Look Who's Talking!

As of a few days ago, Joe's been in speech therapy for about three months.  Remember back when I said that one day soon hopefully I'd be posting videos of him babbling away?  Well, here you go.  Check out his truly fantastic progress. 

This will work best if it's in context, and you're a little prepared on what to listen for (we're still working on intelligibility, but he's not even two yet, so I'm still dang impressed!).  My mom and sister took Joe to the zoo a few days ago, and he can't stop talking about the animals - especially the tiger:

Animals are a thing lately.  Lindsay taught him all the animal sounds - here are a few:

And he loves to talk about his friends at school - Alexis and Gage are his favorites.  His teacher's name is Ms. Zakea.

Since Charlie's very into all of Joe's new Christmas toys, Joe has also gotten pretty good at "No Charlie!":

No talking in this last one, but the dancing was just too cute.

Okay, enough with the annoying braggy parent videos.  I'm just so proud of him for coming such a long way in such a short time!  Nice work, Joe!

A Pink Shower for Once!

My brother is having a baby in a few weeks.  Well, to be technical, my brother's wife is having a baby in a few weeks (if she's gonna do all the work, she definitely deserves all of the credit).   

A few things to know about Val that will probably make you understand her a bit better, if you don't know her already.  One: She loves all things sparkly.  Like, a lot. She would probably murder anyone for a bedazzler (right, Val?).  Two: She is so refreshingly sweet, fun, and happy.  On her wedding day, as the preacher was saying "I now pronounce you man and wife," Val was standing up at the altar bouncing.  Literally, bouncing. With joy.  How awesome is that?  And she was marrying my brother, of all people.  Think how happy she would be if she was marrying someone who wouldn't drive her completely nuts for the rest of her life, especially during commercial breaks of Inspector Gadget??  Three:  She is a fantastic friend.  Just read this to see (to put that in perspective, my dad wrote it the day he found out Val was pregnant).

So, in 38 days, Val's gonna be popping out an adorable baby girl.  Her name's Cameron, and based on her completely squished up face in the sonogram photos, she looks just like her dad.

I am SO. OUTRAGEOUSLY. EXCITED.  I have another niece named Emily (John's sister's daughter) who was born just under 3 months ago.  She's pretty awesome.  Ian's already punched her a few times, and she took it like a champ.  Her dad should be proud; she has a seriously strong chin.  Anyway, I have to admit -- I thought having Emily around might make me slightly less excited about Cameron, since I would get out some of that bug for girl shopping that all moms of boys have.  But, for reasons I can't explain, having Emily around has actually made me more excited about Cameron.  I just love that there are finally some girls to dote on for a change!

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago, some of Val's closest friends hosted a baby shower for her and Cameron.  Fantastic job hosting, both Nikki Parises! (Parises?  Does that work?)  Check it out.

Pretty great spread.  And you can't even see all the gifts piled up on the side!

Great desserts, ladies. 

 Some fun girly clothes.  Love me some polka dots on a baby grrl.

And she'll be gameday ready, too! 

Oh em gee.  This DRESS!  She will be the cutest girl to ever exist ever ever ever.  Nothing could be cuter.

Okay, except these Stuart Weitzman baby shoes.  Whaaa??  Who even knew these existed?!  Startin' a girl off right! And the have leopard print inside.  Ridiculous.

Just had to get in this side view of the bump.  Sorry, Val, everyone expects to see the baby at the baby shower.

 

Awesome owl hat, Val!  Who got that for Baby Cam?  Probably someone who loves Etsy lots and lots, yes?  I better see some cute pictures of my niece wearing that contraption!

The Kanes can't wait for baby Cameron to make her appearance, Aunt Val!  And you know what the best part is?  Once she comes out, you won't be pregnant anymore!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy belated Thanksgiving from Joe, the kid for whom the holiday was made.  Exhibit A.

[Please forgive me for posting this, Future Joe!]

Some Love for Ian

I realized the other day that most of my posts are about Joe.  The only post lately about Ian was that he isn't sleeping (which he still isn't, really).  Sorry Ian!  You're just too much of a sweetheart -- Joe's antics usually way trump yours. 

Anyway, this post is all about you, littler kiddo.  "Littler" is definitely key, cause there is no measure by which you are "little."  At your four month appointment last week, you weighed in at almost 16lbs 15oz--almost two full pounds bigger than Joe was at that age.  Which I thought was impossible.  You're off the charts long, and only barely on the charts heavy.  Your weight and height were the weight and height of an average eight month old baby.  Wowza, buddy.

As you can tell from this picture, you look ridiculously like your Uncle Matt.  You're all Lavalley, for better or for worse.  Goes well with the middle name, right? 

See this one-socked look you're rockin' in this photo?  That's because you always like to kick that leg out of your swaddle at night.  It's not cool enough yet for full-on footie pajamas, so this is your dad's solution: one socked foot and one non-socked foot.  It may not be the most fashionable look, but at least your toes are warm. 

You're teething, as the excessive amount of drool in this super out-of-focus picture is meant to show.  This is what happens when mom trusts her camera to dad.  He also promised that I was not in this picture at all when he took it??  Anyway, no little white buds yet, but you chew on anything and everything, all the time, and you drool buckets.  Oh, and you still have a mohawk.  Weird.

One of your favorite pastimes is to hang out on the bed every morning while Joe eats his breakfast (and Charlie stalks you guys for any unmanned food particles).  Joe makes sure to re-plug that binky whenever it falls out.  He is outrageously attentive to you.  Every time he comes into a room from a nap or from being out of the house, the first thing he does is find you and check on you to make sure we haven't negligently killed you while he was away.  He loves to give you hugs and kisses, and every time he finds anything of yours out of place, he brings it to us and says "Ian!  Ian!  Ian!".

You've rolled over all the way a couple of times (yay!), but usually you only get halfway and get stuck on your arm.  See.

They say babies your age don't have allergies, but you are definitely the exception that proves that rule.  Your piping upstairs is just not awesome.  Every early morning since you were about 4 weeks old, you have had terrible congestion that wakes you up and makes you very, very pissed.  I think this problem contributes to your less-than-desirable sleep patterns.  We use saline drops and the sucker (a baby version of the netipot, which will change your life once you're old enough to use it), but you still had boogers the size of Alaska clogging up your nostrils every morning.  The next thing we're trying is the half raised up crib.  I really, really hope this works, cause the 5:00am booger hunt is growing a little old.

It may not look like much of an incline, but it's clearly doing something, since two mornings in row you may have, eh-hem, tumbled down to the bottom by that giraffe.  But hey, if it leads to less congestion and more sleep, you're okay with a little tumbling, right?  Right.

Dad and I can't believe how fast you're growing up.  We're so happy to have you around, even though having two of you under two can get pretty fiesty at times.  You're as easy and fun and happy as you could be, so thank you for doing your part to make our lives a little easier.  Love you, Cutepie!

Ouch.

You parents out there know that most of the first couple of years of having a baby basically involves waiting for them to have all their baby "firsts."  The first time they hold their head up, first time they roll over, first time they pee on you, first time they sleep through the night...just imagine any activity you could possibly perform throughout the day, except maybe blinking and breathing, and there's probably some mom out there who noted the first time their baby did that activity in the baby book (or the baby blog). 

As a parent, you're usually eagerly anticipating all of these firsts--in my case, mostly because I was shamed into thinking they should happen earlier than they did because of the silly questionnaires I had to fill out at every doctor's appointment.  But a "first" that every parent knows is inevitable but that they are definitely not eagerly anticipating: baby's first trip to the emergency room!  yay! 

Look, Joe is almost 2 years old.  That's 24 months.  John and I used to joke that we felt like we were successful parents if we didn't have to make a trip to the ER before he was 18 months old.  So, by my math, we are officially successful parents.  Unfortunately, I definitely did not factor in myself being the cause of the accident that sent us there.  One thing about being a mom (as opposed to a dad, nanny, grandma, or other non-mom caregiver) is that you think you do everything related to your kid right, and everyone else could really benefit by just watching what you do a little closer, cause you are just so awesome.  I mean, I'm not saying this isn't still true for 99.99% of things out there, cause again, I'm just super awesome at momming.  But I guess causing your kid an injury that requires an ER trip means you've officially lost the argument that you do literally everything better.

So here's the sitch.  Joe likes to watch morning cartoons after he wakes up but before Lindsay gets here.  Ian likes to lie down on his back and look up at me super cutely after he wakes up but before Lindsay gets here.  I need to get my hair straightened for work (otherwise I'd bear an eerily resemblance to a young Albert Einstein) after the kids wake up but before Lindsay gets here.  The only way these three things can get done efficiently and with the least amount of tantrums, fussing, and tears: all of us perform these various activities on the bed together.  Unfortunately for all, and especially Joe, Yo Gabba Gabba (last Thursday morning's cartoon) has a "dancey dance" segment that he likes to imitate -- which involves, you guessed it, twirling, jumping, dancing, and bouncing all around on the bed.  So I set the straightener down for .0234187284 milliseconds to stick the binky back in Ian's mouth, and in that teeny weeny timeframe, of course, Joe manages to fall down directly onto the 450 degree Chi.  Yikes.

Full-on family panic ensues.  I yell, John runs in from the bathroom, and Ian starts crying--basically, chaos.   But Joe didn't do anything more than make a tiny frowny face of displeasure, and grunt at us for getting in the way of the TV.  This lack of reaction worried me and John more than anything else, because we both know that burns hurt.  So why wasn't he acting like it hurt?  Of course, Google confirmed our fears (because Google can confirm any fear, as long as you use it right), and we read that third degree burns have associated nerve damage that would make the burnee not feel any pain at first.  And we read that both second and third degree burns require immediate medical attention.  So we headed to the hospital. 

The rest is uneventful.  Burn was second degree, so no permanent damage done (other than a super awesome and manly scar).  We were out of the hospital within the hour, and Joe was all bandaged up and given the stamp of approval to do whatever he felt like doing at home.  Since then, Joe has not acted in any way like the burn was causing him trouble.  Mostly he just likes to play with the bandage and hold his arm out to people who ask what happened.  And we learned two new words out of it: "burn" and "boo boo."  Success?

He's only crying here because he was afraid of the machine the registration lady brought in to check us out.  Seriously.

So, all in all, no big deal.  But a few takeaways:

1.  Not all minor injury emergency room trips are created equal.  I totally expected having to run him to the hospital because he banged his head on the cement and needed a few stitches, or he jumped off the couch and broke his collarbone.  I did not expect to take him to the emergency room for a second degree burn injury.  Does the type of injury really matter?  Probably not.  But for whatever reason, the "burn" part of this was hard for me.  To me, stitches and broken bones are a normal part of childhood.  Burns are not.  To me, burns come from totally avoidable neglectful parenting, not unavoidable crazy kid stuff.

2.  Burns actually are a normal part of childhood.  I realize I just said the exact opposite.  But the other day I heard so many stories of people getting burned accidentally as kids, or people's siblings getting burned, or people's cousins getting burned, that I guess it's just something that happens.  You all know that toddlers get into everything.  It's really hard to be 100% hyper vigilant all day every day.  That doesn't make those random neglectful moments okay, I guess, but it makes the few times where things do go wrong seem more accidental than negligent (boom, lawyered).

3.  Other parents are very helpful people to have around when you've been a part of some less-than-stellar parenting experience.  I can truthfully say that every single parent I talked to first asked if Joe was okay, and when it was clear that he was fine, they immediately asked me how I was holding up.  Every single one.  Lindsay, my work neighbors, my family members - everyone.  This was, for some reason, unreasonably touching to me.  Maybe because I was beating myself up for letting him get hurt.  But if any of you are reading this, thank you, truly, for asking.

Joe's burn is fine, and I am fine too.  Don't worry, I'm not beating myself up as much as this post seems like I am.  I just wish I hadn't been the cause of my baby's first major injury.  Sorry, Future Joe!

Sleep Regression. Help.

Ian hates sleep.  Every kind of sleep -- naptime sleep, bedtime sleep, 4:00 am sleep, car sleep.  Lindsay (the nanny) fights with him all day to get him to stay down long enough for his naps.  I fight with him all night to stay asleep more than an hour and a half at a time.  Needless to say, Lindsay is probably ridiculously frustrated and I am definitely ridiculously sleep deprived.

It wasn't always this way.  I have a very clear memory of staying up until 2:00am with our friends one night when Ian was about 8 weeks old.  That's laughable now. 

I am in unfamiliar territory here.  Joe was a huge napper, and from like 10 weeks old was sleeping 10 hours at a time.  We may have had some sort of sleep problem with him around this age that I just don't remember (it's funny what you forget), but all I remember about Joe is that he loved sleep from the very beginning.

So, those of you with kids who hate sleep, please give me any advice you have.  I vaguely remember a couple of you mentioning that your kids had sleep regression at similar ages (my whole life is sort of a fog right now).  Is this is a phase or a character trait?  Is there anything I can do to keep him down longer that I'm not already doing?  He's still eating three times a night on bad nights, and twice on good nights.  Is this a breastfed baby thing I can't avoid?  We start rice cereal soon, but I hear it's a wives tale that that will help.  But tell me your experience.

I will try anything.  I need SLEEP!

Some Bad Behavior and an Almost-Milestone

I'm going back to work tomorrow.  Did I have any intention of disciplining my kids in any way today?  No.  Did Joe realize this about 5 minutes after the nanny left for the day?  Yes.

 

You can't see his target: it's Ian.  Sigh. 

But check it out.  Ian is almost rolling over one way!  A big step in baby world.  Since I probably won't be around to catch his first time rolling all the way, I figured this almost roll-over would suffice.   Go Ian!

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho

Tomorrow is my last day of maternity leave before I have to go back to work.  Ian will be four months old -- a seriously great maternity leave, right?  My mom took 6 weeks with me.  But, even with such a long leave, time flies.  I feel like I was just a couple days ago I was getting my work self organized to take all that time off.

People keep asking how I feel about going back.  And truthfully, I have no idea how to answer this question, because I don't really know how I feel about it.  And my feelings on the matter change daily, hourly, minutely.  Am I excited to go back?  Definitely not.  But I'm also not completely dreading it, either.  Thus, the typical, endless struggle with working mom guilt begins again.

Here are the two sides of the coin.  The "going back is going to be horribly sad and I'm dreading it completely" side:  I love my children.  Seriously, love them.  I love being involved in their lives the way I've been able to while I was on leave - being the face Ian sees when he wakes up from his naps, and getting to pick Joe up at school every day.  I love having the control over their days that I won't have when the nanny is there all day instead of me.  I love being able to stop Joe mid-sprint and give him a huge kiss on the cheek.  But most of all, I love that they know I'm there for them whenever they need me.

The "seriously, I really need to get the heck out of this house" side:  Staying at home drives me a little nuts.  I don't love that my biggest activity for the day is taking a shower (eh-hem, when that even happens), and I don't love that my biggest contribution to the world is making sure that the laundry is done and the bathroom is clean.  I went to law school, for goodness sake.  We have the monthly loan payments to prove it.  So, I am excited to be back among the land of the living, where no one knows the names of all of Handy Manny's tools and very few can recite every word of The Belly Button Book.  Where I can use my brain and my skills and help people.  Not to mention that it will be nice to actually put on cute clothes again every day (once they start fitting again).

I think everyone who knows me would tell you that I wouldn't be happy not working.  I'm not convinced that this is completely true, but I am convinced that I will never know if it's completely true.  I'm coming to the realization that I'll probably always work, and that by the time we can afford to give our kids the life we want without my salary, they will be old enough to be at school all day anyway.

But all of this is really beside the point.  I am going back to work, and I will continue to work for the foreseeable future, for one big huge fat reason that will never go away, no matter how much money we have and no matter how old the boys get.  I'm going to work because I want to be the best possible role model for my boys.  What better way to teach them to respect women as equal to men (which, seriously, a depressing number of men truly do, even these days...what does it say about my fellow lawyers that that the "dumb blonde" card is the easiest one for me to play to get my way?) than to have a mom with a great career?  My mom had a stellar career for my entire memory, so it never occurred to me, or to my siblings, that women shouldn't be entitled to have every single opportunity that they are willing to go for.  Being a working mom isn't the only way to instill this lesson, of course, but it sure is an easy way.

The key, as they all say, is balance.  My mom may have had an intense career, but she was home for dinner every night and was with us all weekend.  She went to all of our soccer games, football games, baseball games, dance recitals, piano recitals, and on and on and on.  All of us knew that we were way more important to her than her job--but, inexplicably, we also knew that her job was part of what made her her.  She loved going to work and kicking butts all day, just as much as she loved curling up on the couch in her comfies with her latest romance novel (sorry for outing you, Mom).  

So that's my new goal.  Letting my kids know that they are the loves of my life, but that they aren't my entire world.  Trying to tread that fine line between neglecting the kids for work or neglecting work for the kids.  I think I can do it, with the help of my ridiculously understanding husband and my sainted nanny.  And a lot of wine.

Mustaches Mustaches Everywhere

Hello dear friends and fam.  I hope you have your charitable panties on today, cause it's time to bust out the cash in support of a great cause!

Ever heard of Movember?  It's prostate cancer's answer to October breast cancer awareness activities -- except instead of adopting a bright girly color and auctioning off random players' NFL gear, Movember is about growing as intense of a mustache as possible, and getting donations from friends and family for doing it.  Probably explains why you've been seeing all those young men around town sporting some super sexy prepubescent-looking mustaches, yes?

Well.   One of my oldest and dearest friends is accepting donations in her son's name for their family friend's Movember team.  Thatcher, her son, will donate a penny to prostate cancer research  for every pageview that my friend's blog gets (just click here! it's that easy!).  And for every donation received directly through their site, my friend will wear a mustache around town for the day!  So please, get into the pre-holiday holiday spirit and donate for a great cause.  Cause even though they drive us insane sometimes (okay, most of the time), we want our men to stick around as long as possible, right?  To kill the spiders in the bathtub, if nothing else.

So come on, don't be lame.  Help out a good cause.  Click here to donate through my friend's site...and remember, just clicking the link is a help!

Maybe Don't Read This if You're Politically Inclined

Time for a non-speech related update about Joe's speech therapy.  I debated not writing about this issue since it can be kind of sensitive to some, but I'm selfish and it will help me to know that other people out there are aware of what we're dealing with on this one.

It probably won't come as a shock to you that private speech therapy lessons aren't free - in fact, they are pretty absurdly expensive.  The reason Joe and I drive all the way up to 635 and Hillcrest twice a week for two 25 minute speech classes is that the office up there is the closest one that accepts our insurance.

To back up a bit.  Back in August, we got Joe's hearing tested by a pediatric ENT.  Joe's hearing was fine, thank goodness, but the ENT was adamant that we get him in speech therapy, like, yesterday.  The ENT's lecture to me was the kick in the pants I needed that instigated the original blog post about speech therapy.  Anyway, the ENT told us that we had two options for speech therapy for Joe.  Private speech classes, which is expensive but more often than not covered by insurance (according to this guy) or Early Childhood Intervention (better known to some of you as ECI).  ECI is a state-sponsored program where a person comes to your house to evaluate, and later treat, your kid for developmental delays, including speech therapy.  This service is a ridiculously good benefit of living in Texas.  The ENT we used, however, made the point that ECI is sort of a 50/50 proposition.  Since it's free, and state sponsored, you don't always know what kind of help you're going to be getting.  He was adamant that there are plenty of highly qualified speech therapists working for ECI - but he was just as adamant that there are plenty of less qualified speech therapists working for ECI.  You're sort of rolling the dice.  He suggested we at least investigate our private therapist options before committing to ECI. 

So, right after the good news that Joe's hearing was fine, I called our insurance company to make sure that speech delay was covered by our insurance policy (assuming that we met all of the red tape requirements associated with filing a claim).  The lady I spoke with on the phone assured me that speech therapy for speech delay would be covered by our policy if speech therapy was determined to be "medically necessary."  So, I scheduled an evaluation of Joe at the speech therapist's office.  At the same time, I called ECI to see if we could get on their schedule for an evaluation.  They told me that the earliest they could have anyone contact me (contact me, not come out to evaluate Joe) was seven business days from my phone call.  Yikes.  Seven business days is not much in the grand scheme of things, of course, but to me it was sort of indicative of the whole "state-sponsored" quality of service we'd be getting.

After Joe's evaluation at the private speech therapist, he fell into the "severe speech delay" category of their magic evaluation tools.  Which makes sense, since he was completely silent 99% of the time at that point in his development.  Actually, to quote the letter the speech therapist sent to the insurance agency:  "Joe presents with a severe expressive language disorder...that will not likely correct on its own."  (By the way, I'm not naive enough to be ignorant of the fact that the speech therapist has an incentive to write these kinds of reports so that they can get clients whose appointments are paid for by insurance.  But try using that kind of logic when it's your own kid's development at stake.)

So we started with the private speech therapist.  Unfortunately, it takes them about a month to get their evaluation written, sent off to the insurance company, processed by the insurance company, and responded to by the insurance company.  They assured us, though, that almost no one with Joe's level of speech delay gets denied coverage.  So, we agreed to pay the speech therapist out-of-pocket for each appointment during that month while everything was getting processed, and the speech therapist agreed to reimburse us everything we'd paid out-of-pocket once the insurance company approved coverage.   Joe started speech classes with Kristen, and as you know from being a loyal blog follower, he thrived under her tutelage.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.  Six weeks into speech classes, we got the news that the insurance company had denied our claim.  "No worries," says the speech therapist, "we'll appeal the decision to the insurance company and they'll probably cover you.  Just get a letter of medical necessity from Joe's pediatrician, and send it on over."  Okay, no problem.

We head to the pediatrician for a consult about this letter of medical necessity.  The doctor asks me a stock list of questions about his speech development -- which basically comes down to "how many words can he say."  I was honest (stupid me.), and said that as of that time, after about 7 weeks of speech therapy, he could say about 30 words.  The doctor looked at me like I was the biggest idiot and the most paranoid, over-involved mom to ever walk into his office, and said, "Well, then he's on track.  He doesn't need speech therapy for speech delay."  ...seriously?  So no letter of medical necessity from him.

So, to recap: Joe isn't talking, so, according to several different and disinterested medical professionals, he needs speech therapy.  Speech therapist evaluates and agrees that speech therapy is necessary.  Insurance claim takes time to process, so Joe starts classes before coverage is guaranteed.  By the time coverage is denied, Joe has been doing so well with speech therapy that he is now on track to meet his two year old speech-related milestones.  So the doctor won't write the letter of medical necessity, which means the speech therapist can't appeal the denial of coverage, which means that John and I continue to pay the ridiculously exorbitant out-of-pocket cost to the speech therapist.   The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that maybe the insurance company knows that this is the typical order of things, and knows this exact situation will happen in a lot of cases because speech therapy can be so helpful to kids like Joe.

Of course, the reason John and I agreed to pay out-of-pocket in the first place is that we are very, very on board with how important these speech classes are to Joe.  At first, this may have been just blind hope in the process, but now the results have been so great (and continue to be so great) that the importance and success of these class is impossible to deny.

So we are left with two poor options.  Either we continue to pay almost every cent of our truly disposable income (seriously) to the speech therapist every month, or we sign up for the free state-sponsored ECI services.  Which, of course, also entails pulling Joe out of classes at the place where he is currently thriving, with a teacher that he has clearly bonded with (and as you know, Joe doesn't bond that easily to grown ups).  And entails rolling the dice on getting someone who may not be as good, and therefore may not be as helpful to Joe. 

For me and John, the choice is clear.  Our kids are the most important thing in the world to us - more important than wine to John (I know, right?!) and more important than shoes, clothes, and vacations to me.  We are fortunate enough to be in a financial situation that even allows us to have the option to pay for private speech therapy.  Making the sacrifices for Joe is the easy part.

But my main question, and the reason I've been hesitant to post our experience in this area, is: WHY?  Why is this the way our whole insurance situation in this country works?  I can assure you I'm neither right wing nor left wing, and in fact I'm pretty politically ambiguous, so please don't think I'm making this a political matter.  But our experience with Joe's speech therapy has just been a shining example to me of how our insurance situation is broken.  The state obviously recognizes that these developmental delays are an important enough issue that they offer free services to anyone to help fix them (which I know is something that plenty of people will think is a waste of state money in the first place, but again, that's a political issue that is neither here nor there to my checkbook).  The insurance company, on the other hand, to whom I pay a ton of money every year in premiums, does not acknowledge that this kind of developmental delay is worthy of their help paying for, even though I pay the insurance company money so that they willhelp me pay for things like this.

Ignoring all the political rhetoric: I pay loads of money to the insurance company so that they will help me pay for the really expensive healthcare stuff that will come up with me and my family.  Joe's speech delay is, according to two pediatricians, a pediatric ENT, and a speech therapist, a severe developmental issue.  So please fill me in, Aetna: what exactly am I paying you premiums for?  Thank you for helping pay for Ian (helping to pay, let's be clear, not paying) but how about next year, when I don't have a baby and, God willing, everyone remains relatively healthy?

Healthcare and insurance are broken.  Someone has to fix them.  Please do it soon so that I can retire before I'm 95.

Halloween Pt. III: Adventures in Last Minute Costume Design

If you've read any of my previous posts about Joe, you know that he's a pretty timid kid.  He doesn't really love new adventures, or toys, or sounds, or words, or really anything.  It's usually a pretty endearing trait, but there is one time it's just plain annoying (sorry Joe): Halloween.

I ordered Joe's Halloween costume at least two months ago.  Because I'm the kind of person that if I don't do things super early, I will always put them off to the very last minute and make them into a mini-disaster.  I'm especially infamous at this with Halloween costumes, where I virtually always go as something that can be cobbled together at the last minute from stuff in the house.  So it truly was a big win for me that I was so on top of ordering this stupid knight costume.

Anyway.   Costume came on time, we made sure it fit and that Joe didn't hate it (which he didn't, three weeks ago) - everything was dandy.  But, of course, right at go-time this morning, he decided that he wasn't going to wear the costume to school unless he also got to bawl uncontrollably the whole time.  I tried all my awesome parenting tricks - soothing, cajoling, bribing, demanding...all to no avail.  Hate to admit it, but I seriously considered sending him to preschool and making the teachers deal with this situation.  They are the pros, right??  But I guess preschool teachers are right up there with mailmen, trashmen, and the like--they really are people who you really don't want to hate you cause they can truly mess with your life.  I gave up and let Joe win that round.

So we bailed on the knight costume.  John stayed home for an extra hour and a half this morning to help me scavenge the house for a last minute costume that Joe could wear to preschool.  Cause who wants to be the only kid at preschool without a costume!!  Since he won't wear hats or anything on his head, makeup of any kind, or anything at all scratchy, we were severely limited in our scrounging options.   In his infinite wisdom, John thought of a monk costume - so he cut up a brown crib sheet, tied a piece of white fabric cut from one of his shirts around the waist, and voila.  Joe accepted this costume, and eventually even learned to like it, but there was no lack of tears throughout the process.  Needless to say, I was beaten down by Halloween by 9:00 this morning.

Later, when we had more time to discuss, John and I decided that trick-or-treating would be a terrible experience unless we came up with some costume that Joe would be willing to wear.  Which basically meant that we had to fool Joe into thinking he wasn't wearing a costume at all.  More severely limited options.  After some rummaging through our costume stuff (we have a lot), a couple of quick trips to Wal-Mart and Babies R Us,  and a minor breakdown on my part (special thanks to the hubster for talking me off that ledge), we came up with his "rockstar" costume.  Actually, I'll credit John 100% with the idea, and me 100% with the implementation.  Teamwork: the key to somewhat successful parenting without attempting to gouge out your own eyes out in the process.

The best part of the new costume: Ian had a coordinating one!  He played the part of the lazy band member that everyone wants to kick out but doesn't want to hurt his feelings (that basically means that he just hung out in the bjorn while Joe did all the work). 

Can you tell that it's harder to get Ian to STOP smiling than it is to get him to smile?  That kid is gonna be a serious charmer.  

In the end, after all the drama, Halloween 2011 was a pretty big success.  Everyone loved Joe's costume - one lady even singled him out of a crowd to take his picture - and it didn't take Joe too long to realize that this whole trick-or-treating thing might be a pretty good deal for him.  Everyone loved Ian too because, well, he's adorable.  So, first stressful event of the holiday season behind us.  Next stop: Thanksgiving.

Halloween Pt. II: A Trip Down Halloween Memory Lane

Halloween!  Everyone's favorite non-religious, non-day-off-work, not-truly-a-holiday holiday.   Also one of those holidays that separates the grinches from the holiday nerds. 

I think the most lasting lesson that John has taken from college is that the importance of going all-out on Halloween costumes.  Every year, he spends literally months planning his costume, down to the smallest detail.  Being married to him, he, of course, expects me to follow suit in this level of costume design.  I'm no grinch, so I give it the old college try (pun totally intended.  har har.), but his costumes are consistently way better than mine.  And honestly, probably better than yours, too.

You know how dads always have something that they've been desperately waiting to teach their kids?  Like, a lot of guys are so anxious to play catch with their sons that they buy them baseball gloves for their first Christmas even though their little baby hands can't even grab the binky yet?  Well, for John, the thing he's been desperately waiting to teach Joe and Ian is how to truly own a costume.

So, in honor of Ian's first Halloween, Joe's first trick-or-treating Halloween, and John's first true opportunity to impart this lifelong lesson, here is a trip down memory lane for some Halloween's past.

2011

Reverse chronological order makes sense, so let's start with this year's costume.  Nascar fan, complete with a mostly gone six pack of Bud.  Can you see the koozie?  It's a 3D deer koozie.  There is seriously a deer with antlers sticking out of the side.  The mustache was intricately fine-tuned to the perfect level of, eh-hem, trashiness.  All in all, a pretty great costume.  It actually won him $150 and a free happy hour at his work costume contest, so I call that a win.

2010

 I hijacked Joe's outfit last year, which is why this year is John's first teaching opportunity.  Cute, right?  He hated it.  This smile is fake.

2009

The year before Joe was born:  Malibu's Most Wanted.  I wish I could say that the shirt was part of the costume, but that's actually a real live Texas State Fair purchase.  I think he really sells this one with the look on his face. 

Have to say, I don't think I did too that year bad either - I was the pregnant Kardashian.  Thrown together, but the actual baby in there helped.

2008

 Halloween 2008: Larry Byrd.  The "mustache" is real, or as real as John will ever be able to grow it.  Too bad this picture doesn't capture the socks that had been hand-colored with green permanent marker to look like basketball socks, and a pair of old school Converse.

2007

This time, the mustache is supplemented with marker, or makeup, or something.  Anyway, he's that guy from The Big Lebowski, you know, the Vietnam one?  His name escapes me at this moment...Walter Sobchak, John tells me.  Either way, I think Daniel steals the show here, because that is a true blue sweater straight from his dad's closet.

Not a Halloween picture.

Those are as far back as my Halloween pictures go, but here's one more random costume for good measure.  Law school 80s party.  Why?  I don't remember, but there was probably a good reason at the time.  

So there you go.  Joe and Ian will learn from the master.

Halloween Pt. I: Pumpkin Carving!

Pumpkin carving: awesomely classic Halloween activity, maybe not so classic toddler and infant activity.  But we gave it the old college try.  Special thanks to Meghan and Per for helping us wrangle and feeding us dinner too.

My Kids Are Saints

So.  Have you ever had one of those days where nothing truly bad happens, but you definitely, definitely should have stayed in bed with the covers pulled over your head?  The kind of day that will be funny in 10 years, but today just makes you want to cry?  That's my last Tuesday.  And in another example of "I had to live it, so you can at least read it," here you go. 

Approximately 2:15am:  You know it's bad when your first "incident" happens less than three hours into the day.  Ian's still getting up for a super-early morning feeding -- he sleeps six or so hours straight, but he goes to bed really early (like 7:00).  So, every morning at about 2:00, I sleepwalk over to Ian's room, feed him for about 20 minutes.  Then I then walk (honestly, I run.  I dare you to calmly walk around your dark-ass house in the middle of the night with no protection from ghosts or creepers before you judge me.) back to our room, get into bed, and mess around on my phone for a few more minutes while I make sure Ian is asleep and settled.  Last Tuesday night was no different from normal; Ian wakes up hungry, I feed Ian, I come back to bed, I continue to mess around on my phone to ensure baby restfulness before I pass out again.  But this time, as I'm lying there checking my phone, a three-quarters-asleep John out of nowhere, all of a sudden sits up in bed, pump-fakes at me as hard as he can, and yells (YELLS, at the top of his lungs, no joke) "RAAAAAAWR" while clawing at me with his hands.  Seriously.  It was so terrifying that I literally screamed at the top of my lungs.  Why would he do such a thing?  Why, you ask??  Good question.  As soon as I could compose myself enough to talk, I repeatedly asked him "WHY??  I just want to know why you did that??" -- but he was still so asleep that he couldn't even answer.  He just kept mumbling and laughing (which freaked me out almost as much as the initial attack!).  Whatever, no excuses.  Horribly traumatizing. 

After that lovely start, things actually went well for much of the rest of the day.  Joe went to school, Ian and I went shopping with my mom and helped her do some unpacking.  I headed home around 3:00pm to make sure I was home in time to take Joe to speech therapy - he had a rescheduled appointment at 5:30pm that evening, which isn't our normal time.  That matters for later.

3:30pm:  I get home and need to pump a bottle for Ian so he can stay with the nanny while we go to speech therapy.  After thirty minutes of pumping, I have about half a feeding's worth of noms.  Getting enough for Ian to eat has never been a problem for me -- in fact, I've always had the opposite problem... -- but, as you can tell from last week's post, I was sick as a dog last week.  And I learned the hard way (last Tuesday at about 3:30pm) that sickness will screw with your milk supply.  So, change of plans.  Ian will have to ride with me up to speech therapy, so that I can feed him there if the half-feeding doesn't tide him over.  3 month old + rush hour traffic.  See where this is going?

4:10pm:  So Joe, Ian, and I pack ourselves and all of our baby crap into the car to head to speech therapy.  The office is about 15 miles away from our house, not even, but it's down a road that is under massive construction, so we usually leave ourselves about 45 minutes to get there in time.  Since this appointment was smack-dab in the middle of rush hour, we weren't messing around.  My goal was to leave by 4:15, and we did.  Success.

4:20pm: As I'm entering the ramp to Terrible Highway, I hear on the radio that there are accidents going both ways on Terrible Highway, each at the exact exit we need to take for speech therapy.  So traffic is a disaster.  No problem, there are some back roads we can take.

4:35pm: I'm patting myself on the back as we exit from Terrible Highway.  We turn onto Forest Lane, which runs parallel.   A few stoplights in and I'm very pleased with my resourcefulness in avoiding the traffic apocalypse on Terrible Highway.  We still have about an hour to go 6 miles.  Easy.

4:50pm:  Sitting through the fifth light cycle at the fifth light on Forest.  Oh no.

4:58pm:  As I'm finally speeding through that same stoplight (on a red), I hear on the radio that there is a huge accident at Forest Lane on the street directly after the turn we need to make.  Awesome.  But, we still have thirty minutes to go 6 miles.  We could all WALK there faster than that, so still, easy.

5:10pm:  I've turned off of Forest onto some other lame parallel road.  Which is even more completely stopped than Forest OR Terrible Highway.  I call the speech therapy office three or four times to let them know the situation, but no answer.  On the last call I leave a voicemail, kind of pissed that no one is there to answer, right?  But I'm the late one I guess, so I have to be tolerant. Anyway, Ian's regular time to eat is about 5:00 (another reason I wanted to get there early) and today is no different, so he's in the back screaming his lungs out for food.  Joe is being a complete saint.  But still, as anyone who's been trapped in the car with a screaming infant knows, this is horribly stressful.  Mom tears ensue. 

5:27pm:  We haven't even moved through one stoplight since we turned onto this other road.  The speech therapist office calls me back finally and apologizes that their phones aren't working, but will  I be able to make it in time? I tell them that there's no way I can make it by 5:30, but we are one block away from our turn, which is 5 blocks away from the office, so there's no way it can THAT much longer to get there.  They tell me that Kristen will work with him for as much time as she can, so I decide to keep trying to get there.  Ian's screams have chilled out because I was able to get in the backseat and replace the binky at one of the stoplights.

5:45pm:  We are just turning onto the road that the therapy office is on, and the traffic is even more stopped on this road than the other road.  Great.  I finally realize that there's no way we can make the appointment (no idea why this took me so long.  I was out of my right mind.), so I call and cancel.  Ian's screaming has resumed at full throttle.  I decide it would be terrible parenting to make him wait any longer, so, decision made.  I pull over onto some random side street and give him his bottle. 

5:52pm:  Ian finished his half-feeding and, of course, is still hungry.  So, out comes the boob.  On a random side street in Dallas.  Maybe not so weird for some nursing moms, but this "in public" thing is not my M.O.  At this point my tears are flowing freely.  John is on the phone making sympathetic noises.  Joe is still being a saint in his carseat.

6:05pm:  Everyone gets back strapped into their respective seats, and we head back into the traffic to get home.  Repeat steps above re: horrible traffic. 

6:50pm: I get home.   Finally.  In the end, we were all in the car for over two and a half hours.  And we didn't even go anywhere.  The whole trip was less than 30 miles.

If you stuck through this story up to this point, you can hang on for some bragging.  I can honestly say that I shed more tears throughout this ordeal than my kids did.  Joe was happy and funny the whole trip.  Seriously, the whole trip, not an upset peep from him.  He just talked to me and looked out the window and hung out.  Ian cried, of course, but he is three months old and it was for food -- totally justified.  And the minute I got the bottle near his mouth, he had a smile so big he couldn't even eat it.  How great is that, he went from bawling for food to smiling and laughing the minute he was up with me getting his bottle?  Love that kid.

My kids definitely have their moments, but in this horribly trying situation where I lost my cool on so many occasions I'm embarrassed to admit it, neither of my kids lost their cool once.  Love that they are already better than me.  Doesn't that mean my job is basically done??

To Speak or Not to Speak

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Joe starting speech therapy.  In a nutshell: Joe wasn't making any noise at all; doctors and teachers kept commenting on how silent he was; John and I got nervous; John and I decided to start Joe in private speech therapy lessons.  For whatever reason, realizing that Joe needed some help was a big "AHA!" moment for us about our kids sometimes needing a little extra push.

So, it's been about six weeks since Joe started speech therapy classes.  And we have seen some seriously impressive results (videos below!).  Part of the reason we were so hesitant to put Joe in speech therapy originally is that I had always thought that there couldn't possibly be an effective way to speech-therapize a one and a half year old.  I mean, I can't get Joe to pay attention to anything for more than 15 seconds, and even though he does follow directions sometimes, how do you try to direct him how to talk?  What could they possibly do to that would teach him or explain to him how to make certain sounds?  Definitely couldn't have been more wrong about all that, though.   Turns out there are lots of things you can do to teach a toddler to talk. 

Here's what they do in Joe's speech therapy.  Phase I: narrating and labeling.  As far as Joe knows, he and his speech therapist (a super sweet, patient girl named Kristen) just play together for the whole half hour.  The whole time they're playing, though, Kristen narrates everything he does.  Everything.  She gives a constant play-by-play, so to speak, of everything Joe does with the toys ("Oh, you see the horsey!  Horsey runs to the barn.  Horsey plays in the barn.  You're done with horsey, bye bye horsey!").  Truly, it's enough to make you want to stab out your own eyeballs with a dull pencil -- I have so much respect for all you speech therapists who are able to keep that up all day.  Seriously.  But narrating is a big part of teaching him to talk because it gives him an opportunity to hear and label every single thing and every action he sees.  It's shocking how much this worked in getting him to just start attempting to talk and make some vocalizations.

Phase II: Breaking routines to encourage him to speak.  Sounds complicated, but actually simple.  The best example is "Ready, Set, GO!".  Kristen and Joe would play with, say, those car toys that spiral down a big roadway (the ones you let go of at the top), but before Kristen would let go of the car from the top so it could come down, she'd say "Ready, set" over and over, until Joe said the "GO!" part.  At first, all we were wanting from Joe was some kind of vocalization at all; any sound would have satisfied because the idea is to get him to understand that language can get you what you want.  The way I think about it, the idea was to teach him to communicate more than to teach him to speak.  (By the way, this concept is exactly why I am now officially a huge supporter of baby sign language.  Speech and communication are really two separate beasts that kids have to learn at the same time, unless you give them a head start by teaching them that they can get what they want with hand signals.  Huge apologies to all you baby-sign-language moms for thinking you were crazy and over-involved.)

Phase III: Hold out what he wants until he actually says the word.  This is the classic "You want your milk?  Say MILK.  MILK."  "On" and "off" are another good example; get out a toy that he really wants to turn on, but make him say "on" before you'll turn it on for him.  This one is a little more touchy because you definitely don't want to frustrate him -- frustration would go against the whole "language gets you want you want" thing.  But Joe has always been incredibly patient with Kristen on this one, and he's starting to get more patient with me, too.

So there's a quick and dirty breakdown of Joe's speech therapy sessions.

As for his six week progress report: totally. different.  kid.  He talks so much and makes so much noise that you wouldn't even recognize him.  When we went to our first speech therapy session, the only noise he'd ever make were whining noises and sometimes vowel sounds.  He never talked to himself, never babbled, and definitely never said any words.  I cannot stress enough how completely and utterly silent he was, and had been since he was about 4 months old.  But boy, what a huge change a few weeks can make.  He babbles to himself all day, says a bunch of words pretty clearly, and (the absolute best part for me and John) he actually tries to say words all the time.  I'll be walking through the grocery store narrating everything like a good speech therapy mom, and when I start talking about onions, he'll get very serious and look me right in the eye and say, clear as day and out of nowhere, "ONION!"  Then he gets all giggly and happy with himself.  It's so fun to see him excited and proud of himself when he tries to talk instead of frustrated and pissed at himself.  [Insert guilty feelings about not getting him started with a speech therapist earlier here.]

Anyway, great, fantastic, fabulous, unexpectedly huge progress in just six weeks.  But we still have a ways to go before we're on track -- according to the ENT who did Joe's hearing test, Joe should have at least 200 words in his speaking vocabulary by the time he's 2 (which is January 17), despite his speech delay, so we're sort of working on a time crunch here.  So far, Joe's pulling his weight like a champ.  I think I can venture a safe guess that we're at about 30 words, all of which have sprouted up in the last two or three weeks.  Definitely on track for our 200 word goal.

I can't resist putting up a couple videos to show you all the new words he can "say."  (Give him a break on pronunciation, we're trying to crunch a year's worth of talking into a month or so.)  Here's one from a few weeks ago when he started seriously babbling.  You may have to jack up your volume to hear.

Notice how he stopped as soon as he saw me watching him?  He's definitely super shy about the whole talking thing still.  He still won't make a peep at school, or in front of anyone he's not comfortable with.  Clearly, he doesn't even like getting caught by me! 

Here's a little later when he first started saying actual words.  He struggles with hard consonants, but you can clearly tell that he's got the right idea.

And finally, here are a couple of pretty clear words!  "Mine" (side note: don't ever teach a toddler this word.  ever.) and "bubbles."  You're going to have to give me a break on this one - I have a terrible cold and lost my voice a bit today, so I sound like a 75-year-old leather-faced, oxygen tank-using smoker who just got let out of the pen.

That's Ian in the background, by the way.  Don't think he'll have talking issues, since he's always got something to say.

So there you have it.  Moral of the story: there's no point in waiting to get your kid help with something they struggle with.  Sometimes all they need is a little push and the floodgates will open.  Joe, your dad and I are so ridiculously proud of you for achieving so much in such a short period of time.  We love you.

Cheap Thrills

Big furniture boxes.  More fun than toys that mom and dad paid for since [forever, I think].

 

  Add in a $4.99 grocery store bouncy ball....

...and a little game of "WHERE'S JOE!"...

["THERE HE IS!"]

...and you have one happy toddler.  Even if the roofers across the street didn't let him nap, like, at all.  Happy Friday, peeps.

 

The One About the Toddler Poop

Warning: this entire post is about toddler poop.  Stories about blowout toddler poop are nowhere near as cute as stories about blowout newborn poops.  There are photos, but I promise that none of them are of the poop itself.  Except maybe one.  But you can't tell there's poop in it, I promise, it just happens to be there.  And if you stick this one out you will definitely appreciate however you spent your own evening, and you may just get a laugh or two out of it (or you may call your doctor immediately to schedule an appointment to get your tubes tied).

Well, if the title of this post and that disclaimer didn't turn you away, I guess nothing will.  Bravo!  Just remember, I had to live this, so the least you can do is read about it.

To dive right in - Joe has had some lovely and intense diarrhea for over a week. No fever, no sickness, nothing else.  Just liquid poo, multiple times a day and sometimes overnight.  And always when he wakes up in the morning.  Super fun, sexy, and glamorous.  Poor Joe.

So have you heard about the big cantaloupe/listeria problems that have been going on lately around these parts?  Since my mom listens to NPR religiously and may actually have a crush on Diane Rehm, I am always very up to date on newsworthy national issues like cantaloupe virus outbreaks.  Turns out that people are actually dying of this one, though, so it matters, and is scary.  One of the symptoms of cantaloupe-related listeria is frequent, eh hem, liquid poo -- and the symptoms can take up to 70 days to show themselves.  Of course, a few weeks ago, Joe had some cantaloupe at my mom's house.  Add NPR melodrama to paranoid grandma, sprinkle in a few drops of actual symptoms, and you have a kind of freaked out mama.

Since today marked the eighth straight day of liquidity, and in light of my aforementioned freaked-outedness (and since I could practically hear my mother wringing her hands through the phone every time we talked), I figured it was about time to get him into the doctor to get this output issue checked out.  Fortunately, the doctor found no obvious issues, and the lack of other side effects means it's safe to say that he doesn't have any of the really scary stuff (including listeria. phew.).

Unfortunately, because there are no obvious issues, they have to test for non-obvious issues.  And how, you ask, do they test for non-obvious poop-related issues?  Why, stool samples, of course!  The doctor sent me home with a whole goody bag full of stuff to collect the next burst of poo in.

Because timing on stuff like this is always perfect, John's got trial tomorrow morning and is working late tonight.  So I'm home alone with the kiddos.  Perfect night to have to collect poop, wouldn't you say?  Right around bathtime, the evening burst I'd been waiting for reared its ugly head.  It was time to gird my loins and go poop hunting. 

Here are the tools of my poop-hunting trade:

Six vials in which I am supposed to trap the poop.  Only three are pictured, but please be clear, there are six of these that I had to fill.  I guess Joe had some part in filling them too, but I intend to take as much credit here as I can.

Three tongue depressors with which to scoop the poop.  Seriously.  I had to scoop the poop into those tiny vials with these tongue depressors.  Let that one soak in.  So to speak.

Thank goodness for gloves.  But why do they make these medical gloves thin enough that you can feel everything you're touching and doing?  I would have preferred some seriously industrial construction worker gloves or something.  I mean come on, this wasn't exactly precision work.  But they got the job done.

So, I captured the poop.  I won't go into the details of that unforgettable 10 minutes of my life, but let's just say that it was, for lack of a better term, gut-wrenching.  Especially with a fussy 3 month old and a hyper 21 month old hanging about.  Unfortunately, despite my somewhat heroic efforts, the evening burst wasn't prolific enough to fill all six vials.  Still got four to go tomorrow.

Final question I will pose to you: What do you do with a poo sample that you capture in the evening, after the doctor's office has closed?  Poo is already mucho bacteria-laden, but it doesn't seem right to just leave it sitting on the bathroom counter overnight.  But does it seem more right to put it in the fridge with all the food the entire family eats every day?  A thinker, isn't it.  Kind of like a weird law school hypo, but for med students.  (Remember when I said this post would at least make you glad you weren't me?  This is that moment.  Enjoy.) 

John and I debated the merits of each approach and ultimately settled on putting the poo in the fridge and throwing out just about everything else in there tomorrow.  Because that's what parents do.  We make sure our kid's poo is safely maintained in the fridge overnight so that we don't screw up the sample.  If fridge-poo isn't love, I don't know what is.

(This is the picture with the poop in it.  But see, you can't see it, can you!)

Needless to say, I think I may be getting the Mom of the Week award for the second week in a row.  I can say with certainty that I definitely earned this beer.

And two cookies.  And a few bites of cookie dough.  And a massage.

*Update: I'm sure you're dying to know what happened with the three remaining vials, right?  Well, you'll be happy to know that all were successfully filled the day after I posted.  My saint of a husband filled two of them at 5:30 in the morning (after he got home from work after 1:00am and got up to start working again at 6:30am), and I filled the last one later that day.  Of course, since then, Joe's poop has been normal.  Why wouldn't it be??  Sigh.