The Sun Son

I had an incident yesterday in the parking lot of Walmart (I was not surprised. People act extra stupid in the parking lot of Walmart). I pulled into a parking space and parked and was on my cell phone calling Tim to ask him if he needed me to go to Lowe's for something. A soccer mom in a minivan tears through the parking lot and pulls into the space next to me and managed to park such that the rear end of her minivan was literally maybe a foot from the front end of the car, and her passenger side was right up against my passenger side. If there had been someone in the front passenger seat, they would not have been able to get out without opening the door into her van. She got out and walked around to get her kid out and LOOKED DOWN at how close she was to the car and then turned around and walked away, swinging her Coach purse the whole way. I said loudly, "You better hope I don't open my car door into your van". She turned around and looked at me and then kept going. I was seriously So. Tempted. to just open the car door into her van a few times and leave a few dents, but I am trying to practice good karma.

Just, if you can't park, cool, give yourself an extra parking space of buffer room. If you choose to park poorly, and leave it like that, don't be surprised if you piss people off. She was literally ON the yellow line of the parking spot. Arg! It just made me mad. Zen, zen, zen. I suppose that's what I get for going to Walmart!

Today was a pretty low key day except for having to go up to the hospital twice for things Tim forgot at home, first a cake I made for him to take in and then his lunch. Other than that, just picking Haley up from the bus and then making dinner, which turned out good. Meatloaf, I am trying to perfect my recipe. It's pretty good now, but I keep trying variations to find something perfect. We had corn on the cob, and mixed vegetables and green beans and garlic bread. I made a few chocolate walnut cookies for dessert, just the break apart and bake kind, so I only made enough for each of us to have two. I think everyone enjoyed dinner, and it felt good to cook again. I go through phases of cooking every night and then not feeling like cooking at all and Tim cooks instead or we eat whatever we have on hand that can be thrown into the oven, fish sticks or chicken or whatever. Most days it seems like Savino's fussy evening time coincides with dinner. It will be easier when Haley is out of school because she is an excellent distraction for Savino and she can supervise him having a snack or give him a bottle while I cook.

Tim has an appointment to meet with a guy from the water dept. at the little house on Friday to evaluate what we are going to have to do with the meter situation. When the guy repaired the meter last week he told Tim that they are making everyone upgrade their meters to these new ones that will require us to either completely change all the plumbing and purchase an upgrade kit that is $135 or dig a huge hole in the yard and tear up the sidewalk and all the concrete between the shutoff in the yard and the house to replace the pipes from the shutoff to the house. I am so pissed off about the whole situation. Either way, we are being screwed. I guess we'll just see what the guy says on Friday, but I am sure it will be "you have no choice". If we had not needed the meter fixed, they would never have said anything about upgrading the meter. It's just one stupid thing after another, I swear. I think we will probably end up having to purchase the upgrade kit and redoing the plumbing again. Tearing up the sidewalk and replacing all the outdoor pipes is just way too much and too expensive right now. At this rate we will NEVER get our renters into the house. At least eventually we will be able to recoup the cost through the rent, but still. Suck. Think good thoughts. Maybe they will show up and go, "Oh we take pity on you, we'll leave you alone". We got the bill for the part of the meter they replaced. It was just this one plate that is designed to crack if the water in the pipe freezes, and I'm sure it costs them $1 but they charged us $11 for it. Which is FINE with me, but then they also said that we will get a seperate bill for the labor, and truck time costs. Tim said it took the guy all of a minute to replace, so it better not be a big bill. I will be so glad to put all of this crap behind us. Burning the stupid house down looks better and better every day.

I leave you with the sweetness. He is getting too big! When he nurses, his body hangs half off my lap. *sniffs* I think back to when he was born and I could only nurse him in the football hold and I just laugh at the thought of trying to get him in that position now. He is way too big!

Here's to hoping we get a night of sleep. Last day of school for Haley tomorrow!

Notta Lot

My poor son. He just will not settle down to take a nap this afternoon, I have nursed him and rocked him and held him, but when he started smacking me in the face and arching his back and trying to twist around, I put him into his swing and sat on the floor in front of him folding clothes while he cried and "Phbbbtttt"'d at me until he wore himself completely out and calmed down enough to close his eyes. Of course, as soon as I stood up and went to leave the room he opened his eyes and started crying. I sat down in the hall and after a minute he stopped again but I don't thin he is all the way asleep, I think he is hovering. Hopefully he will go to sleep and take a good nap. Yesterday was a fight with the nap as well, I ended up having to lay down with him and nurse him to sleep.

But, I will take the fitful nap issues because last night he slept for SEVEN HOURS uninterrupted!!! !!!!!! YES!! I was so happy. I don't know what did it, whether it was the carrots at dinner (which I doubt because he had maybe a teaspoon full), or what, but he slept from 8pm to 3am, woke up, nursed and took half of a bottle, fell back asleep until 5am, had the rest of the bottle, fell back asleep until 7am, and then I put him in bed with me and nursed him for the next hour and a half while we both dozed. We both woke all the way up at 8:30 and were both feeling good. It was so incredibly awesome to have a full nights sleep, I can't even tell you. I could get used to that, but I better not until he does it more than once a week. It was just awesome. SEVEN HOURS!!! I really hope that he does it again tonight.

The carrots, well, they really did not go over so well last night. The first few spoonfulls he just got this intensely weirded out look on his face, just making these awful faces. Then he was just totally over it and started spitting it out and gagging, I don't know if it was just the total alien-ness of the taste, or the texture, or what. He was not amused. He was much happier when we switched back to the cereal and he ate all of that happily. He did not want his bottle, again. Up until bedtime he had only had maybe 4 oz. of formula, but he had another 3 oz. when I was putting him to bed and then 4 oz. in the middle of the night.

He was a little more accepting of the carrots again at lunch today, he had another teaspoon and while he still made faces, there was no gagging or spitting it out and he opened his mouth to let me feed him more. We are taking it slowly, but he seems to be alright with them. It's not like it's a main source of nutrition.

Haley has another snow day today. We got three inches of snow and then a bunch of freezing rain so we got the call this morning at 6am that school was cancelled. Haley was so happy this morning to hear that. She has been vegging out hardcore, but she also did a few things to help me and Savino out, so I am tolerant.

My keyboard is acting funky, I think it needs cleaned. I need to get a can of that compressed air stuff and clean it out.

I think I am going to look into getting a new laptop. I need one, I've worn off half the letters on the keyboard of this one and I can write it off as a business expense on taxes next year.

Poor Tim still doesn't feel good today but he had to work because he has admissions coming in. He was going to come home early but one of his admissions is very late and it looks like he will be stuck there until the regular time waiting on them to get there. Poor guy.

I have been trying to decide whether I want to do another week of the Mother's Milk tea. It seems to have helped a little bit, it brought my supply back up to where it was when the boy was nursing every hour and a half, but it hasn't done anything spectacular. It tastes, well, bad. I just keep thinking "This is medicine" and chug back the whole cup all at once. I've been taking it 3-4x a day and I have maybe another day's worth of tea bags left. It's not terribly expensive but I just don't know if it is doing enough to keep torturing myself by drinking it.

I reeeaally need to go grocery shopping, we are out of cereal, oatmeal, cheese, basically anything easy to eat with one hand while a baby is screaming. Being on a diet suuucks, but it is even worse when you don't have anything that you can just grab to eat on the run, and lately it feels like I am always on the run.

At least it's Friday! I leave you with pictures...

In the bath with Haley



I loved how his crazy hair caught the light



Passed out for a (brief) nap