Rhett: 5 Months

I always wax poetic about how much I love my babies and it is true. It may be redundant but it is so very true. Rhett is no exception, he is so very loved. If he could speak I am sure he would kindly ask me to back off with the face eating and endless smooching. Maybe. He could certainly ask but I don't think I would be able to comply. 

Did you know Rhett's middle name is "Happy"? It should be. The boy is always smiling.

This month Rhett has been working hard on his chubs, specifically his legs. They are so delicious.

He is loving this new world of food and thus far we have introduced bananas, pears, applesauce, butternut squash and peas. 

I made the mistake of not packing some food with us when we met Phil's family for dinner last weekend. He was reaching for my food, opening wide, just begging for it literally. Against my better judgement I gave him little nibbles of the soft inner crust of my pizza. He gobbled it up, appeasing my guilt (why do I always feel guilty?) and we carried on. About 5 hours later he wakes from a sound sleep screaming. Clearly in pain and nothing and no one could help him. Cue mommy guilt! We believe he was having some horrible gas pain as his little body was trying to digest the complex carbs of the pizza dough. He suffered for 15-20 minutes, we tried to help him get a few toots out and then he finally fell back asleep. Lesson learned.

I just packed away the 3 month clothes and pulled out short sleeves and 6 month sizes. As I was sorting through baby clothes I was hit with flashbacks of my chubby Max wearing the same clothes. Sniffle, sniffle! They just grow up so darn fast! And now Rhett is wearing the same clothes and dang it he is growing at lightening speed. 

Rhett rolls over from back to front and vice versa. He is starting to be a wiggle worm during diaper changes, arching his back and reaching for whatever he can get his hands on. Everything now goes straight to the mouth for further inspection and his fingers are still beloved.

He goes to sleep well and night sleep is still not consistent. He will sleep 6 hours straight one night and then the next few nights be up every 3 hours. I have not been strict about working towards eliminating night feeds and am secretly hoping he will just get there on his own. Honestly I haven't given him the chance to work through it on his own. Sleeping in my room has its own hazards, mainly that I am constantly aware of every sleep interruption during the night and the easiest course of action is to feed him. I suppose I am enabling him but I don't mind too terribly.

He is over 15 pounds and my arms and back get weary during long periods of holding when we are out of the house.

He thinks Kate is hilarious, especially when she talks to him in her little mother voice. She mimics whatever I do to him, kisses in the same spots I do, tickles his belly, tries to blow on his belly. It is wonderful to see them love each other.

Decorating with Photography

Yesterday while the kids napped I finished putting together my family photo wall. I am in love! This project makes me so happy every time I see it. The kids love seeing us on the wall and throughout the day I hear "a Kate, a Max, a baby Rhett, a mommy, a daddy!".

The big photo wall is above our couch and make such a statement now for me. I am not used to seeing it and it usually takes me off guard but I just love how it turned out. It looks so clean and perfect that it made me want to get the rest of my house clean and in order to match it and finish other lingering projects. I love the energy and satisfaction that comes after I finish something productive.

Being on a tight budget I used several frames that we already owned, thrifted a few solid wood frames, snagged a $3 one at Wal-mart and bought unfinished wood frames at Hobby Lobby and spray painted them all the same color if they weren't already black. I chose black since I know we will likely be in rental homes during our medical training and won't be able to paint and it appeals to the traditional side of me. I feel like I haven't yet figured out my "style" yet and since we aren't going to be having a decorating budget or discretionary funds for a loooong time I should figure that out before making pricey purchases.

I received the canvas of the kids yesterday, the missing piece I was waiting on and it is gorgeous. Such lovely quality and the image is perfection to me.

I ordered this image below on canvas through a new company and a groupon type deal. Never again. It was going to be the focal point of the big wall and it was wretched. They even reprinted it for me after I complained and still it was terrible. The image was stretched, the colors were heavy and over saturated. Just awful. I have two ugly canvases just sitting in my office now and a credit with a company I don't want to ever use again and cannot recommend. I've learned my lesson and now will save my pennies for quality and reputable professional labs like the one I used for the kids.

This is also from the coupon deal but after dealing with the company and already receiving two terrible canvases (this one was already ordered and in production before I received the above to know to steer clear) I was tired of the fight and since it was better than the previous two I kept it. The colors are also off and the image is too cool/blue. I am very particular and want my printed product to match what was originally created. If i am going to spend money on a product I want to be proud to hang it on my wall.

 Regardless of it's flaws I love my little family and had never printed any images from this session, it will stay on the wall where less discerning eyes can notice. (Sorry, that was a tangent that I didn't mean to go on, moving on!)

The three frames above the TV went up first and I love love LOVE it. It makes such a difference to fill in all that empty space we had going on. My three babes with their sparkling eyes. I literally stop and smile back at them, it makes my heart swell up and I just want to go and kiss their faces off.

I love the anticipation of waiting for my print order; the doorbell chiming and hearing the engine of the UPS driver pulling away, tearing open the carefully packed goods and admiring the quality of the product, the beautiful paper and texture. My gorgeous family. Mmmm. Love it.

My newborns got moved off the main living room wall and into the office. A bit of color for our rental white walls. Though clearly I forgot to zoom in a bit when ordering Rhett's image so he would match Max and Kate's but he seems to balance out Camden's. I will probably reorder one day so they are more similar in crop factor because it bugs me. Oh well.

My view from the kitchen sink/prep area, where I spend most my day it seems. It makes me so happy. I love that I am surrounded by my family and it always helps to cheer me up and keep things in perspective when I am having a rough mommy day.

I am glad I did this and my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner. I take thousands of images each year and have been terrible at printing them. Not anymore! I think I am addicted and if money wasn't a worry I would be papering my walls with photographs, every room would have large beautiful images. Some day that will be a reality in my home.

Reflecting

I just spent a good hour looking back through the early posts of my blog. Several things stood out to me, mainly how different I seem now compared to the younger me only 4+ short years ago. My writing style and voice are different; I made an effort to be witty and funny then, now I document our family's life, namely my children. I wrote a lot about dental hygiene, (I should count how many times I admonished my readers to floss!), I documented the seemingly silly shopping I did, talked about myself a lot (I didn't have kids, so I talked about myself), with keeping my weight in check and my sweet tooth. I lamented about trying to stay in shape, though looking back now I would kill for that old body! Silly. I also blogged for fun. I think I was more fun then, more naive perhaps? Phil has even said that I am much different now and I told him I think I just grew up.

"Everyone" was blogging back then and you took pictures of random every day stuff and wrote about it. It was rather "look at me! look at me!". In some posts I cringe at myself and am tempted to delete the entry(ies) but am keeping it so I can continue to look back and see how I have changed. Whether I have grown up for better or worse remains to be seen, I am sure I will look back at myself now and cringe at times.

We were childless, having just lost Camden, I was working full-time, Phil was a full-time student at ASU. Life was pretty darn easy and I thought we were busy then; YW president, work but plenty of time for leisure. Life was "good". We had a lovely comfortable life.

Life is good now, just vastly different. Three kids under the age of three, medical school and living off of student loans leaves little time for leisure and the old life we led. I mentioned these thoughts to Phil tonight and he teased me, asking if I felt I needed to find myself again. But I think I do. Right now my purpose is children and taking care of my family. It defines me. We are busy in a different way, we have so much more stress in our life, I am consumed and obsessed with my children. The blog is dominated by their sweet mugs and their latest antics. Darling for me to read through but I am sure it gets old for others. And yet I don't care. Because the purpose of this blog is to record our family, I am not blogging in a narcissistic fashion anymore, unless posting a million pictures of my children is my new narcissism.

I am deliberate in what I blog, how I word things, what I share. I try to include the little details I want to remember and know I will forget otherwise. I write with the end in mind, knowing that I want to print the blog into a family journal, make a permanent record. I try to use proper grammar, don't use emoticons or obvious Internet lingo. I even struggled with what to name this post. When did I become so anal? I should loosen up. :) Wheeee! (I totally put that smiley in and then deleted it and then put it in again. Progress?)

I am totally writing this on the fly as these thoughts come to me, when I should be capitalizing on precious sleep time. Where these ramblings are going I don't really know but it did make me want to find pieces of that old Heather again. But take her and who I am now and make myself even better. We are always evolving and are products of what life throws at us and what we make of it. I do want my voice to be present, I want a record of it so my children get a glimpse of who Heather is/was, not just me in the role of their mother. I am going to work on finding myself again, taking time to do something(s) just for me, to fill my bucket so I can give more to those I love and interact with. To be my best self. And I think I will record it.

** Edited to add: 15 minutes after I hit publish I am still thinking about what I wrote. Maybe I am being too harsh on my old self. I blogged about my life then; it was all about me and Phil, my job, my awesome-to-me life. And that is okay. That is who I was at the time and my writings weren't always in a showy manner, though I do think I blogged more for others than myself. It is what it is. Now, off to bed before Rhett wakes.

Hungry Boy

You can't hold Rhett and eat something at the same time. He watches you like a hawk, leaning in and opening his little mouth. Even while drinking water he makes a grab for the cup. I have given him samples of water which he does quite well with and a little smidgen of a muffin I was eating. 

Sunday I was eating a banana and the boy was begging for it!  I waited until 6 months old with Max and Kate and was planning on doing the same with Rhett. But he is sooo ready! He has great head control and with his active interest we went for it. 

I pinched off a bit of banana, smooshed it and put in his eager little mouth. He loved it of course. Look at those sweet puckered lips. I want to kiss them.

We have since made it "official" by busting out the little rubber tipped spoons, our littlest dishes and bibs.

Oatmeal cereal has been bought, apple prune juice for mixing and I printed off the approved baby food list to refresh my memory on when we can introduce foods. 

Rhett adores his oatmeal cereal. I have since added a bit of banana to it. We tried butternut squash yesterday and he wasn't so sure about it. We will keep trying before we introduce another food.

He is adorable. And very vocal right now, here he is talking to me. Sweet baby.

Mmmmmm, tasty.

He gets very excited for his food. We have only been doing it for less than a week and he knows when I am mixing it. He leans in and grabs for it. Love him.

Hopefully this helps him sleep a bit better with naps (longer please?) and at night. Our 15-pound boy is sure to get a bit chubbier now that we are starting solids. More to love and munch on for me!

This boy is just cruising right along, tackling milestones and getting too big for his britches, quite literally!

This morning I laid Rhett on his tummy so he could play while I dressed and diapered Max and Kate. I left the living room, went into the kids' room to gather clothes and came back just in time to see Rhett roll from his tummy to his back and then to his tummy again! Hooray for Rhett! I am so happy I was able to see it and not walk back in a few minutes later and find him 3 feet from where he started. Mr. Big Stuff.

Kids live here

It is fun to find little details of Max and Kate's play as I am tidying up the house while they nap.

Monkey and Rabbit Stew anyone? This was Kate's doing.

Max is really into trucks and figurines lately.

The kids have worn their shoes out riding their plasma cars. Blast. And here I was hoping to get more use out of them with Rhett. They are perfectly good shoes otherwise! 

One of my favorites: Sparkle star wands and a sippy. What every kid needs as they cruise in circles around the living room.

The library has a train table and wooden trains. Max played with them a solid 20-30 minutes. This never happens at our house! I wondered what was so different and inspected the trains, I recognized the brand from Target so we made a special trip there just to get trains. Now Max is hooked. He loves them and will actually play by himself for longer pockets of time. Hooray!

10 on 10: February

My friend Lori did a fantastic post last month and I knew that I had to copy her. I love taking pictures of an ordinary day and the thought behind this series is to take one photo every hour for 10 hours on the 10th day of the month. Clearly I have missed January but plan on taking on the rest of the year. It will be fun to have this snippet of life documented.

I am already cheating since I took waaay more than 10 pictures and had a hard time narrowing it down. I think the challenge for me will be to just choose one picture that best shows that hour of life, sometimes more than one picture is needed to tell the story but I will work on being more deliberate. And since it can be hard for me with three littles to take a picture at exactly the same time each hour I am also bending the "rules" to fit me. The pictures are taken within each hour instead, sometimes multiple times within that hour.

Here we go, February 10th in pictures.

We took Rhett to the doctor to follow-up with his finger.

The doctor asked if she could drain the finger and I agreed since no changes were really noted after one week of antibiotic. Rhett was past his nap but still okay with me holding him. I laid him on the table and the doctor and assistant prepped his finger with iodine and alcohol and then she poked his finger with a needle and pressed on it. It only bled, no exudate and she didn't feel any difference in pressure. Rhett was so sad. He was fussing a bit as they prepped him since he was overtired and wanted me and then when she poked him he just let out the saddest cry ever. Broke my heart. I definitely heard his pain cry but he was okay after some loving and reassurance.

After discussing the situation with his doctor we are just going with it being a callus from his sucking. As long as the redness doesn't track down his finger/arm and he doesn't show signs of fever, etc. then there is nothing really to do short of keeping him from sucking his fingers to see if it goes away.

We got home and I put him straight to bed. He needed help since he was so overtired and he wasn't supposed to suck on his fingers since he had an open wound and band-aid on. It took less than two minutes of holding him, swaying and blocking out stimulation with a blanket over his head. I gave him extra kisses.

The big kids enjoying a Valentine treat.

Nap time! Max brought both of his blankets to me and asked to go "night-night". I told him he could still play and he got upset and said "no! night-night!". So off they went. Obviously Kate is happy about the decision. Ha!

I got to sneak into the garage for some home decor crafting.

The never-ending daily piles of laundry. We seem to make at least one load a day.

Trying to incorporate scripture study into my day. Key word: trying. I failed. Kids always take priority and I need to find a better time, probably definitely before house projects...

I love nursing. It is such a sweet and special time for me.

The kids played hard and dirty out in the yard and needed a bath before dinner.

And that is a good portion of our day!

Rhett's Finger

A few weeks ago I noticed that Rhett had a white blister looking lesion on his forefinger. It was small and didn't seem to be infected, no redness, just the white blister near the base of his fingernail. I kept an eye on it and as the week went on it progressed. Redness and swelling were now present and Phil said I needed to take him to the doctor. He is taking his second year of microbiology and launched into hyper aware med student mode and told me he probably has cellulitis and a staph infection since staph is all over our body. I listened to him but in my mind thought he was being a bit over the top.

I took him to the doctor that afternoon and told her my husband is a crazy med student and thinks he has...relaying what Phil told me. I felt kinda silly since I was sure she would just dismiss it as no big deal and send us on our merry way. I told her that Rhett sucks his two fingers and perhaps he just sucked really hard and made a blister?

She confirmed Phil's diagnosis and gave us a prescription for Keflex; but told me to first do warm compresses and Neosporin and see if it improves. I took the script and we went home. That night it seemed like the blister had subsided though his finger was still red. I waited a few days and then filled the prescription since it didn't improve after our compresses and the blister had returned but now it looked yellowish. His poor little finger is red down to the first knuckle and is distended. I don't think these pictures do it justice.





We started the Keflex and only had it for two days when I was in the laundry room stain treating some clothes and came back into the kitchen to find Max at the kitchen sink with his little chair, one bottle of orange flavored Keflex poured down the drain. Ahhh! Such a stinker! I was not happy but was glad he just dumped it instead of drinking it.

One sheepish phone call to the doctor and refill later we have been on the medicine for going on 5 days now and still no improvement. One night I covered the infection in ointment and put a sock on his hand so he couldn't suck it and it did improve a bit. Rhett was not happy though and I felt bad for him. I have since let him have his fingers back since I can't keep a sock on him forever! Plus he or Kate takes it off.

Despite his sore looking finger he is still a happy camper. He definitely doesn't like his medicine but does well. He is smart and quickly learned to clamp his lips together after the first taste. We have a few more days of the medicine and will return to the doctor since it is not improving. I don't know what she will do, maybe lance and drain it? So sad if that is the case!