The Pea Incident

Ever since Jay's 4 month check-up, when the doctor gave us the "okay" we promptly started introducing him to baby solid foods, primarily veggies to start with.

I picked a Gerber Nature Select pack at Sam's that had 6 jars of sweet potatoes, 6 jars of carrots and 6 jars of peas.

Having been warned he might not like the peas, I started him with the sweet potatoes (which might I add, actually tasted pretty decent for being baby food!). He seemed to like those a lot!

Once we finished those with no allergic reactions we gave him the carrots, which he also seemed to like!

This is the result of Jay trying to "help" mommy put the
spoon in his mouth - carrots EVERYWHERE, lol...

Then, once those were gone, we got to the peas...

and boy did he NOT like those!

He took the 1st spoonful just fine, but the 2nd one he started fussing about, and by the time I attempted to get a 3rd spoonful in him he was spitting out at me and screaming bloody murder (I swear he was cussing me out in baby speak, lol...). I called my mom for advice and after hearing him scream in the background told me just to save them and try again in a few weeks as to not force it into him and turn him off to eating the solid foods, so I fixed him another bowl of rice cereal for dinner that night instead as I needed to go get some more non-green veggies for him.

Sleeping in the high chair

I got about 1/4th the bowl of cereal in him before he passed out in his high chair for a good half hour or so - he wore himself out screaming over the peas! LOL...

So apparently Jay does not like baby food peas!

Since the pack at Sam's only has the 3 flavors in it I went to Walmart to stock up on other flavors - in addition to carrots and sweet potatoes I grabbed some squash and sweet potatoes with corn (which he finished off this week just fine!). I also grabbed some fruits too so we can start those next week - he has apples, bananas, peaches, and pears waiting for him to try!

I like the Gerber Nature Select foods as they come in a 2pk plastic container with snap on lid for just under a $1 and it's made with 100% natural fruits/veggies, with no added sugar, salt, starch, artificial colors or flavors! He also eats the Gerber brand rice cereal too. He's definitely a Gerber baby!

Baby Mozart

Since I've been getting more and more hours/shifts at work lately, Jay's been spending quite a bit of time over at my mom's house lately.

I sat down on one of my breaks last week and got a text from her - my sister sat Jay down with her at their piano, he watched her play for a few minutes and decided to try it himself!

Check out my little Baby Mozart, playing away at the piano!

Baby... talk?

I think I'm going crazy and hearing things.

I was sorting through our mail & Jay decided
he wanted a piece of mail to call his own, lol...

Last night, as I put Jay down in his crib for the night he was all being squirmy wormy trying to settle in. Not expecting a response I asked "Hey buddy, where do you think you're going??" He turned his head, looked at me and I SWEAR he said "Up" before going back to squirming around!

Completely baffled me!

I texted hubby, once Jay got settled and began drifting off to sleep, to tell him and much to my surprise, he told me he coulda sworn he heard Jay say "momma" the other day when he was with him on the couch while I was in another room!

How crazy is that?! Jay'll be 5 months on Monday and we both swear we've heard him say a word!

I did a search online and they say that words like "mama" and "dada" and other 2 syllable sounds/words can be heard as early as in the 4-6month age range, so I guess it IS possible... but still! Wasn't expecting that!

***************

I also *finally* find something that helps his mouth when his teething pain becomes unbearable - baby tylenol! I had asked the pediatric urology specialist if stuff like baby motrin was fine for him to take for him gum pain and he said yeah, so I stopped at Target the other day to pick some up. The closest they had was the generic baby ibuprofen - I ran into one of the pharmacists though, explained what I was looking for and why and she suggested the generic baby tylenol at the lowest dosage amount would be best, as the ibuprofen is only for high grade fevers.

I went to pick him up from my mom's as she was watching him while I went and got my Mother's Day mani-pedi that morning and he was fussing in pain cuz of his mouth, having trouble drinking his bottle, so I gave him some and it seemed to work immediately, as he finished his bottle with ease and just kinda vegged out with no fuss for several hours! I gave him another dose later in the evening, as the pain seemed off and on all day (he was having a real bad time earlier that afternoon but it hadn't been 4 hours since his last dose so I couldn't give it to him yet, poor kiddo!) and once again, it seemed to work like a charm for his mouth pain!

***************

This weekend should be interesting - hubby and I are dropping Jay off at my parent's house for a few days tomorrow once he gets home from work as we're going to a wedding up in Minnesota this weekend.

This'll be Jay's first extended stay away from mommy and daddy... as much as I wouldn't mind a getaway with just myself and the hubby, I know I'm going to miss Little Man and that it's going to be weird not having him with us for a few days - I'm still debating about just taking him with us!

Anyways... I hope everything goes okay and he doesn't give my mom too much of a hard time. We'll be gone roughly 48 hours, as the wedding is on Friday and we need to be back in town before 5pm on Saturday since hubby couldn't get the night off work. He's only been away from us overnight once and that was when we were moving and he was getting a bit anxious and antsy to see us again within 24hrs and was extremely confused that night when neither my husband or myself came to pick him up from Grammie's...

Our 1st Official Father's Day

This past Sunday hubby got to celebrate his first official Father's Day as daddy! (Last year he sorta did, as we broke the news to our families that we were expecting).

It was also Baby Dedication day at our church too, so we were able to get Jay dedicated.

It was a very long day for all of us - we got up early as we had to be at church early. Then we went out for Father's Day lunch with hubby's dad, mom and younger sis (our treat). We took a bit of a nap in the afternoon before heading over to my parent's house for Father's Day cookout. Then we watched the Game of Thrones season finale, with Jay passing out for the night very early!

All in all, it was a fun day though!

We got hubby several gifts - from Jay he got a cute little card, a picture frame (that I let Jay pick out for daddy) with hubby's favorite photo of Jay so he can put it on his desk at one of his jobs, and the Adam Sandler movie "Big Daddy." From me I gave him a funny card, "Tron Legacy" on Blu-Ray and a Black&Decker cordless drill with a pack of drill bits.

I'd say he had a pretty good 1st Father's Day!

Jay's meeting with the pediatric urology specialist & official diagnosis

So I'm sure everyone is wondering - how'd Jay's appointment with the pediatric urology specialist go today?

Seemed like it went well and was very informative.

They weighed him to start and checked his vitals - his blood pressure was good and his weight is up to 13lbs, 2.8oz so he's gained some since his regular check-up he had last week.

The specialist went over the scans from the testing they did back in April and explained more of what it showed and what it meant.

Jay's official diagnosis now is that he has a UVJ ureter obstruction. Below is the diagram that the specialist drew me for to sort of explain what's going on:

On Jay's right side (the left side of the image), his kidney and ureter look perfectly normal, going into the bladder as it should. On his left side though (the right side of the image) the part of the ureter tube that feeds into the bladder (the UVJ) is tapered off so much that nothing can get out (or in) and a bit deformed.

I asked what causes this and he said what happens in these cases generally is that at about 2-3 weeks after conception is when the bud of the ureter tube is formed on the bladder and branches out to form the tube up to the kidney. Basically, his left one was just a dud and didn't form properly.

He said that while it still is possible that it could grow and open up on its own as he grows, he said he doesn't want to get our hopes up and said that realistically he'll probably need the surgery to fix it. He said it's basically a problem that he has "bad plumbing" and that he can fix it, as he has plenty of times before and says the surgery is almost always successful (of course they can't say it's 100%, as there's always that slim chance something could go wrong, but he seemed very confident that it was just a simple, minor procedure and nothing to get worried about). He said what they'll do is they'll continue monitoring it via renal ultrasound every 3-4 months and when his bladder is big enough (usually between 1 and 2 years of age), he'll do the surgery, pulling out the ureter tube from the bladder, cutting off the bad part and then reinsert/attach it to the bladder.

He said other than the UVJ obstruction, everything else about Jay looks 100% - he said even the kidney that's blocked looks to be completely healthy, and while you only need 1 kidney to leave, just in case something happens down the road to the one, he'd like to have the other one fully functioning as well so we don't have to worry about it then.

He said another option they could do if it became necessary (ie: something happened to his right kidney and we needed the other to function asap), they could do a temporary ureterostomy where they make a hole in him and the tube is sticking out onto his belly and that everytime he pees it would drain out onto his belly... yeah, that just sounds messy, and gross and more of a hassle than we need, so we're not planning on doing that.

He also put him on another antibiotic, taking him off the amoxicillian, so that he doesn't get any long-term effects of the amoxicillian (I guess it's been known to give stomach problems and can cause diarrhea) and this one is more to prevent and treat any possible UTI infection (basically, it's more specific than the amoxicillian).

So... I'm doing alright. Not thrilled at the fact that he'll probably have to have the surgery come 2013, but it is a ways off too so it's not like I have to think about it. He'll probably have the scar from where they go in on the left side to get to it though for awhile... the doc's confidence though at how well the surgery goes seemed to put me more at ease, so I guess we'll just deal with it when the time comes.

A busy week is upon us...

I must say, we have quite the busy week!

Today we're heading up to Madison for Jay's appointment with his new pediatric urology specialist, as his local urologist isn't a pediatric specialist (he's a urologist with some background in pediatrics, but he isn't a pediatric specialist) and has deemed Jay's case to be a little more severe as the blockage being down near his bladder instead of up by the kidney is a little more rare and uncommon.

Then I am on call at work from 5-10pm, which I have a feeling I might be needed as we're in the process of changing the store over for our Back to School collection.

Tuesday I am also working from 4:30-close.

Wednesday we have our family photo for the new upcoming pictorial directory for our church, as they put one out every 5-10 years or so (last one was during my early college years). I'm pretty excited to get a professional family portrait of the 3 of us, as it'll be our first official one and we get a free 8x10 of it too, not to mention being in the directory with my now intermediate family is something I was always excited about getting to do someday when I was a younger and now that day is here!

Thursday and Friday we have nothing really planned (that I can recall), aside from Friday being payday and I'm looking forward to a decent sized check considering how many hours I got to put in last week.

Saturday I'm working open til 1:30 and being on call til 3.

And Sunday is another big day - hubby's first "real" Father's Day (last year we made the announcement that Jay was on the way) and Jay's Baby Dedication at church. We have to be there at 915am, which is early for us, as usually we're strolling into 2nd service at about 1030am, just before the actual sermon starts (service itself starts at 1015). After church we're doing Father's Day lunch with my inlaws at Famous Dave's and then I'm assuming we're grilling or something with my family for dinner later in the day.

And of course I should be in bed, as it's going on 4am and I need to be up around 830am or so as I have to get myself showered and ready to go before Jay's up so I can feed him his cereal and bottle before we hit the road to Madison (which takes about an hour and half drive, but I want to give us at least 2 hours in case we hit traffic - his appointment isn't until 12:20 but I want to aim to leave around 10am so we have plenty of time). I find that I can *never* fall asleep at a decent time the night before a busy day... so annoying! I just hope there's a point to this doctor's visit rather than just driving all the way up there for a simple meet and greet with our new specialist that could have been done over the phone.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

As I once overheard a friend tell her fiance, I'm sorta of a queen when it comes to getting stuff for free or cheap. My "secret" is I have a few good survey sites I regularly take surveys for rewards and stuff and until it recently shutdown I was also a regular on VH1's focus group VH1VIPs where I was VIP of the Month or a runner-up multiple times, getting various Amazon.com giftcards.

The one rewards site I enjoy doing surveys on is called eRewards and while you don't get cash, you can earn giftcards and the like. I often get Gamestop cards or Borders Rewards points on that one. This last time I "cashed out" though I had about $80 worth of points to redeem, with $70 that would expire in the next few months if I didn't use them, so I cashed out what I could (you can only get 1 Gamestop giftcard per quarter and I think Borders is the same too). Since I had some spare points that were "use or lose" I decided to spend some for a year subscription to Parents magazine.

My 1st issue came just the other day and I flipped through it the other night (with Jay grabbing or kicking at *every* page - he's such a little stinker, lol...).

On the last page there's a section where parents can submit funny things their child has said - here's some of the more amusing ones:

Sight Seeing
We were out to dinner when a man with a spiked Mohawk walked past our table. My son Jack, 2, pointed at him and yelled "Dinosaur!"

Dirty Laundry
I was in my bedroom when my 2 year old daughter Peyton came in and asked what I was doing. "I'm changing mommy and daddy's sheets," I said. She replied "Oh okay. You pee-peed on them too?"

Acting Out
My 5-year old son Matthew came out of his bedroom holding his Star Wars Monopoly game which we keep on top of his tallest mirrored dresser. I reminded him that it's not safe to climb on the furniture and asked if that was what he did. "Nope," he told me with a grin. "I used The Force, Mom."

Watch Your Step
I asked my daughter Avery, 3, if she could behave while I hopped in the shower. She looked at me, terrified, and said "Please don't hop in the shower mommy. You might get hurt!"

Make Room
My husband and I were getting ready for vacation when I said that the only thing left to do was pack the car. My 2-year old son Isaiah started laughing and said "Mommy, you're so silly - the car's too big to fit in the suitcase!"

-From Parents magazine, July 2011

And he flipped again!

Hubby's  been on vacation from UPS (his 3rd shift job) all week this past week and so he's been spending more time with Jay, working on him flipping.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, he can flip from his tummy to his back and is doing it regularly.

This past week hubby's been putting him on the floor on his back, trying to get him to work on flipping from back to tummy... and this morning he finally did it!

He's been close for weeks, trying ever since he started flipping the other way. And this morning, while I went to go make his rice cereal, hubby watched him in bed and he flipped back to tummy twice!

Hubby said he did it this afternoon too while I was work... unfortunately I have yet to see him do it (I've only seen the aftermath), as he couldn't quite get the final push over when we had him on the floor to show me tonight. Hopefully I will soon though!

His main hang-up is getting his arm that's underneath him straightened out, as he often rolls back onto his back when trying to pull that arm out from under.

He's also eating his sweet potatoes regularly - the first and 2nd night, for dinner, he ate half the jar and then the 3rd night he ate the whole jar!

So proud of him!

As far as the insurance fiasco, I spoke to a lady the other day who was real helpful and she talked to her supervisor about the fact that when I called on March 17 and asked that I was told the children's hospital in Madison was in our network so they said they would look into and pull the call and find out what happened and told me that and why and get back to me about it sometime this week. She also looked it up and was able to confirm that there are no pediatric urology specialists in our network within 30 miles of us so she told me what we can do is apply for Gap Exception Coverage so that we can get the in-network rate for whoever we see for that as there is none nearby in our network that we can go to. When I called to apply for that they told me it has to go before a review so we won't know til sometime after his appointment on Monday if they'll give us the in-network rate or not, but I guess we'll just go and find out and see. Hopefully they will though as it's not like there's a closer option for us.

They also seem to be finally giving me actual hours at work this week, plus they've used my on-call hours twice this week as well, so I'm working like 3 shifts a week now, up from 1! Guess I'm doing something right!

And call us crazy, but Jay sorta has his own smartphone now! Hubby's day job is working for a premium Verizon Wireless retailer and he got a Droid Incredible that can't be activated to use as a phone as it's missing an ESN or whatever. But you can hook it up via WI-FI to download apps and watch videos and do stuff online. Since Jay loves the Multi-Touch Visualizer app as well as watching Sesame Street videos on Youtube, we made sure those are both on there. It's pretty amusing, lol...

4 Month Check-Up and then some!

4 months old already!

Just realized I haven't really posted too much on here lately.

Honestly, there hasn't really been much to post about.

Jay's still flipping from his tummy to his back and he's been working on going back to tummy and getting pretty close! He gets stuck on his side though, as he doesn't seem to be quite able to get that last push over.

He's fascinated by our smartphones still - hubby found this app, Multi-touch Visualizer - where when you press the screen a colored circle and line crosshairs pops up. You can touch several fingerrs to the screen at once to get multiple colors. Jay loves it.

He also loves this Youtube video of Elmo playing "Elmo's Song" for Big Bird and Snuffy, although he tends to get fussy when Snuffy's on screen and Elmo isn't, lol...

He's still working on that first tooth coming in so not really much progress there.

Today (Wednesday) we had his 4 month check-up. He's up to 13lbs even, which means he's doubled his birth weight and is in the 25th percentile. He's also 25inches long. Doctor said he's looking healthy and was impressed by how well he was holding his head up and keeping control of it, as well as how strong the rest of his muscles seemed.

He said we can start him on the rest of the solid foods, as it seems like he's eating just fine, so we gave him some sweet potatoes to eat for dinner. I think what we'll do is give him the full serving of rice cereal he's been eating at breakfast, bottle for the afternoon, sweet potatoes for dinner and then just a bottle before bed. He seemed to like the sweet potatoes pretty well though, eating about half a jar before not wanting anymore and just drinking the rest from the bottle.

He also got boosters of the shots he had last time, which he wasn't happy about. Took a good minute or so to get him to calm down afterwards - I let him cuddle with me, Elmo and his binky for a minute or so before I get him ready to leave the doctor's office. He's been sleepy most of the night, taking a long evening nap and going to bed a bit early - we're pretty sure it's just the shots making him sleepy.

But the doctor said he's doing well, which is good news, and he said the only issue we seem to have to worry about now is just his kidney blockage as his growth and eating are just fine!

Also, tomorrow I have to call our insurance company and maybe bitch them out.

A week or so ago we got a rather high bill for Jay for the testing on his kidney they did up at the children's hospital in Madison back in April. We were a little confused as we had already met his out of pocket expenses this year due to the week long stay in the hospital back in February, but today we got an "explanation of benefits" notice which explained it. Apparently, the children's hospital in Madison is out of our network! The problem, is that when Jay's urologist wanted to send us to one of the nearby children's hospitals to do the testing they had me call our insurance and find out which of the 2 nearby (Madison and Chicago) were in our network, as they would prefer us to go to Madison, but said that for some people it's out of their network so we could do Chicago instead if that was the case. So I called when we got home and the male representative I spoke with confirmed that the children's hospital in Chicago was in our network but had to check the one in Madison. He spent a minute or so pulling up the information and confirmed that both were in our network so going to either one was fine.

So yeah... not sure why they're saying suddenly it's out of network now when I had called and specifically asked if it was and was told that it was. Obviously if it wasn't we would have gone to the one that was! Kinda miffed... and right now I don't know what we're going to do about his appointment up there on Monday as his urologist in town is now referring us to the one up there since Jay's case is a little more uncommon - if this new doc isn't in our network I'll have to cancel and let the urologist's office here know that and have them set us up with a doctor in Chicago (despite the fact I had *just* confirmed his appointment on Monday earlier today! Grrrr).

Oh and his doctor said we can give him water or pedialyte too while we're out to keep him hydrated, as he said he doesn't have any problem with that.

So that's how things are with us!

101 in 1001 progress update #4

Well May (and April since I forgot that month's update) have come and gone - it's officially June 1st! Wow!

Let's check my 101 in 1001 progress for April/May

#4 - Watch at least 2 Netflix DVDs and 2 Instant Queue movies a month (9/66, 10/66)
As I mentioned in my last update, in April via Instant Watch we watched The Other Guys (which had its moments but overall wasn't that great). I also watched Toy Story 3 with my mom and sister as my mom hadn't seen it yet. I also watched Old Dogs with them in May. Old Dogs was pretty cute, as it's about Robin Williams being a former pro-athlete and John Travolta as his agent and the 2 are in business together and about to close a major deal with a company in Tokyo when Williams' ex wife whom he was briefly married to says she has to do a few weeks of jailtime and is desperate to have someone watch her kids (who are actually his kids!). It's basically him adjusting to fatherhood with Travolta as the "honorary uncle" sidekick while the 2 continue to close their business deal. It was cute and had some good laughs! As far as physical DVDs, we've watched The Social Network (which I thought was interesting and LOVED the music by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross), Salt (which was kinda meh), and Little Fockers (which was just okay - the kids were cute but the plot wasn't much).

#10 - Go to 10 restaurants we haven't been to before (3/10)

 Mommy and daddy got a night out and went to this Asian Bistro downtown called Bambo where we met up with some of hubby's UPS co-workers and watched some of their co-workers play in an acoustic 90s coverband. We didn't eat dinner there but we had dessert and it was pretty good!

18 - Read at least 15 (non-children) fiction books (3/15)
I actually read 2 in May! I finished the latest Sookie Stackhouse book, which came out at the beginning of May, and it only took me about a week and a half which isn't bad considering I don't get a lot of time to myself lately. I also downloaded Switched, the first book in the Trylle trilogy, to my Kindle app on my phone. It was a pretty easy read - I read it in a couple of days while Jay was napping or before I went to bed. Both were good reads.

26 - Get my bass guitar back
My sister showed up with it the other day - woot! Only took 9-10 months, lol...

29 - Have a date with hubby at least once a month (3/33)
Our night out to the Asian Bistro counts as this one, not to mention we also got away for an evening to catch a movie together (we went and saw Fast Five).

41 - Make said house “homey”
I'd say for now our house is about as homey as it's going to get! I'd say things look pretty nice and we got all the major stuff for the house on the inside that we need right now. Now it's time to work on the outside!

53 - Visit in person with a friend once a month (5/33)
I've gotten Jay and I in the habit of meeting with one of my close friends at least once a week to go for a walk. She has 2 young kids as well (a 4yr old and a 1yr old) so we push the kids in the strollers while we walk and talk for a bit.

55 - Have a movie night with mom or sis once a month (2/33)
As mentioned above, we watched both Toy Story 3 and Old Dogs together.

57 - Have family over for dinner once a year (1/3)
We hosted a Memorial Day cookout the other day for our family as hubby's parents were coming into town anyway since it's Monday night and his mom's gotten in the habit of spending Monday evenings with Jay and my parents always cookout on Memorial Day so since we just bought a grill of our own, we decided we'd host it at our new house this year! It went pretty well! We all pitched in some meat, I made the corn and brownies, my mom brought her awesome potato salad and my mother-in-law brought chips, some beverages, beans and a dessert (Sin a Bowl aka Death By Chocolate). It was a good time!

60 - Go to church at least once a month (2/33)
In April we went for Easter service since Jay's big enough now and in May we went at least twice.

63 - Donate clothes to charity twice a year (1/6)
We donated more than just clothes too as when we moved we found a bunch of stuff in storage as well that we never use so figured might as well give it away!

75 - Try the 30 Day Shred
I mentioned at the beginning of May I had started this... unfortunately it only lasted a week. I had to stop as apparently I have bad knees and just the up and down of the circuits as well as some of the cardio exercises were just too much for them - they'd hurt so much and I'd have trouble walking a bit afterwards too so I figured it'd be best to stop before I messed my knees up anymore. I've been going for walks at least once a week though, pushing the stroller and I probably should do some weights and ab exercises too. It's a great exercise if you can do it! Unfortunately my knees won't let me =/

78 - Go for a walk at least once a week when weather is nice
Been doing this! And even if it's not nice out, if my friend is available we'll go and do laps around the upper level of the mall for an hour at least.

79 - Exercise at least once a week
Walking counts!

92 - Host a Mary Kay party once a year (1/3)
I did this one in May and it turned out pretty well! Everyone seemed like they had fun and I got stocked up on my make-up and earned some goodies for free too! Seriously, if you need make-up, host a Mary Kay party! They have this option where you can get $75 worth of product for $35 and you earn a percentage of products based on sales from your party. For $44 I got like $150 worth of make-up! Talk about a deal! I highly encourage you guys to do this - if you're in my area lemme know and I'll give you my rep's name!

100 - Go shopping at Woodfield Mall once a year (1/3)
We did this in April while my sister was on spring break - Jay and I joined her, her boyfriend and my mom and went shopping for the day. I got myself a nice special occasion dress I wore for Easter and we took Jay to Build-A-Bear and got him Jedi Bear! He also behaved really well, not really fussing much at all, and spent most of the time in his stroller playing with his new stroller bar toys!