Week 18

The sleep thing was good while it lasted but after 3 nights of bliss we are back to the once a night feed & change routine. Must have been the shots that conked out Mr. Sleepy last weekend. Of course he chose to go back to his usual routine on Sunday night - just in time for the work week. Oh well, like I said, it was good while it lasted. I can live with being up for 15 minutes and then back to bed - beats the hell out of the first couple of months when he was up every 1.5 - 2 hours.

Monday squirmy worm rolled from his back to his tummy and then rolled from his tummy onto his back - another first. He is fascinated with my hands and will play with my fingers and wedding ring for ages (has expensive taste already). He has also started to work with his drool and make bubbles and gurgling noises. Since I imitate everything he does he finds my gurgling hilarious. The top of my had also cracks him up (weird). Diaper changing continues to be a challenge (still doing it mostly sideways) - when I do manage to get Mr. Twisty Pants on his back he grabs his feet and hangs onto them like a spider monkey. Speaking of diapers we decided to take a risk and buy the bulk box of 200 generic since they are way cheaper than the usual Pampers brand. Upon opening and removing the first diaper I was surprised that the tabs closed on the back instead of the front like usual. Was so difficult to put the damn diaper on I had to hold onto Liam with one hand and stick the tabs to his butt with the other. 5 minutes later we were out the door and on the way to our weekly mommy group. I took a spare diaper with me to show the girls - there was silence as I explained the "backwards" diaper until one of the girls piped up and told me to flip the diaper over. Good God am I stupid sometimes! I had accidentally put the diaper on poor Liam back to front! His rear end was covering his front end, tabs stuck to his ass. The girls howled with laughter at my demise. Mental note to self: There are NO backwards brand of diapers.

Liam hitched his first ride with his buddy Kaiulani to the mommy group. The two babies looked so cute in the back of mom Tania's car I had to take a pic (see above). On the way home Kaiulani started screaming and then promptly fell asleep. Not to be shown down Liam decided to start screaming which woke Kaiulani up and the two of them started screaming in chorus. Tania turned the music up to drown out the noise and eventually they both passed out. Was pretty funny driving down the highway with two wailing kids in the back. Not much you can do except laugh and turn up the volume.

Took Liam for his first walk in the rain giving me the opportunity to use the rain cover for the first time - while he sat all comfy & cosy in his plastic cocoon I huffed and puffed in my heavy raincoat getting sopping wet. Didn't help that I had 15 tins of cat food under the stroller - felt like I was pushing a 50 pound baby. This is my life - sweating my bag off while pushing my baby & cat food down the street.

Friday was my birthday so Ian took Liam grocery shopping in the morning while I had a nice bath, read a book & did my hair. Was so relaxing! After coming home Ian made me eggs benny and then we went for a walk downtown for a bit of shopping before heading to my work for lunch & jello shooters (yummy). Post lunch we decided to have a couple of celebratory drinks on the inner habour followed by a quick stop at the liquor store to pick up some dinner booze. I always feel weird taking my baby into a liquor store but the stroller does hold a lot of alcohol. Once we got home Ian spent 3 hours in the kitchen making a surprise dinner for me - Liam must have known that it was a special occasion since he went down to sleep early without so much as a squeak. Ian made me the most fantastic meal EVER - the menu consisted of Mediterranean grilled vegetable salad with kalamata olives & fresh italia parmesan nestled on baby lettuce; fire roasted red pepper, goat feta & baked salami on toasted ficelle baguette and fresh basil-mint pesto crusted rack of lamb with twice baked tomato-thyme goat cheese potato & grilled sweet corn. To polish it all off we had individual double chocolate cheesecakes & red wine. YUMMY!!!! It was just incredible and all made from scratch! All in all it was a lovely day!

Saturday we took Liam for his first swim in a pool - was a huge success! He paddled around in his inflatable turtle that we bought to take with us to the Dominican and had an absolute ball. Also gave us the opportunity to try out his disposable swim diapers - not sure if they actually work but since I did not see any floating brown sharks around I'm assuming they do. We are starting swimming lessons when we get back from our vacation since you can start at 4 months (called Starfishes - cute!). Mommy will be trigger happy that day for sure! Liam was so tuckered out from his swimming adventure he instantly passed out & had a good snooze.

Today was our baby reunion with everyone from our prenatal class including our instructor - was too cute seeing all the babies dressed up. Liam is no longer looking like the giant baby since the others are all catching up (he's still the biggest though). Took some pics which I've posted above. We scooted early from the reunion to meet up with Ian's aunt & cousins from Nova Scotia who he had not seen in a very long time (some of his cousins he's never actually met). Enjoyed a big greek dinner and Liam was happily passed around - he was in a very good mood and was dressed in an adorable white shirt, vest and jeans outfit especially for the occasion. He really is a little boy now!

Week 17

We have reached the moment we've been waiting for since the day our bundle of love arrived - the big "sleep through the night". Yes people, it has finally happened. Liam slept through the night on Friday from 9pm till 6:30am and last night from 9pm till 7:45am. Both mornings Ian woke up and hurried over to the crib to make sure he was still alive. I rolled over in bed and felt like I'd strapped a couple of bowling balls to my chest - owwwwwweeeeee!!! We've had so much sleep the past 48 hours we're actually tired. Can't win. We've noticed the past week that Liam has been getting uber cranky at 8pm which is his normal bath time and hasn't been enjoying his bath as much so tonight we went for bath time at 7:30pm when he started yawning and put him to bed at 8pm. Aren't we smart. Hopefully his sleep streak will continue and he'll sleep until at least 5:30 or 6:00am, however, knowing the unpredictability of babyhood, I am being very optimistic. Tonight I'm relaxing with a cup of calm tea while I do about the 4th load of laundry - this includes both couch covers - one which Mr. Barfy puked on and the other that Mr. Poopy Pants pooed all over. Thank God for slip covers - I just don't have enough saran wrap to re-upholster.

Mr. Chatty has been saying a lot of oooohhhhs this week - seems to his favourite conversational piece. He loves being on his belly (complete opposite of what he used to be like) and Ian walks around the house with him draped on his arm aeroplane style while he says ooohhhhh at everything. We managed to get him on his Lady Bug spinner for about 5 minutes Friday night - he was fascinated with the crunchy leaves and bee rattle. He's still too small to spin himself so we do the rotating for him. Far cry from when he used to scream everytime he saw the lady bug.

Mr. Drooly is on a roll with the spit. It's insane how much drool comes out of such a tiny mouth. He seems to be mass producing. Ian and I, in addition to being barfed on multiple times a day, are constantly wet with drool patches. The barf is gross but the drool is funny. We tried a bib on him for the first time today and discovered he has a fat neck. Most of our bibs don't fit. Luckily we have 30 of them so we have enough to get by. The bib looked cute and lasted for about 5 minutes before Mr. Barfy yacked all over it, down his shirt and all over Ian's jacket. With the drool comes the gumming - Liam puts everything in his mouth and gums on it, another reason why I think his first set of teeth are working their way through. We have started buying teething toys to keep him happy (some of them go in the fridge to make them cool) although his blanky is still top on his gumming list. Quite frankly I'm happy he loves the blanky so much, I can't exactly refrigerate his teething toys while I'm out of the house. That's all I need - a child that only likes cold teething toys. Forget it.

Thursday we took Liam to get his second set of immunizations - 3 shots this time. He screamed blue bloody murder (due to a set of well developed lungs) but was fine 5 minutes later and playing aeroplane around the clinic with daddy, bandaids stuck all over his chubby legs. I had taken him to the doc for his 4 month check up earlier that day and he now weighs in at a healthy 16 pounds 1.5 ounces. He is also in the 90th percentile for his head (no surprise there) and his height. The doc called him healthy and robust. How about heavy and rotund.

I took another depression test at the clinic after Liam's shots and scored really high (that's bad). Apparently I have Postpartum Depression and will most likely need to go on happy pills next week. I knew I was on a downward spiral but was too embarassed to admit it until I broke down and told Ian how I was feeling and he made me tell the nurse. I will be seeing a councellor and joining a support group of other moms going through the same thing. Plus I have tons of support from family and friends so I will be fine. This mom thing is damn hard - not only are you sleep deprived for months, the housework is endless, you have a little being that demands your attention 24/7 and you are still trying to make time for yourself and your hubby. It's overwhelming and exhausting and is the reason why PPD is so common. I'm not about to throw myself out a window or anything - I'm mostly suffering from anxiety. I'm a worry wart - I worry about everything. Only now my worry is out of control. Thank God for happy drugs and all-inclusive tropical resorts. I need a pina colada REAL BAD.

Week 16

Oh My God I'm losing my hair. First it was my mind, now it's my hair. The past week I've been shedding worse than the cat - huge clumps of hair have been falling out and covering the house. Apparently this is normal after you have a baby according to my hairdresser. I eventually couldn't take it anymore (Liam was starting to resemble a small fuzzy animal with my strands constantly all over him and pulling them out of his mouth while feeding was not pleasant either) and decided to chop off the locks. I am now sporting a much more sassy, less hairy bob. I swore I wouldn't cut my hair short like so many moms, but as with everything else I swore I wouldn't do pre-mommyhood, that went down the toilet. Even the vacuumn cleaner was starting to gag from all the hair.

This weekend we went over to Vancouver for our first 1 year old birthday party - our friends Gary & Kerry were throwing it for their little girl Taya (what a cutie she is) and it was complete chaos for 3 hours - 26 adults and 9 babies all around the same age running around getting into everything. Ian and I were exhausted at the end - we definitely need more time to get used to the physical requirements of a crawling/walking tot. I now appreciate how mellow and "easy" Liam is. He slept in Taya's bouncy chair almost the entire time and once he woke up there were plenty of arms to carry him around. At least we have 8 more months to work up the energy. Hopefully by then my hair will have stopped falling out. I can just imagine Liam crawling around sticking things in his mouth and choking up on carpet hairballs.

Our exciting news for the week is that we just booked a trip to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic to see my parents. We arrive Sept 8th and will be staying together at an all-inclusive resort. Babysitting and free drinks here we come! Ian took me to get a bikini as an early birthday present. Forget the itsy bitsy teeny weeny - I am now sporting the "my gut is gross" post birth tankini bikini. No one in their right mind wants to see my belly - it's so wobbly I could do party tricks with it. Liam will be sporting a nice full body sun suit and big sun hat - since he hates hats it should be fun trying to get him to wear one. Hats are the least of our worries though - it will be interesting to see how he deals with two long flights - I'm sure I'll have some good stories. The dumb agent with US Airways asked Ian if we needed to add our infant on the return flight as well - of course my witty husband replied "no we're leaving him in the Dominican". She didn't have much of a sense of humour.

Speaking of sense of humour - Liam is finding all sorts of things funny these days - first it was my sneezes, now it ranges from looking at himself in the mirror, to watching me wiggle my eyebrows, to blowing on his belly. He has the cutest giggles, but of course that's expected since he is dead cute all around. He now rolls onto his tummy to fall asleep which I don't like at all - as soon as he is out, one of us will roll him onto his back and generally he'll stay that way until he wakes up and we play the roll over game again. He is also increasing in the drool department - I give it another week or so and we'll be into the bibs. It's all about sticking things in his mouth and sucking on them like a mad man - most of the time it's his fingers, his soother or Mr. Turtle's head. I can see the little white nodules on his bottom gums - if he cuts a tooth while we're travelling on vacation I'll throw myself out of the plane. Mr. Barfy is still on a "I'm going to throw up after every feed" streak and can usually aim past the burp cloths hitting us down the arms and on the floor. Between the drool, barf and the occasional power poops (he now manages to blow poo right out the sides of his diapers) I am once again oggling the saran wrap in my kitchen drawer. I wonder what US Airways will think when I show up at the airport with my suitcase in one hand and a naked saran wrapped baby under my arm - probably ask if he's checked or carry on luggage.

Week 15

We are fast approaching the 4 month mark and this week has been our biggest "milestone moments" week. Last week Liam was trying his hardest to roll from his back to his stomach but couldn't figure out how to get his arm out of the way - we knew it was just a matter of time before he would work it out (with all that brain in his large head) and on Monday it happened. Only I missed it. Yes, I missed it. I had him on his back oggling at his hanging toys on his activity mat while scarfing down lunch - no sooner had I got up to put my plate down in the kitchen (which took all of 20 seconds), Mr. Rollover decided to make his big debut and promptly propelled himself onto his tummy. Crap, crap, crap - I can't believe I missed it! Luckily he decided to do an encore for Daddy & myself later that evening so that made up for it. Thing is, now that he can roll over, that's all he wants to do. This makes diaper changing somewhat challenging (like I needed more challenges in the world of diapers) as he twists himself into a sideways pretzel forcing me to twist myself sideways to get the thing on properly. Nature has a way of always keeping you on your toes - it's not good enough to master the art of changing diapers - noooooooo, you need to take it to the next level like Super Mario Brothers and learn how to do it sideways - I must admit I need practice with the 3:30am change - my brain does not process "sideways" at that time of the morning. Speaking of night time - now all Liam does is sleep on his side - as soon as you put him in his crib on his back he flips on his side and instantly goes to sleep. While snoozing away his head stays in one place and his legs propell around like the wheel of fortune so you never know which end of the crib he's going to be on. The other night I picked him up in the dark for his feed and couldn't figure out where his face had gone - turns out he was on his stomach and I was smooching the back of his head. In my sleep deprived stupor I thought he had grown some serious facial hair. I'm really retarded sometimes.

Liam is constantly smiling and grinning and seems to find certain things funny. On Wednesday I was changing his diaper (what else) and pulling out my tongue while going cross eyed at the same time. All of sudden he started laughing. I was so excited I started clapping and jumping up and down which scared the crap out of him so he promptly stopped. Of course I was desperate to make him laugh again and spent the next 10 minutes pulling my tongue out & crossing my eyes until my eyeballs hurt and I had to give up. Ian managed to make him laugh yesterday while blowing raspberries on his tummy and arms - tooooo cool!!!!

Tuesday we had a playdate with our friend Corrie and her little boy Jaxon who is almost two years old. I discovered real fast that my house is NOT toddler proof. After pushing over screens, grabbing the hairdryer while prodding at the light socket and transferring dirt from my plants into his mouth, we decided to abort the house mission and head for the park. On Thursday we had our friends Kari & Chris from Florida over for pizza & beer with their little girl Elly who is one years old. Again I discovered how "un baby proof" our house is. Although easier than Jaxon since Elly is still learning how to walk, she still managed to go for the remote controls, stick her fingers in the dvd player and spit chips all over the coffee table and floor. Whoever said that it gets easier as kids get older is lying. You simply get more sleep at night so you can cope better with running your ass off chasing your active child & preventing them from cutting, bruising or zapping themselves during the day. When are they going to invent giant foam suits for kids? Sumo wrestler style with an electric conducter so they can stick their little stubs into light sockets all day long. While you put your feet up and watch your favourite daytime TV shows, your kid could be flying over the coffee table and slam into the wall and it wouldn't matter.

Thursday we took Liam to the movie theatre to see Harry Potter along with his friend Kai & her mom Tania (from my mommy group). The theatre organizes "Stars & Strollers" every Thursday for moms and babies - was quite cute seeing all the little tikes (about 50-75 anywhere from a few days old to a couple of years old) cooing, crying and crawling around. The theatre sets up stroller parking and change tables with complimentary diapers of every size so you can change your munchkin during the movie if you need to. We took our strollers into the theatre with us and parked Liam & Kai side by side while we watched the show. Of course as soon as one baby would cry, all the other babies would start up (Liam had one mini meltdown half way through) but no one cared since we are all used to it. Will be doing lots of Stars and Strollers movies in the Winter since it's a great way to catch the latest flicks without worrying about disturbing everyone else in the theatre!

Friday we packed (sorry - CRAMMED) our car again for our second trip up island to see Grandma Marg & the Filberg Festival (local arts & crafts festival in Comox). Along the way we stopped by Englishman River Falls so Daddy could take a dip in the frigid water and to have a picnic. Of course we took the house with us down to the falls (no wonder people stare).While Liam lazed back on the picnic blanket and stared up at the trees, we relaxed, sucked in the warm fresh air and ate sandwiches & trifle (both felt like barfing on the steep hike back up the hill to the car - didn't help Daddy that Liam now weighs 16 pounds and I was lugging the rest of our stuff like a sherpa). Liam had already barfed all over Daddy after his milk picnic (forcing Daddy to reluctantly change out of his matching white n' camoflauge outfit that both boys had on - see attached pic pre-vomit) and fell asleep in his baby carrier. You could hear the Wards coming from the heavy breathing. The rest of the weekend was not as straining on the body (thank God).

After an uneventful (minor meltdown here and there) drive home this afternoon, Daddy had Liam on his lap and all of a sudden he started wiggling his toes and staring at them. Within a couple of minutes he grabbed his foot. Luckily Mommy was ready with the good 'ol camera and took a snap shot (see attached pic!). Another proud moment in parent world!

I am convinced that the first few teeth are starting to come through - Liam is drooling everywhere and is constantly gumming on things & then getting unusually fussy. Plus I can see what appears to be white bumps on his top gums. Dammit - I just got over Mr. Fussy - I'm not ready for Mr. Teething. His favourite gumming device is his Winnie The Pooh security blanket that my girlfriend Kristal gave us - however yesterday we found out that giving gripe water followed by sucking on your blanky when you're a drool baby equals a super glue effect. The blanky got stuck to Liam's lip and Daddy had to perform "unattachment surgery" by pouring a small amount of water on his lip to peel away the blanky. Once again Mommy took a pic for all to see while trying not to laugh at my baby's demise.

Tonight we watched the Symphony Splash with Liam's other buddy Jackson and parents Rachel & Brian (also from our prenatal group) - the event showcases an orchestra that plays on a barge in the downtown harbour and ends with canons & fireworks. There are usually about 40,000 people that come down to relax on the surrounding lawns and enjoy the music. Navigating through a crowd that size is no easy task, but Daddy took charge and rammed his way through (no politeness there) and we eventually found seats near the canons. As soon as the final song started the boys took off with the babies so the canons would not blow out their eardrums while Rachel & I stuffed our fingers in our ears and literally vibrated from the sound. Liam was wired after that (he looked too cute wrapped up like a mummy in his blanky's - see attached pic) and is now settling down to sleep (11:45pm) - hopefully he'll go till morning or mommy will be hitting the good stuff!