When you don't sleep...

...you spend a lot of time thinking weird, unimportant thoughts. Namely how much I hate the blatant misuse of the words 'sell' and 'sale'. Now, I do not know all the word-for-word grammar rules about prepositions and nonessential clauses and inverted quadrupeds (the way Joe does) but I do know that there are a lot of people out there who apparently do not know what these two simple words mean.

For example, if you are a sales rep you do not sale your product. The word you're looking for is 'sell', conveniently located right there in the English language, waiting for you to use it.

Alternately, all you sells reps, your product or house or item on KSL Classifieds is for sale. It's not for sell.

Are we clear on that? Good.

In baby-related news, he's now covered with red bumps and spots and I assume he's allergic to his antibiotic. Unless it's a reaction to his vaccinations. He spends a lot of time yowling and babbling in a complainy way (mostly to his fox toy, but also to his hands) and consoles himself by visiting his favorite boob. He also talks and complains to it.

The saga of sleep and solids

Brought to you by the letter S and the number 4 (which would be the number of hours of sleep I got last night).

So. Yesterday I got a box of rice cereal. And a pack of baby spoons. And a cute bib with a lovely little elephant on it. Love the elephants.

And then I decided that I didn't really feel like forcing the little guy to eat cereal from a spoon because he just has absolutely no interest in it. And judging by the way he wiggles and coos and smiles and jealously guards his nursing territory, he does have a very decided interest in continuing to breastfeed.

He usually does have a bottle in the evening though (Joe and the kids really like to feed him too) and so I put a teeny bit of the rice cereal in the bottle, just to see if there was any truth to the cereal = sleep theory.

There isn't.

At least there wasn't last night. If anything, he got up MORE (ALL CAPS!) than he ever has in his entire livelong life and that includes the first night he came home.

So. What to do, what to do?

When he woke up last night, he was more angry than hungry. In fact, I only fed him one of the 4 times he woke up. One time I held him and rocked him. Twice I gave him his pacifier. Each time I waited (to no effect) about 10 minutes to see if he would settle down on his own.

Right now he is taking his nap. He sleeps in longer stretches for his nap than at night! The differences are:
- at night he sleeps in his crib and I wrap his blanket around him because he tends to wave his arms around and wake himself up as I put him down. He sleeps on his back. There is a white-noise machine in his room.
- during the day he takes his nap in my bed because it's quieter and has less little brothers parading back and forth. There is a fan on. I just lay down with him and nurse him until he falls asleep, then I tuck his blanket around him and leave him there. He usually sleeps halfway on his side (I put a beanbag by his tummy to keep him from flipping onto his face).

I know he can sleep through the night because he's done it before. What on earth can I do to help him sleep longer now?

Solids schmolids

The wee one, while still a precious angel from heaven, has decided that sleeping all night is totally not as party funtime as waking up multiple times to eat and snuggle and eat and eventually be taken into bed with me, where he snoozes away contentedly, tiny fists tangled securely in my hair, holy run-on sentence Batman.

So this is definitely something I addressed at his 4-month well-check today. It's worth mentioning that I have the best pediatrician in the world. I love him. I highly recommend him. If he was in general practice, I would take the whole dang family and possibly some of the neighbors to him. When I die I will have his entire staff entombed with me so they can take care of my whole family forever and ever. I hoped that he would have a magic miracle solution for the no-sleeping problem but I don't know why I was surprised when he suggested starting baby on a little rice cereal.

So now I'm feeling all sad and frowny, thinking that my baby is not old enough for solids, he has exhibited no interest in them and I'm really enjoying nursing this, my last baby.

But baby is 4 months - a perfectly good time to start solid food and his brother and sister both did fine with rice cereal at this age. He's also almost 16 pounds, big enough that he's probably super hungry.

Does this post feel rambly and confused? Good. Because that's how I feel. It could also be the 3 entire hours of sleep I got last night. Sleep would be super wonderful and fabulous. I didn't want to start cereal for another month or so. Sleep.... solids.... not enough Diet Dr. Pepper in my day....

What do I do?

Working as a team

Mr. Naughty has recently discovered that he has opinions. About things! Most importantly, that he would rather be held and cuddled and watch his own TV shows, thankyouverymuch and that napping all by your lonely lonesome is for losers.

So today he is my coworker. Which, while it makes the time pass quickly, does nothing for my typing speed.

Why Easter as a secular holiday is Not My Favorite

It's one of those holidays that involves Waking Up Way Too Early

There's too much candy in my house.

There's way too much candy being consumed by children who turn into the Chocolate-Faced Crazypants Pirates of Hard Face Punching.

It's ever so awesome to break up arguments over who:
a. found more eggs,
b. got more candy,
c. got the wrong color of egg
d. re-hid the wrong color of egg in the wrong spot
e. hid in a corner and stuffed their face full candy before the other one thought of it

Peeps are not a part of this balanced breakfast.

YOU try suiting up the Crazypants Pirates of Hard Face Punching team for church.

There's always the risk of not finding one of the real eggs. Then there's the penalty of actually finding the missing real egg, many months down the road (this actually happened when I was little - we found 1 extra egg one Easter and then we didn't dare to eat any of them).This is not a hazard you run with Christmas. If a fruitcake gets tucked away and you discover it at the 4th of July, no problem. Just put it away for next year.

No other holiday demands that I let the children dye their hands, clothes and the better part of my countertops.

And finally, for no apparent reason, everywhere I go, I keep finding plastic eggs filled with rocks.

A bit of my childhood

When I was little, my Grandma Bev had a record player that you could hear throughout the entire house. She had two records we could listen to - The Smurfs All Star Show and Urban Chipmunk (by The Chipmunks).

Grandma was so little that at 8 years old, I could easily wear her dresses and shoes. She had so many fancy cocktail dresses and lovely little heeled sandals and a box full of costume jewelry that we were allowed to wear. We would dress in the fanciest of outfits and whirl and twirl around to the sqeaky-vocals of country music. And, like most things that were fabulous when we were young, these songs are just as funny and catchy today. Violet and Dash have been dancing around to the music all morning.

Favorite banana bread

This recipe is a combination of my mother's recipe and my attempts to make the bread a little less deliciously calorie-laden. The sour cream and yogurt gives the bread a faint but nice tang. The bread is dense and moist without the oily feel you get from using all butter or vegetable oil.

Jeri's Banana Bread

• 1 cup butter, melted
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
  
• 6 eggs
• 3 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cup light sour cream
• 1/2 cup plain low fat yogurt
  
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 5-6 very ripe bananas, smooshed up (great job for kids)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Shortening and flour** four 9x5 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the melted butter and sugars. Add the eggs one at a time and vanilla, sour cream and yogurt - mix well. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, stir into the butter mixture until smooth. Finally, fold in the walnuts and bananas. Divide evenly into the prepared pans.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool loaf in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool. When still slightly warm, wrap in plastic wrap. Freezes really well.

** Get a dab of shortening on a paper towel and smear into every corner of the loaf pan. There should be a thin film of shortening on the entire inside of the pan. Put a palmful of flour in the pan and shake shake shake it all around, tapping the excess out. More labor-intensive than non-stick spray but it will release your cakes and breads a million times easier.

Oh my!

Three months already?


At three months, baby:
- weighs 15 pounds
- has graduated to bigger size of clothes, rendering another entire wardrobe useless
- eats and eats and eats
- can hold his head up all he wants
- still is not in love with Tummy Time
- likes to be tickled
- will laugh at stupid noises that no self-respecting adult should make... but we will do absolutely anything to get any smile or giggle out of him. Something is funny only three times though and then the would-be comedian needs to gather new material.
- loves to bite and suck and slobber and chew his wee dimpled fingers

Oh... the fingers. They're in his mouth every waking moment. In fact, he's almost given up the binky in favor of those succulent little digits. After a while, sucking on the fingers makes him think that a snack would sure go down nicely. Then he's hungry again. Even in his sleep, if you see his hands inching towards his mouth, you know he's only minutes away from waking himself up.

And food will be the first thing on his mind.

Project, part II

So my quilt is done. Yay! It looks pretty much the same as the last pictures I took except I totally did not screw up the binding and it actually looks like a fer realz quilt. And, like most labor-intensive creations, I'll now hand it over to one of the children so they can slobber and ooze various fluids all over it. What was I thinking?

On a more inspired note, look what I did with some of the leftover scraps! I love fabric flowers, I could sit and make them all day.

Random pictures

Being the parents of three entire children still kind of freaks me out. We are starting to have a fairly substantial herd.

Pictures that Jackie took of my sweet little guy.

April Fools

This was my trick for the kids. Candy bacon and eggs. The eggs are white chocolate and a Lemonhead. The bacon is caramel and Tootsie Roll. And salt water 'juice' on the side.