working in the time to practice was the real chore. I stumbled here and there and can fully admit that i am not the best student. I still love to procrastinate so i am not sure how i ever got a college degree in the first place. In the end though, i was able to play the beginner version of Pachabel's Canon in D. I'm by no means a "musician" but i can now read music and work through some basic pieces with time and practice. I really don't want to loose this new semi-talent that i have earned so I need to buy another piece of music that i like so i can continue to play. It's a really small acheivement but it's something that I am proud of because i never thought i would make the attempt to try it.

2007-05-07T12:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday was Isaac's 2 year birthday. We had a nice little party for him with 3 of his little friends plus family and a few of our friends. It was a tiring but fantastic day. the weather was perfect and we has such a great time. We had a semi Cinco de Mayo inspired party with a piñata and all. The little ones took a stab at breaking it but of course my nephew Jalen finally stepped up to the plate and shredded it. I’m not the most fun piñata stuffer because it was filled with raisins and granola bars but no one seemed to mine. Even though we didn’t have a big party, I was amazed at how the presents just add up. He loves trains (choo choo is what he calls it) so we found a small little tykes powered train that has tracks and he can ride. This made him very happy. There were countless other presents that he is just now working through. The best part the of party was just seeing him with his little friends. All 4 of them are within 2 months of each other and they were all having a blast running all over the back yard playing. I must say I was impressed with Gertie’s restraint by not being too playful with the kids. I didn’t take any pix so I am relying on others to send me theirs so I can give you a glimpse of the day.

2007-04-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

Isaac counted to 10 today. I assure you a video will follow soon.

2007-04-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

If you see my husband in the near future, take the time to congratulate him on his acceptance to Dickinson College. Although i work there and he can now go for free, he still has to get in on his own merit. We tried before last year but his track record at shippensburg wasn't great...even if it was 10 years ago and he is completely different person. They recommended that he take a full year elsewhere and take standard, transferable courses. He went to Harrisburg Area Community College for the past year and has been getting great grades. He interviewed at Dickinson again and they were very pleased with his progress but there is always that chance that the board will choose to deny him. Dickinson is a competetive school and we were unsure if the acceptance would come through. I am very proud of mike and I can't wait until the fall when all 3 of us will be in the same town each day.

2007-03-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

Our luck may be changing. The night i made my last post isaac slept 6 hours and then woke up for only 5 minutes around 3:30. The next night the same happened around 11:30 and the next night around 1:30. Last night Isaac went to bed at 8:20 and woke up at 7:30 without waking up once. I actually woke up for a few seconds at 6:30 just enough to see the clock and started thanking god in my delirum for allowing the whole family to sleep like normal people.

I am hoping for another night of blissful sleep. Today Isaac played in the snow for awhile then had a very early nap from 10:30-12:15. We went to see a traveling zoo at the farm show and he ran all over visiting animals. We had a quite night at home and he was asleep by 8:30 tonight.
I hope this lasts because it seems too good to be true.

2007-03-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if i will ever sleep again like a normal person. Since i wrote my last post isaac has not slept through the night or else the few days he slept, he didn't go to bed until 11. The night i posted my last message i was soooo excited because i had gotten him to bed at a normal hour but i never posted that he woke up 3 times that night. Since then, Mike and i have been living in limbo between sleep and awake. We finally realized he was freaking out when he was in his crib so we figured it was time to upgrade to to the toddler bed. Some people wondered why we didn't upgrade earlier but it was just easier this way and he didn't mind. It was nice that occasionally he would wake up but because he couldn't get out he would put himself back to sleep....those days are now gone.

It took a few days to transition to the bed but he seems to like it but this hasn't solved our issue. The original sleep issue was that he wouldn't go to bed. Now he is back to a normal time to bed around 9pm but he has been waking up anywhere from 2 hours to 5 hours after he goes to bed. Last week mike had his spring break so i took off mon-wed and a half day thur. This way i only really worked 1 1/2 days last week. This was very helpful because isaac slept like crap all week. One night he was up 4 times. Other times he was up just once....but for up to 2 1/2 hours. The past 3 days have been the nail in the coffin though. Saturday night he went to bed at 9:20 and woke up at 4:30 (with the hour change for daylights savings time). He was up until 7am! Mike and i were dysfunctional that day and took turns sleeping. i woke isaac up at 9 that morning in the hopes i could get him back on track. He had an hour and 20 min. nap and went to bed around 9. Of course he was back up at 1:30 until 3:30. I figured it couldn't get much worse until last night came. Isaac woke up at 12:30 and didn't go to sleep until 3:00. Mike had class today and i had to work so he couldn't have picked a better night to do it. I ended up taking a nap in my office over lunch just remain functional.

Before when Isaac would occasionally wake up in the night, he would sometimes ask for a cup. We would comply and give him a cup of milk and he would usually go to bed in a normal amount of time. We followed this same method recently but i believe we have now created a monster. Mike and i take turns with him at night and try to keep him quiet so the other can sleep. On really bad nights we took him downstairs and he would have a drink and yes....sometimes a snack. We thought it was harmless but now are trying to tame the beast. Last night was the night we decided to try to stop the cycle so we only gave him a cup of water (incase he was truly dehydrated) but that was not what he wanted. He screamed and cried for over a half hour. He wanted to go downstairs but we resisted. He calmed down after about 45 minutes and was quiet in his bed but wouldn't fall asleep and we can't leave until he's asleep. This is the issue with the toddler bed, he will just stand at his door and scream since he doesn't have to stay in bed. Although this process of changing his sleep routine is horrible i am equating it with quitting smoking (which i did 9 years ago). It is really rough but at some point you finally feel better and things are normal again. The big difference is that after 5 days without a cigarette you are pretty much cured but there is no end in sight to this sleep nightmare. Sweet dreams.

2007-02-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

Raising a child is a very interesting experience. Soon after we had Isaac people would give us advice or tell us horror stories about their experiences. They would tell you about all of the terrible things you will have to go through. Although some of what they said was true, what they didn't mention was that usually the bad times don't last as long as you think they will. Children grow up rather quickly (this is the other piece of information people repeatedly remind me of) and so these "phases" they go through aren't really that bad because they are over in a matter of months (at most). Some times these changes catch you off guard though because sometimes you get used to your child doing something you like and then they change. For months now, Isaac has been the perfect child when it comes to bedtime. We weren't super strict about bedtime but there was an hour window that he would go to bed. Our evening ritual started when we got home. We would play for awhile, make dinner, eat, he would get a bath, we would watch sesame street and somewhere between 8-9pm he would go to bed. Often we would see him rubbing his eyes or would just start staring and then we would take him up to bed. He would usually lay down ok but after we left the room he might cry for a minute. You could always tell that it was a cry that was slowing down and would eventually end up with him falling asleep. Sometimes he would even just walk out of the living room to the stairs and simply state "night night". He would wait at the bottom of the stairs for us and would go to bed quietly.

Over the past 2 weeks this normal bedtime ritual has changed. He now simply doesn't want to go to bed. He seems to just run all over trying to keep himself up. We would still take him upstairs and hope that he would go to sleep but he would simply scream irrationally until we would come up. His face would be red and puffy and streaming with tears. He wasn't going to bed until 10 or a little after some nights. We finally have come up with a solution that seems to be working. As we see him slowing down, one of us lays down on the couch and acts like they are really sleepy and maybe going to sleep. He loves to cuddle on the couch so he will come up and i will start rubbing his back. He relaxes and finally lets down his guard and falls asleep on the couch. The first night i only let him sleep a minute before i tried taking him to bed and that was a mistake. He freaked out and i had to go through the whole thing again. i think i have it down now and i let him sleep for about 5 minutes and then take him to bed. he went to bed at 9:15 tonight. This is good news but we feel like we still need to keep pushing bedtime earlier. We are trying to trick him by feeding him and bathing him earlier so he starts to feel like bedtime should be sooner. i recently realized that daylights savings time is 3 weeks earlier this year and will occur on march 11th. the whole "spring forward" thing means that 9pm will really be 10pm and if isaac is now going to bed at 9:15 and we go to bed at 11, we will only have 45 minutes of decompression time before bed. Being a parent means you have to be skilled in trickery and be able to adapt easily when you child makes another new change in your life.

2007-02-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

Mike is blogging for the Patriot News for the Millennium Music Conference this week in Harrisburg. This is his first post and second post from last night’s show.

The rest of his posts will be available at the Penn Live site.
He will be making another few posts over the next 2 days.

2007-02-11T18:41:00.000-08:00

We went to see Iron and Wine at Messiah College on Saturday and it was an absolutely fantastic show. It exceeded all expectations. Here is a nice sample thanks to my friend Brian and Youtube. Watch it before Youtube yanks it.

Queen of savings

2007-01-05T06:21:00.000-08:00

I used to mock people (not to their face) that spent a lot of time clipping coupons because i didn't think it would really make that much of a difference on your spending in the end. I now realize that to make coupons work for you, you have to have a full savings action plan along with coupon use and the results can be amazing. Each Sunday morning the paper is delivered to the house so i get up and while isaac is eating his breakfast I start mapping out savings for the week (notice that i disregard the fact that i have to spend money to actually achieve the savings). I have my regular circuit of stores that i go to and start perusing their sales circulars for the week. These stores generally include but aren't necessarily limited to Weis, Giant, Rite Aid, Cvs and sometimes Eckerd. The first thing i look for are the BOGO sales (that's buy one get one free). Don't get confused by BOGO1/2 sales (buy one get one 50% off) because these really end up being the standard sale price and don't pack as much savings. The key to saving the most is starting by looking at what is the best sale and not taking into consideration what you want to eat. This doesn't mean you won't eat great meals but if you are a creature of habit and always want a certain type of potato chip each time then this model is not for you. I pull out a piece of paper and start making a list store by store (I will attach a copy of a grocery list later for reference). I list what the item is, what the sale or price is and if i think I have a coupon to go along with it. Also, when i find a coupon, i note what i have to buy to use the coupon (like if it is $1 off 2 products). I also keep in mind things what i actually need and try to find sales and coupons that go along with these items. Most often i'm not looking for a brand but just a type of product (sour cream, dish detergent, etc.) so my options are open. I do have some things that i always buy like Gertie's dog food (purina one) which is usually 16.99. It kills me inside when i have to pay full price so i keep an eye out because every so often they put it on sale for 15% off and even if I have half a bag left i will buy it ahead just to save a few dollars. I realize people probably think that it is wastes gas to go to different places but i justify it with the savings and i don't go to all of them in one day. Usually one store has most of the items and the others i can just pop into when i have a chance.

Just to prove all of my craziness pays off here are scans of the last 2 receipts i got at the end of 2006 from Giant and CVS.

I somehow lost the weis receipt but my preferred shopper savings there came up to about $500 for the year. I do most of my shopping at Giant and saved $1232.60 and $267.26 at CVS. Rite aid doesn't keep track for me but I would guess that with rebates and general savings it would be in the $350-$400 range. None of these include the coupons but coupons are just a small fraction of my savings obviously. The few other perks of the grocery stores are that over holidays like thanksgiving and easter they give free hams and turkeys if you spent a certain amount of money over the previous 3-4 weeks. They also give a percentage off your total order every so often if you accumulate a certain spending level. Giant also has gas rewards sometimes when you can get 10 cents off every gallon of gas for every $100 you spend. I don't try to acheive any of these things but if they end up happening through my regular visits then i am happy all the same.
People have asked how i save so much money so i thought i would lay it all down here so if you are ambitious you could make a stab at it.

P.S. one last money saving tip for parents of children in diapers: CVS and Rite Aid both put their store brand diapers on sale BOGO every so often so stock up. Forget about that idea that expensive diapers work better and instead focus on the fact that they still work just as well and will save you lots of cash each year this way.

Post Christmas

2007-01-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

This Christmas was one of the best in a long time. It was Mike's first retail free holiday season in 8 years. What added to the relaxed feeling of not working in retail or having a someone close to you work in retail was that we hardly did any christmas shopping either. After all of our car issues and since we went down to one income this year, we decided to have a mostly homemade christmas. All of our friends and family members got homemade gifts this year except the children which we bought gifts for. It was quite fun for me to create the stuff and I didn't have to struggle going from store to store trying to find the right present. I could work in the comfort of my own home and hopefully everyone appreciated the extra time i took to make the presents even if the financial investment wasn't very much.

I've already started to think about things i could do next year. I'm not necessarily planning on making every christmas completely homemade but I really enjoyed this year because of it. I also want my son to grow up knowing that christmas isn't just a season of buying but instead a season of giving. My grandparents on my mom's side would always make everyone in the family a new christmas ornament each year. They would take turns each year so one year my grandma would make something and then my grandpa. Both of my grandpa's have made the family members things in there wood shops as gifts, anything from stools to cradels to hope chests to bookshelfs. I don't have the time, skill or equipment to build anything of that scale but it is inspiring to see how much you appreciate something that hand crafted by someone you love.

Isaac did love our gifts but i think so far his favorite was a drum set given by my parents. Of course he has always enjoyed going out to the garage and playing on mike's set so it was natural that he would love a miniature version especially made for people his size.

something to think about

2006-12-18T05:26:00.000-08:00

There is a little boy named Isaac who is friends with my nephew Jalen. I don't know him that well, just through meeting him at Jalen's birthday parties but i was always struck at how sweet, mild mannered and caring he was....even at such a young age. Isaac is 5 and in August he was diagnosed with having a brain tumor. When i heard this, my stomach just sunk because I simply can't imagine what I would do if my Isaac was diagnosed with something like that. How would a 5 year old be able to deal with something that big and how can a family be strong for the little ones while dealing with so many things that most people would never have to be confronted with. I have been reading about Isaac's progress through his mother's blog. It has been inspiring to see that every picture of Isaac always shows his glowing smile, even if he is sitting in a hospital bed waiting for chemo or radiation treatments. His mother, Becky, amazes me with her strength to juggle trips to hershey from williamsport for treatments, her family (they have 6 kids total), and working on the weeks when he doesn't need treatments. Since August he has had 3 treatments of chemo/radiation and things seemed to be looking good. At the end of last week he started having problems with not being able to focus his eyes and double vision. He was rushed to Hershey and had an MRI done. The tumor seems to be growing again and at a fast rate. The doctors basically told Becky that they couldn't do anything more for him but she didn't mention how long he has. I'm writing this because last week i was in a pretty bad mood. Some things weren't going well for me and i was sick and i was having a little pity party for myself. Then, i hear this and i realize that although there will be inconveniences in life, they are things that will pass and that you need to cherish what is truly important to you. You never know what might happen. I hope that you will keep this little boy in your prayers.

Check up, a little venting, and maybe too much information

2006-12-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

Isaac got his 18 month checkup a little late so it was closer to 19 months but he still was able to get his flu shot before the flu got to him. The doctor that we love was all booked up until that time so we opted to wait a little while so we could see Dr. Holly. She was very impressed with his vocabulary again and mentioned that he is verbally on the level of a 2 year old. Of course that was music to my ears. Some how they must have measured him incorrectly last time because they said he was 33 inches long last time and said he was the same thing this time. He has definitely grown over the past 3 months because he can now pull way more stuff off of shelves than he used to. He is 26 1/2 pounds and he is finally starting to go down the charts and has fallen from the 75 percentile to the 70th for height and weight. He is really starting to thin out and get longer.

Even though i have always been very impressed that Isaac is a go-getter and is ahead of some other children his age, it has always come with some draw backs. I have always described it as Isaac being "more". This means that when he is happy, he is happier than others, when he is talkative, he is more talkative than others his age, and when he is angry, he is angrier than others his age. It's not exactly anger all of the time, but it is something that you can't ignore. Isaac can throw a temper tantrum like no one's business. I'm not exactly talking laying on the floor kicking and screaming (although that has happened), but i am speaking more of he wants something and he won't stop until you give it to him. Although he can play by himself sometimes, once he gets bored...watch out. This often happens when we try to cook dinner....especially when only one of us is home. I can't take the time to play with him while i am cooking and he will simply melt down. This also can happen if he wants food and we won't give it to him. It's not that he is hungry, it's just that he wants it. These things go in spurts. He will be a little angel for a few days and then he will simply be a terror.

I'm writing this now because yesterday and today were terror days (or at least part of them were). Yesterday after work, Isaac and I got home and nothing would make him happy. He didn't want to play inside or outside or if he did finally enjoy something it would only last abou 2 minutes (i'm not exaggerating here). Finally, i decided that we would eat dinner early so I knew i would get him to sit down. I realized we were out of milk so i threw something in the oven and then ran across the street to CVS with him for milk and diapers. I thought this was a quick, painless 5 minute trip but i was wrong. As soon as we got there, he was unhappy so instead of being the mother that had her child screaming all the way through the store, i let him out and he was able to help push the cart. This worked great because it made him focus on something. The real issue came at the checkout because i couldn't let him on the floor any longer because he would walk away. As soon as i put him in the cart he freaked out because it wasn't what he wanted. He was heaving and sobbing and finally someone else opened their register so we could get out. It's embarrasing when this happens but anymore it's so hard to take him to a store with me. He doesn't want in the cart but if i put him down he will try to pull every last thing off of the shelves. I'm not going to be the mom that continually goes out with a screaming child but I don't know how to get him to be content in a store. The only thing i have found that works is if i bring a little snack along for him and then he is focused on that but i'm not going to bribe him with food all of the time. I have tried bringing toys along but that doesn't work either unless it's something he has never played with before.

We were able to stop by rite aid tonight for a quick second with out much issue thankfully.....the real came when we got home. We were home less than 2 minutes and i was in the kitchen starting to get some stuff out of a bag when isaac walked over to gertie's water dish and picked it up and poured it all over him and the floor. Then i realized (as i stated above) that he must be growing more because was able to reach up to the counter and was able to pull down a pan from dinner earlier (yes it was cool thankfully) spilling all contents on the floor. He has never completely dumped gertie's whole dish before because it is a flip proof dish and it's hard for him to pick up but instead he usually just slaps his hands in it until it is empty. Once again, i don't know how to keep him from doing this. We almost always have it up when he is down stairs and let it down for gert when he naps or is outside. We have tried to teach him not to do it but are obviously failing because he finds it waaaayyy too much fun. I think across the board i am in a rut about how to discipline him. We use time out are consistent with the language we use "no thank you" and "walk away" are what the day care uses so we followed suit. This works sometimes but if he doesn't want to listen.....he doesn't want to listen.

Another "fun" thing he likes to do is throw his cup at the dinner table. We tell him no thank you (in a stern manner) and take it away from him. Often times he simply looks at us after he does it and laughs right at us. WOW, it is super fun seeing that. The problem comes when he wants the cup back. Sometimes we try to keep it from him for the rest of the meal but then he melts down and won't eat dinner ....or better yet....throws that too. So the option is to give it to him or let the melt down continue. I don't know which one is correct but it really matters how much energy we have left and how much he has worn us down during the day.

I guess with this whole post i'm just coming clean in saying that I love my son but some days he maked me struggle more than i could have imagined. I have read books and talked to people to make sure I parent the "right" way but if your child broke the standard child mold I guess all of the advice isn't always as helpful.

I'll try ending this post on a lighter note although it might be more information than some people would like to know. Isaac recently found his "equipment". He might be ahead of the game in a lot of stuff but he has never had any interest in that region. He found it a little over a month ago and doesn't do anything "gross" with it, but did give it a name. I have decided to post what he calls it because if anyone hears him say it and him possibly pointing to that region I'm afraid of what people might think. He calls it his tatu (pronouced tattoo). I have worked on getting him to call it his pee-pee (i really don't know what to tell him to call it really) and he does repeat it back to me but often enough he just points to it and says tatu. Neither mike nor i have any "hidden" tattoos that might have spurred this name.....i just thought i should mention that because i figured someone out there would end up thinking it.

Anyhoo, those are the adventures for today. I'll post more soon. I need to go work on Christmas cards now.

a regular chatty cathy and a car update

2006-11-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

Isaac is picking up on words at a lightening pace these days. He will repeat, or try to repeat, almost anything you tell him repeatedly. Of course his pronunciation isn't the best initially but he gets better over time as you would expect. This weeks words were empty, full, soft, hug and a bunch of others that i can't recall. We are trying hard to make sure we don't let any bad words come out but we aren't perfect. It's a work in progress for us too.

He has his 18 month doctor's appointment tomorrow....although he is almost 19 months. Our favorite doctor was booked up so we had to wait. The issue with this is the fact that he still doesn't have his flu shot. I woke up this morning with a bit of a cold and i am hoping isaac can stay healthy for one more day so they won't postpone his shot. He woke up last night at 10:15 and it wasn't until 1:15 that i actually got him to sleep. I am feeling quite slow today and i am stuck in a terribly boring training all day which just salt in the wound.

The holiday season is upon us and it seems like i have the whole month already booked up. Mike has his first show with his band since isaac was born this friday. It's on campus so it will be nice to have a local show to attend. he has another one the following friday in state college at PSU. Dec 4th is our cookie bake night at my mom's house with Jalen and Deenie. The boys decorate sugar cookies, make a mess and have a great time. Jalen's birthday is the 11th and we are going up on the 10th for a train ride on the "polar Express" in the evening. i guess santa is on the train and the polar express is read and all of the kids come in their pajamas like the boy in the book. We are hoping to have a small get together with a few close friends a weekend or 2 before christmas. I have been hard at work creating presents for all of our friends and family. Since we are down to one income and we have encountered quite a few car woes we have decided to have a very DIY christmas. The kids will get real store bought presents but adults will get all of my hand made goods. I have been having a great time making everything so hopefully everyone will appreciate all of my hard work.

Back to the car thing, i guess i should fill you in on the rest of the drama. So the last time i posted i mentioned that we had one blown engine and 2 bad replacement engines so we were going to find a used car instead of trying to drop another engine in. We went out and got a used 1994 saturn station wagon with 90,000 miles on it for a minimal price. We really weren't looking for a car payment and wanted to pay it in full. We got a limited warranty and went on our merry way. A few days later i left for a conference in San Antonio (which was great by the way) and we took Isaac up to stay with my parents house so mike would still be able to go to his classes. I left on a Tuesday morning and Mike was going to go up to pick up isaac after class on thursday. Not quite halfway to lewisburg he called me at my conference to tell me he was sitting in dead car on the side of the road on Route 15 near one of the many lovely porn shops on that road. I felt totally helpless and hopeless because I was halfway across the country and our car and financial issues seemed to be never ending. I called my rents and told them to bring isaac down later and mike got his mom to loan him her car for a few days. We found that our warranty was a 50/50 warranty were we pay have of the cost to fix the issue. I'll give you one guess for what the issue was. Did you guess a blown engine? Wow, you are smart. Yup, this is engine #4. Then the story gets even better. Mike and i talked and we decided that we would put a new engine in the car since we had 2 bad engines get dropped in the kia and we ended up paying $1000 in labor for a dead car. Well, the dealership said they would only pay half of what a used engine and labor would cost because a new one would cost more than what the car would cost. Mike tried to talking to the guys at the dealership over the phone a few times but they kept giving him the run around. Mike couldn't go in to talk to them while he had Isaac so i left work early and went to strong arm them. I first had to re-read the warranty because mike left it in his car when it was towed. I went over and saw that the warranty didn't say anything except the standard "this is covered, this isn't" but nowhere did it say that they could tell us they wouldn't fix something if they felt it cost too much. I went in, asked for the manager, showed him the warranty and told him to show me where it says he can decide what type of parts go in the car. He said that it doesn't say that the customer and choose the parts and i came back with the fact that it doesn't say he can either. I must have done something right because he then offered to refund my money in full. The only issue was that we didn't have the title yet so we weren't able to finish the transaction but i have it in writing that we will get it refunded once the title comes in. So, we just bought another used car that cost double what the first one cost and it has a 3 year warranty (no 50/50 this time). we got a 2002 hyundai elantra with 64,000 miles on it. I also signed up with AAA. It's been a trying time but hopefully it will start looking up soon.

Isaac and apples and car woes

2006-10-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

I thought i would start out with something nice....Isaac eating apples. He found the bag I bought and stole 2 and started running around eating them. He worked on them for about an hour until he started throwing them around. Incase you have never accidently dropped an apple you were eating....especially in a house where a dog lives....I will tell you that finishing eating it isn't something you want to try. Many stray gertie hairs fused themselves to the apples and it was simply time to say rest in peace yummy apples.

No for the bad news. Mike's car is no longer living. It broke down 3 weeks ago right outside of HACC and we had it towed to mechanicsburg. We thought that it was probably a timing belt or maybe and alternator....but no...it had to be the engine. We talked to the garage and they found a used engine with only 40,000 miles on it. After working on it a week and a half they said it wasn't good. Then they found another engine, this one from a recent wreck with only 40,000 miles on it. So we tried again and you can guess what the end result was. This one didn't work either. At this point we just said f#*k it and decided to cut our losses while we still could. The garage is only charging us half of the labor cost they put into it. We are going to work on finding a used car but we aren't rushing it. Mike and i can share the car because he only needs it twice a week and can take me to work. It sucks but it would have been catastophic if he was still working and we tried to live on one vehicle.

Other than that things are great. Mike is doing great at school and currently has a 3.5 gpa and Isaac is silly as ever. I'll post more later but i just wanted to give a quick update.

One more year

2006-09-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

Today i turned 29. I have one more year in my twenties and then I move up a grade. I'm not really concerned about turning 30 but it is funny that i am noticing that i am changing as time goes by. Although to many people this will sound very silly but i recently did something i never really thought i would do. I bought a blazer. Don't get me wrong, i have had full suits that i have for special dressy/professional occasions but i never had one of those blazer that a woman could wear in a professional setting or with jeans and look good both ways. I think my issue has always been that i thought of blazers in the 1980's corporate woman's power suit kind of way with gigantic shoulder pads and all. And when it came to men's blazers it wasn't much better. I always thought of those tan ones with the ovals on elbows. To this day i don't understand what those things accomplished because style wasn't one of them.

Another change has been the introduction of NPR into my life. It's not that i ever had anything against NPR, it's just that i didn't listen to it. I have always had cd's in my car and for those of you who don't know, we have a lot of tunes in our household. This generally meant that anytime i was in my car i was listening to a cd. And it's not like i was starving for news in my life. I am a news junky and check in to news sites at work multiple times in an hour just to make sure i don't miss any breaking stories. My only real memory of NPR was that my grandparents would always have it on at their house when they would baby-sit me. The dry, monotonous voice of the news bored me to tears at the time and it didn't matter what the story was about, it wasn't anything that was going to interest a child. My introduction to NPR came when the tape deck in my car died and i could no longer use my cd player adapter. Neither one of us had an Ipod adapter for our ipods and i was just really thrifty about spending $30+ for one for each car. So in the meantime i found NPR and i fell in love. I have since purchased ipod adapters for our cars (although i found them online for $8.95 each) but i no longer only listen to music in the car. It depends on what mood i'm in. Somedays i want to listen to grindcore and some days i want to listen to NPR tell me about guerrilla gardeners and seed bombing or the effect C&C music factory has on toddlers.

doctor appointment, Gertie and Intentional unemployment

2006-08-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

Isaac had his 15 month appointment a week ago. He is 33 inches long and 25 pounds 13 ounces. He is still holding steady in the 75% in height and weight. He impressed his doctor with his vocabulary. He was upset when she initially came in so she gave him her little hammer like things she checks your knee reflex with. One had the head of a chicken and one had the head of an elephant. I said chicken, elephant to Isaac and he responded by saying eh-a-ba. Ok, so i know that it really isn't elephant but it is 3 syllables and started with e sounds and you know what he was trying to say. She was wowed by his attempt. Of course this put a smile on my face because i know he is a smart little guy but it's always nice when a doctor tells you the same.

Gertie unfortunately had to visit the doctor this week as well. She actually had an appointment for her shots tomorrow but on Thursday morning we woke up and I could smell that she had pooped in the house (which she never does). I came down stairs to find that she had pooped but it wasn't diarrhea and she also threw up twice. For a few days prior, she had an open wound on her rear-end. It looked like an abscess and although it didn't look pretty, it didn't seem to really be bothering her. I had been cleaning it 2-3 times a day with antibacterial soap, hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin. It was slowly looking a little better and I just figured that as long as it wasn't bothering her and wasn't getting worse, I would just wait it out a little while. My first job was at an animal hospital and although I don't know everything, i know some basic home animal care and felt she was doing ok. When I saw how sick she was on Thursday I was so scared that I had made the wrong choice and that maybe the abscess wasn't getting better and had burst and infected her blood stream and she might actually die. Yes, this was my exact mental progression. I fed Gert some food but she threw it up within 5 minutes. I called the doctor before i went to work but they weren't open yet so I called as soon as I got to work. Mike had helped me with Gert and Isaac that morning and then he went back to bed for a little while before he had to get ready for work. When he came downstairs around 8:00 he found she had thrown up 5 more times. Although this sounds terrible, it actually put our minds at ease because the final purge brought up one of Isaacs stuffed animals Gertie had ingested. She has done this in the past, not with Isaac’s toys but with her own. I think this is the 4th time and she does it every year or 2. I'm not sure what makes her want to eat something like this but it nearly gives me a heart attack each and every time. This time was the worst by far because of her other ailment going on at the same time. I did take her to the doctor to make sure everything seemed good. The doctor told me I had been doing the correct thing by cleaning her wound and that i was looking like it was on it's way to being healed. He didn't feel anything left in her stomach and he even gave her the shots she needed so we didn't have to return tomorrow.

For those of you who might not be aware yet, Mike's last day of work was Friday. He is going back to school full time this semester to get his bachelor's degree in Math. He is starting out at Harrisburg Area Community College for the first year to get used to school again and hopefully Dickinson will accept full time for fall 2007. He will then be able to go to school for free through my position. We are both very excited for this new chapter in our lives and all of the doors that it will open in his professional career path. He loves music and loved working at the store for a long time but retail has a way of slowly draining the life out of you. He made great money but was going to be limited to retail management work to continue making that level of income. When I was in school, Mike was always there for me and encouraged me to finish even though at the time we were living 3 hours away from each other. I was working full time and going to school full time so I could pay for my apartment and eat. Sometimes buying food was an afterthought to paying rent and he would help me out when things got tight. He always helped me when my stress level went through the roof and I would just cry to him on the phone or when he would visit. Those 3 years were wonderful because they were the first 3 years we were together but they were also very trying on me emotionally because I was trying to balance everything and still succeed in school, work and a long distance relationship. I did win on all sides and Mike was a pillar of support for me. I want to give him his chance to shine academically like I know he wants to. He is an incredibly smart person and I hope everyone can see that he is being very brave to make this great change in his life. This will allow Isaac to go to day care part time, 2 days a week and mike can spend a majority of his time with him. My income is plenty to pay our bills and still have some extra to save each month. I'm so excited for him to start school and one of the best things will come in December when we will be able to spend our first holiday season together without stress in 8 years.

i'm such a slacker

2006-08-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, i have really been neglecting my blogging duties haven't I? I'm always thinking about my next post but then never really achieve getting it written. I'll try to remember all of the things that i have been wanting to write about.

Isaac has really been working on his vocabulary. The most useful word he knows is Please and he can use it in the correct ways. It kind of comes out as "pwee" but you can surely tell what he is saying. This has helped curb the wild screams when he wants something and he is very proud of himself when he says it. Many times he would yell and we would say please then he would repeat and he would get what he was asking for but now he actually uses it without prompting. Now on to the coolest word he knows "tattoo". I'm sure many of you thought that might be his first word but no, he waited a bit longer to spring it out on us. He generally only equates it with the tattoo on my chest so far but soon he will realize it's all of the lovely colors mike and i have on our skin. Sometimes he uses 'D' sounds instead of 'T' so it sounds more like he is trying to say daddy but don't be fooled. He also has a list of favorite words and they are all the animals he knows. He uses them interchangeably sometimes but he knows what he means. Kitty, puppy, bunny, birdy....they are repeated many times throughout the day. He also knows where to find these things on our daily walks. There is a house down the street that has a flag on the side of the house that looks like a cat hanging from the flag pole. Although you can't see it until you are right by the house, he will start to say kitty and I couldn't figure out where it was. Now i know that he knows that the kitty flag will soon be coming up and he is simply announcing it. Isaac's vision is great. Many times we will go outside and he can spot an animal (usually a bunny) hidden in the mulch and bushes and I have to scan the whole yard until i finally find it. He will start saying bunny and I will have absolutely no clue where it is.

On top of the individual words isaac is learning, he is also trying to perfect the art of the conversation. I realize usually a conversation consists of 2 people talking to each other and understanding what each is saying but unfortunately, i don't really know what he is trying to tell me....but that doesn't stop him. The first day he really did this was a few weeks ago when my parents visited. He woke up from a nap and I went up to get him. As soon as i picked him up he got really close to my face and just started talking no stop. I'm not exaggerating when i say non-stop. He just talked and talked and talked. I was in tears i was laughing so much by the end because you really couldn't get a word in. It seemed like he just had the best dream and had to tell you every detail about it. Once I got downstairs he talked a bit more but was really excited to go sit in Boppy's lap (my dad). As soon as he sat down he started all over again with the story. He talked for a long while then he got down and was kind of quite then he wanted back up on my dad's lap and talked like crazy. This probably went on for about 15 minutes. (here is a video from that day but unfortunately it is the tail end of the conversation and doesn't give the full effect i am trying to relay) Ever since then, he gets in these spurts of conversation and it doesn't have to be with a person. We recently had new neighbors move into the upstairs apartment next door to us. They have a balcony that looks into our yard and they have a dog. Yesterday the guy and his dog were out and Isaac was so excited about the puppy. He initially said puppy a few times and waved but that was it. A little while later though, i was in the kitchen and Isaac stood on the back porch looking up at the dog and talked non-stop to her for about 3 minutes. You might not think 3 minutes is that long, but it really is, especially when no one is talking back to you. He just rattled on and on to her. He entertains me to no end.

We have been doing more swimming lately and he is just doing a fantastic job. We usually go to the Dickinson pool and we recently went to a friend's pool so he really hasn't been exposed to baby pools, just full sized ones. Yesterday, the Mechanicsburg pool was free so we went there and I must say it has one of the best public pools that i have seen. They have the pools areas but mix in water park elements of waterfalls and fountains. He was a little reserved because there were so many kids running all over the place but i think he will adjust if we take him again.

Here is the video i promised of isaac giving kisses. It starts out with him giving gertie a kiss through the glass door but while Isaac and i are on the back porch. I then am the recipient of the rest of kisses. And yes, just a reminder, he kisses with his mouth open.

Talking, Kisses, Reading and Teeth

2006-07-04T19:35:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I have really been slacking off on the blog. I am always thinking of new things I should be writing down but then the night comes to a close and I still haven't posted anything. But that all changes right now.

I can't exactly remember when Isaac first said mama and dada but it was a log time ago. Since then, he has been working on other words but most things that came out sounding like real words still didn't mean what they sounded like. For instance, I know I had posted about how he said Bob all of the time for a while. He doesn't do it any more and of course he never really was trying to say some ones name that was Bob. Now he is really starting to say words and he knows what they mean. His first real word came out about 2 weeks ago. It is puppy. He loves animals more than anything and gets so excited when he sees dogs. He just lets out a squeal and a big belly laugh when they run over to him. So I would start saying the word puppy over and over when he was playing with them and he just picked up on it. He now says puppy when he sees dogs. He already had a name for Gert. He calls her T as in Ger-T. Other words we have been working on are "more" and "cup". "More" is the word I need him to master so when he runs out of food he doesn't just start to scream. At this point, I usually start pointing to the food and saying "more" repeatedly and then he settles down a bit and sometimes laughs and I know he knows what I mean. He usually gets a mmmmmmrmmr sound out but by the time he runs out of food again he doesn't care what the word is and just screams again. I hope he gets a grasp on it soon.

Today he learned the word Kitty when we were reading a book together. The funny thing about Isaac and books is that he just doesn't sit still so i can read them any more. He has always seemed more interested in the mechanics of the book rather than the story. By this I mean that he just opens and shuts it again and again. He's fascinated by how the book works. This has bothered me because I really want him to like reading and I know that he has a whole lifetime to start to enjoy books but they just pound this idea into your head to start reading early. Well, of course I do read to him but he just didn't have the attention span yet. I am happy to say that he is starting to come around. He still isn't all that patient and we sometimes don't make it through a whole book in one sitting, but he does get more engaged in the book. He points to the pictures and says things (of course I don't know what they are yet). That is how I got him to say kitty today. We were reading a sweet little story called "the tale of frog" and he was pointing at a cat so I kept saying kitty and he said ditty....ok, it was close enough for me.

Speaking of books; I was at the day care and the one staff member’s daughter is in the same room as Isaac. They are about 2 months apart and she loves to read. She sits down on you (even if you aren't expecting it) and gives you a book. You can read it to her and as soon as you finish she gives it to you again. This could go on all day if you allowed it. I thought this was very sweet and I said out loud that she should teach Isaac to love reading so much. The other staff member (not the girl’s mother) said the most ridiculous thing, she said "but he's a boy". What she meant by this was, it's a given that he doesn't like to read and it's a given that she does and why do you want to try to make him like reading so bad? I don't want to give a really bad impression of the day care at this point in my story. The center is very nice but this lady is just a bit backwoods and had the most outdated ideas on gender roles. She has a 1 1/2 year old boy and she has told me that she saw him playing with a doll one day and threw it across the room and said baby bad (meaning it's bad to play with babies). She told me this story while laughing and I guess she thought I would find it incredibly hilarious. All I could think about was what the poor kid will have to go through if he ends up being gay. I'm sure she would disown him. Ok, so back to my original story. Now, since you know a little back story about the woman I would like to say that I didn't put my 2 cents in about the baby doll episode except that I said I wouldn't care what Isaac plays with. This time though, I told her "that is such a stupid thing to say". I wasn't really mean about it, just more matter of fact. I really didn't want to start a fight, but I wanted her to know that what she had just said was wrong and I hoped that she wouldn't say it ever again.....especially to parent at the day care. Just to put your minds at ease, Isaac should be moved into the toddler room soon and won't have to have this lunatic talking to him very often.

I am hoping to get a new video up soon of Isaac giving kisses. If you don't have a child, or aren't around other toddlers, you might not be aware that many children kiss with their mouth open....as does Isaac. It's very sweet but kind of odd at the same time. He doesn't give kisses out just when you ask but he gets on a roll every so often and will be free with his kiss giving. His favorite time is when I carry him up the stairs to bed and we are usually in the stairwell and he will give 1 or 2 kisses. He was giving gertie kisses today and he also kisses his stuffed animals. He is the sweetest little thing in the world and I am so very happy that we have in our lives.

Last thing before I go to bed, Isaac will be 14 months tomorrow and just yesterday I saw one of his molars had come in. I'll try to blog again soon and get up some new video.

Isaac's sweet ride

2006-06-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

Isaac has been running all over these days. He is a big climber, runner, biker type of child. Here is a video of him and his bike. Take notice to the end of the video when he becomes facinated with another 4 wheeled mode of transportation. I'm sure it won't be long until he tries that one out too.

Vacation

2006-05-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

We just got back from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. It was a short trip, only a 3 night stay but it was fantastic. I would actually recommend that people take a shorter trip to the beach if they get bored easily. We usually take trips to cities where there are endless possibilities for things to see and do but i have always thought the beach has it's limits. What we needed this time around was just a lot of lounging and relaxation which is exactly what we got. We also were staying at an all inclusive resort which included our drinks and meals which made it for a very economical vacation. Of course, this also allows you to fall into a gluttonous lifestyle because you can eat and drink whatever you like, when ever you like. I must say that i enjoyed every minute of it. To counter act the food and drink consumption, we tried to stay active by swimming, kyaking, and going out on the pedal boats. These things were also included so that was very handy. Although i am very careful at home and always use sunscreen, for some reason i didn't think to up the spf level when i was there initially and we both got somewhat of a burn. We then continued using spf 30 for the rest of the trip but we are still kind of sore.

Now onto some of the things i learned on my vacation and the travel to and from our destination. The first thing you should know is that we flew out of baltimore to a layover in newark...that's right, New Jersey. There were 40 people on the flight going on vacation together that had some friends and family thing with the NJ Bar Association. The girl that sat next to us was very nice and we talked to her the entire time. I add this point in because i don't want you think that i dispise all people from new jersey when you continue reading this blog. I can say for sure that there is at least one good person in new jersey and her name is charlene. Now, let me continue. The rest of the people in her party of 40 were less than polite. The one woman across they isle looked like swam in a tank of makeup each morning. We had to taxi for about 20 minutes before take off and she started to harass the flight attendants about why she couldn't go to the bathroom. They said if it was an emergency they would stop the plane but instead she sat there and grumbled and didn't get up even once we were in flight. She was just one of those people who always has to get there way....of course she didn't this time.

Once we got to the airport, we were shuffled into a taxi that was an older model mini van. Mike could see the odometer and said it had 260,000 miles on it. It wasn't in the best condition but didn't look like it was going to fall apart and i was sure it would get us the 20 miles we needed to go. The driver waited a little while for more people to fill up the seats so he could drop off multiple people at the same time. We waited patiently in the air conditioned van as 2 other couples got in over time. I won't describe them but both were obviously from New Jersey or the greater New York Area. As the one man got in he said quite loudly, "What is this, a suicide van?". At this point we knew we rather die then ever have to hang out with these people. The road between the airport and our hotel was filled with small shacks and fruit stands and you could tell it was an economically depressed area. Mike and I sat quietly looking out the window. At one point, we passed a shell gas station and a burger king complex. The man sitting behind us said "There's a little piece of america for ya, burger king. How much is gas? Probably more than these people make in a week". That speaks for itself i believe. Thankfully, we were dropped off first and got away from New Jersey....for a little while.

At one point, we were in the ocean when these 2 meat heads (most likely from the same area listed above) came walking into the ocean with a cigarette in one hand and a plastic cup of beer in the other and their gold chains shimmering around their necks. Before you read on, do you want take a guess if they actually walked out of the ocean with their empty cups and cigarette butts in hand? I probably don't have to answer that question for you do i? I realize why people in other countries hate us so much. No matter how good of a person you are, there will always be fuckers like that that ruin any good that you try to do.

We did fly back into Newark when we left but we didn't have to deal the same type of people. On this flight it was an older french couple that was sitting behind us and obviously had split a bottle of vodka for breakfast between the 2 of them. It just reaked and anytime i would try to rest my head against the window, it was like she was breathing on my face. They were also incredibly loud and we had to sit on the runway for an extra hour while they added more hydraulic fuel or something. When we finally took off, she said out loud "goodbye punta cana, i will see you in november" ....at this point i could have thrown up. When we finally landed, she was one of those people who decide to clap. I couldn't get off the plane fast enough.

Because we were held up in Punta cana we didn't get in until 7:15 and our next flight took off at 7:40. we still had to go through customs and make it to our gate. At this point i was getting kind of frantic. All day long, all i wanted was to see Isaac and suddenly there was stopping block right in the middle of my plan. When they finally opened the cabin doors we were over half way back and i asked people if i could get through because we had a flight to catch. Some woman said, we have flight to catch too in a not so nice tone of voice so i didn't push the situation. Once we were off the plane, then i started really making sure people started to move for us. Then we got to the hall that takes you immigration. It was very empty, and very wide and about a 1/2 mile long. I took off my shoes and started to sprint. We finally got there heaving and puffing and then got to the baggage claim area. We tried to go out to the gate area but we had go through one more check of our passports. This guy at the stop said, you have to wait for your luggage. We said that it was just a layover and it should just go right on. He said we had to wait so we turned around and started to walk back. The entire baggage claim area was empty except one woman and her granddaughter. At this point, i basically broke down. I'm not one to cry but all day my whole focus was to see my son and suddenly i was basically being told that i wasn't going to. The woman standing there actually worked for continental and asked mike what the issue was and he told her. She looked at our baggage tickets and said they were listed as baltimore and they should make it. I quickly ran over and through my tears, told the guy at the check. He still insisted that we were supposed to wait but then he mentioned that even when it came through, even if we still made the flight, the luggage most likely wouldn't and they would have to mail it to us. At this point i inquired what would be the difference if we left now and they mailed it anyway. He basically pittied me and let us through even though he said repeatedly that we he wasn't supposed to. We made it to our gate just at 7:40 and the door was shut and i ran up and asked if the gate was already closed and the attendant said it hasn't boarded yet. Yup, our flight was late. So in the end, I cried, ran and almost had a mental breakdown and in the end we still had to wait another hour and a half until we finally took off. Thursday was becoming one hell of a day. To sum up the rest, we got to baltimore at 9:45pm and of course they didn't have our bags. We then couldn't find our car in the parking lot. We got caught in construction on 83 and finally picked up Mike's brother Brett at our house (he was house sitting for us) at 12:30. We drove another hour to mike's parents house and were planning on sleeping there so we could take Isaac home first thing in the morning. He woke up, wouldn't go back to sleep so we drove home at 3:00am and finally went to bed by 4:30. Yesterday we took multiple naps.

Our vacation was fantastic but the thought of traveling again soon gives me a headache. Did i mention i am flying to a conference in Cleveland in 2 weeks. I'm not looking very forward to it now.