yu-burnett.com

First, a video compilation of three videos I took of Matthew getting his groove on. Lately he’s been inviting me to dance as well – it’s great fun! Until he asks you to pick him up and then your back hates you.

We are all doing well here. It’s been raining, which is nice because we sorely need it, but not nice because it kind of limits what we can do. I think I have wimped out on weather a lot since moving out here – I used to not get ticked until there was a big old snowstorm, but nowadays, toting an umbrella around makes me a tad bit miffed. Can anyone say “spoiled”?

Anyway, the kiddos are great. Matthew is in speech therapy and is doing well. He’s also sick – bronchiolitis – and sounds like he’s been smoking for 20 years. Otherwise, he’s good. We’ve gotten a referral for an ENT evaluation to see if maybe he needs tubes in his ears since he’s got chronic fluid there. Ick. Hopefully if we can remedy the fluid in his ears he will pick up on his language.

Lindsey is doing well. In a little bit I am going to get her ready for bed. This is the Baby Who Sleeps – we can put her down, awake and swaddled, and she will fall asleep on her own. She naps two great naps a day and sleeps from 7ish pm until 6ish am, with a few wake-ups in between but even so, just having a schedule in place makes me feel like a whole new person!

Josh and I went out last week on a Date (shh, don’t tell my husband) – Josh’s grandmother and cousins came over to babysit while we snuck out and caught the movie “Doubt” which was great, and then all of us went out to dinner, which was Korean barbecue, also great. It was nice to go see a movie, if only so I didn’t spend the entire time talking about the baby.

And that’s about it. I ordered some new fabric so at some point this week I need to sit down and start making stuff and get my sewing groove back. I’ve been trying to take a picture a day in 2009 and am pretty successful thus far! We’ll see how things pan out.

a) It’s 9:23pm. I put Matthew to bed two hours ago and he is still up. I suspect a variety of things:
- Matthew
- Age 2 (actually, a mom on my mom’s board says she’s seen something indicating a “wonder week” type of developmental spurt at 2.5 – I hope this is the case. DESPERATELY.
- sniffles – he has a head cold
- transition with Lindsey coming into his life

Nevertheless, the boy is still awake and it is irking me madly! He’s just sitting there near the door. When he is tired, he will go to sleep. Right? He can’t stay awake forever… or can he?

b) Matthew is week 3 into speech therapy and it’s going well, I guess – she does a lot of directed play with him and toys and makes him sit down and talk and is teaching him some signs.

c) So when I put M to bed tonight, around 7:15ish I put Lindsey down, awake but a bit groggy. She’s still asleep. I suspect she will wake soon to nurse, at which point I will move stealthy like ninja to change her diaper quietly, nurse her and put her back to sleep. I think the Prilosec is helping – she’s spitting up less – although still spitting up and still grunting and having a hard time with gas. She seems less farty lately, but has still shown traces of mucous and green in her diapers (sorry nonparents, that was kind of gross). I have eliminated dairy… except for a pecan shortbread cookie I ate yesterday and didn’t even realize I’d consumed dairy until this morning. So we will see.

d) My supply seems to be touch and go. I am debating whether or not to go back to this lactation support group I’ve been going to on Tuesdays (it’s $10 a session and I’m not sure exactly how much more help I need – we’ve got a latch down pat and it doesn’t hurt at ALL now, just pinches when she first latches on, but otherwise it’s peachy). I know she’s getting milk since she’s spitting it up (ugh). She’s definitely gained – she’s outgrown her NB sized sleepers (sob) but she still seems so impossibly tiny! Anyway, back to my supply – today feels like a low, but perhaps these last few days of constant nursing was her 6 week growth spurt? Is there one at 6 weeks? Have to go check kellymom. I have also noticed that if I have a lot of salty foods/soy sauce, things seem slower going the day after, so I have to make sure to buy low-sodium soy sauce – we had sushi last night and what can I say, I like soy sauce.

e) I finally broke out my sewing machine and sewed a quick and dirty mei tai for Matthew. Yesterday, Matthew came over to me with the mei tai and asked me to put it on (in his own language, sigh) and wear him, so I did. He is heavy. HEA-VEE. Afterward, I put his doll Quincy in it and tied the mei tai up for him to wear which he was perfectly happy to do. He was none too impressed with my sewing skills, but it was a fun adventure nonetheless. I miss sewing – with some creative boppy-pillow sitting, I could nurse Lindsey and sew at the same time. Woo!

Matthew’s first time in a meitai:

(more…)

a) Josh took the kids to the Berkeley Bowl to pick up a few things that Safeway didn’t have – he took both of them so I could get a break and nap. Yet, here I am, unable to sleep. Gah. So instead I bought a crockpot.

b) Lindsey’s on Prilosec right now to help with reflux. It is a drug that’s supposed to stop her belly from making acid, which may be working right now, but she keeps gurgling up my milk and that keeps all of us up at night. We’re kind of dying. Gurgle, spit, gurgle, spit. Blah. I am almost a week into dairy elimination, so we will see how this goes, but what else can we do? Just wait until her gurgle flap grows in? It sounds like she’s drowning. And it only happens at night. During the day, trace, but nothing nearly as bad as it is at night – and we have her sleeping propped up in a boppy pillow. I might try hanging her in one of these things next! (just kidding, I mean, really – not going to hang Lindsey at the Oakland Airport for us to get a good night’s sleep!)

c) I am a cow. I do nothing but nurse, nurse, nurse. She cluster feeds at night and goes maybe 90 min during the day, the occasional nap notwithstanding. If I weren’t fatigue-tired, I am most certainly physically-tired. I feel the life force draining out of me when she feeds! Hello overdramatic.

d) I remember how stoked I was that M settled into a nap routine and I am desperate for the same for Lindsey, although she feels too young for that. Maybe in the next few weeks or so we can transition her? I don’t know. But man, it would be nice to have a few hours, roughly, during the day where I wasn’t attached to a mouth. Or get dressed for the day before 1pm. Or shower more than 3 times a week.

e) I’m taking insulin again. I hate diabetes.

f) It’s 6:10, and I hope the kids haven’t killed Josh. I think they’re going to be great friends, they already tagteam each other brilliantly.

Happy Lunar New Year – Gong Xi Fa Çai, homeys.

Matthew had his 2.5 year well child check today. He is healthy, and exceeding weight and height on the growth chart 3′3″, 42lbs. – Dr. Lewis had to get a new chart that was bigger because it was confusing otherwise. Go M! Next WCC is age 3. He got the flu vaccine and Hep B (I think) vaccine, and is all caught up til kindergarten now. He seemed shocked and betrayed when he got his shots – he frowned but did not cry, but if he could he totally would have cussed me out.

His peeing thing – Dr. Lewis thinks he’s learning how to hold his urine and deposit en masse. She’s suggesting a timed potty training intro for him – offer him the potty after he wakes up, 10-20 min after he eats*, before we go out, when we come back and before bed – to get him used to the idea that people go to the potty.

Lindsey – she just had a weight check and is 7lbs 14oz! Yay! She is actually gaining fast now – the average they want to see is 1oz/day and she is at 1.28oz/day. Dr. Lewis thinks she a) has reflux, but it’s not bad right now as the vomiting doesn’t seem to bother her (and in the last few days she’s totally indifferent to it) and she’s gaining; and b) is not allergic to milk proteins – no blood in her stools, although the mucous in her stools indicates that she’s sensitive to something I am eating, which is not ruling out milk proteins as it might be a slight sensitivity. Based on this I am eliminating dairy from my diet and I am going to journal how she’s doing so if in a couple of weeks things are the same, I am going to go back to see Dr. Lewis and ask for a prescription for something for her. Right now both of us thought we should wait and see how she does as she both ages and as I tweak my diet.

She also has a teensy hemangioma on her right collarbone. Josh has the remnants of one on the back of his neck on the right. She says it is benign, it will get bigger and peak at age 2 at which point it will fade. Nothing to worry about. She comes back in a month for vaccines.

*She said that the vast majority of people poop 10-20 min after eating, and 70% of those people poop in the morning. How funny is that? That pattern describes me to a T!

Matthew is…

• 2 and a half years old
• 2 sessions into speech therapy (and is starting to understand some sign language, which is neat!)
• 6 months away from aging out of early intervention and if his language hasn’t improved, his care transfers to the local school district, which for some reason makes me worried
• 42.4 lbs. I kid you not.
• Growing out of 4T tops and pants and into 5T comfortably
• 1 great big brother – he kisses and hugs his little sister and is very possessive (”MINE!”)

Somewhere around the time Lindsey was born, Matthew seems to have gained 20 lbs and 10 inches and is such a big little boy. We go to the doctor’s on Monday for his 2.5 year check up and I am curious to see how much he has grown. He loves the doctor’s. He is also totally in puffy heart love with his speech therapist, Lauren. Cries inconsolably when she leaves.

Still loves his mama’s cuddles, which is really what’s important!

One of the upsides of maternity leave is the opportunity to take tons of pictures of my favorite subjects. Here is Lindsey’s tag, Matthew’s tag, and the stream in general.

A couple of my favorite pictures thus far:

Lindsey flips Matthew off:

Matthew loves kissing Lindsey. She’s not as enthralled. The next few years are going to be interesting, that’s for sure.

…that my baby could start morphing into an honest-to-goodness little person?

Deep down, though, he is still my little schmoo and I will look back wistfully at these days when I am his favorite person and he loves to randomly kiss, hug, and cuddle me. I can’t cuddle him when he’s 30, can I?

This has been a good weekend – despite feeling like a truck ran me over from here to the ends of the earth. Josh’s sister is in town, so we strongarmed her into babysitting our fussy toddler on Friday night while we ran away (oh yes, literally – I ran down the stairs and urged Josh to hurry behind me so M wouldn’t fuss as badly, although as we shut the door I heard a little wail coming from upstairs) to a delightful Cameroonian restaurant in south Berkeley. Delicious, and perhaps because of the food, or perhaps because we were starved rats, we ate really fast, and then headed over to Barnes & Noble in Emeryville to kill some time before the movie started – we saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Good movie, although to be honest I think I have seen entirely too much of Jason Segal’s penis.

Yesterday was a deliciously napful day. After Josh put Matthew down for a nap, we settled in to watch an episode of News Radio on DVD. Halfway through, I started conking out, and by the time I woke up a couple of hours later, Josh had done the grocery shopping and put them away.

Today, I woke up a little earlier than I would have liked (and it’s my morning to sleep in, which seems like the greater injustice!). We met Jera for brunch at the Thai Buddhist temple and ate oh so much food, and then hit the farmer’s market. It’s been a lazy Sunday afternoon – the best kind – and really, I couldn’t ask for anything more. Maybe a pony. Ponies are good.

I am having a blast these days – I am finally sitting down and scanning in pictures from years past – from when my mom was a kid – and also from high school and college. I am fascinated now by pictures of my uncle when he was a young boy, and also of my grandmother as a young woman and a new mother.

The most amusing thus far is this picture. Notice the little girl (ahem) behind the screen door screaming her head off because she was not going to be in the picture?

Now notice her son, almost 30 years later:

I recently found out that my uncles were not fraternal, but identical. It’s fairly evident when you see them in their younger years, but as adults, they were as different as different could be. Their voices were different – their body types different, and certainly their personalities (obviously not affected by genetics) were different.

What I would give to have known them at a younger age – before the stresses of adulthood and marriage and work and making ends meet created permanent furrows in their brows.