Introducing Solids

I'm not a patient person, so when the doctor told us at the last check up that she could start solids between her fourth and fifth month, I bought a high chair, and Bella sat in said high chair every time my husband and I sat down for a meal.

Then I let her play with her baby spoons and bowls, and bottle that she wont drink from, to get her used to having her own eating utensils.

This bought me about a week and a half before I decided to buy her baby food... just to have on hand.

Well last night I cracked, five days before she turns four months old we tried solid foods. I think it went well, I have two videos below, one from her first attempt, and one from her second the following day.

Check it out. anodynes are the answer!

The Man Flue

This article posted today on MSNBC states that the "man flue" is a myth.

"While the stereotype that men moan and groan more loudly about their symptoms than women persists, at least one recent survey, however, exposes “man flu” as a myth. In a 2008 poll of more than 2,000 British adults, 85 percent of female respondents admitted they exaggerated their flu symptoms to gain extra compassion compared to just 76 percent of the men surveyed. About one third of the women also acknowledged feeling “more emotional” when battling winter sniffles as compared to just one in 10 men."

Having just suffered through a stomach bug only to have my husband catch it two days later can I beg to differ here? They asked the question wrong. Actually asking the question at all is useless.

Men don't think they are exaggerating. In my experience men truly believe their cough or cold or fever or stomach ache is that bad. Bad enough to where if I was feeling as bad as they claimed I'd be in a hospital or unconscious. Is that enough to get them to take a Tylenol when they have a headache? No, its apparently not that bad.

Men just seem to have no concept of pain. As a woman who has gone through labor (yay! I can use that now... yes I was drugged, but that still puts me ahead of any man on the pain scale) I can honestly say I have never complained or felt "as bad" as my husband when he gets a headache.

He was in fact shocked that labor didn't seem "that bad." (This earns him a glare, because while it wasn't as bad as I though it would be, it was easily the most difficult and painful thing I have ever done. I just handled it well.)

The frustrating thing, if he was to answer this survey he would say "Ah, I don't get sick much, but when I do it's no big deal." And answer no to the do you ever exaggerate question. I love how he is exponentially sicker depending on who is in the room.

He had pneumonia last year while attending school and fraternity events out of town. No one even knew he was sick. Later while home for vacation, he had a standard cold, no fever, just the sniffles and a headache, not even a cough and spent the whole time telling me he felt like death. If his mother happens to be up for a visit, heaven help us all, because he won't just feel like death, he will be having death throws.

If I mention it to him later, "ah, I wasn't that sick, what are you talking about."

Let me be clear, my husband is not exaggerating, or trying to get attention that he knows of on a conscious level. He really thinks its that bad. And later he really believes it wasn't. This is why the survey failed.

Are your husbands the same way

My new haircut

I've been spending frivolously the last few days and loving it. I've gotten my hair cut, ordered contacts, and bought a few new clothes. The spending must stop... tommorow, but in the meantime I'm feeling a lot more human. I forget how much I don't like wearing glasses until I have contacts. They make my face feel oily where the little nose holder things are.

As for my hair, I didn't actually want to cut it. It was down past my bra, and looking pretty long, but the ends felt like straw, so it had to be trimmed. The trimming took it to three or four inches past shoulder length... upper mid back I guess, but it looks so much healthier!

The eye doctor let me try on all the colored contacts. I'm really considering ordering a box of blue contacts, but its so much more expensive for such a small cosmetic effect. Contacts I can order without feeling too bad, but colored contacts... meh

The biggest spending I did was the most needed. I got mirena. I needed to before I switched insurance, and since my deductible has been met with Kaiser we are all cramming as much medicine as we can get until the first. My husband and I both had our physicals, the baby is scheduled for her checkup, and there will be no more babies for at least five years. We also have dental cleanings and eye exams (hence the contacts) and everything else our insurance offers us a discount on.

I feel so old, getting excited about eye exams and physicals.

If it's not raining Bella and I will be going to infant playtime at the library tommorow :D

Insurance

Well we are not renewing out insurance with Kaiser. We are having to seek another company. The rates just rose too much and we can't keep up. I'm surprisingly sad about this. I mean I knew I loved that insurance, and the doctor and everything about it really, but still, it's not like we're going without.

Kaiser has been good to me, but it hasn't been exactly honest. I said nothing when their 100% maternity coverage charged me one-thousand-five-hundred dollars for the hospital room, delivery, doctor, and anesthesia, because I was so impressed with the whole experience. Between different family emergencies I've spent a lot of time in hospitals visiting over the last few years, and I've never seen a more positive and responsive staff as I had. It was worth it.

I do take issue with their "free coverage for children under age 2." It says on my plan my daughters well baby visits are free and her regular checkups are $25. What they don't tell you is that it's "free" after you add your child to the plan, boosting your premium up $150 a month.

With that added charge, and the $100 rise in the premium for this year, we couldn't renew.

The facilities and staff are wonderful, the language is a little tricky, but I should have known better than to take what was written at face value, and read deeper into the plan. It's actually worth the money, we just don't have it.

I wish we did. Now to hunt for another doctor for my baby.

Mom's Groups

I finally did it. I went on meetup.com and found a local mothers group in athens. I'm so glad I did, I went to my first meet up today and I had a blast. It was just a playgroup at one of the mothers homes, the kids played with play dough and water colors, Bella was of course too young to participate but she watched with avid interest.

I got to meet more mothers and have grown up conversations :) Maybe even go see some chick flicks with other women.

Incidentally I saw Sherlock Holmes this weekend, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The entire time I was watching I kept thinking "wow, the characters remind me of House and Wilson," which means the writers of House modeled him very well. I enjoyed this fresh take on the adventures.

Sherlock Holmes the books were interesting but very very dry. I much prefer modern day adaptations, which I suppose makes me a bad English Graduate. Meh, I'll survive the shame. Classic literature is written in boring classic language. Half the challenge is reading it well enough to understand the very interesting plots. If people rewrite or rework it in a way that captivates the larger audience of today like it once captivated the larger audiences of a hundred years ago, power to them.

There's modernizing, and then there's destroying. Sherlock Holmes modernized, Ella Enchanted destroyed. (Evil Uncle? a snake? can they even pretend its the same story? It wasn't a bad plot movie wise, but it wasn't Ella Enchanted.) The writers of this film understood the difference.

Also read a new book this weekend. Angelic, by Kelley Armstrong. It was more of a novella, but very well written with a cohesive and fun plot. Overall I've had a great weekend :)

My Pal Violet

I'm not getting paid for my opinion, I wish I was. I wasn't even asked to write these reviews, I'm just doing it for fun. Bella has tried a lot of new things in the last three months, and I'm going to spend the next blog or two talking about them.

Most recent toy is Violet. Violet is technically intended for 6 month olds, but Bella loves Violet. Violet was plugged into our computer and given Bella's name, favorite color, favorite food (milk is sadly not an option) and favorite animal. Violet talks, sings, and plays with Bella using a variety of personal information. You can print off coloring sheets and activities for violet online as well.

Bella stares and stares at violet. She tries to eat her, coos to her, and grabs at her. It's the most I've seen her interact with a toy... ever.

It's awesome

Bella's other top rated toys include:

Tummy time mat, by bright starts, its actually more of an activity center shaped like a flower with the arches of toys over it. Bella just stares and stares at the big yellow flower that sings, and rolls over to see it.

Winnie the pooh swing. She loves the mobile, and she falls asleep in like a minute. I love the different speed settings on the swing, and its very sturdy.

Bright starts car seat toy bar, Bella bats at it the whole trip. I think she's playing with it... I hope she's not just annoyed that its in her face

Sick

I had a great weekend... up until I got sick. My mil came to town, so my husband and I got to go see a movie and go out to dinner. We saw avatar in 3d. Awesome movie, btw. My husband didn't care for the environmentalist overtones, but conceits that it was a great movie despite them.

He's being silly. There weren't many, and they were unique to that planet.

We're not anti-planet. We like the planet, we recycle, and take the bus when possible, and even have those twisty light bulbs. We could be considered green, we're just tired of hearing about it.

We still remember the global cooling scare (mostly thanks to outdated text books in elementary school) and we have a fairly decent science background, and even if we didn't, all of the movies, and products, and talking to death, and lets not forget the hyper expensive green baby movement (really?) just make us tired of hearing about it.

Anyhow, it was a great movie, everyone should see it. In 3d it was amazing. It had a concise and well designed plot, good character development, and was very well paced.

I also got a rocking chair :)

Then I got super sick. Now, when I'm sick, I google what's wrong, and and read everyone else's graphic accounts of it, so I would like to return the favor. The following will be TMI

You have been warned

I felt very full the night before, but I had eaten a lot and didn't think much of it. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning feeling queasy. I woke my husband and asked if he could get me a small glass of soda to sip on so I could feel better, and I finished feeding the baby. By the time my husband got up, I had run to the bathroom and thrown up more than I remember throwing up in awhile... I was pregnant 3 months ago... I've thrown up within the last year, this was worse.

I brushed my teeth and rinsed with mouthwash and stumbled back to bed, where my husband whisked the baby away and after a brief "are you pregnant?" discussion, gave me my soda to get the taste out of my mouth and left me to get back to sleep.

I remember optimistically thinking that at least it was over and attributing it to too much excitement and junk food as had often happened in my teenage years, and going back to sleep.

15 minutes later I was up again violently projectile vomiting the soda. I almost made it to the bathroom, made it to the door in fact, and then it came.

I didn't know such force was possible. There was soda dripping from the ceiling. The wall was covered, the toilet actually had a fair amount in it, which considering I was across the room when it happened was kind of impressive. I was just glad it was soda, soda is possibly the only thing I've ever drank or eaten while sick that doesn't come back up completely disgusting.

I mean don't get me wrong, I wouldn't drink it, but its a welcome relief after throwing up popcorn, you know?

Anyhow, I stripped down, and used my clothes which were fairly covered to wipe up most of the mess and grabbed my handy dandy clorox wipes and wet swifter to handle the rest. I took a shower, braided my hair, and used my automatic shower cleaner and bleach spray to take care of the shower, just in case.

I've never been so glad to have that stuff

Then I went back to bed

and was up about every fifteen minutes either throwing up, experiencing diarrhea or both simultaneously (fun). I had a new experience, waking up to diarrhea, uncontrolled... yuck. I went through two sets of sheets and thats all I will say about that, except that it freaked me out enough to call kaisers advice nurse who told me that was common with this bug and to drink lots of fluids and have faith it will pass.

I had a fever of 101.7 despite 2 Tylenol every 4 hours, and was throwing up constantly from 8 am to 3 p.m., then the diarrhea lasted until about 6. After that I still felt sick but was recovering.

My husband stayed in the living room with his mom and my baby, feeding her pumped milk. He brought me drinks every so often, and after much begging got me some Gatorade from the gas station. (we had only milk, soda, and water, none of which are great while sick. ever throw up water? not fun) He volunteered to go right away, but remember the now means now conversation? I asked at 12, he got it for me at 2. I felt like I was dying of thirst. I've never been so thirsty before, ever. Not even in labor, and I was super thirsty during labor. I compared the whole experience to labor, and actually if you ignore the pushing part of labor, (you know, the painful part) this was worse, and I had back labor... drugged back labor, but still.

My mil left about when I finally got some sleep in, so I missed her going. I felt sorry for myself for awhile, everyone visiting out there, and me stuck in my throw up room. I missed my baby. I cleaned up, and went out to the living room a few hours later and spent some time with her, feeding her so she could get the anti bodies, and snuggling with her more than I should have.

Still feeling rough two days later, and now my husbands sick.

I feel bad really, but is it wrong that I'm sort of happy that he's thanking me so profusely for getting him Gatorade (asap) and telling me he had no idea it was this bad? Meh, maybe a little. I think pregnancy numbed him to me being sick, he saw me with morning sickness all the time, and I was always up and ready to go shortly after.

Now he knows better

Sorry for the nonupdates, sick as a dog... Will write when I am feeling better... Can't wait to be feeling better

Now means now

My husband doesn't understand the word now. It didn't used to bother me, but then I didn't breastfeed every other hour before and now never mattered as much as it does now. When I'm hungry, I need to eat, now. So I get up to make a sandwhich, "Oh don't worry about than hon," he'll say, "I was going to make us dinner."
Awesome. Super sweet, and very thoughtful, so I'll start to clean up the house, or do some other item on my to-do list. If it's something he can help with, he'll tell me not to worry about some part of it, like putting away dishes, or taking out trash, he'll do that.
Great, very thoughtful. I love my husband. I'll go do some work, and he'll mention that he's about to make dinner, why don't we just eat together. Fair enough, let me change the baby, nah, I'll do that, I haven't gotten to spend much time with her today.
But before he gets started on any of that, he has to finish exercising, or fixing something, or studying. And before you know it, the baby wakes up hungry, so I go change her, and feed her, and while I'm feeding her he finishes dinner and I can't eat for another thirty minutes because I don't have free hands. Then I eat cold dinner, and he hangs out with my while I eat, and then we go to sleep, leaving the house to be cleaned up for tommorow, so then we have two bags of trash, and no clean dishes, or laundry, or whatever. This can go on forever! The kitchen can be full of trashbags, there can be dishes all over the place, he'll let the baby sit in a dirty diaper for hours and hours. When I'm not home and he watches her, he'll go the whole time without feeding her or changing her sometimes when he gets sidetracked, and be shocked when I get home that so much time has passed.
I love my husband, and I hate to complain, but when I need to do something, it's now. My blood sugar has been going nuts while breastfeeding. So what I should have done is just made my sandwhich, cleaned the house, and finished my work, and changed the baby, and then fed her. Then instead of stressing about everything I didn't do while my head is pounding and I'm getting a shorter and shorter temper, I'd be able to relax.
But then his feelings are hurt if I say no thank you. I've tried just saying, oh, I'm getting a snack or something, but he maintains he's about to make dinner right now. He doesn't get that time passes while he does stuff. It never mattered before, but babies don't wait. He generally eats twice a day, and never gets anything done around the house because he gets so wrapped up in whatever it is that he's working on. I can't do that.
I hate to say this, but I'm so glad school starts for him tommorow. Having him home completely throws my schedule. I know he's trying to help, but how can I turn him down without hurting his feelings? How can I get him to understand how this whole baby clock thing works?
She doesn't always eat every other hour, sometimes its 3 or 4, but I have to assume its every two. It gets really frustrating when we have to go somewhere. I'll get her ready, and fed, and while I'm feeding her he'll get started on some other thing that he just has to finish before we leave, and then our outing gets cut short, because the baby is hungry again, and my husband doesn't understand how that happened so fast. Clocks are meaningless to him, because it doesn't feel like time passed. I remember life being like that, it's not now though, and I don't know how to get him adjusted to the change

Dog Poop

I never have inbetween neighbors. My neighbors either always suck, or are the greatest people ever. Two of my former neighbors from apartments we've lived in are great friends of ours. Both are expecting new babies in February, and we visit both everytime we go through Atlanta.
Before that we had the crazy cat lady who would come to my shop every day and ask for office supplies, the couple who lived below us who called the police every night because we were too loud walking from one room to another (even when we weren't home) and had us terrified to turn on the television because if conversations and walking were too much, god forbid we actually have music playing or watch a movie in our living room, and the neighbors who lived in the haunted house next to my mothers (each resident left under mysterious circumstances, more on that later)
Here, we have a whole new catagory of crappy neighbors. There's the college kids who live below us, who play drunk tag on the staircase at 3:00 am, and listen to the radio in their car loudly at night, but then bang on the ceiling when the baby cries in the am hours.
There's the people who live across from us who lock their 2 year old outside when he's bad, and listen to him pound on his door screaming for an hour (most likely only 10 minutes, but it feels like an hour) and there's the dog poop lady who lets her dogs pee on our rug, and poop on the stairs, and sidewalk, even though there are bushes right by her door, and a whole wooded area five feet away that the dog can happily poop in without getting in anyones way. The same dogs who are in a cage all day or something because every minute they are inside howl, and the same woman who listens to loud basey music at all hours of the night, and always parks in the front parking spot.
I think there is a special place in hell for inconsiderate neighbors. If I believed in karma and past lives, I'd wonder if I was in that special place right now, and what I ever did to deserve these people to live on my planet, much less in my building?

Mea Culpa

I have spoken to the commenter in the previous post who works for autozone, and have learned that autozone does in fact sell used batteries for $20, legitimately. The employee I spoke to was either joking, or it is highly likely I misunderstood entirely. My apologies to autozone and autozone employees.
The keyboard for my mac is no longer functioning, so I'm not going to be able to put more photos of Bella up until we buy a replacement.
My husband has spent the last week doing his mandatory volunteer work for pharmacy school with the red cross at various blood drives. The last two, on New Years Eve, and New Years, were at the mall of Georgia. Bella and I accompanied him for his shifts and spent the last two days shopping. Well window shopping, as we can't afford to buy much, but I did purchase two baby books by Karen Katz at the Waldenbooks that is going out of business.
I hate it when bookstores close :( It makes me feel guilty. Guilty because most of the time I go into book stores, browse for books, and sit in the coffee shop with a snack and a hot chocolate and read my iphone's kindle application.
I love books, but they take up so much space, and are several dollars more than the kindle versions. We're planning on moving summer of 2012, and then again in 2013, so I'm very aware of how much space things are taking up. Everything in the storage closet is already packed, boxed and labled, and next year as we use things (Holiday decorations and the like) we will be packing those up. As is my books take up tremendous ammounts of space, and I can't justify taking up anymore.
Bella's books I can justify. She's a baby, she can't read kindle yet, but when she can, she'll get kindle books. It's just easier. I've spent the last year donating books I'll never read again to the library, keeping books I want for Bella to read one day and packing them up, and replacing any torn or worn books on my kindle, and replacing any books I have with free kindle downloads. I've cut my bookshelves down from three shelves to one. One shelf was broken so we got rid of it, and the other we use for Bella's books and toys. I've kept anything autographed, and sentimental, other than that my bookshelf is getting slimmer and slimmer. I have to keep evaluating my book shelf, because my husband keeps getting textbooks from pharmacy school that he needs to keep. It's been going great, and there is so much less clutter in my house already that it's amazing. I like packing as we go.
But I still feel guilty when I'm at bookstores. I support their coffee shops at least, and their childrens sections, but how many other people like me are switching to electronic readers? I was sad enough watching the downfall of the independant book store, but bookstores in general? It's depressing.