I Swear I'm Still Here!

Yup. It's Shazam. I'm still here! I've been silent but I'm here...buried in diapers, laundry, baby drool, and grad school essays. Little E is napping so I though I'd give a shout out and give some updates on what is going on in our household.

Last week was Germ Fest 2010 here and just to make it interesting it was all different kinds of germs. SSG and I often brag that we don't get sick and boy did that bite us in the ass. E was still fighting her cold at the beginning of last week which was pleasant. On Tuesday SSG came home from work feeling horrible and had a fever. She basically spent the afternoon in bed and then took Wednesday off. It was great to have her home but so she wouldn't spread germs she was completely hands-off so it was a bit of a tease to have her there. On Tuesday and Wednesday night I slept on the couch with E in her pack and play next to me. Those were two looong nights. SSG got better from the fever but then developed a sore throat and a runny nose. I think she's feeling much better though. Friday night I went to bed and at 12:30am I woke up with a horrible stomach ache. I knew I was going to barf and knowing that gave me an anxiety attack. So there I was stumbling down the hall trying to get to the bathroom. I almost took a complete header. I made it to outside the bathroom...barely but couldn't move any more. My lovely wife actually had time to get me a bowl, tie my hair back and get me a damp washcloth before all hell broke loose. I'll spare the details but it was horrible. I'm surprised I didn't pull something I barfed so hard. I then of course spend the rest of the night on the couch and Saturday too. I was hurting and actually think I got a bit of food poisoning but who knows. All I know is I wasn't hungry all weekend and lost a couple of pounds which makes sense considering I basically ate 6 saltines and half a banana. I'm feeling better but I'm still not ready to dig in to a big meal. It's really not appealing.

The other thing going on as our readers know is I've been working hard on getting in grad school applications. I have 2 out of 3 in and trying to finish up the third this week. I did get notice this weekend that I got in to Simm.ons College in Boston. It's a great small college where SSG actually got her undergraduate degree. I'm anxiously awaiting on a Bos.ton College reply which is ironic on multiple levels. Long story short I didn't originally want to consider BC because I already did the private Catholic school thing for undergrad and didn't want to go there again. I wanted something different. That was until I realized how close it is (like 15 minutes), how good the program is, and how much I liked it when I went to an info session. I find it rather comical that the non-catholic lesbian has a chance of once again going to a catholic school. Seriously funny. I did some research and they do have a couple GLTB groups at BC so I am somewhat comforted there is some diversity and I won't be surrounded by "god squaders". Thanks but no thanks.

I guess the only other thing with me is I've still been consistently going to my personal training gym 3 days a week and I still love it. I've lost 13.2 pounds but that is a little skewed because of my non-eating this weekend. Realistically it's around 10. I'm feeling better for sure and think I look a little better. It's nice to have my clothes fitting better. The important thing is I'm healthier for my family.

That's it from here! E is doing great and honestly you would never know she was a preemie as she approaches 7 months old this week. She's working on sitting up but very wobbly and needs someone there to help.

Rolling Machine and First Cold

Ella got her first real cold last week. She has been a drippy snotty mess but seems to be on the mend. We took her to the doctor just to be sure that she didn't have anything serious like RSV or an ear infection. Her lungs and ears were clear and she seems to just have a plain old cold. She has been a trooper through it and is still mostly her happy self. She had a fabulous day yesterday but last night was terrible. She isn't eating well as she get frustrated by not being able to breath and eat (she is soooo picky) so she has not been finishing some of her bottles. Also she coughed so hard Saturday morning that she barfed pretty much her whole bottle on my pillow! Last night she gagged herself on her own hand and barfed a ton on my lap (yuck). Needless to say her eating was all off last night and she nursed at 12 am, 1:30 am, took 3 oz from a bottle at 3 am and I think she ate again at 5:30 am. She was up for the day bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:30 am. The mommies however were not feeling so perky. I hope that she went down for a nap soon after I left, as Shazam certainly needed it. I am dragging today but I have kind of a low key day as I am giving a quick quiz, explaining a project and passing back papers. Let's hope she gets back to a semi normal schedule tonight.

In other news Ella has become a rolling machine. She figured out early last week how to roll from her back to her belly. She couldn't do it on Tuesday for early intervention but by Wednesday she was rolling away. She had been rolling from her belly to her back every once in a while but not on a regular basis. Throughout the the week she would roll from her back to her belly every time she was put on her back. Once there she was stuck as she seemed to have forgotten that she could roll back. After a few minutes on her belly she would get frustrated and start to fuss to be rolled back. Well last night she put all the pieces together and started rolling all the way over back to her back. She also figured out that this is a mighty great way to move towards an object. So now she is a rolling machine and boy is she quick. I left her for a minute to grab a snack in the kitchen and when I came back she was off her play mat, the rug and on the hardwood floor heading towards Shazam who was in our office nook. We need to make some kind of containment system and also start baby proofing the apartment.

Shazam has now finished two of her three grad school applications and I hope we hear soon that she is in one of these programs since they are her top choices. We would appreciate any positive vibes sent to B.C. and Simmons to help her application along. She did a great job in her applications and I think they are stupid if they don't let my awesome wife in. A wonderful financial aid package would be wonderful as well.

Pictures

Our photograper posted some of the pictures from our session on her blog and I just had to borrow them to let you all see them. We have prints of these but didn't get the digital versions (so expensive!) I just love the one of Shazam a little E with their noses together. I love my pretty girls.

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Click here to view this video

Busy

Now that I am back at work I am so busy I have not had a chance to blog in a week. I am going to try to be better about updating but I may need my wife to pick up my slack although she is pretty busy at home so we will have to see what happens.

Ella is still not sleeping through the night but most nights it is much better. If she only wakes up one time to eat I can deal. Espesially if my lovely wife gets up with her. I am getting a pretty good am routine and can shower pump and get out the door before 7 am. This morning we all over slept and I had to get out the door in 20 min. I still mananaged to pump for 15 min but that meant no shower for Super Sammy G today.

I am finding it tough to pump at work but am doing the best I can. I guess the biggest problem is that every day my schedule is different. Some days my prep periods are all in the morning, others are spread out and others they are all in the end. Add that to the fact that I have to pump in what I call the pumping cave in the basement in the girls lockeroom and it makes for not an optimal situation.

While on the pumping topic let's talk about supply. When in the NICU my supply was great. We brought little E home to a freezer packed with milk. Over the last 3 months my supply has been dropping and E's appitite has been increasing. Our freezer supply ran out a week or so ago and we had to start supplementing with formula. I had wanted to breast feed for a year but as we all know what I wanted and what actually happens often are not the same thing. I am not against using formula I just wanted to give E the best possible food. Now that she is a preemie I am really hoping to continue to give her b.m. until at least the end of RSV season in May. I used all the old tricks to increase my supply to no avail so I started taking domperid.one a week ago. I think I am responding to the drug very well and my supply is up. Yeah! The only problem is that it is not available comercially in the US so my only options is buying from Canada or having it compounded. I got it compounded at a pharamcy in the town I work in. I am very happy to have a facility so close to us that will make it. There are only a few phamacies in the country that do. Also the geeky side of me thinks it is totally cool that the pharmacist took chemicals off a shelf and synthesized the drug just for me. I wanted to aks if I could watch him do it. I think that if I didn't totally suck ass at organic chemistry I would have totally wanted to do this. Also if I had known that is what pharmacists really do (not just count pills) I may have paid more attention in organic chemistry and tried to be a chem/phar major! That said I am totally annoyed that it is not coverd by insurance. It pisses me off that they will pay for a man to get a boner and not for me to supply food for my baby!

Ok off the soap box.

Little E has been really working on her reaching grabbing and using her hands lately. She has taken to pulling on my hair and necklace and really likes her toys. It is great to watch. She is sporatically rolling over from her tummy to her back but everything needs to be perfect to have that happen. She also is begining to try to move around on her tummy often moving hersef towards a toy she wants. She doesn't get very far but I think she is pre army crawl. She is really getting good at tummy time and is holding her head and upper body up quite a bit.

Here are some of the latest pictures from the last few weeks!

6 Month Update

First I can't believe my little baby girl is 6 months old. She went for her check up on Friday all is well with Little E. All systems checked out great. She is growing like a weed and even the doctor was impressed with her stats. She weighed in at 14lb 1 oz, 24.75 inches long, and 16.3 inch head cir. All of this is great but what is even more impressive is her jump in her percentiles. She is in the 17th% for weight, 19th% for height, and 21st% for head circumference for her actual age! She is not only on the growth chart for her actual age but is moving up on it every month. At 3 months she was not on the chart in weight, at 3.5 months she was in the 1st percentile, and at 4 months she was in the 2nd percentile. She jumped 15 points in 2 months! In fact she was not even on the growth chart for height at 4 months and not only made it on the chart at this visit but is holding her own quite well there. To say that we are happy about her progress is an understatement. Six months ago we were told so many times how small Ella was for her gestational age and she was so slow to gain weight in the NICU it is pretty amazing to see Ella growing better than anyone could have expected.

We got the green light to start solids at the appointment but things are not going well on that front. We tried rice cereal three times with very poor results. She seems to be having terrible gas and starts screaming about 1/2 hour after she eats. It is pretty horrible. Saturday Shazam and I went out for our first date night and my parents watched Little E for us. Our wonderful date was cut short as Little E was hysterical and my parents could not get her to settle. We ran out of the restaurant leaving my Flirtini on the table and my surf and turf in a Styrofoam box. She was fine by the time we got home but all in all it was a solids fail. Same thing happened Sunday night. I tried giving her less cereal on Monday and it wasn't as bad but she still spent a good hour fussing and crying when I was trying to get her to bed. She is still pooping up a storm so she is not constipated. I think her little system is not ready for solids. Since she is only 4.5 months old adjusted we think we will just stop with the solids for a few weeks and try again when she is a little older.

Shazam wrote about Ella's lack of sleep at night. After sleeping through the night for the last month and a half Ella decided that the night before I went back to work she would stop sleeping. Argh great timing Ella! She has not slept through the night since then. I was hoping that with solids she would go back to sleeping through the night.

Since that didn't work out we are trying a new method tonight. Our early intervention case worker wants us to try and let Ella cry it out. I must say that I love EI. I think every first time parent should have a developmental psychologist come to your house once a week for the first year of parenting. She has been wonderful, she talks through issues that we are having, brings us articles to read, and is just someone to listen to us when we are stressed out. I know some of you will not agree with this method but at this point we are willing to try anything. We gave Ella a bath and her last bottle and put her in her pack n play. She has been falling asleep for about 30 minutes and then waking up for the last 90 minutes. I hope that she falls asleep soon for good. It is really hard to listen to your baby cry out for you and not go and comfort her. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Finally, school is going great. I have great kids and we are settling in to a nice groove already. While I hate leaving Ella every day I must say that I feel lucky to have a job that I really do love. Well Ella is quiet so I am going to take this opportunity to snuggle with my wife and watch Ame.rican Idol. I do have to note that the auditions are in Boston and are being held at our wedding venue! It is strange to be looking out at the view we had when we got married with Simon sitting there.

Rough Start

Ok so I know it's not news to anyone but this week SSG went back to work as the fabulous science teacher she is and I am playing the part of stay at home mom...for now due to losing my job in 2009 and well paying for daycare on just one salary would be near impossible. We had a nice weekend though clearly SSG and I were feeling anxious about what would be a drastic change in routine. She was sad about leaving us during the day and I was nervous about not having the calming presence that is my amazing wife. I recently was in the nursery with a screaming Little E and she wouldn't stop so knowing the monitor was on I desperately called out "Sam! Help!" She often rescues me.

Now just to quickly back up Little E has been sleeping through the night for a while now. Not sure how long but it feels like a month or two but then again I have no concept of time since I stopped working. Sunday night rolled around and E was miserable going down and continued to be miserable through the entire night. Bad start. I must note that SSG did a great job on Monday morning and was really strong. I know it was hard to leave but I think it's getting easier as the week goes on. So SSG dragged herself to work and I dragged myself through the day at home. Monday night was an even bigger disaster. Again E was miserable and screamed bloody murder from about 10:45 to 12:15. We could not figure out what was wrong and it was awful. SSG was practically in tears and almost called the doctor and I was practically curled up in the fetal position on the bed, rocking back and forth begging for the crying to stop. It wasn't pretty. Then SSG remember the gas drops. We gave her a dose, she let out a little burp, and gave SSG a huge smile. Seriously? Yesterday was extra special due to the fact Darwin seems to have a stomach bug which is resulting in horrible diarrhea. Yeah. Gross. He had an accident in the house because SSG was by herself and couldn't get to him fast enough. I was outside at 3:00 this morning letting the poor dog relieve himself. Awesome. Can you give dogs Pep.to?

In a nutshell E has slept horrible all week, waking up often, and sure as hell not sleeping through the night anymore. We have her 6 month appointment today and surely will talk about introducing rice cereal. We think she is waking up hungry and just needing more food. We hope this is the solution because we are all exhausted. I foresee lots of naps this weekend and possibly a baby covered in rice cereal.

I now leave you with E looking at her musical glow worm that her Mimi gave her for Christmas. She loves this thing and is mesmerized by it.