First Hair Cut--Before

My boy got his first haircut.  And I cried.  I didn’t understand crying over a haircut.  Its just hair.  And then I got HIS hair cut.  In a matter of minutes, he went from my baby to a BOY.   I had her leave most of his hair on top–I have spent too many hours pushing that back as he nurses; I’m not ready for it to be cut.  I got it cut at the barber shop on base.  She wanted him to set by himself  in the chair!  HAHA.  He did really well.  I had to hold his head still a couple times.   They gave him his first sucker–orange–and he LOVED that.

First Hair Cut--After

Jim’s parents were visiting earlier in the month.  We spent one week here and then went over to the Big Island for a week.  We had such a wonderful time both weeks.  I did a trip report, posted photos and the link to the rest of the photos on our family blog, if you want to check it out.

If you’re the praying type, I’d appreciate your prayers.  This deployment is doing a number on me.  Mostly I’m doing okay with it mentally but I’m WAY tired and quickly approaching burn out.  And, mentally, I have my moments.  Jim’s leave getting pushed back six weeks was really my tipping point.  On the plus side, we’re half-way done!!!

I’m not sure I’ve talked about it here but we’ve had “issues” with Ben and eating.  He has been taking solids for months now but wouldn’t swallow anything.  I met with the hospital’s feeding team about a month ago.  They strongly suspect, based esp. on the history of all the horrible troubles we had with latching, that its simply a matter of training the mouth and tongue muscles on how to swallow.  With latching, I’d finally get him on well and then, the next nursing session, it would be like he’d completely forgotten how to do it.  So they instructed me to do a positive reinforcement food (they got him to swallow chocolate pudding, so chocolate pudding it is!) every day to help with the training, in addition to continue offering a variety of other food.  Its working!!  He will generally swallow most any foods, asssuming he’s hungry and the food is in really small pieces.  He loves foods with strong flavors–lime yogurt, pepperoni, taco meat, chili, etc.  He doesn’t do well with drinking yet.  He is better with an open-faced cup than a sippy or straw cup.  But, like nursing, its like he forgets how to do it.  After several attempts, he’ll swallow but then has to start again the next time.  But we’re working on it.  I don’t mind if he skips a traditional sippy but it’d be awafully handy if I could get him to take a straw cup at least, especially considering his delight in dumping cups!!

New Car Seat Recommendations from AAP

I’m thrilled to see the AAP come out with this!  Elizabeth rear-faced until 2.5 and Ben will stay just as long, I’m sure, if not a little longer.  I have other links that talk more about why rear is better, if anyone is interested.

Keep your toddler in a rear-facing car seat until age 2 (not 1)

Lori O’Keefe
Correspondent

New research indicates that toddlers are more than five times safer riding rear-facing in a car safety seat up to their second birthday. Following are some safety tips for car seat use:

All infants should ride rear-facing in either an infant car seat or convertible seat.

If an infant car seat is used, the infant should be switched to a rear-facing convertible car seat once the maximum height (when the infant’s head is within 1 inch of the top of the seat) and weight (usually 22 pounds to 32 pounds) have been reached for that infant seat as suggested by the car seat manufacturer.

Toddlers should remain rear-facing in a convertible car seat until they have reached the maximum height and weight recommended for the model, or at least the age of 2.

Okay, okay.  I lied.  I didn’t come back yesterday as promised.  Not that it appears anyone but Julie is reading anyway.

Ben’s birthday was good.  We celebrated when we were in IN, so we didn’t have a party here. We did go over to $1 scoop night at Baskin Robbins with friends.  She has a daughter a year older than E and her other daughter is a couple months younger than Ben.  She cloth diapers, too, and that’s actually how we staretd talking (she saw Ben in an adorable fleece soaker I had).  The girls played at the park together all summer and into the fall.   Surprisingly, Ben did eat a little ice cream (Whirl of Change…the Obama ice cream! )

Stolen from Lisanne’s blog:

The first seven people to respond to this post will get something made by me. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

• What I create will be personalized and intended for you.
• It’ll be done this year (2009).
• You will have no idea what it’s going to be. It may be knitted, sewn, papercrafted, used in a bubble bath, related to photography, graphic design-y, or perhaps a mix CD. I might even bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure!
• The catch? You have to put this offer in your journal as well and make seven things for your friends! (If you have already done this, then I will happily add you to the list.)

I stole this directly from her, so don’t count on anything knitted. LOL  I’m not planning to take it up.

1. jen S.

2. Jen T.

We’re back from a wonderful trip to Indiana (I’ll try to post pictures & write about it in the next few days).  We actually got back a bit ago but its taken me awhile to get back into the swing of things.  Jim went back to work the end of last week.

Ben is full-steam into crawling and moving onto cruising the furniture.  Jim has him on the deadline to walk before he deploys.  I’ve laughed at Jim with the crawling.  He was so anxious for Ben to start since he was deployed when E did.  Now I think he’s regretting that! LOL  It doesn’t help that, with the layout of this place, its harder to do some babyproofing.  In our place when he was a babe, the living room & kitchen were completely separate, so it was easy to keep her out of the kitty food & water.  Plus we spent most of our time upstairs in her room (the computer was in her closet & there was a TV in her room).  And it was obviously totally safe for her.  And she had no big sister to chase after!!

Elizabeth is doing okay.  Turns 4 next week.  I don’t even know how that is possible!  She’s developed a lot of fears & separation anxiety.  We’re muddling through it but not well.  I expect it will only intensify when she finds out about the deployment and it actually happens.  *sigh*  I got the name of a good child psych if we need it.  They’ve recently hired a few new ones because of the demand with the upcoming deployment.  *double sigh*

I did the kids’ bathroom and it looks cute!  I need to take pictures.  I haven’t done the bedrooms yet.  I need to find a couple picture frames still.  I’m planning to do them one day while Jim is at work.

I don’t have much to say, really, but I wanted to post tonight. So let’s see…

Elizabeth has been in VBS this week. She has loved it. Our church is really into getting the teenagers to serve in the church, so they are leading all the classes. In the 3yo class they have two male teenagers. Quiet ones at that. I love that they would take on the 3yo class but these two also seem like an odd choice. Tomorrow they are doing songs & skits for the parents. I was reading the sheet about it and E wanted me to read it to her. So I did. She then says to me “Parent, let’s wait and talk about this tomorrow. Its too much for me right now. Just too much.” Okay, then. Where in the heck did that come from?

Jim is off tomorrow. Yea!!

They put a playground in our front yard. Not directly in front of our house but a couple houses down. Its nice to have one close. The other closest ones were 10 minute walk and a 20 minute walk. On the other hand, it can be a little annoying as well because she sees it and wants to be down there all the time. We go down every evening after dinner and I try to get her down there a few mornings as well. There’s another mama who is down there most evenings. She has a little girl a little older than E and a little girl who’s a little younger than Ben. I really like her. She’s a cloth-diapering mama too! She’s really nice and we seem to have similar parenting styles. Thought I may invite them over for a play date.

Today I met a mama from LLL at Starbucks. I don’t know her well but, after last month’s meeting, we exchanged numbers. We didn’t do anything though. LLL was Tuesday night and I mentioned I’d be in her town this week, so we met up today. I had a good time with her, very relaxed.

We booked our trip home for September. We’ll be home just barely a week. It’ll be nice. But it also means that this deployment really is happening.

We’ve decided we’ll tell E about this deployment after we go to Indiana. She has no real sense of time, so telling her now would be nuts. And she gets SO anxious about things that are a long way off. So we’ll tell her when we are 3-4 weeks out.

This morning I woke up to her crying in my doorway. It was a 3yo whiney cry, so I told her to go find something to play while I slept a little more. She broke down. She wanted Jim. I told her to go find him. She said she looked everywhere but didn’t know where he was. Then I remembered he had to go in early today. I told her. And she really broke down. She was hungry but needed HIM to fix her breakfast. And she couldn’t eat cereal because he may want some. And he may be sad if she ate cereal without him. She didn’t want to eat at all but I finally got some food in her. And I just cried. I called him but he didn’t answer. And that made her cry even more. And me too. Its gonna’ be a long year.

My baby has a tooth! He’s been teething on and off for a couple hellacious weeks. One tooth has barely broken through the gums, just enough to feel the sharpness. And the other too is getting ready to break–you can see the ridges of it just under the gums.

I took a two hour nap this afternoon. I have a feeling I’m going to be awake late tonight!!

Truly, I have the cutest kids ever. Ever!