Fletcher: 3 months, plus bonus HATSTRAVAGANZA

So. Three months. Apparently, the mantra for the rest of my life will be "Where does all the time go?"

Our little Peanut is doing great. He has his fussy moments, but for the most part, he is still a happy little guy. Lots of "talking" and smiles, squeals and laughs. He has excellent head/neck control, and so loves to be upright, whether in his bumbo chair or when we're wearing him in one of the carriers or sitting on a lap. He's also gotten good at grasping things, especially if you touch them to his fingers. His playmat/gym thingy has a monkey hanging from it and he spends a lot of time pulling on it. Because we are twelve, Mr. Fantastic and I giggle like loons when one of us says "Look, he's yanking the monkey!"


Fletcher has also gotten the hang of rolling over, although he doesn't do it a lot. He's pretty content to lie on his back, but he hates tummy time, so he's pretty good at flipping himself over to his back. He's much happier doing tummy time when we lay him on our own tummies. He also does the little mini-pushup thing and rests on his elbows.

Since he was born, when it's time for him to eat, we have always called it "Yum-yums." As in, "Time for yum-yums, baby!" And he may not recognize his own name yet, but he sure as heck knows what yum-yums is. He can be fussy or crying or whatever, and we'll say "time for yum-yums!" and he will stop whatever he is doing and lift his eyebrows and look around for mommy. And then he'll open his mouth when Mr. F brings him to me. The downside to this is that if we accidentally say "yum-yums" and the yum-yums are not forthcoming in the next minute, we move immediately to Defcon 5. You can bet we didn't slip up often once we learned that. Also, "boob" has become a verb. As in, "Well, lets go for a walk now so I can boob him at 3."

Sometime in this last month Fletch suddenly decided he doesn't like his binky (the pacifier) anymore. I know there are whole books written on this subject and many, many people who feel babies should never use a binky. But when the other alternative is your boob, it sure would be nice to have the binky sub in. Luckily, he seems to find a pinky an acceptable substitute, so at least Mr. F can take over.

While he's pretty great at sitting up in his bumbo chair, he's not real good at sitting on his own yet.

Still a little top heavy.

















Success! And a little bit of a smile.






















Peanut, being the sartorial genius he is, has a lot of hats. Many of which he doesn't get the opportunity to wear that often, especially now that the weather's nice, so I decided to take pictures of Peanut in his hats for posterity. I have to say, he tolerated the pictures for hatstravaganza extremely well. Mr. F would like you to know this is his favorite bib in these pictures. It's a polar bear!



The bee hive hat. How cute is this? That's a little row of bee buttons going up the front.




















His other baseball hat, which is a bit bigger than the one he usually wears. But which is nonetheless darling.





















Ride 'em cowboy! He is clearly thinking, "Look, lady, I'll wear the hat. But don't you dare put me anywhere near a horse."


















Winter cap with a dinosaur on it. "I have just seen the pile of hats you have over there..."





















An absolutely adorable hat my friend Erin knitted him. I wish he could wear this hat every day. "OMG, what is sprouting from my head?"




















"Hmm...actually, this is quite fetching. I can see why the bringer of the boobie juice likes it."



















Traditional baby bonnet. He'll probably wear this a lot this summer since it's so light even though it looks pretty old fashioned. "Lady, what year do you think this is? Bring back the ball cap."




















Another winter hat that I adore. "Ah! The fetching sprouty one in blue. Very nice."



















Reversible summer hat. "How YOU doin'?"





















"Good lord, I have just seen the inside of this hat!"





















And this hat, which he has worn only for this picture and probably never will again. It's one of those painter-style caps with flaps in the back, very reminiscent of the 80s. It reminds me of Russ from European Vacation. Probably not the look we're going for this summer. "Duuude."





















So that's it from the world of Peanut for this month.

Fletcher: Two months (and a bit)

Ok, more like ten weeks, but who's counting? Either way, it's still hard to believe my little guy is already two and a half months old. I have to ask again, where does the time go?

Fletch is grand and growing like a weed. He is a skinny boy, but I think that's mostly because he's long (tall?) and we just can't fatten him up fast enough to keep up. He is outgrowing clothes already (!!) but it's funny because they are clothes which he never filled out around the middle but which are too short. If they have feet on them, he can't straighten his legs but has room for an entire pillow to be stuffed around his tummy. It makes me sad though, to already have to set aside some of those teeny tiny outfits that I love so much. My favorite bear suit may only have one more wearing left. (Which I suppose is ok anyway, considering it's May now and he prolly doesn't need to be quite so bundled up!)

I got nervous for a while and tried to feed him extra, but to no avail. At his two-month doctor appointment Fletch was in the 15th percentile for weight and the 85th for height. Dr. Matt says not to worry and that he is likely just destined to be a tall, skinny kid. Who ever would have thought any child of mine would be both tall and thin? At his one month he was about 8 pounds, at the two month around 10, and I'd bet he's already at 11 by now. And 24 inches long! He's no longer my tiny burrito.

OMG, my whole life is going to be like this now, isn't it? One milestone after another and at some point I'm going to have to let him out of the house alone, aren't I?

People keep asking if he's sleeping through the night...I don't even know what that means anymore. The books classify it as a 5-6 hour stretch at night, which, NO, we are not doing. Sometimes we get a 4 hour stretch without having to feed him at night, but that's not often. He's still eating every 2 1/2 to 3 hours around the clock but it's gotten easier to live my life around that schedule. Plus I have gotten better at dozing/napping when I feed him at night, so in all I am feeling pretty well rested.

We also had Fletch's first round of vaccinations at his last appointment. He did a great job! I was all prepared for an unhappy baby the whole day, but he hardly even cried. Mr. Fantastic helped hold him while two nurses gave him simultaneous shots. He cried briefly but calmed down right away when they handed him back to me and I gave him a bottle with some sugar water. As a matter of fact, I cried harder and longer than he did! What a trooper.

Fletcher smiles all the time now - it's hard to catch it on camera still, but we did get a great video a few weeks ago.


As you can see, he continues to be the Cutest. Baby. Ever. More photographic evidence here. In addition to the smiling, he also laughs all the time - one of my favorite things ever is when I am feeding him, and he's all peaceful and sucking away with his eyes closed, and then he will pause - eyes still closed - and start laughing around his mouth full of boob. I wonder what's going through his little baby head to make him laugh so. I would video it for you but again, it would require showing you more of my clown porn boobs than I'd like.

He's also started "talking" in earnest. When we get up in the morning, he's particularly chatty and we have long conversations that involve him laughing like a fiend as I repeat his gurgles back to him. Also, he has inherited my laugh-snort. It is spectacularly adorable.

Peanut: Grr?
Me: Grr!
Peanut: heeheehee!...Ghee?
Me: Ghee!
Peanut: heeheeheeSNORT!
Me: *heart melts*

We had a lovely Mother's Day and I got a gift certificate for a mani/pedi at my favorite place from Fletch (he had a little help from Daddy picking it out.)

Being a mom is the best thing I've ever done in my life. Here are some reasons why:

So I forgot to tell you that my brother is home from the hospital and doing great. We actually got to bring him home last Friday (the 17th) - can you imagine, having brain surgery on a Monday and going home by Friday? Last time he was in the hospital for almost two weeks and on the ventilator for like five days.

The nurses told him that it was not being on the vent that made such a difference. Apparently, the ventilator really takes a toll on your body and you get really weak. The difference in him between last time and this time is astounding. He felt so good when he got home, in fact, that he decided to start his next round of chemo right away, so he went in on the 21st for that. I couldn't be more thrilled with his progress, and he is in such better spirits this time around as well, which I think can only do good things for his recovery. So keep your fingers crossed that things keep going well!

~~~

Sadly, it has already been two months and my maternity leave is over. I started back to work today, but luckily I have sneakily been checking my inbox during my leave and deleting stuff that I don't need to take care of. So the potentially scary inbox situation was luckily under control. Plus, the cool thing my company does is give you a "transition week" your first week back, where you only work half time but get paid for the full week. Peanut and I have somewhat settled into a routine and I am sad to have to chage it. Hopefully we'll be able to fit work into our busy schedule of eating, sleeping and pooing.

Speaking of eating, sleeping and pooing...I haven't been doing much of any of them lately. This unfortunately landed me in the ER again last night with that same stomach pain/gallbladder thing that I had back in August. Since we are now getting it down to an art form, some pain meds and a couple hours of IV fluids to rehydrate me, and I was good as new. I think what we are learning from this is that I really have got to look after my diet better. And apparently, since I'm breastfeeding, I need to drink sixteen glasses of water a day as opposed to the usually recommended eight. Unfortunately, it hit me at about 1 a.m. and so we didn't get home until almost 5. And Peanut, while he was so good at the hospital, was fussy as soon as we got home and didn't really let us get much in the way of sleep. Very glad I didn't have to do a lot at work today because I was pretty useless until after noon.

That's pretty much it for me...Peanut is two months old now - where did the time go? I'll post more about his second month later, but in the mean time, let me leave you with this picture.

Surgery success!

Thanks to all of you who sent you wishes and good karma our way. Steve's surgery went great. And even better, they took him off the ventilator before he woke up and aren't keeping him sedated for several days like last time. Major improvement over the previous surgery! I know the vent was one of the things Steve was dreading - last time he was conscious for a few days while on the vent and it was absolutely horrible for him. Although it does your breathing for you, it made him feel like he couldn't breathe and so he was constantly fighting it. It was awful to see him like that, so that makes it easier on his loved ones also.

So, he is already awake and alert and feeling good (obvious headache notwithstanding) and in much better spirits. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that the rest of his recovery goes just as smoothly.

Steve - surgery

Steve is having his second brain surgery tomorrow. We're picking him up at 5:30 to go to the hospital for check in and an MRI and then surgery is scheduled for 8 a.m. They expect to be done around 1 p.m. The tumor is basically in the same place as last time, so this should be pretty similar. They'll likely keep him sedated and asleep for several days while he's on the ventilator and hopefully we won't have any of the same complications as before.

Please keep him in your thoughts tomorrow and send us any spare good karma!

Maybe the Grumpy Face was better.

So we finally were able to snap a picture of Peanut without his usual Grumpy Face. The result:

Fletcher: One Month

I can't believe it's already been a whole month. I've been somebody's actual mother for a month! What an amazing adventure it's been. I have no idea what we did with all our time before we had a baby but every minute spent with him is an absolute joy. Yes, even the times when he's crying (which, so far, is thankfully not all that often). I've posted some more pictures in the Peanut Gallery so you can continue to see that he is indeed the cutest baby ever.

Our little Peanut is growing so fast - already over 8 lbs, which is great because he lost quite a bit of weight right after he was born and got down to 6 pounds something in the hospital. We are breastfeeding and have been on a schedule of about every three hours, but recently he's been wanting to eat as often as every 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The non-scary books say this is probably a growth spurt.

Breastfeeding is an adventure of its own. It took some doing to get started - as part of the larger birth story that I will someday relate, let me just say that I got very dehydrated in the hospital and that caused my milk to be sluggish which in turn caused the baby to lose a lot of weight and enormous frustration for both of us - but we seem to have gotten the hang of it. My Boppy pillow is fabulous and Mr. Fantastic and I seem to have learned Fletcher's hungry cues. This is useful because if we wait too long, our happy little baby will go from precious snuffling and lip smacking to wailing Defcon 5 BOOB BOOB MUST HAVE BOOB NOW in the blink of an eye.

There is nothing like hearing your baby cry from hunger to make you feel like a giant flaming failure as a parent. A week or two ago, I was driving him home from my mother-in-law's close to feeding time and he made the transition to Defcon 5 on the way. It was the most horrible, awful feeling, driving with Fletch wailing in the back seat, knowing that I'd be home in 15 minutes and would be able to feed him then but that he was hungry NOW and I couldn't do anything about it. He started crying and then I started crying and trying to reach into the back seat to comfort him...ugh, it was awful. And I felt so horrible, like he was going to hold it against me or think I was starving him on purpose. Of course I know that he won't even remember, let alone think the world is a terrible place where his mother abandoned him to STARVE TO DEATH, but it's hard not to feel that way in the face of your baby's pitiful cries.

He cried himself out and fell asleep after less than ten minutes, but it was the longest ten minutes of my life. And when I got him out of the back seat, I discovered that he'd cried so hard his hat fell off and I felt horrible all over again. Thankfully, we are mostly on top of keeping him fed, so we don't have a lot of Defcon 5 moments. I do still pretty much cry every time he cries and we can't fix it despite the fact that I know sometimes babies just cry and it's no reflection on us.

So the breastfeeding is going well, although I have started getting upper back aches from hauling around these enormous boobs. Seriously, I thought that at size 34 H, I was big before. Ha. Those boobs were a walk in the park compared to my boobs now. My boobs now are like giant porn star clown boobs. And yes, they are WAY bigger than Peanut's whole head. I don't know how he isn't scared of them, but instead, they are his most favorite place in the world. When he's eating and it's time to take him off the boob, he does this adorable little nom-nom-nom turtle mouth thing chasing after it and trying to get back on. I would video it for you but the video would also have to include a whole lot of my clown boob, which I am just not willing to share.

Mr. Fantastic is an awesome dad. He loves this kid so much I can't even tell you. Not that I expected any different, but I can't even explain how much it fills my heart to see them together. My heart goes all *meep-clench-eee* whenever Mr. F shows me our baby he's holding and says, "Isn't he the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?" I never knew I could love two people so much. My little family. ♥

Aside from being an awesome dad, Mr. F has also been an awesome hubby and unbelievable help to me. Breastfeeding really takes a lot out of you (or me, anyway - I am so tired and constantly eating, trying to keep up my energy and milk supply) so Mr. F basically does everything else. Makes me sandwiches, gets me drinks, helps clean up, does all the laundry, and so many other things, but especially, he is the Diaper King. Changes Peanut halfway through each feeding (which is like 8-10 times a day) and has become such an expert already that I call him Quick Draw. We both keep telling each other that we feel like the other is doing all the work. So far, I think we make a pretty good team.

We had bath time recently, which was a tag-team event and went extremely well - Peanut didn't cry once, despite some obvious dubiousness at the start.

Peanut has achieved several of the milestones the book says he should or may be able to do by now, including gaining some head/neck control, focusing on a face, following an object, making noises other than crying, smiling and bringing his hands together in front of him. Unfortunately, we can't seem to get a picture of him smiling - the camera seems to promote Grumpy Face.

We did, however, get a photo of him with his hands together and discovered that this makes him look uncannily like Mr. Burns.

Mostly though, he's just about the cutest thing you ever saw. ♥♥♥

Mission Accomplished: The Peanut has landed!

Hooray! We finally welcomed Peanut to the world on Saturday, Feb 28 at 12:56 a.m., almost a whole week past the due date. Fletcher Steven Farley weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and is 21 inches long. And, incidentally, is the cutest baby ever. I have photographic evidence.

All of you who suggested my lower back ache was back labor were indeed correct. At some point, Peanut flipped himself face up (otherwise known as "sunny side up"), which puts lots of pressure on your lower back and tailbone and hurts like the dickens. There was some minor drama during delivery, which if I ever have the energy again, I will tell you more about, but all in all, everything turned out well and we are both doing great.

Will check in more as Peanut allows!

Still here...still pregnant

Week 41

Hi! Yep, still pregnant. Had a dr. appt. on Monday, regular visit plus we went ahead and did the membrane sweep. I will not lie, it sucked. Somewhat painful and pretty unpleasant. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to have done anything...usually if it's going to jumpstart labor, it will do so within 48 hours. So I guess me and Peanut are just not quite ready to part ways yet. Doesn't mean I'm not doing my best to evict him anyway!

I have been having lots of low back pain since then, and also what I think are contractions in my belly. But the stuff going on in front is nowhere near as painful as the low back pain, so I don't know what that really means. I was under the impression that if the baby is turned the right way (which Peanut supposedly is) then you don't have back labor, but that could be wishful thinking. The back pain usually goes away after a nice rub from Mr. F and the front pain tends to go away on its own. I'm guessing things are progressing and we are getting under way but I don't think we're too close yet. Who knows!

I'm scheduled for another appointment on Friday, where they'll do an ultrasound to check fluid levels, another NST and something called a biophysical profile, which I guess is part of the ultrasound.

They'll also want to talk about scheduling an induction, which they know I don't want to do but they don't like to let you go past 42 weeks. Today I am 40 weeks 3 days, so technically, I have until March 8 before I am 42 weeks. I'm sure they would like to schedule me the first week of March but I would like to put it off until the second. Steve has chemo the first week of March and I was sort of hoping not to be having the baby when he was feeling crappy. So if I could have the baby before the 3rd it would be great (hint hint, Peanut!), if not, then I'd like to wait until the 8th when Steve will hopefully be feeling better after the chemo.

These last few days practically everyone I know has called or texted me (some of them multiple times) to see if I've had the baby (and possibly forgotten to let them know!) and I feel so bad when I have to tell them I have nothing to report yet. My doctor told me at the very beginning not to tell anyone my actual due date because everyone would start coming out of the woodwork wanting to know if I'd had the baby yet, and she wasn't kidding! It's sweet that everyone is so excited, but I really do feel kind of bad saying, nope, no baby...and no idea when, either.

Also, I have been advised by both my sister-in-law and Mummy Fantastic that we need to be having sex to get Peanut going and I had to tell them both we've tried to no avail. Also thus far unsuccessful: walking, swimming, bouncing, nipple stimulation, pineapple, red raspberry leaf tea, evening primrose oil, chinese food, bribery, pleading, threats. I am considering acupuncture at this point! (which I have actually done before - obviously not to induce labor - but I found it very relaxing, so it might not be a bad idea.)

So! Keep your fingers crossed that Peanut will see his way to joining us in the real world in the near future. Will keep you posted as always!

Dear Peanut:
Okay! Today is d-day. Or b-day, whatever. So really, ANY TIME now would be great. Especially if it means this back ache will go away. Plus, Mr. Fantastic says I can't be having you tomorrow because Tottenham v. Hull City is on. You know we wouldn't want Daddy to miss that. And you know, it would be totally awesome if you didn't make us wait until next week or anything. I'm just saying.

Dear Battlestar Galactica:
Yeah. Still watching but there're only 4 more episodes, so I might as well. But you continue to be mysterious and confusing and a whole lotta work for not much reward. Maybe we're just not right for each other...maybe I'm too old and unhip to understand your depths. Maybe some people like having to figure you out, but that's not me. I watch t.v. so I don't have to think.

Dear Stargate Atlantis:
Oh, I miss you. My Friday nights will never be the same. Yes, there are other things I can watch, but they're not like you. Those things will never replace you; they take too much work. You were easy to love, with your pretty and your splodey and your shiny stories that nobody ever needed to draw me any kind of chart to decipher.You will always have my heart.