This Past Year, Summed Up

I knew that no matter how much or little I wrote in December (each month it seems like I post less and less), I HAD to write a "This time last year" post like I did last year. If I write quickly, I can make it in before the new year hits. ;)

This time last year...

-I was still pregnant

-We were still house hunting

-I couldn't have any alcohol

-I had only been knitting for a few months

-I still had two ovaries

-I had a salary/benefits


This year...

-Luke passed away and thus I got my second tattoo when Andy was here on leave

-We had our first baby!

-We bought our first house!

-I had my first-ever surgery

-We paid off our cars with money leftover from the house

-I'm back to working hourly, Dan's still job hunting


I just got back from a New Year's Eve party at Theo's parents' house, she's here on leave and has to go back tomorrow. I went to the party for a bit to hang out with her one last time before she flies home in the morning.

The lace is winning...

I'm long overdue for an update. I've been busy knitting Christmas presents and working, between those two things, I sleep. So here's a longish post about what I've been up to (attempting to finish before the baby wakes up!):

Christmas was wonderful! The people who got knitted presents all loved them (with the exception of one who I haven't seen yet) and I finished knitting the last present on Christmas Eve Eve, woot! My brother, sister-in-law, and nephew are all in town and were actually here for Christmas, which hasn't happened in several years. The rest of my family came over and we got a nice family picture, complete with four generations!

Joey thoroughly enjoyed himself, though he has not gotten the hang of opening presents. Mostly he just wants to eat them, with the paper on or off. The rest of the family spoiled him so much, I didn't bother to get him anything, so I bought my nephew Jimmy some books instead ;)

You know you're an obsessive knitter when getting yarn for Christmas excites you! My first-ever hank of yarn was a wonderful surprise from Theo--who knows my desire to knit myself a lace shawl. She knit a lace shawl using this exact type of yarn (different color) and said she had plenty so I'm knitting the same pattern. Currently, it's kicking my butt for unknown reasons, though probably because of the sheer number of stitches on my needles. I cast-on 273 and it took a while because it's not a standard cast-on that I'm used to, also it was 273 stitches! I had the correct number, did the set-up row correctly, but when I moved on to the first charted row, I ran into issues. I got to the center marker and had 3 extra stitches. Having no clue where I had made the mistake, I painstakingly un-knit (also referred to as tinked/tinking because "tink" is "knit" backwards) all 136 stitches and started the row over. Imagine my surprise when, for a second time, I arrived at the center marker with 3 extra stitches. Unwilling to tink all the way back again, I began counting in hopes that I could find the error somewhere else.

I had to Google, "What the heck do you do with a hank?"

Sure enough, there it was! My center marker was off by 3, phew! Row 1 continued with no other issues. Row 2 was just a purl row, easy peasy. Row 3 is where I'm currently paused. First time through, I got to the center marker and had 1 extra stitch. Remembering my last issue, I decided to count and look over my stitches before tinking back. Sadly, I found the mistake quickly because it was one of my first few stitches. Aaaaaalllllllll the way back I tinked, stopping to curse every several stitches, fixed my error and continued. Devastation hit me when I reached the center marker again because I was off by 1 again, but this time I was missing 1! Deciding not to tink back again was an easy decision because missing a stitch in that part of the pattern was a fairly easy fix. So I moved on. I'm currently on the second half of the 3rd row, we'll see what happens. I think I might be destined NOT to do lace, despite how much I want to...

Attempting to Contact Maryland Medicaid

I just want to speak to a real person about my account. That's all I've wanted since July of this year--nearly five months ago. Since July, I have been into the Glen Burnie Social Services Office no less than once a month and left several voice mails that were never returned. I cannot get a single person to give me a phone number to call or the name of a person who can sit down and talk to me. At all. The office in Glen Burnie claims that they don't handle processing, nobody there answers the phone, and when the Annapolis office is contacted, they simply transfer me to the unresponsive Glen Burnie office. If they don't transfer me, they refuse to give out phone numbers, simply stating that "someone will call" me.

Here's the reason I need to talk to someone (written November 17th, 2011):

I was in the middle of applying for a state medical assistance program for pregnant women when I went into labor and had Joey. I didn't try for anything else until after school closed because according to the charts online, I made "too much money" to qualify. Imagine that, a Catholic school teacher making too much money for anything. In June, after the school officially closed, I applied for regular Medical Assistance (hereafter referred to as Medicaid) and at first I was rejected, again because of "too much money." However, if I could show them more than $1,200 of medical bills, I could qualify. I could show them significantly more than that between the delivery (which, after insurance, cost $2,000ish) and the surgery for my cyst (also in the $2,000ish range, after insurance) so I submitted the necessary paperwork. I received a letter from the Medicaid office stating that not only did I qualify, and my coverage would be from 06/11 to 11/11, but I would be responsible for:

"paying $0 of your medical bills for 06/01/11 and all medical bills prior to this date."

Direct quote. This is important.

Joey was born on 05/15/11
My first ER visit was on 05/21/11
My second ER visit and surgery was on 06/03/11

I submitted all my bills related to the delivery and the cyst. I got the letter, and assumed that responsible for $0 of bills for 06/01 and all bills prior means that the first ER trip and delivery would be included in what Medicaid was going to cover. Either this really means "we're going to take our sweet time paying the bills" or it means "we're only going cover some of them but not tell you which ones", I can't really tell. The people in the Medicaid office will only speak to me if I take a number, wait in line, and have bills to submit. If I want to ask a question, I can fill out a "Request for Contact" form, where I leave my contact info, explain why I want to be contacted (supposedly so they can look up my account info ahead of time), and they'll respond in the order in which requests are received. Still. No. Contact.

When I got my Medicaid card in the mail, I called everyone to give them my number so they could bill Medicaid directly. For the most part, the number was accepted and I never heard anything else. For several of the bills, the accounts department couldn't accept my Medicaid number because the dates of eligibility were after the dates of services rendered. Meaning: somewhere in the computer system, it does not say that my Medicaid coverage is retroactive. Ok.

More attempts to get straight answers from the Medicaid office. More nothing.

Then the bills prior to 06/01 get sent to collections. I receive a letter for each bill, 3 different collections agencies total. I call each one and explain the situation, I even fax them over a copy of the Medicaid letter stating the supposed retroactiveness. That was more than two weeks ago. Today, I got a phone call from one of the collection agencies saying that Medicaid had been billed (even though the last time I talked to them I was told they couldn't send the bill) and the claim was denied because of the dates of eligibility. Now, in order to avoid whatever the next step in the collections process is (I really don't want to find out), I have to make payments to the collection agency until I can get this whole mess sorted out. They wanted me to make monthly payments of $100 and I nearly laughed and said something smart but I kept my cool and simply said that I could do $25 a month and that was it. I am making other monthly payments to keep other bills from going to collections, which I said also. She didn't like the $25 and said that's fine but we would "re-evaluate" in three months to see if that could be increased. I highly doubt it. That's just one collection agency, I haven't heard from the other ones, we'll see if they say anything.

I sent a letter to my County Councilman to see if there's anything he can do or if there's anything I'm not doing that I should be doing. I'm sick and tired of not talking to a real person at the Medicaid office and I have a feeling if I had just had ONE conversation (even over the phone) with SOMEONE, this whole thing could be resolved. I told the councilman that if I was responsible for those bills sent to collections then fine, but I need to be informed that I am responsible. Don't tell me I'm responsible then tell the collections agencies that I am actually responsible. That's just wrong.


Latest update:

I received a reply on November 29th, 2011 from the Councilman's Legislative Assistent, Nancy Schrum. She suggested that I contact Social Services in Annapolis and ask for Marcia Kennai (who I Googled and found out that she's the Director of AACo. Social Services). My first call to the number Ms. Schrum provided--which is also the number found on Maryland.gov's telephone listing--resulted in speaking with someone other than Ms. Kennai. I explained my situation and why I needed to speak to Ms. Kennai and I was told that she was unavailable but someone would look into my account and give me a call.

The resulting voice mail (which is a step in the right direction since someone ACTUALLY called me back) was not helpful. The voice was different than the person I had spoken in Ms. Kennai's office and simply stated what my dates of eligibility were for Medicaid coverage. That was it. Information I already had in writing and nothing related to my actual questions. Meanwhile, collection agencies are threatening to report my delinquent accounts to the credit bureau unless I pay either the full amount or make monthly installments.

Dan (my husband) called Ms. Kennai's office again on Monday (I was at work and don't always have access to a phone). He got the same run-around I had gotten before, Ms. Kennai was unavailable and someone would call back. He gave them my phone number, and I haven't had a call back yet. I called again first thing this morning (December 7th, 2011) and, again, was told that Ms. Kennai was unavailable. This time I asked when I could call back, I was put on hold while her schedule was checked, "tomorrow after 3pm" came the answer. I also asked about making an appointment and was given the same information as Dan and I got before. I thanked the woman and hung up, and promptly began composing this blog post, as well as several e-mails to local news stations and papers, AND letters to the collection agencies to stop contacting me and if they report me to the credit bureau I'll contact them too. I'm fed up with talking to a brick wall.

(*Update* Thursday, December 8th, 2011: I called Ms. Kennai's office today after the specified time and didn't even get a real person. I got a recorded voice mailbox message. I'm not surprised at all, but still ticked that I was told a specific time to call and it just lead to voice mail.)

I'm not too proud to say that we're on Medicaid, though if this is an example of how my tax dollars are working for me, then I am ashamed that this is the best we've got as a County and State. All I want is to make an appointment and sit down with someone to go over my case file. I'm not looking for more than I need. I'm not trying to get any of my other living expenses covered. I'm a hard-working, tax-paying, new mom who is trying to make ends meet in a rollar coaster economy.

Side Note: Turns out when I was calling the different places that had billed me to give them my Medicaid number, I missed one. I know this because I got a second-notice bill from them dated December 1st, 2011. I submitted that bill to Social Services on August 5th, 2011 and I have a receipt. So it's not just my pre-eligibility bills that remained unpaid, it's potentially all of them.

Sleep

It's almost 0500 and Joey is wide awake, thus I am awake. If he doesn't show signs of falling asleep soon, I'm passing him off to Dan so I can go back to bed.

The sidecar has been up for just over a week now and I have definitely noticed a difference in my amount/quality of sleep. Joey still wants to use me as a pacifier all night long (and I still try to give him an actual pacifier and he's having none of it), but because I don't have to get up, we both fall back asleep pretty easily. Most of the time. This morning, I had to go to the bathroom. Joey was hungry and eating and when I put him down, apparently he was done and ended up waking up all the way and that was over a half an hour ago. So now he's playing happily in his chair while I type.

Most nights I can just nurse him and we both go right back to sleep, even if he's up every hour, I still wake up in the morning feeling more rested than when he was in the PnP. I've noticed that Joey has also started sleeping in slightly longer increments too, which is awesome. Still not nearly what he was doing before teeth, but still better than every hour. He also wakes up for good every morning right at 0730, so not too much sleeping in for me, but better than nothing.

Now he's fussing, maybe we can go back to bed...

Joey's First Thanksgiving

I made the mistake of looking back at last year's Thanksgiving post and found out that I had written it completely about Luke. Cue tears. It still hurts when I think about him for more than a few minutes or when I go visit my parents and he's not wagging his tail at the top of the stairs as I open the door.

Anyway, on to this year!

My uncles and cousins came over and we had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner complete with, not one but two sides of sauerkraut (which is apparently a Baltimore Thanksgiving staple). I'm not a fan of it so I stuck to the turkey, potatoes, and gravy myself ;) I fed Joey before dinner so he chomped on foam pieces out of a toy book while we all ate actual food. Next year he'll be able to try a little bit of everything and I'm sure he can't wait. Joey was pretty good about letting other people hold him, which can be hit or miss lately. He even liked meeting Hailey, my uncle's dog, and she was pretty curious about the little human.

How To Sidecar a Crib

Co-sleeping is awesome. It's not the right choice for every family or every situation, but we were fortunate enough to try it, enjoy it, and make it work for us. After Joey got too big for his bassinet in early August, and we moved him to the pack 'n play, I thought I'd overcome how much I missed having him next to me at night. I figured that eventually we'd move him to his own room and I'd be ok with it. Not only did the feelings not go away, they got stronger and I began to really, really miss co-sleeping. Especially when the teething started and he woke up more often to comfort nurse. So I began researching options for co-sleeping that would work with a larger baby and in the confined space that is our house. I came across How we sidecarred our crib and knew that I wanted to try it with Joey! Now, without further ado, here is how we sidecarred our crib and are again co-sleeping full time after 4 long months!

We got a crib off of Freecycle.org from another family no longer using theirs. It is a drop-side crib, but because we left off the side that comes down, the danger is no longer there. Our bed is also super-tall, so I purchased bed risers to add height to the crib. If I had only added height under the mattress, eventually, when Joey is pulling himself to standing, he would be able to fall over the side. This way, the sides get height added to them as well. It's important to place the crib in the corner of the room for added security so it can't separate from the adult bed.

Not pictured: we used ratchet straps also to secure the crib to the adult bed frame. There are two straps that run from the crib, between the mattress and box spring of our bed, to hook onto the frame on the other side.

We're pretty sure we were missing pieces of the crib because upon initial assembly, we couldn't figure out how to attach the spring part for the mattress. So Dan finagled something with thick pieces of wood, and I actually like it a lot more than just the flimsy-looking pieces of metal.

Proof of Dan's hard work! He sat there and bounced without any problems!

As suggested, we used high-density foam to fill gaps. We only needed one 2in thick, 8ft. piece to fill all our gaps, score!

Crib mattress is flush with the adult mattress, foam is wrapped in a twin-size flat sheet, and mommy and baby are happy to be co-sleeping again!

Our bedroom is not gigantic. At all. I forget the exact dimensions but it's in the 11'x9' range (that could be the smaller bedroom but ours isn't bigger by very much) and we were able to make this work for us. Granted, we had to rotate the bed but that was the only major change to our room besides the addition of the crib. We did this last night and had a chance to try the set up. Other than night nursing is so much easier when I don't have to get out of bed, I don't have much to say yet. Last night was one of Joey's up-every-hour nights AND I had to be up early for work, so not a whole lot of sleep happening anyway. We'll see how it goes the next couple of nights and I'll report back.

6 Month Postpartum Belly

Right after staples were removed

Ok, so my postpartum belly is going to look different from the average person, but I'm curious about this stuff with other people, so I may as well share my stuff too. The picture below is from today, just 2 days after the 6-month-mark for Joey's birth and just under the 6-month-mark for my surgery (that's in another two weeks). I've been wondering about the "twin skin" for a couple of weeks now, because it seems to actually be on it's way back to normal. I decided to do a side-by-side comparison to see and sure enough, there's some change! The scar looks way better for one thing, still there, just much less noticeable. The stretch marks are fading more and I feel like when I take handfuls of skin there's less there ;) I still doubt I'll ever be "bikini-ready" but there's hope that it might not be a complete disaster area.

6 Months Later

The good news is my pants size! Not only am I out of maternity pants, I bought new pants and now, only two weeks later, they're falling off me! I now fit into pants from college and I bought a belt to help hold my other pants up! I've only ever bought a belt in the past because work required it, I much prefer buying belts for this reason. I've been wearing it the last couple days just to get used to it and don't even notice it's there. I'd like to think that my weight coming off is to make up for all the crap I dealt with because of the cyst and the way my stomach looks now.

We're still working on the whole co-sleeping thing. After attempting to put the crib together to get an idea of size and everything, we found out that we have no idea how the spring-part that holds the mattress attaches. There are holes that screws could go through, there are little bunny-ear-shaped metal pieces on the frame but the spring piece seems to be just big enough to rest on top of them and just small enough not to attach to the frame itself. If any of that made sense. Dan's going to work on figuring something out because we all seem to sleep better when Joey is next to me for the majority of the night. We do have some time to get this figured out because there are still two chairs being stored in Joey's room while we find time to drop them off to our church's new youth space. One is a bentwood rocker and the other is a super comfy armchair with an ottoman, both are hand-me-downs so I'm not attached to them, I just don't want to get rid of something that our youth would enjoy.

And because I'm in the mood for side-by-side comparisons, check out how much my bamboo has grown since the move!

Just a cute little bamboo stalk at the old apartment.

Turning into a monster bamboo stalk sitting in the bathroom window!

De-Cluttered House, De-Cluttered Life

Yay for a completely organized shed! We finished putting up the shelves and sorting through things (finding several treasures along the way) with room to spare in both attic and shed. At first, we attempted to put the bassinet in the attic, because it would have been slightly more protected from bugs, but it didn't fit. Luckily, we now have plenty of floor space in the shed and didn't have to worry about it at all. It's a very cool bassinet and I want to save it for the next baby.

My mom came over after work and played with Joey while Dan and I sorted and stored. It's so much easier to put things away when you're not 8 months pregnant! It was great having my mom watching Joey because when we worked on this earlier in the week, it was just us and it was difficult keeping Joey happy and getting work done at the same time. We moved him between the bouncy chair, his rocking chair, his playpen, and eventually me holding him while Dan moved the heavy stuff.

I'm so happy with how much we got done! Everything we don't need is stored and we have way more space in the house now, including more space in the laundry room. The next step is figuring out which room we want the bed-crib-combo in, assemble the crib, and get the bed risers (our bed is really tall so the crib needs to be raised) and the mattress. Hopefully by the end of next week we'll be co-sleeping again!

Ancient gas can that Dan's dad gave us with the lawnmower

Mostly empty half of the attic

Less empty half of the attic (still loads of room)

Newly cleared laundry room!

Organization: The Shed

Today was one of my days off this week and the weather was perfect for clearing out and organizing the shed! Not too hot, not too cold, and it's been dry for days so nothing will get ruined sitting on wet grass.

When we moved in, anything that I couldn't unpack got stuck in the shed until I could "consolidate boxes." Between having a newborn and now having a nearly-six-month-old, I never got around to the consolidating...until today! Not a day too soon either, we found my winter clothes so I could switch out my summer clothes for the winter ones in my wardrobe! I also got to make decisions about more permanent storage options for the various things in the shed. Things like my American Girl Dolls, the shed was only a temporary solution and the fact that I found spiders in their box when I unpacked them just reinforced that. I still don't know where their clothes and things are but the dolls are now safely stowed in a plastic box under our bed.


Dan picked out shelves to line the walls of the shed, eventually there will be 5 sets total, 2 on each side and 1 in the back. This leaves the middle floor open to park the lawn mower as well as walk in and see what crap we've got out there ;) Anything stored in a plastic bin will be out in the shed and cardboard boxes will be up in the attic, to minimize spiders and such. All of this is a step towards being able to co-sleep again, though it desperately needed to be done anyway. I can't wait until we're all done and we have a clean and organized house!

Before shelves...

After shelves.

Storage Space!

Joey is napping right now, and not ON me for once (though he is on Daddy lol) so I get to have a few minutes to myself before he wakes up. Normally, I wouldn't let him nap this close to 1900, but he hasn't really napped all day and I don't think it will interfere too much with bed time later.

I'm pretty stoked about what we got done today, well, what Dan got done while I watched Joey. We're in the process of figuring out a more permanent solution for Joey's crib. Currently, the pack-n-play is still outside our bedroom door. He has outgrown the newborn/bassinet feature and has been on the lower level of the PNP for a couple of months now. I recently purchased a mattress because the one that came with the PNP was just foam on top of cardboard and was bowing in the middle (something I read about in the reviews before I bought it, so not totally unexpected). The mattress is too small so I rolled up baby towels and stuffed them into the open space so that Joey can't roll over and get stuck. I have several of issues with our current arrangement:

1. With him being so low to the floor, he's often exposed to the colder air in the house. I have a wearable blanket that we use with him, but most of the time he doesn't fall asleep wearing it, which means that it doesn't get put on him until halfway through the night or later.
2. The very motion of laying him down that low wakes him up more often than not. Most of the time, when it does wake him up, it wakes him up more fully than he had been when I got up to feed him. This leads to him wanting to play at 0230, not cool.
3. On nights that Dan has a hard time sleeping and stays up to play Xbox, Joey and I will frequently fall asleep together in the big bed. While I tend to sleep lighter and can't move around as freely, I feel like I get more sleep when this happens because of how much more convenient it is to nurse Joey when he's lying right next to me. I like having him at arm's reach, I always have, I didn't want to move him out of our room but due to budget and space restrictions, it was our only choice at the time.

 We ordered oil for the winter. We didn't order as much as we planned so there's a little bit of money left over. I talked to Dan about using it to get us back to co-sleeping and he was totally fine with it. Initially, I looked into the Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper, but that seems to be a glorified bassinet and Joey would grow out of that quickly and we'd be back at square one. Determined to make co-sleeping work for us, I widened my search and came across a blog where the family had turned their crib into a sidecar for their bed. Bingo! This was exactly what I was looking for, a way to co-sleep but still be able to give Joey (and us) his own space. The only question that remained was: how? I came up with two options and presented them to Dan (who is still thinking them over). Both require measuring and other logistics before we can put them into action. One is that we sidecar the crib in our room as we have it now, but moving furniture around so everything fits. I'm feeling meh about this one. The idea that I really like is that we take everything out of Joey's room, move our bed and the crib in and sleep there while our current bedroom becomes like a big walk-in closet where we get dressed and we keep all of Joey's clothes and toys. Eventually we can put a toddler bed in there and keep our bed in the backroom. Again, both ideas require measuring to see if they're even feasible, so we'll work on that.

In the meantime, there was no question that whichever solution we go with, Joey's room would need to be cleared out. We've pretty much used it like a storage closet since we moved in because we ran out of room in the shed and laundry room. The next step in storage was to start using the attic. Today Dan went to Home Depot to pick up plywood and a ladder so we can start storing things in the attic. There's going to be plenty of room up there which is fantastic because most of our stuff is still in boxes from the move. A lot of the stuff was in the closets at our apartment and since we only have two very small closets in the whole house, we've been pretty limited on long-term storage. Joey got cranky towards the end of hauling the wood up to the attic, so we haven't put anything up there yet, but we will. I also may have scored a usable crib off freecycle, so once I coordinate with the woman who's giving it up, I'll be able to see it and assess whether or not we can use it the way I want (and also how big it is for the measuring). We never did get around to getting "real" crib, that would be the financial limitations I mentioned earlier, the bassinet was $46 and the PNP was around $70 and purchased completely with a gift card.

So to sum up:

• Today was step one in cleaning out Joey's room
• The attic is ready for storage
• Possible crib is hopefully coming sometime this week
• I never saw myself being baby-wearing, co-sleeping, cloth-diapering, nursing-pad-making momma. The granola just sort of happened. I'm parenting according to my instincts and if that puts me in some sort of hippie category then so be it. I'm learning to be more unapologetic about who I am.

Cheeseburger Puffs

Take 1lb. browned ground beef, 2 packages of Pilsbury crescent rolls, and your favorite cheese.

Pre-heat the oven according to the Pilsbury package.

Roll out the dough so that you have two triangles next to each other--as a rectangle.

Put some of the ground beef in the center of the rectangle, add your cheese, and fold up the sides. Do this until you're out of ground beef or crescent rolls or both. This will make 8 puffs.

Place in the oven and cook until the puffs are golden brown (between 10-15 minutes).

Take out, let cool, enjoy!



I used shredded cheddar and that was nowhere near enough cheese. It ended up tasting like regular hamburger and not cheeseburger. Next time I will be trying Velveeta or American as well as increasing the amount I use. Also, the crescent rolls I used had a buttery flavor to them that didn't seem to match up with the hamburger (they were still good, just a surprise to taste butter), next time I will find plain rolls or use biscuits.

40! Well, we HAD 40 yesterday.

This is my freezer stash. After work yesterday, I had a total of 40oz. which is more than I've ever had stored up! Then because Joey decided to get up and play yesterday at 0230, I was super tired by the time Dan got home from work, so I let him give Joey one bottle so I could get some sleep. Joey ended up being hungry later on, but I had gotten to sleep an hour or two by then.

Yesterday was a short shift at work, only 5 hours, and because Joey mostly sleeps in the morning, he didn't eat nearly as much as he normally does. He ended up only eating 6oz. and I brought home 10oz., a whole "serving" more than he ate! This is so awesome because I haven't brought home more in a long time, much less an entire bottle's worth! I have to work 9 hours tomorrow then 11 on Friday, so I'm very glad we have plenty for both days. I've continued to pump on my days off, while not as routinely as several weeks ago I'm still adding at least one or two "servings" to the freezer a day. It's a slow stash re-build, but I'm happy to see the progress as opposed to seeing it eaten the very next day. I'm still determined not to supplement with formula if I can avoid it. I'll probably still be working several days well into January and I've heard from several working-full-time moms that they either had to supplement or wean completely before the one year mark. I don't know if they didn't have time to pump at home to add to the freezer stash or what, maybe they just weren't getting enough when they did, but that's not going to be me.

When it comes to the epic battle of me vs. Joey's appetite, I will prevail!

In other news, Halloween was fun. Dan had to work so I dressed Joey in his cow costume and gave out candy for the first time since we've been married :) At the apartment, nobody knew we were upstairs, plus our walkway was not well lit and I probably wouldn't have let my kids walk all the way down and then up the stairs, PLUS I don't think there were many trick-or-treating kids in that neighborhood anyway (lots of grandparents). So this year was fun, though we didn't get nearly as many kids as we planned on and have extra candy (not complaining). I didn't want to take Joey trick-or-treating because he's 5 months old, CLEARLY that candy would have been for me lol.

14 + 7 = 21!

I'm excited about several things today. First, Joey cut his first tooth yesterday! I got home and there it was, slightly popping through his gums, hardly able to be seen but definitely able to be felt! This explains the recent change in sleeping habits (was doing 7-8 hours regularly then switched back to 3-4) and possibly the increased appetite. I'm excited because it's a new phase but also a little sad because it means my favorite gummy smile will go away soon, though it will be replaced by an adorable pumpkin-tooth grin.

Next, I'm excited because yesterday before I left for work, I ordered a teething/nursing necklace from a seller on Etsy.com. I'd been planning on buying one, but the ones I liked were all $19 plus shipping which is a little too much for a necklace my baby is going to chew on so I held off. After talking with Amanda and seeing her latest Etsy purchase (a cute shirt), I looked up more teething necklaces and wouldn't you know, I found one I loved for $13 shipping included! It's green with blue and brown polk-a-dots and made of wooden beads and fabric (to sop up the drool). It's awesome because my favorite outfit (which is about to go out of season with the incoming cold weather) is a bright green and blue skirt, blue shirt, and my blue Keen sandals. This necklace will go perfectly with all that :)

I'm also super excited about today in particular because Joey napped almost the whole time I was at work and Dan only had to make a few bottles! I pumped more than Joey ate today!!! The freezer today looks a lot different than it did two weeks ago. Today there were 7oz. leftover and I brought home 14oz., so total there are 21oz. in the freezer! Two weeks ago, there were only 10oz. in the freezer and that was what I brought home because Joey had eaten everything else. On top of that, I don't go back to work until Tuesday, so I have three whole days to pump more and stock up! With cold and flu season starting up, the more breastmilk Joey gets, the better off he'll be immunity-wise.

Photography '05/'06 (300th Post!)

 I recently found sheets of negatives from when I took photography classes in college. Dan's dad has a scanner with a negative feature, so I spent some time scanning my favorites. Here are a few of the best ones. The first (above) and last pictures are in MD but the rest are from a trip we took to NYC :)

I did it! A post about a very full week.

When we last saw our heroine, she was vigorously pumping in a valiant attempt to stash enough milk so her dashing husband wouldn't have to open the can of formula while she was at work. I'm proud to say that

I DID IT!

When all was said and done, I left for work Monday with 29 or so ounces in the freezer. When I came home Wednesday, there was still one lone 4oz. bag leftover after what I had pumped at work the previous days and what I had gotten over the weekend. Wednesday I did not pump at work as much as I normally get and that ended up being due to using my own pump (instead of the hospital grade pump) at the end of the day and also because I couldn't spend 20 minutes pumping because Dan had to get to work.

Thursday

Our little family got up early and headed for the airport. I was super excited to go to South Carolina to visit my Great Aunt Jane for several reasons. It's been just over 3 years since I've traveled anywhere on a plane and I definitely get a travel itch right around the 2 year mark, although this was my first time flying with a baby. I also was excited to see Aunt Jane because it's been many, many, many years since I've seen her (ETA: Mom said she was at our wedding so I last saw her 3 years ago). My mom and I traded suitcases so I could have only carry-on luggage, and let me tell you, that is the way to fly! No waiting around at baggage claim, no standing in line at the check-in/bag check counter. I was able to check in and print my boarding pass the night before and got to walk straight to security once Dan dropped us off. The controversy of the day is the TSA's full body scanners and their super-intensive pat downs. BWI is not currently making everyone choose one or the other. Joey and I walked through a metal detector and that was it. I saw one person get a pat down but it was a random choice and I didn't even see the full body scanners.

My parents had driven down to SC the day before so they picked us up at the airport down there with Joey's car seat all ready to go. Aunt Jane is doing chemo so we didn't go see her right away, we had to wait for her to get back from treatment. Downtown Greensville reminds me of Annapolis and historic Ellicott City, but if they were combined. It's got lots of shops and places to eat, a lot of them on Main St. We stopped and got something to eat at a brick oven place, my parents got pizzas and I got Alfredo--one of my all time favorite dishes. Eventually it was time to go visit Aunt Jane and her daughter (my cousin once removed, so Dad's first cousin) Yancy was there too.

We all went out to dinner at a really lovely place called Harry & Jean's. It's an American restaurant, but done really well. Our server was probably the best server I had ever had, part of that may have been because we beat the dinner rush and there weren't many other tables there but mostly because he was just an awesome server. I had chicken marsala and it was to die for! Everyone else enjoyed their food as well and overall the entire meal was wonderful for the company. We went back to the hotel and once Yancy dropped her mom off, she came back to the hotel to visit some more. I wasn't there for that part, in attempting to put Joey down for the night in the back bedroom (my parents got a suite with a bedroom and living-room type deal), I fell asleep with him and woke up after Yancy had left. The price of waking up at 0330.

Friday

My first and only full day in SC. Aunt Jane's treatment is every day so we had time to kill before visiting with her again. We went furniture shopping (for my parents who are looking for a kitchen table and couch) and then back to Main St. There's a park in the middle of downtown (Falls Park on the Reedy) with a cool waterfall and suspension bridge. We got some lunch and went back to the hotel to rest up for a bit before going over to see Aunt Jane again. We were in for a treat with this second visit because some Korean friends of Aunt Jane's had driven down from VA the day before just to see her and give her Anointing of the Sick. They're Episcopalian, but have a lot of the same sacraments that Catholics do. I really enjoyed their ceremony, especially because some of it was in Korean. I also liked seeing their Korean Bibles, very cool.

Aunt Jane in the center, Yancy far right, and Dad in the back.

I'm a little fuzzy on the details but here's what I can remember: The priest on the very left did part of his seminary at Jesus Abbey (where my Uncle Archer was for most of his missionary career) which is where he met Aunt Jane. I'm sure that's where the other priest met her as well. It came out in conversation how Uncle Archer came to be at Jesus Abbey. His parents were missionaries as well (my grandfather, Archer's brother, was actually born in China) though they were Anglican, not Episcopalian. Sometime in the 1950's, while they were at their beach house in Korea on a beach where a lot of foreigners and missionaries vacationed, they ran into a bishop they knew and invited him over for 4 o'clock tea (something they had picked up working with English missionaries). While the bishop was there having tea, he saw a picture of Uncle Archer in his collar and asked about him. Upon finding out that he was Episcopalian, and knowing Archer's parents' reputation as missionaries, the bishop thought it might be a good idea to invite him to help re-open a seminary that had closed during the war (WWII). The rest is really history because Uncle Archer and Aunt Jane moved out to Korea and have been there ever since (with the exception that Uncle Archer went home to Heaven a couple of years ago). Aunt Jane is anxious to get well and go back to the Abbey, she misses everyone there terribly and truly lives to serve others.

Saturday

My flight was fairly early again, but not nearly as early as the one on Thursday. Also, the Greensville airport is pretty small so I knew getting through security wasn't going to take very long. There was a little restaurant in the airport, so my dad and I got some breakfast while my mom held Joey (she wasn't hungry). I was glad that it was a small-town airport's security I was going through this time because I had pumped some milk (stored in the hotel fridge, I'm sure my dad loved that) because I knew I was going to have to re-build the stash, plus I didn't want to lose the bigger supply I had worked hard to increase. I knew that the TSA allowed breastmilk, formula, and other liquids on the plane with little-to-no issue, I just didn't know how they were going to handle my bag of ice. The fridge didn't have a freezer section, so I couldn't re-freeze my ice packs to keep the milk cool. Turns out they didn't really care too much about the bag of ice. Frozen things aren't much of a problem for them. Had the milk been frozen, they probably wouldn't have given it a second thought. Good to know for next time. They did do a vapor test over the milk and melted ice, but of course that came up negative and we were on our way.

Dan picked us up at the airport and after Joey woke up a little bit (he fell asleep halfway through the long flight), he was happy to see his daddy. I love my sling, it's probably the only reason I'd consider traveling with a baby by myself again. I used my backpack as a diaper bag (and on the way home my parents put the suitcase in their car so I didn't even have to fiddle with the overhead) and put that on after Joey in the sling. We were so mobile that I didn't take a single elevator in any of the airports we were in! We got lunch on our way home, I fed Joey and attempted to nap, though Joey only let me get about 20 minutes. Dan bought me Season 5 of Dexter and Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides last week and I had not yet seen Pirates so we watched that. I didn't get to see it because it came out 3 days before my due date with Joey, and since he came 8 days early, he wasn't even a week old yet when it came out. Had I still been pregnant, I would have been in the theater for sure! It's the only Pirates movie that I didn't see in the theater and after watching it, I'm not so sad that I missed it. The first is the only really good one. The others are just built around Johnny Depp reprising one of the best roles of his career. Anyway...

The Men in Black game was also Saturday night! This year we actually went to the tailgate before the game and had a blast! Holy Trinity loves to party and the other youth groups in our cluster came to party with us! We're becoming a fusion youth group for some of the smaller churches so our group is getting bigger all the time. I didn't know many of the the kids but we still had a good time. Momma Marlene knew that the Chik-Fil-A cow would be coming to the game and bought Joey a cow costume so we could take his picture with the cow. We watched the game and cheered while we waited for the cow to show up. Friends from the church where we go to Mass (St. Jane's) also came and sat with us. They love Joey and he loves them :) I love Trinity, we had the biggest, loudest section again this year. The priests actually won this year's game! For the first time that I've seen, not only did the priests win, the STOMPED the youth! The final score was 43-32, yikes!

A cow holding a cow holding a cow. Oh yeah.

I'm not entirely sure why the Chik-fil-a cow was there, but we love Chik-fil-a so it doesn't matter ;) The person with the cow had a bag of goodies and they were throwing them to the crowd. When we went down for the picture, we got a stuffed cow for Joey to hold so that the Chik-fil-a cow is holding a baby cow, who is holding a baby Chik-fil-a cow. Awesome! My guess is that cows are black and white and priests wear black and white so that could be the connection or I'm just grasping. Either way, we got this awesome picture and the person with the cow got a picture for Chik-fil-a too so somewhere Joey is famous.

The Men in Black game is a basketball game between our area priests and guys from various youth groups. It's to help raise awareness for vocations and show the kids that just because you're called to religious life, doesn't mean you stop having fun.

Ben and Joey are best buddies :)

Eat mor...cow?