Confessions of A Tired Audiologist

Just a quick post tonight, because we're headed up to Disney with John and Jasmine tomorrow.

Zach had his six month check up today and is doing well. He's a little taller than average at this point, at 26 and 3/4 inches, and weighs a little less than average at 16 lbs, 6 oz. The pediatrician was watching him and she said she wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be an early crawler. (Oh, great.)

So he got his shots, with a minimum of fuss this time, and did very well.

I've got pictures up the wazzoo to load and post, and more in depth stuff to post about, but I've been fighting a very nasty cold all week, so I'm going to take advantage of the fact that our cooperative baby went to bed easily tonight and head that way myself. I've got to kick this thing - it doesn't work too well to be losing your voice when you spend all day trying to communicate with people who have a hearing loss. You can imagine the conversations: (raspy voice) "Okay, I want you to press the button when you hear the tone..." "What?" "I want you to press the button..." "What?!"

Yeah. It's been that kind of week. I even managed to bash my finger in the door of the booth - if you've ever been in one, the walls are about 3 inches thick. It didn't feel very good.

Okay, a quick round of tea and off to bed so I'll be refreshed for Mickey and Minnie (and Zach) tomorrow!

Right now, the joys of motherhood involve a baby with a cold that's bad enough for us to have to use the bulb aspirator-booger sucker thingie that they give you at the hospital. As you can probably imagine, poor Zach is about as thrilled with the use of that thing as we are. (I'm convinced I'm going to accidentally suck his brain out.) Poor baby, he's not too fussy until he gets really snuffly, but it's enough to wake him up at night (thus the 12-something am timestamp on this blog entry) and make him frustrated when he's feeding.

Me, I'm beat. He hasn't slept well all week and Bryan was underway, so it was All Mommy, All The Time. I went to bed at 7:45 last night, no joke.

In other news, we gave Zach his first green beans and he was maybe a little less impressed. By the third spoonful, we were getting what would best be described as an emphatic yuck face. Ah well, he'll come around. The only veggie Bryan will eat is corn (which I think is technically a starch, not a veg), and I refuse to raise a kiddo who won't eat veggies! Pretty much the only veggie I won't eat is carrots. Spinach, brussels sprouts, broccoli, yum! Bring 'em on! You can keep the carrots, though.

Some may have noticed I haven't been posting much about Derek Boogaard this season, and there's a good reason. No, I'm not holding a grudge about the fact that despite numerous tries, he still hasn't signed my jersey. He's been out a fair chunk of the season with back problems. Rumor has it, he may make his way back into the lineup soon. The Wild have been very up and down this year, and it's anyone's guess how the Northwest Division will end up. It's so tight that if a given team wins on a given night, it may be enough to propel someone from seventh to first - or vice versa. Let's hope the Wild get their act together down this final stretch of 10 games (most of which are against division opponents) to make the playoffs!

Well, after a feeding and booger sucking, Zach is in his crib, babbling away and I guess I'd better get myself back into bed while he's in a decent mood. He should fall asleep soon, and I need to do the same. It's going to be a busy week at work, lots of meetings and patients and all that good stuff, and life's easier when I've had some sleep.

Okay, either I'm getting crafty, or Lost is getting more predictable. Was anyone surprised that the freighter off the island is there compliments of Mr. Widmore, Penny's dad? (Duh, that's why Fisher Stevens said something about how she calls on the red phone or whatever it was.)

And here's a prediction. Ben's shocking "inside guy" on the boat? I think it's Michael, who left the island at the end of...Season 2? 3? I've lost track now. Know what's behind my educated guess? The fact that Harold Perrineau's name has been in the credits for quite a while, but we haven't seen Michael around anywhere. So you heard it here first, if it turns out I'm right.

I will admit to having been surprised by the whole Kate-Aaron-Mummy thing. It'll be interesting to see how that comes to be.

Hey, in a drought of new TV thanks to the writers' strike, I'm thrilled to have new episodes of anything that's not some form of reality or game show.

Bryan had another random day off on Friday, so we called up Jasmine, packed up Zach and the four of us went up to Disneyland for the day. Having an extra adult meant that Bryan and I could take turns staying with Zach while the other person rode the rides with Jasmine, which was a lot more fun than riding alone. The weather was pretty good, a little chilly in the morning and evening, but mid-day was 70s, sunny and gorgeous. Once again, we made good use of Disney's Baby Care Centers and Zach did pretty well all day.

We did find these cool Mickey St. Patrick's Day glasses at California Adventure (which was funny, I don't remember seeing them in any of the other shops, including World of Disney. Maybe they were there and I was just too tired at the end of the day to notice.), and Bryan and I both liked them so much we decided to get two. I'll have to find out how to make green beer, since I still have never had green beer for St. Paddy's day and I (obviously) missed out last year while I was pregnant. We also got Zachary his own Mickey ears (with his name embroidered on the back, of course), but they're still a little big for him, so he'll have to grow into them.

Today we were low key. Zach has been a complete grump-a-potamus, probably as a result of all the excitement and less nap than usual yesterday. He didn't sleep well last night, and I think that didn't help. I did laundry, Zach fussed and Bryan tried to tame him. Bailey was well behaved and considerate at least!

Bailey has a tendency to sleep on the futon in Zachary's room. Bryan says I'm imagining it, but I think he seems to sleep better (less waking, etc) on the nights that she sleeps in with him. She can sprawl out all over the futon, Zach sleeps better and we don't have to share our bed with Bailey Bed-Hog, which suits us. It's funny because she never used to sleep on the futon unless one of us was in the room with her, and she'd get up as soon as we left the room. She started sleeping in with Zach the very first night we moved him to his crib to sleep, instead of having him sleep in the pack and play in our room. Whether he really sleeps better with her in there or not, for whatever reason, I feel better when she's in there. She's such a good big sister. He's discovered her, and thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread. He giggles when she comes over to sniff him and watches her very intently when she's walking around.

8:25 and I'm beat. Zach is finally in bed, hopefully for the night, and Bailey's in with him. I think it's time to crawl into bed and read or watch some TV. I'm feeling kind of under the weather today, and if the Grump-a-potamus makes a repeat appearance tomorrow, I'm going to need all the rest I can get!

I never really pictured myself as one of those people who makes their own baby food. Ask anyone who knows me - I'm a girl who likes convenience. Those little Gerber jars seem pretty darned convenient, yet here I am making baby food!

It started with some ripe bananas around the time Zach started solids. I like my bananas when they've just turned yellow. As soon as a brown spot appears, I want nothing to do with them. Well, I had several that were ripe (meaning deep yellow and a couple brown spots) and there was no way I was eating them, so I pureed them up, fed a little to Zach and popped the rest into an old-school style ice cube tray that my mom had sent for Christmas. (The style makes it easier to get the cubes out than the normal plastic twist-style trays. Silicone trays are easier than the plastic ones, but not quite as easy as the old-school ones.) A couple of hours later, I popped the banana cubes out of the tray, into a Ziploc bag and voila! Bananas, ready to thaw whenever I want. A couple of weeks later, I had some Fuji apples that had been in the fridge and it didn't look like I was going to get to them, so I looked up baby food recipes on the web, found one I liked, cooked up some apples, threw them into the blender, into the ice cube trays and poof! Homemade applesauce!

Zach really likes applesauce. Apple-banana-sauce is also very popular. Straight bananas result in a facial expression that I say is Zach looking like he's just been mugged. Today we tried sweet potatoes and they were a big hit. No "mugged face" at all. Once again, we did homemade and it was so easy!

I won't have time to do homemade with everything, but for now, I say why not?! My fresh/frozen homemade stuff certainly smells better than the stuff in the jar. We tried a jar of bananas and boy did they stink! Zachary's not complaining about the homemade version, so we'll stick with that for now.

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