More than you want to know about John's pee Part II

On Saturday, I started signing "Bathroom" each time we went there. The sign, the way I do it, involves putting your thumb between your pointer and middle fingers while holding your hand in a fist and moving your hand to the right and left. Yesterday, about forty minutes after a nap, twenty minutes after lunch, and a few minutes after nursing (read: he should have been super-happy), John began fussing and wouldn't let me hold him. I looked more carefully and noticed the "Bathroom" thumb position and promptly took him. He didn't "go", but he sure had fun playing with his bathroom toys!

Today, after running some errands, John did the same thing (slight fussiness, hand in the "Bathroom" position), but this time his diaper was dry and he went within 5 seconds of being put in the tub.

"By George, I think he's got it!" Sort of, at least.

Warning: More about John's pee than you want to know

(Title copied from Amy.)

On Monday, I decided to start changing John's diaper in the bathroom instead of on his changing table. It seemed like a good first step in connecting the bathroom with the bodily functions which our society expects to happen therein.

Well, it appears John has already made that connection. Out of the first seven changes in the bathroom over a course of two and a half days, he went #1 or #2 within thirty seconds of me taking off his diaper during all seven of them. By the fourth time, I began to believe this behavior was statistically significant, since he normally doesn't "go" between diaper changes, so Wednesday afternoon I bought six more pairs of training underwear.

We've established a sort of routine: I take him to the bathroom with me whenever I need to go (which is frequent, being a pregnant nursing mamma) and about 20 minutes after a meal. If we're going to go out, I put a diaper on him. He isn't comfortable sitting on the potty seat yet, so I just stand him in the bathtub and wash it out afterwards.

Today, we had two wet diapers (last night's diaper and a diaper we had him in for an outing), a wet pair of training pants, and a dry pair that had stayed dry for a 5.5 hour time period which included two mini naps! Since trainers are so much smaller than diapers, this is equivalent to cutting my laundry to a third compared with a regular day!

Will it keep going? I hope so! With the weather warming up (though today it was 45 degrees!) I won't be needing to put layers on him, making the bathroom trips easier than before. I try to make bathroom time fun since diaper changes were generally quite fun, involving singing, dancing, tickling, rhyming, and kisses. We have bathroom only toys and I always sit in there with him. Now that I've established a routine (unlike Thursday when I was just figuring this out and made many many trips to the bathroom) it doesn't really take any more time than diapering would.

Bad Science

I've been correcting a lot of bad science recently.

Bad Science 1: A friend was worried her husband would get more cavities because he had replaced his frequent Cokes with Kool Aid. She thought Kool Aid was more sugary and worse for his teeth. In reality, the carbonic acid in soda works together with the sugar to cause tooth decay. Additionally, Coke is just as sweet, but the carbonation makes it taste less so. Coke ranks around 2.2 in pH.

Bad Science 2: "I only swim in shallow areas because they are cold and sharks like warm water." I think this girl has lived in both New Jersey and California and thinks that the top layer of water "blankets" the lower water to keep it warm.

Another friend thought a 2-liter soda was the same size as a gallon of milk. I guess it is packaged in a way that makes it look bigger...

First appointment

John and I went to the first appointment with the midwife this morning. The appointment started about 10 minutes late and mainly consisted of talking about John's birth and my family health history. She ordered a few blood tests, including iron when I mentioned that I feel like I've been doing olympic weight lifting if I am not vigilant about protein consumption for a day. The tests will be done at Princeton's health center which waives the lab costs for people on the student plan. We heard the baby's heart beat which was wonderful, although I think it disturbed John when he saw me sitting on the exam table. He began yelling but refused to be held (I think he wanted to be the one using the doppler). At the end of the exam the midwives suggested a book for me to read from their library so I checked it out.

All the midwives were wearing skirts today! (There were three of them there - one of the main midwives and two students who will be having babies this summer and who will be on maternity when this little one is born.)

On the way home, we stopped at a farm and bought about 10 pounds of grassfed beef, which should last us a while. We also bought some eggs, which happened to have been laid the previous day by the chickens I drove by on the dirt road.

Into the mouth everything goes

John started putting everything in his mouth this week. Before now, he stuck to blocks so I let him play in the pantry and with some miniature ducks my mom had. I became lax and there are little things all over the house.

Yesterday, in the pantry, he started yelping and I found him with a socket cover stuck in his mouth!!! Today, as I was washing dishes, I saw the hand go to the mouth and bobbed down to find a NAIL in his mouth!!!

Goal for today, tomorrow, next week: Get the floor spotless! Argh!

A week of firsts

Following yesterday's first pair of shoes, I gave John his first hair cut today.

A few too many people told me what a beautiful little girl I had (while he was in navy blue and sitting in a navy blue stroller!) so I got out the shears. I've cut hair since I first gave Jane a haircut my freshman year at Caltech and I estimate I've done over 100 haircuts. At Tech, I saw it as a public service - the guys needed haircuts and some hairdos was painful to look at. Now, I just cut Dan's (and now John's) hair. Unfortunately, John started trying to grab the scissors as time went on, so I'll have some touchup to do on his hairdo tonight when Dan gets home and can entertain him. On the bright side, John didn't seem to mind at all. I think he spent the whole time playing with a socket cover that the handyman had taken out of a socket this morning.

I've read about nursers being broken into three categories:
1) Weight falls off immediately
2) Very little change for 8-12 months and then it falls off
3) No weight loss until nursing ends.

With John, I was in (2), but since I hit the 9 month mark, I've been getting skinnier and skinnier. As of January, everything pre-pregnancy fit again, but, according to my Target scale, I was still heavier than pre-pregnancy. Dan was also at his highest weight since our marriage. While in CA, however, I tried my parents scale (which was much more expensive and has been checked against their doctor's!) and magically "dropped" 15 pounds to a number which seemed to make a lot more sense!

I'm starting to count protein grams and cups of milk, but clothing seems to be getting looser everywhere except at the belly, where buttons no longer shut. But, then again, I didn't gain any weight during John's first trimester and more than made up for that by the end!

What happens when you dream about making marmalade on Monday night and find organic oranges for $0.50/lb on Tuesday? You make marmalade! And candied oranges! And everything else involving oranges you can possibly think of!

I broke down and bought John a pair of shoes today. I have great shoes in sizes 5-1/2 and up, but John is currently in 4-1/2 and doubling his walking distance every day. Ouch. Shoes are expensive. In New Jersey, clothing isn't taxed, but shoes designed for crawlers (I couldn't believe such a thing existed!) are taxed! I guess they are accessories, not clothing!1

As you may have noticed if you’ve read my blog for any period of time, I tend to blog about upbeat and trivial things. For me, an internet diary isn’t a place to share intimate emotions. I don’t think sharing deep emotions online is necessarily bad, I just don’t have the writing skills to make my emotions appear as serious at they really are.

Today I’ll take a break from that format and write about something that really matters.

I was about to start this log by writing that today was a day of giggling, which it was. John and I had a splendid time today with lots of stacking blocks, balancing toys on mommy’s head, and playing chase around that house. He got more than his fair share of bloopers (this is our family name for blowing on someone’s skin) and we just generally had a good time. It was a day of giggles.

Now that John is asleep, though, it is a day of tears. My grandmother, whom I called “Gram”, died about three weeks ago. At the time, I was in California. I was able to see her the day before she died, but she couldn’t see me. Today was her memorial service.

I think few people are blessed with such close relationships with a grandmother as I had with Gram. My family lived with them for a few months (when I was three) until my parents were able to find a house about 1.5 miles away to move to. She taught my sister and me how to bake from an early age, including us in all the holiday baking rituals and building up recipe boxes of family recipes for each of us. We often stopped by during weekday evenings for ice cream. During the summer, there was always my favorite kind of iced tea in the fridge (mostly Lipton’s Black but with a token raspberry tea bag). She volunteered with a charity league that ran a costume rental and brought home rejected costumes. Her house was a dress-up playing paradise!

She was the bookkeeper for the family furniture business, which employed about thirty people when I was in high school, and in ninth grade I began working for her every Saturday as her assistant. At the beginning, she always drove me, but after I got my permit, she let me practice driving if the weather was good. She often told people that I was the reason she was able to retire.

Dan lived with my grandparents for one summer while we were dating. We spent many Sunday afternoons that summer enjoying my grandfather’s soups and open-faced sandwiches for lunch. My parents also entertained at their house nearly every Tuesday evening that summer, weaving my grandparents into many of their friendships.

There are so many more things I did with her that were special, like holiday outings, or special because they were so normal to me, like coring apples to dry, but I'll reflect on those on my own.

Although there are many things I admire about Gram (and my grandfather), I think their ability to make and retain friends is remarkable. Gram was a founding member in a bridge club that still meets today, 55 years later, and a supper club of the same age.

Gram’s grandmother never took off her wedding ring. Gram followed her tradition, getting a plain white gold band that she never took off. I too have a white gold wedding band, for the same reason.

Snow!

It is snowing today and it is beautiful! It is wonderful to be inside!

We went to a used book sale today and picked up a box of books for $5! The sale was through the Seminary so many academic libraries had been emptied for it. I focused on cook books, children's books, and education books. I bought a book my MIL recommended on family customs and the La Leche League book in addition to an Indian cookbook and an Italian cookbook. Today was the last day of the sale and it was basically a free-for-all, so there wasn't much time to look at books before buying. If we only like half the books, we'll still have gotten a great deal.

Our new faucet has been installed and is wonderful and has a better design than the old faucet! It would have been a great improvement even if the old faucet had been working perfectly. What a blessing.

It is so easy to think whatever problems you have are the most annoying ones there are! If your washer is broken and you cloth diaper you think that is the worst thing ever. If your faucet starts leaking because the pipe gets a hole in it, and it makes your kitchen stink while you are pregnant, you (I) decide that is probably the worst kitchen problem there could be. If there are piles of rotting leaves in your yard on Friday and rain predicted for Saturday, well, there seem to be few yard problems more annoying.

Sin is so easy, isn't it? Pitying myself and imagining that my "needs" should be foremost in everyone's minds comes naturally. I complain about the rotting leaves in my yard instead of visiting my homebound neighbor. I angrily and bitterly mop up the pool behind the sink while snapping at the handyman (who doesn't even know about the problem) instead of praying for his sanctification since he confesses the same Lord I confess.

The story ends better. I confessed my anger, not loving my neighbor, considering myself higher than others, and prayed for resolution and contentment. Dan helped me clean up the leaves on Saturday and take them to the curb for pickup. Our neighbors paid for a new washing machine and refused to let us pay for any of it. I told the handyman about the broken faucet today and he said he would buy a new one at Lowe's tonight.

The roof still leaks, but the hole in my joy has been fixed.