The Picture of Health

We had Jamesen's 4 month well check today. We had his two month check a little late so there wasn't enough time since his last set of shots for him to get this next one. I have to go back in on Monday. That's not that big of a deal though since I was going back for my spider bite anyways.

They said he was the picture of health and everyone kept commenting on how adorable SHE was. Honestly, does he look like a girl? I had like 7 people say "Oh she's so adorable!" It's probably because of the teething necklace, but honestly, he doesn't look like a girl! He's obviously a boy. One lady said "He's a boy? He's too pretty to be a boy. He should have been a girl!" *rolls eyes*

They were really impressed with how well he held his weight while standing and how well he's rolling. He can roll everywhere! It annoys me a bit actually because I have to stick him in something and strap him in to keep him from disappearing on me. Marcus didn't roll around like that until after he could sit.

Anyways, he's 16 lbs 3 oz and 26.75 inches! that's the 93% for height and 62% for weight. So I have another tall and lean baby. He's not skinny like Marcus was, but he's not fat like Patrick is. I wish he were Patrick fat :( But at least I don't have another skinny mini on my hands! To give you a comparison, Marcus at 4 months was 14 lbs 2 oz and 26.1 inches. I have a feeling that Jamesen will always be taller than M was at that age and later pass him up completely. Though I doubt Marcus will be short. He's always been in the 60 something for height. We'll see!

Rashes, rashes everywhere!

If you don't know the story behind me using cloth diapers, I have to tell you.

Lucky for Marcus, he inherited my family's sensitive skin. When he started teething, the super acidic poops would give him a terrible terrible rash. If it was even left on his skin for a minute it would turn into a bleeding rash. It got to the point where he would get a rash and it would take me 2-3 weeks to get rid of it and then in another 2-3 week he'd have another one! I felt like the worst mother ever for not being able to figure out what I wasn't doing right to keep him from rashing up.

I prayed so hard one night when Marcus had a particularly nasty rash that I would find something to stop him from rashing up all the time. The next morning I randomly decided that I wanted to cloth diaper Jamesen. As I was looking up different kinds of diapers, I found a one size diaper and decided to get a few to try on Marcus. After getting enough that he was mostly in cloth, I noticed a significance difference in him and he didn't get his first rash in cloth until MONTHS after he was in only cloth.

It's days like today, though, where he's teething terribly and has the worst acidic poops literally all day long and has a bad rash, that I say a prayer to God, thanking him for leading me to cloth. If his rash is this bad in cloth, I can only imagine how bad it would be if we were in disposables.

On another note, thanks babe for all you have done for this country to keep us all safe! I love a Veteran! :)

things have been hitting me hard lately

You know, ever since my bite was confirmed to be a bite, I've been dwelling on the fact that the stupid spider could have bit Jamesen and if it had, there was a very real possibility that he could have died. He's not dead and is perfectly fine but my heart is aching at how close I was to possibly losing him. Again.

I can't put the kid down lately. There have been a few other things that have really been making me dwell on it. One is the story of a little boy who was diagnosed with a heart defect in utero and wasn't expected to live who just had successful heart surgery and will be fine. Reading up to that point that he will be fine, I can't imagine what his family went through never knowing if her son would make it to the next year, the next month, the next day.

Brittanie also started a blog about Cora and that one's really been hitting me hard too. I think other than Matt and my mom, I was the the most affected by Cora. I can't explain it to you at all, but I felt that I had a bond with her. She was due on my due date and would have been born on my birthday had things been different.

I can't really explain what's going on in my head. I'm breastfeeding so I do still have crazy hormones going on, but I can't shake the thought of losing Jamesen. The kids almost been drowned twice and was only two inches from me when I was bitten by the spider. The staff infection alone could have killed him. It was kicking MY butt! Can you imagine what it would have done to his tiny body?

My heart aches. It seems so silly that I'm dwelling on it. You know, from the moment I conceived him I thought I was going to lose him. I thought for sure they were going to tell me something was wrong when I went in for the gender ultrasound. But he's fine. And since he's almost drowned twice and it's not happened, it's pretty obvious to me that he's supposed to be HERE. He's got angels watching over him so why am I so upset by this?

Why do I feel this way for Jamesen and not Marcus? Silly thought here, but every time something has been wrong with my kids, I've known about it. Even when people have said "oh it's nothing", I KNEW something was wrong. So this feeling I'm feeling for Jamesen is kind of freaking me out. He's perfectly fine, but I can't shake the thought of almost losing him again.

Blown Away

So I posted recently that Marcus has been talking a bit more lately. It was really apparent to me a few days ago. We were watching Word World [wow... lots of w's]. Anyways, if you don't know about Word World, everything is made up of letters.



In the episode we were watching, frog had bought a bed and it was finally delivered. Instead of getting a bed, he got the letters B, E and D. So frog goes to "Build a word" and sets the letters up and Marcus says, "Beeee! EH! Dee dee dee!" I was so ecstatic about that!

If you know us or read my blog at all you know that Marcus has been behind in communication. When I took him to get his 18 mo check up they gave me a questionnaire like they do for every check up and for the communication section he got like 10 out of 60 points. On the paper he looked autistic. His pedi was prepared to come in and tell me he was autistic but when he walked in and saw him he said, "Wow what a busy guy! No wonder he's behind in communication!" It's been a rough battle because all the other two year olds we know talk up a storm.

It started with him mimicking animal sounds. I knew that was a good sign because he never mimicked or tried to say anything! Then he started mimicking actions like THIS

And then the letters started. I caught him yesterday morning going "Deeeee! I!!!" at the letters. So tonight in the bath I decided to see how many letters he knew and he completely blew me away. See for yourself!

I'm back to loving a certain two year old in my house ;)

Testing Boundaries

I'm very frustrated with a certain two year old living in my house. It's really funny and yet extremely frustrating talking about Marcus to other people. I've noticed that a lot of people with kids the same age as Marcus tend to not believe me that he can do these things unless they see proof. Or their suggestions are things that I know for a fact will not work to help the situation.

Case in point, getting out of his room at night. Your first reaction to hearing someone having a problem with kids opening doors is to suggest those doorknob things, right? Marcus learned how to take those off BEFORE he figured doors out. Second suggestion, a baby gate.




So how about a taller baby gate? Well he can climb out of his pack n play which is a good 6 inches taller than that baby gate. Why waste money on something I know he'd be able to master in MAX 2 weeks, specially when they're more expensive?

Our solution to this problem was to lock the door. He figured it out like a month after we started doing it but for some reason he forgot he could do it. Until recently. The same thing that happened then is happening again. He wakes up EARLY in the morning and comes into my room and lays down with me but doesn't go to sleep. Instead he plays, flops around, yells, etc, etc. Half the time he tries to go downstairs. And since he knows he can get out, he gets out at all hours of the night and I have to put him back. If he wakes up at night, he doesn't just go back to sleep, he gets up. Marcus getting up 4-5 times a night plus Jamesen getting up 1-2 times... I'm one exhausted momma.

Another thing he's recently started doing is unbuckling himself from his carseat. I was driving on the freeway about to take my exit when he just stood up! Gave me a heart attack. I was practically screaming for him to sit back down, which thankfully he did. I pulled into the welcome center and strapped him back in, hoping nobody would see me and get me in trouble. In a way I'm glad he stood up because I would have been in trouble had I gone through the gate with him unbuckled. That wouldn't have been fun.

I had one person suggest that I had just forgotten to buckle him in because she can't see how a 2 yo could unbuckle themselves. I have to roll my eyes at this. She's always making snide comments like that about things Marcus does like she's trying to say "Yeah he's doing a lot of things my kid isn't doing so I have to downplay it so he doesn't look so awesome." I really hate when people compaire kids like that. Who cares?!

K, rambling! Back on the subject.

Frustrating Marcus. You know, you'd think that if someone got in trouble for doing something at least 2o times a day every day, they'd eventually stop right? Not Marcus. He's getting smarter about things. Climbing on the counter is an automatic spanking because he KNOWS he's not supposed to be up there. I've done everythign I can to get him to stop. I've spanked him, put him in time out, calmly explained why he's not supposed to be up there, grabbed his face and brought it right to mine to make sure he's listening, yelled at him, etc etc and nothing makes him stop.

He's recently learned how to open the fridge and will get in there and not close it. He's got a fascination with dirty cloth diapers and will open the drier so he's got something to step on and grab dirty diapers out of the basket and play with them. He's gotten close to climbing over the fence in the backyard on more than one occasion. The list goes on and on. And honestly, I'd be semi ok with all of this if the dang kid would just sleep!

I've been having really bad insomnia the last couple nights. When I dont' sleep, I don't sleep well. Just like little kids do. If they go down late, they get up early type thing. I do my best sleeping in the wee hours of the morning and hes been waking up really early. Totally killing me because I can't sleep until like 1 am. It was the stupid ER visit that has thrown me off so bad. Bah

Ok, I think I'm done complaining. Talking about sleep made me tired and I still have to shower and wash the hole on my chest [grosssssss]

Explosion

You know how boys are... sometimes they don't talk at all and then all the sudden their saying words and everything like they've been talking for awhile? Marcus kind of did that. He didn't use to try and say a word after me at all but now he does. Instead of saying "diddy" he actually said "kitty" today. He tried to say camel and got it pretty close. He can do the sounds of almost any animal now which he never use to do. I'm so proud of him! I knew it would happen and I just kept talking and talking to him and sure enough his words are coming! He still can't say much and screams when he needs something until I ask him what's wrong, but we're making progress!

And for the record, it was a spider bite. But it's also a staff infection. The lady that's been stuffing and dressing my hole told me that the spider most likely had some bacteria on it's fangs when it bit me so I had the bite underneath and the staff infection on top. She also said that if she had to guess, she'd say it was recluse since it was eating at my muscle. She said that explained a lot because yesterday when we though it was just a staff infection, she was afraid it was going to flair up again because my skin is still raw and tender. If it had been a staff infection it wouldn't be like that.

Oh and Jamesen is almost sitting! Though I fear he'll do exactly what Marcus did and go from sitting to crawling in a few short weeks and then from crawling to cruising and walking in a few short months and then I'll have two crazies to keep after and that will mean no more kids for use. I hope he's not crazy like Marcus because I want a girl to keep me company when Sabe takes the boys camping just him :(

Abscesses are fun!

NOT! I've been calling it a bite but the people at the hospital aren't sure if it was a bit or staff infection so they took a sample to culture and we'll know in three days.



I can't even tell you how glad I am to not have that thing anymore... It started the size of a large zit on Thursday and didn't really change much between then and Friday. On Friday however, the dark ring around the head got bigger and the lighter red around the entire thing grew three times in size. I went to the ER on Saturday after Sabe got off work and they sent me home with some antibiotics.

On Monday I was going to go back in because instead of radiating out in a circle, the redness has started to travel downwards like it was going to my heart and it was starting to really hurt to use my arm. however, Jamesen and Marcus were having a hard time sleeping so I ended up waiting until yesterday to go in.

There were quite a few open wounds, broken bones, high fevers in children and active duty ahead of me so I waited for quite a while before getting in there. They took me back and the doctor told the other guy [I'm not sure what he was.. a nurse? I dunno] to lance it.

I'm afraid of needles. I didn't use to be this bad [hyperventilate and shake right before], but since I got pregnant with Marcus it really heightened that fear. The guy called his coworker in to hold my hand and distract me while he numbed the abscess. Let me tell you, that needle in my extremely tender abscess made me almost cry. I cried out, that's for sure. After I was numb he sliced it open and was really working it to get everything out and I felt it in my lower tissue and it HURT! I was boobing about it a bit. I'm sure the entire ER could hear me "Man this freaking HURTS! OW OW OW OW!!" lol! He couldn't get everything out very easy so he had to shove a pair of surgical scissors in there to break everything up. I didn't look at it but he kept saying "Yep there's another huge chunk, and another, and another...."

They said it was a good thing I came in when I did because it was starting to eat away at my muscle and was probably why it hurt so much to use my arm. I'm on the mend now though! :)