Poop Stories

Clinton had the day off today, and I had to work. This morning I was running late and even though we have Ashley coming to baby-sit Landon, we told her she could come a little later, since Clinton would be there. Clinton’s still a little afraid to be left alone with Landon for an extended period – and I honestly don’t want to push him to do something he’s not comfortable doing – for his sake and for Landon’s sake.

For those not familiar with a baby’s intestinal working – it’s like a conveyor belt. A reflex in the sucking makes them poop. Milk in, poop out – almost at the same time, or immediately following a feeding anyway.

So I’m late and he’s asleep right up until I should be leaving – and then he wakes up crying. Since I’m going to get to work and immediately pump anyway – I figure I might as well just feed him. So I fed him, and handed him off for burping and ran out the door. I thought he might poop after I left, but I didn’t think it would be a big one, and I thought if nothing else, he’d survive the 30 or so minutes until Ashley got there to change him.

But the little gremlin pooped up his back and all over Daddy, and caused him to have to change a dirty diaper. I didn’t plan it, but if I had, it wouldn’t have worked so well. Anyway, it turns out that he CAN change a dirty diaper! Clinton called me for sympathy. He said he asked Landon if he and I had conspired against him in planning this – and Landon giggled at him. I probably didn’t give him much of the sympathy he was after – I certainly don’t get sympathy when I change a dirty diaper. But I am proud of him for not sticking him in the bathtub and waiting for Ashley.

SIDE NOTE SIDE NOTE SIDE NOTE SIDE NOTE SIDE NOTE SIDE NOTE SIDE NOTE SIDE NOTE

Yes Clint lives with us.

Clint said yesterday that people ask him after I post something about where he was in the story. “Don’t you live with them?” they ask. And I have to say that all the “we” and ‘”us” references kind of sound like I mean Landon and me, but I really mostly mean Clinton, Landon, and me. He’s in there. He may be in the background, but he’s in there.

Right now, I hold a disproportionate amount of duties when it comes to Landon. I am his food, I change his diapers, I get up during the night with him, I take him to his appointments, I was the day care dropper offer/ picker upper and I’m the author of the blog – therefore I will be in more stories than Clinton will be.

That being said, when Clinton starts his blog about taking care of the house – I will be pretty absent from that – as he’s the dishwasher, the vaccuumer, the tidier, the duster, the pool boy, the sprinkler guardian, the lights in the landscaping are burnt out noticer/replacer, the decorator, the trash taker outer, and for the most part, the laundry guy – I’m the one running around making messes for him to clean up. I think I have the better end on this deal.

Gratuitous Christmas Picture:

You're so Vein

Or in Landon’s case, not vein. He’s been congested for 2 weeks and the doctor said to suction him out with saline, but as long as he didn’t have a fever – or that his fever couldn’t be broken with Tylenol, that we were ok. This past Friday his fever reached 102.9°F, I gave him Tylenol and after 2 hours it had only come down to 101.5°F. We were in Gun Barrel, so we headed to the ER at the hospital where Grandma Wood works. First order of business is to rule out RSV – so they did the swab and it came back negative. Then they ordered a CBC. The kid has ninja veins. They tried twice to start an IV – and when that didn’t work, they collected the blood from a heel stick. The CBC came back with a really high white blood cell count, so he was clearly fighting off something. Then they ordered the X-ray. The X-ray showed pneumonia. So they arranged for an ER to ER transfer to Children’s in Dallas. Where we were treated like we had come in with a kid with the sniffles. They ordered another CBC – which meant another try to get a vein, they got the blood sample, but couldn’t get the IV. Their CBC still came back high – but that doctor thought it was viral. They deep suctioned him, cleaned out his nasal cavity, and sent us packing.

Luckily for us, the doctor who saw him first called to check up on him the next day. He had shown the X-ray to another doctor locally and one in Houston, and all 4 (including the second one from the night before) agreed that it was pneumonia and when he heard we had been released from Children’s and not admitted, and not even been given anything to deal with the infection, he called in a prescription for him.

All in all – over the weekend, he had his first ER visit, his (and my) first ambulance ride, his first X-ray, his first dealing with a Doctor who didn’t seem to know what she was doing, and his first Christmas.

Yesterday we went to check in with his pediatrician, and he said what we did was good and that the antibiotic we had for him should be plenty, he agreed that with that high of a white blood cell count that he would have had the same diagnosis. And as we left, we were checking out, and the mom in front of us turned as said “Does your baby have pneumonia too? We spent Christmas in the ER.” And in a weird way – it was kind of comforting that we were not the only ones.

So the good news is that we caught it early and he’s recovering nicely – we still have a couple days of antibiotics to go though. He’s a trooper and was called the “best looking sick kid ever.”

When I enrolled him in day care I completely expected that he’d have ear infections and get sick – I did not expect pneumonia. We went to get all his stuff from the day care yesterday. While we figure out our plan, his Grandma Logan and his cousin Ashley will be taking care of him during the day for the next month.

Skateboarding Dinosaurs

Today we had our 2 month check-up and first round of vaccines. And just to make things interesting, he peed on the scale.

He's 13 lbs even (75th percentile), 41cm head (75th percentile) and 23 inches tall (50th percentile). So he's slowed his weight gain a little bit to be normal.

The appointment went better than normal, he was actually quiet while I talked to the doctor.

Then he got upset when we got left alone for a while. Cranky, cause he was tired I'm sure. He was nearly asleep when the nurse came in with the shots. He got 4 shots and one oral vaccine. For all the horror stories we heard about this appointment. Landon cried more when he heard some other kid crying down the hall than he did when he got his shots. He did not appreciate the taste of the oral vaccine at all. He didn't spit it out, but he tried and tried to tell that lady that he didn't want to have that thing in his mouth. SHe laid him out on the table and gave him 4 shots in very quick sucession and when it was all over he fussed for about 15-20 seconds and promptly started to fall asleep.

He got some rockin' band-aids.


He slept all the way through a shopping trip to Wal-Mart and probably would have slept for a while at home if I hadn't banged his carrier on everyting on the way in.

He seems to be ok with the whole shot thing.

In fact, he's sitting on my lap now, talking away...it won't be too long before you get a guest blog entry from him.

A rough idea of what a blog entry might look like from him, from what he's saying. (*Cluck* being the tongue popping trick.)

uh-yeeeeeaaah. uh nea avvve. *Cluck* ehh ehh ehh *Cluck*uh oooh ooh ne aaah hey I ewe. *Smack* *Slurp* Aaaaye, Whuuu, Aaaaaye, EEEEEEEEEEEEE.

My court reporting skills could use some help.

No time

Pictures tomorrow - I promise.

Monthly Newsletter #2

Dear Landon,

You’ve come a long way this month. We’ve reached what’s supposed to be the height of your colic and are headed back down hill. Either you’re getting better, or I’m getting better at dealing with you, but either way – we’re getting better together. And thank goodness, because it got kind of rough there for a while. I read a book that has helped us tremendously, and I can see the improvement since I started implementing the suggestions.

You’ve started cooing for us, and while we don’t necessarily understand what you’re saying, you don’t seem to mind telling us what’s on your mind. You’re vocal throughout the day – mornings you seem to be happy vocal and evenings you get angry vocal. We’d like to see some of that happy vocal in the evening, the hour or so I get in the morning before I drop you off at day care is not quite enough for me, and your father gets so little of it, he seems to think you are ONLY angry.

You’ve been sleeping less and less during the day lately – although you normally gave me one good nap each day so I could accomplish something. Towards the end of my maternity leave you let me complete my PE application and the Ethics test that goes along with it – which is going to be helpful for us in the long run. Now I just have to study for that test.

You had your second Dr. appointment this month, and everything seems to be going well – you’re gaining weight like you’re supposed to. You started out at the top of the chart, and you’re staying up there.

I’m afraid to say this out loud – and I knock on wood every time I do – I’m sure I’ll pay dearly tonight for putting it in here. But you have been consistently sleeping through the night for over a week. Not the textbook “6 hours is considered through the night” crap, but when you go down at about 8, 9 or 10pm, I have to wake you up in the morning. I on the other hand am still not sleeping through the night, but then I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have since we got Scarlett, so that’s no biggie. Also, don’t tell the AAP – but you like to sleep on your tummy. Anyone to whom I have confided this information has assured me that their children slept on their tummies just fine. You’re not in any other risk category for SIDS, so I think I can justify it. If you fall asleep swaddled you go down on your back, but un-swaddled, gets the tummy.

You had your first road trip and first overnight away from home (other than the hospital) this month. We drove up to Lake Limestone for Thanksgiving – and it seems like we are going to have to work on your vehicle skills. Fiona didn’t seem to mind the screaming, but Scarlett stared out the window like she wished she was out there in the fields with the cows instead of in the truck. Fiona tried to show you how looking out the back window was a lot of fun, but you were having none of that. Scarlett checked in on you occasionally and tried giving you a good lick to calm you down, but that didn’t work either. You kept your schedule of happy in the morning angry in the evening. You went to sleep a little early, so your father and I went to sleep then too, we’re no dummies, when you’re down for the night, if we want 7-8 hours of sleep in a row, we go when you go. Maybe it was that it was a new place, maybe it was your father and me yelling at the dogs as they took turns trying to get up on the air mattress with us after we repeatedly told them no, maybe it was that they took turns doing the ear flap clap, maybe it was that I forgot your CD of the heartbeat thumping noise, or maybe it was that when I put the pack-n-play together and set the bassinet part in it I managed to lay it down at a slight angle and you slowly slid to one side throughout the night, but you did stir a few times during the night – however you were able to get back to sleep. Even with that – you still slept from 8:30 pm to 3:30 am



Your first day at day care was an adventure. First you tried that trick where you don’t take a bottle, so I had to take you a different one, and you got to see me and nurse mid morning. Then you tried your old stand by trick where you tell the nursery ladies you’re hungry – only this time they had a bottle to feed you instead of sending you to where I was – so they fed you and fed you and fed you and you ate 2 ounces almost every hour for 4 or 5 hours and when I picked you up you had a “Big Belly Tight Tummy,” which incidentally is Ivan’s Indian name. And then I got you home and you claimed to STILL be hungry. Liar! The little paper they fill out that tells me what you did all day let me know how VERY little you slept – which tells me they fed you when you cried because you were tired and they thought you were hungry. Also it looks like you started on your newest hickey. This first week has been rough on both of us, but you’ve got to get used to it, because it’s going to be the routine for a while.

This morning you started a really neat new trick of clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth. We can't get you to do it on command, but it's pretty funny when you do it - sometimes you even startle yourself.

Tomorrow is your 2 month check-up. You’ll be getting your first vaccines (aside from that pesky one they gave you in the hospital that I didn’t even have to witness.) I have been forewarned that it’s heart-wrenching. The day care requires them, and so does the school district, so you’re going to have to get them one way or another, I’m sure you’ll forgive us.

Love,
Mom