Let's catch up shall we?

OK I've been MIA for way long.  Here is a recap of the last 10 months!

January:  Went out for a fun sibling night with my sister, brother and sister in law.  My sister teaches me how to "wobble", my brother introduces me to a hawaiian beer.  I have so much fun, and spend time recovering the next day.
The next week I get pregnant and can no longer drink or eat much at all.  I am glad I had that one last hurrah - but am beyond excited about giving Emmett a sibling, even if I am in "I'll believe it when I see it" mode.  Cautiously optimistic!

February:  I go to Mexico for work, which sucks because one of the things that makes me horribly nauseous is Mexican food.  I subsist for the week on two boxes of Clif Bars and a gallon-size bag of Cheeze-its.  Everyone there thinks I am insane because I am so picky about food (I tell them I do not eat seafood or red meat).  But at least they are nice about it.

March:  Another work trip to Mexico, this time my doctor prescribes Zofran.  It helps me eat a little, but not alot.  At least this time I stay in a Marriott so can get a cheese plate for dinner.  Colby Jack never tasted so good.

April:  We are impatient and get a gender peek ultrasound done.  The technician thinks it is a girl, and Emmett says "Baby swimming!" when he sees the baby on the screen.  I cry a little bit, as is par for the course when we find out anything baby related.  I start progesterone shots to prevent another early labor like with Emmett.   Every week I go to the doctor's office, wait 5-60 minutes (usually about 45) and get a shot in the rump which takes five seconds.
At the end of the month I attend a conference in FL and Mike flies down with Emmett to go to Disney World for a few days.  We have a GREAT time visiting with the friends we stay with in Tampa.  Emmett meets Mickey, Woody & Buzz, Donald and Goofy.  He thinks they are all real live movie stars.  We ride like two rides, eat hot dogs and ice cream and head home.

May:  Mother's day - we get cupcakes filled with pink frosting and announce to my family that we are having a little girl!

I sneak in a trip to Savannah with my high school girlfriends!

I borrow the church van and drive 12 drunk people to and from the Indy 500.  It is a blast until we need to leave and everyone needs to pee and has the attention span of my two year old.  Even then I know the stories will be good later so it's not too annoying ;) 

June:  The month of work travel.  I spend one week on the west coast, one week on the east coast, and one week in Europe (Amsterdam, rural Holland, Belgium and the UK, all in one week!)  In Amsterdam I buy tiny pink booties at a cute little shop.  I'm starting to feel better about food and even get down some Indian food in the UK.  

Our basement renovation starts at the beginning of the month, which includes closing off the upstairs den to make the much-hyped Big Boy Room for Emmett.

July:  The month of personal travel.  We head to Minneapolis over the 4th weekend, visit friends in southern Michigan and Mike goes to St Thomas to visit a friend from college.  I find a properly relaxed and boozed husband makes for a much better helper when new baby comes, so I am glad that he is getting some fun time. The only catch is that Emmett gets croup right before he leaves and is on steroids while he is gone.  Trying to prevent him from climbing everything we own is impossible with this hulked out kid - Mike comes home to a tired wife and child with new bruises from all the climbing and jumping.  We spend basically all weekend with my parents while he is gone - which is great.  Dad gets out some kites and we fly a kite with Emmett for the first time who is beyond excited.  "My kite!  Emmett's kite!" he yells, over and over.  I'm biased, but even on 'roids the kid is cute.

August:  We complete our last trip before baby, to Chicago for the weekend.  We take Emmett to the aquarium on the way to drop him off with the grandparents in Kenisha.

I have a great time doing a whole lot of nothing and eating at some of our favorite spots like Pequod's and the Bongo Room.  For the rest of the month, I try to relax and keep off my feet - Mike is SuperDad keeping Emmett busy and my parents help out a lot!  Operation Keep Baby In!  The basement renovation wraps up and my parents come over and paint the baby's room pink.  I can finally start working on getting the baby's room and house in shape once the workers are done!

September:  Over Labor Day the point passes where I had Emmett (34weeks, 4 days).  I am a bit spooked but make it through.  Lots of waiting for baby and organizing the house.  It is VERY organized by the end of the month.  I have contractions for the last full week of September, then deliver our little girl Clara on September 29th (that story to come!) only an hour after arriving at the hospital.

October is currently being spent feeding the baby, changing the baby, and trying to ensure that toys thrown by Emmett do not hit the baby.  So far the experience with a full term baby is crazy different than one with a preemie, and I am beyond grateful that I was able to get her to 38 weeks and 5 days! 

Indiana traditions

Ba and Neemaw help the grandkids pop a shot!

Bah humbug!

Well we are back from Christmas "break" and I'm more than slightly bah humbug about the whole thing. We had a great time but crammed in a lot and are exhausted. But here is a peekat the holiday card and some photos from the trips!

Merry Christmas!

We are currently conducting our annual Indiana holiday road trip. Having so much fun with family and sharing our (mostly) delightful, hilarious little man!

Happy holidays to you all!

Poor man

Emmett had a rough week at school. First he fell on a sidewalk and skidded, resulting in this face injury. Then on Friday a "friend" bit him.

He wore this sweater to go see Santa today. He was frikkin terrified. I loved how he looked in his tiny preppy sweater though, even if when I bought it, mike asked if I was gearing up for an ugly Christmas sweater party. No, mike. This is a cute sweater!!

Today we took one of the rails off Emmett's crib and added the piece that makes it a toddler bed. 50/50 shot that we end up putting the rail back on. I'm sure we will regret it. But it's worthy shot.

Reading Mike's favorite book

Mike hates this book. Baby has read his first hundred words like a million times.

If you can't spot the sucker...

...you probably are the sucker.

I told him he could have some m&ms if he colored on some Christmas cards. He ate the m&ms and then refused to color. Who's the chump? Me.

Bedtime struggles

I've got it! I can post on the blog as I sit on the floor of emmetts room while I wait for him to go to sleep!

(Parenting... Super fun btw)

One of my coworkers told me to put him to bed earlier. I tried that last night. He got so freaking heated up over it, he barfed hot dogs all over his crib.

What? No, my child doesn't eat hot dogs for every meal. Why do you ask?

Very little is grosser than hot dog barf. Seriously.

The thing is, nothing prompts opinions from all kinds of people more than parenting problems and sleep specifically. And I've found little that works other than a stiff cocktail for mommy and daddy.

So here I sit, waiting for Sir to drop off to sleep. It's not like I could be working or doing laundry or wrapping Christmas presents or making gluten free toddler food from scratch. No, nothing better to do. Nothing! Argh.....

Dumb stuff

Sometimes I think, this thought it too long for a facebook post.  Also, I am probably posting too much on facebook. I should act like I care about facebook a little less.  You know, to not look too eager.  haha.  I wish I had somewhere else to put this drivel.

Oh yes, I have a blog.  I guess.  Kind of.

I've never really been a "blogger".  I'm not a great writer.  I'm not really all that interested in getting out my feelings in other venues other than in a phone call to my Mom or sister.  But whatever, maybe I should write a little bit more.   It was originally a way to keep up with people.  Now that we have Sir, we have less time to keep up but more people that are actually interested in keeping up.  I mean, we are BORING.  But Emmett, he is funny!

Speaking of a funny little man, his talking is going great - I read somewhere that if you say "the car is orange" that kids catch onto colors better than if you say "the orange car", so I've been doing that.  His colors have been taking off!  It's so funny.   He said his first whole sentence last week - "DADDY, WHERE ARRRRRRRRRE YOOOOOOOOU?!!"  He is a total Daddy's boy, he is always so sad when we get home and Mike is in Chicago.  Yesterday I was changing out of my work clothes and Emmett was Johnny on the spot to point out that I had a butt "Butt, butt!" and that the shorts I changed into were pink "PINK BUTT."  Oh my.

Back to the original thought that was too boring and long for facebook - Yesterday my flat iron broke.  SADNESS.  I looked it up to see when I bought it to see if it was still under warranty and realized that I bought it in 2008.  Holy poop.  My flat iron is older than my kid.  Not hard, but still kind of funny.  Also, it only broke b.c I dropped it on the floor and the plate broke off.  So totally my fault.  I'll be buying that EXACT same flat iron again.  Hopefully it lasts four years like its predecessor!

I need to find an app to post straight from my iphone via blogger.  Any recommendations from anyone?

Eyeball update

I feel like it's going to be hard to put into words the experience we've had since the last time I updated about Emmett's eyes.  The words "ringer, going through it" come to mind.

We went back in May, and the doctor confirmed that he would need the surgery we'd scheduled in June.  Unsurprising.  She indicated that there was since a very small chance that his measurements would change between then and the surgery, we didn't need to come back to recheck the measurements.  I figured that any chance was a chance I didn't want to deal with - not for something that would take us only an hour to do.  So we made another appointment with the surgeon for the day prior to the surgery to double-check the measurements.  I had some dental work scheduled for that day so Mike took him.

Oy vey, people.  The surgeon confirmed his measurements... then suggested to Mike that we schedule the surgery.  Mike responded that we had, that it was queued up for the NEXT DAY, and the surgeon said "Oh.  Have we decided how much to correct for?"

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.  I GET that the amount his eye was crossed changed throughout the day and was different if he was in glasses or out of them.  But still.  She's the surgeon.  You do NOT want to hear that she's unsure of how to handle the situation.

Unlike what I would have done, Mike kept it together.  I would have given the surgeon an extra eyeroll, told her that I didn't go to med school, and to get her shiz together.  Mike gently prompted her through a discussion of the different thoughts on the topic and encouraged her to consult her fellow practice members. 

The next day we had the surgery done - the process was relatively easy.. Emmett was great.  And was totally fine afterwards, downing some gluten-free sausage pizza only hours after leaving the hospital (surgery was outpatient).

We were very hopeful, but the eyes looked awful.  They were really bloody looking, which we expected.  But one eye actually looked like it wandered out.  He looked so bad, and it certainly wasn't an improvement to have him walleyed!

For the first week, I teared up when I looked at him.  It was so hard, I was so freaked out and I was convinced he'd need to have another surgery.  Words cannot describe how AWFUL it looked.  Then, the week after that it started getting better day by day.  I still think it gets better every day, but that second week - LEAPS and BOUNDS are the only words for it.  Enough to pardon the surgeon from the unholy cursing Mike had planned for her at his two-week post checkup.  She actually was quite pleased with his progress.  She did say the outcome judgement day is really two months post - there can be quite a lot of change up until then, and until then we are patching his "good" eye for an hour a day to ensure his brain keeps processing images from his "bad" eye.

As of now though, Emmett's eyes are looking pretty good.  Check out the pic of my brother, E and I last week:

Still not perfect, will have a better idea at his two month checkup.  File this in the drawer labelled "Cautiously optimistic".

School pic Spring 2012

School pic Spring 2012, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Small Sir's school picture.... how do they get pics like this? How did they make him sit like that? And why isn't his nose crusted with snot as per usual!?!

What you don't see by looking at this pic is that I knew ahead of time that they were taking his pics at 8am. So when (totally uncharacteristic of Emmett) he didn't wake me up at the buttcrack of dawn, I woke up at 7:40, I bolted out of bed yelling OH NOES and ran to his room, slammed his pic clothes on him, tossed him in the car and hauled butt to school. Kid was literally in bed twenty minutes prior. I'm surprised he didn't have sleep marks on his face because he sleeps face down.

Murphy's law/chaos theory at work here in child rearing. Oy.

Mealing

DSC_8721, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

I put him in one of my tshirts to eat some gluten free pasta with red sauce. Actually worked out quite well! I crack up though, the area around his mouth is always so stained. He's like a mini Bozo the Clown!

Trump Tower - Results!

A little follow-up on the Trump Tower post.... the manager called me, offered to let me have 10 people in the room, knocked 200 off the price, and sent up free champagne and chocolates.  Winner!!!

Here are some good pics of the room (all pics taken by my friend Emily)

There was a lot of good food and fun times with the ladies... and a blowup giraffe!

Got these ladies all in one place since my wedding in 2007 - I call it a MAJOR success!!!

And good times were had by all!  :)

Eyeballs

I think one of the really tough things about parenting is that when you're not privvy to the details of other people's lives, you assume that everything is 100% perfect. Many times we don't talk about our struggles. But I think it's important to address these roadblocks as well - everyone has some cross to bear. Life isn't perfect for anyone.

In October a friend came to visit with her little one. We had a great time seeing them. We took the boys for a walk and chatted and just hung out. Although the boys are about 2.5 months apart, we were due only a month apart. So developmentally the boys are much closer in age. The boys were sitting on a blanket in our living room when I noticed something that I'd been getting suspicious of over the past week or so. "There! Look! Is his eye crossed?!" I pointed to Emmett and my friend looked at him carefully. She is a detail-oriented person, Type A, a social worker. Also honest. Not the kind of person to ignore or sugarcoat things. She looked at him carefully for a minute or two before answering. "I don't see it. I don't think it is. Maybe it just looked that way for a minute," she said. I was glad she was there in the moment to give me her opinion. But I couldn't sweep the feeling under the rug. Couldn't dismiss it. Later when I was uploading pictures from the weekend, I noticed that his eye definitely looked crossed in any pictures where he was looking straight at the camera.

One of the pics from that weekend

I rooted around in my photo files. Just a week earlier his eye might have been a little off in one picture I took (of 100).

A couple of weeks earlier at the pumpkin patch

And a few weeks before that, at his school pictures in September, it looked just fine.

I started compiling pics of Emmett and his eyes into a flickr set, and planned to bring it up at his well baby visit with his pediatrician a three weeks later.

The following week, everyone else started noticing. My Dad asked if his eyes were crossed. Dad is a minister and has seen a lot of people and A LOT of situations. He pretty much knows everything (one time he asked me what a kind of cheese was that we were eating in Chicago and I was all "Holy cow I know something Dad doesn't." So dumb, a type of cheese. haha) I felt a sense of vindication that I wasn't just blowing things out of proportion, but also dismayed that there could be something actually wrong with Emmett.

That week, I saw a notice at his daycare that they would be doing eye exams at his school for the older kids. I asked them to have the person take a look at his eyes. I was given a note in a sealed envelope that night. "Dear Emmett's Mom, I would recommend taking Emmett to a pediatric opthamologist." Ugh. Not words you want to read.The next week at his pediatrician appointment, his doc looked at his eyes and said that while she thought his eye health was good, she was referring us to a doctor at Riley Children's hospital in downtown Indy. The soonest they could get us in was the first week in December. And so we waited.

The first appointment was pretty straightforward. They measured his eyes and agreed with my assessment. They prescribed glasses. The doctor told me that it would most likely correct with the glasses. If not, they'd try patching the good eye to encourage the development of the bad one. If that didn't work, then we'd try surgery.

Emmett turns a lot of heads in his tiny glasses. He is admittedly very cute in them. I'm glad I picked the square frames, as they "turn him into a tiny intellectual" as a friend commented.

In February we took him back to Riley to check on progress and they reported that the eye was less crossed. 18-20 diopters of crossed instead of 30 at the original appointment. But not enough to conclude that the glasses would correct the problem. They recommended patching but wanted to schedule the surgery for early summer. We were more than a little taken aback with what we thought was skipping a step straight to surgery. The error rate the surgeon quoted us was 20%. This was alarming to us, for sure. We scheduled a second opinion at Children's Memorial in Chicago.

Let's just say that the 773 Chicago area code cell phone and Indiana address really confused the administrative staff while making the appointment.

But the appointment was great. We were much better prepared to ask questions at this one, which probably explains most of why we felt better about it. The eye was also slightly better and they did extensive tests on eye health which put his eyesight at completely normal and equally good in each eye. But the doctor recommended the same exact course of treatment as Riley. Same methods, same strategy, same everything. The doctor even recommended Riley as highly as she did Children's. I knew Riley was very well-regarded, but I'm from Indiana. I wanted to know the opinion of the hospital outside of the state, and it's good to know that they are held in high esteem by Children's.

So here we are. Waiting until his next appointment May 11. Looking at him critically each day to see if it's gotten better. Waiting to see if the surgery works. Hoping that it does, to give our little man a chance at a normal life with two normal eyes.

Typical sight

DSC_8681, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Climbing on the cozy coupe....

Emmett loves this thing. He is such a fan!

It's all my fault

DSC_8554, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

.... my mom hasn't updated her blarg in a million years. I am walking and into EVERYTHING. On the upside, I'm super cute and can say bye-bye, among other things.

School pictures are next week, so that should be another cute opportunity!

The small delights in life

OK confession time. And this is kind of odd. One of the things I really really enjoy is writing a sternly-worded letter to a manager or customer service representative if I think something sucks or is ridiculous. And yesterday I was able to fulfill just that delight.

I was online, looking at suites for a friend's bachelorette party and found a freaking awesome one at the Trump Tower in downtown Chicago. Of course, the suite was about a million dollars (let's agree to not tell actual amounts to protect the innocent and to keep my friends from realizing how much I was planning to spend). At any rate, I thought, "Self. Allowance goes alot farther in Indiana. You have been saving for something fun. You can cover most of the cost and the rest of the girls can chip in the same amount as if we'd gotten a more reasonably priced room. And I bet if you called the hotel, they would cut their rate. Why not give it a go?" So I did. I called the hotel, and they offered me a discount on the spot to book. Just like that, I was getting a two bedroom, lakeview suite at the Trump Tower for, let's just say, only half a million dollars.

I have fond memories of our anniversary at the Trump a couple of years ago. The bath tub was the size of our Corolla and the bathroom had a TV in the mirror. We drank champagne and watched Tommy Boy from the tub. And lo it was awsome. I was suitably stoked about securing an all out baller place to have this shindig.

Don't believe me? Check out these pictures...

Ridiculous no?

As we are wrapping up the phone conversation, the rep says, "OK, so one final thing. Just wanted to make sure you were aware of our Gathering Policy." I reply with no and she says that ONLY the six guests who are registered to the room are allowed to go up to it. That you need to sign in and have key cards and there is a security guy and the works. And the room can have a maximum of six people staying in it.

I'll stop for a minute and let that soak in. Also..... this pic below of a dining room table that seats 8. For a room that is only allowed to have 6 people in it. Because that makes sense.

ANYWAY - I tell her right then and there that we'd better just go ahead and cancel the reservation. Because while we probably will only have about 6 staying there, there was a possibility of having to squeeze in one or two more. And that we'd have more than that for the pre-dinner bachelorette festivities that included snacks and giving our friend some bachelorette gifts and playing of games. So she says ok, cancels the room and gives me a cancellation number. Bummer.

The more I think about it, the more freaking steamed I get. You pay an exorbitant fee for a great hotel room and then you can only have six people, REGISTERED GUESTS ONLY, even enter it. How weird. So I wrote this letter. I doubt I will get a reply. But it was it fun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: April
To: Info@TrumpHotels.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 1:54 PM
Subject: Manager Question/Complaint

I tried to make a reservation for your 2 bedroom suite with a lake view (at the Chicago location) to the tune of around a half million dollars and the reservations representative asked me if I knew about your "Gathering policy." Apparently, only the 6 registered guests for the room are the only people allowed to access the room at all. As the room was for a celebration for a friend's wedding and we planned on doing gifts and snacks at the hotel prior to going out for dinner and drinks, I had no choice but to cancel.

This seems ridiculous. You charge someone a half million dollars and then treat them as if they are an 18 year old in a college dorm? I was on an academic floor in college and still had a more lenient visitation policy. Is this meant to limit property damage? If I have the means to pay for a hotel room of that amount, I would surely have the means to pay for any damage as a result of having other people in the room. Not to mention that there would be no damage. I would hazard a guess that you don't want parties on your property, but a few extra women in their thirties giving gifts to an engaged friend and eating brie certainly isn't a cause for concern. Your complete and total disregard for your guests in this policy is alarming.

I would really like to touch base with a manager on this policy. It seems completely contrary to the Trump reputation and everything it stands for. However, I was unable to find Manager information (in addition to the "Gathering Policy") published on your website.

Thanks,
April

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So anyways, am I crazy? It is offensive to charge someone out the wazoo for something and then treat them with all the leeway of a middle schooler, no? I just don't get it.

Pics are from the Trump Hotel website

Knock, knock.... is this thing on?

OK, I have been a majorly bad blogger. At least my template is fixed now. But God only knows how long it was like that! I will say that life with a little one is even more busy than I expected, and when I get a spare minute I usually want to spend it playing with Emmett or catching up around the house (which I never actually get caught up on!) or catching up on z's (another thing I never actually get caught up on!)

While Emmett is *knock on wood* a pretty good sleeper, the craptastic part of life is that YOU NEED SLEEP EVERY DAY. So even if he sleeps through the night 6/7 nights, there is that one night that he gets you up and you feel like night of the waking dead for a few days. Lately he has been much more unpredictable than that, but still. Overall it could be much worse. The other awesome thing is that he has been getting up around 5 or 5:30, which is ridiculous. Who gets up at 5? Crazy people, that's who. And babies. And then there are the days that he wakes up at 4:30. Oy. Let's just say, those days are crazy long.

I can tell you one thing that is awesome, and that is having my couch back. Those months in the rental house without my furniture took their toll, and I will never ever take my couch for granted again. This house is so big though that we're rocking things like a folding table in the dining room and a tv tray as a nightstand in the guest room. If that's not classy I don't know what is.

We're currently in the process of dealing with a few things:

• Emmett has glasses and may need eye surgery for strabismus and amblyopia. It's pretty likely he'll need at least one surgery, and it's kind of likely that he'll need two. We're heading up to Chicago at the end of March for a fun weekend topped off with a second opinion at Children's Memorial.
  
• I'm heading to India for a work trip in March, so my two dudes will be on their own for two weeks. I'm feeling a little bad for the dudes, but they'll make it through.
• Emmett was recently diagnosed with a moderate wheat allergy, so I'm learning to adapt and feed him without wheat. We're not going too nutso over it since it's a moderate allergy. Yet it's still a major adjustment. Do you know what wheat is in? EVERYTHING!
• The leasing agency found someone to take over our lease in Greenwood - SCORE! So this next payment is prorated and then we'll get our security deposit back. So really, there won't be any more paying for a rental we don't live in! Woot!
• Thinking of buying a car. Drove some this weekend and I fell in love with a Prius V. For those of you that don't know, this is basically a station wagon. But so cute! And so energey efficient! I am in love! We'll wait until I get back from India though - no use in buying a new car to let it sit in a garage for weeks right off the bat.
  

Overall we are loving our new life in Indiana! Maybe my new pink and chevron setup with inspire me to write a little bit more :)

Technical difficulties!

VID00636 a video by agstratt on Flickr.

I know, I know, the stuff is jacked up. Now I have to go find a new template and install it. Stand by!

In the meantime, check out this video of my tiny baby. My BAAAAAAAYYYYYYBEEEEEEEEEEE!! Where did he go? Now he's been replaced with a small boy who yells and bites my finger when I brush his teeth.

I miss the baby smoke monster noises. At least during the daytime.

Busy Bee

DSC_8252, a photo by agstratt on Flickr.

Sir is a busy bee and won't sit still. I snagged him for a pic and he was all "DUDE! Must keep going!"

He likes to bang on my laptop too. Working, Mom!