Oh, Natalie

A little background to the story...

A while ago, when Nate was in law school, Natalie asked why he was going to school. We told her, so that daddy can be a lawyer. She then asked, "why?" So we explained how all of the stuff we get from the store that we need and all of the stuff we have costs money, so daddy is going to school so he can be a lawyer so he can make money, so we can have the things we need. Made sense. I could tell that she understood. Natalie has been really excited for her dad to become a lawyer. She was excited when he graduated and didn't have to go to school anymore. She knew he had a big test he had to take and he couldn't be a lawyer if he didn't do a good job on it. She was excited when he passed the bar. And yesterday, Nate got his letter from the AZ Supreme Court stating that he had passed his character and fitness report (its a huge background check you have to pass, along with passing the bar to become an attorney) and was eligible to be admitted to the Bar and practice law in the state of Arizona. (after paying yet another fee. Aparently there is an annual fee (like $500!) to be part of the AZ Bar. My goodness, I never knew.)

So...

Nate went in to tell Natalie the good news. He told her he passed all of his stuff so he can be a lawyer now. She got really excited, smiled real big, and gave him a hug. Then she said, "Now, I have some toys I want." Nate came out and said, "And so it all starts..."

It was pretty funny. I guess we need to now explain that he has to get a job as a lawyer to be making enough money to go get some toys. And even then, I have a list. She's going to have to get in line.

Children's museum

Be prepared, there are a lot of pictures coming... Today we went to the Children's Museum with Rob and Tina and their kids. (I have to admit, I've lived here for over 8 years and I didn't know we even had a children's museum.) We had a great time.

Here's all the kids. Damon is even waving to you. :)
This is zoomed in from one of the shots of the group picture. What on earth are my kids doing?

Firefighter Natalie.

Kelton could not be bothered with the fireman attire. He just wanted to drive the truck.

Christian's turn. Very cute, but in the true fashion of a 1 1/2 year old, it only lasted a few seconds.

Once again, Kelton has to drive.

So this room was really fun and I think it was actually Natalie's favorite part. They had this thing you put stuffed frogs with velcro on the back onto and then used a rope pulley thing to lift them up to the ceiling where they were then hit by a fan which knocked them off and they went flying through the air, landing on whoever was nearby. Tina and I couldn't get over it. I think we thought it was way cooler than any of the kids did. Then, like in this picture, they had these block things that you could build a pyramid with--because that is definitely what any child is going to do with these stuffed, overly large blocks.

So here's my grumpy story. We got in trouble in this room. Everyone was having a lot of fun. The kids weren't being crazy--just playing, having fun. Then a musuem nazi, I mean employee, came in and informed us that we were all being too rowdy, and that this room is only for children under 4 years old. I must admit, I was pretty mad. Okay, I'm still mad about it. Nate thinks I should write a letter. It was obvious that this guy was mad at us. First of all, there was nothing about the look of this room that would designate it as a place only for small children. Usually in parks, museums, etc. that have special places only for little kids, they stand out as being such. This place was made to look like a rainforest. And really, how is a 2 year old supposed to stack those giant blocks into a pyramid? And, as we were getting kicked out, little Christian headed toward the blocks and proceeded to climb up them. Then I noticed the sign on the wall that read, "no climbing." As I watched Christian, I thought, "what else is a little kid going to do with these?" No, nothing about this room designated it as a spot only for little kids. And I guess what really makes me upset is that all these kids got in trouble for being kids in a children's museum. They were playing and having fun, and making noise--which, I'm sure, is what drew our friendly museum man in. It's frusterating that everywhere in public I go, I feel like I have to keep my kids quiet and on their best behavior and basically keep them from being what they are--little kids-- so that they won't upset people. But to have to feel that way in a place meant for kids?! That I paid to get into! Okay. (deep breath) I'm done now. Rant finished. Soapbox put away for another time. :)

This cool little floor area had some kind of projection on it. The kids are trying to squash the bugs running across the floor. (the flash messed up the effect)

Rock wall. This was right after we got kicked out of the other room. I wanted to find someone to ask if it was really okay if we could touch it and climb it, or if that would get us in trouble. Wait... I forgot. Rant finished. Sorry.

So this room had a bunch of giant paper mache-like dinosaurs in it. I feel bad now, because after looking at the pictures, I realize that Kelton was scared. I don't know if the picture is too small, but you can see it on his little face. He is concerned. I don't blame him. That dinosaur was painted a bit like Darth Mal.

This should have been my dead giveaway. He has his fists clenched and is growling at the dinosaurs. Kelton will growl at "beast-type" things that scare him. We caught him growling at a large spider at our house a while back. It's really quite cute. He's scared but it's like he's trying to show the other creature to back off because he's scary too. But.... in this case, I just thought, oh look how cute. He's growling like a dinosaur. Sorry, Kelton. I get it now.

Damon and Aunt Tina.

Drawing a picture.

They had this center where kids (and hungry mothers) could get a bag of gumdrops and a bunch of toothpicks and make whatever they could come up with. Natalie's first attempt was a "shooter," but it didn't work out. (like a nerf type shooter gun. we always just call them shooters) This is her with her caterpillar.

Kelton and his house. I'd like to say he's a mastermind builder for a 2 year old, but he had help from his cousin Hannah.

And for anyone still with me at this point... Here's a Damon update. He is sleeping better. Still not quite what I want, but much better. For the last 3 nights he has slept from about 7:30 to between 4:00 or 5:00. Then I give him his pacifier and he goes back to sleep until around 6:00 or 6:30. I'll take it. We're still going to work on it, but for now, I'll take it. Here he is before his dinner tonight. He's such a happy little thing. It is just not hard at all to make him smile.

Tonight was also his first night drinking... soy formula. So he got this little spotty red rash thing--all over his body. I just thought it was really bad dry skin. I remember Kelton having something similar. Anyway, he had a checkup with the pediatrician and the doctor didn't like the look of it. So he got us some 1% hydrocortisone cream to put on it and said he thinks Damon might be sensitive to cow's milk. I'm a little unclear because I don't know if that means he won't be able to drink milk later on... I'm not entirely convinced that the milk is what caused it. But the doctor wants us to switch to soy formula. I'm not too excited about it. I'm not quite sure why though. Maybe it's just because it makes me feel like a hippy. What's next? Organic baby food? Cloth diapers?! (ha! yeah right.) Anyway, Damon got his soy bottle before bed tonight and he didn't seem to mind at all.

I'm married to a...

LAWYER!!!

Nate passed the bar! We are excited, relieved, proud, relieved, happy and very relieved.

He's okay

After the really sad picture from the last post, I just wanted to show everyone that Damon really is okay. :) Natalie took this picture this afternoon.

VCUG

This morning I took Damon in to the hospital to have a renal ultrasound and VCUG. This is all followup for the UTI he had a little while ago. They needed to check to see if the infection was caused by something like urinary reflux. We won't find out the results until we meet with the urologist in a few weeks. But doesn't this look like so much fun? Poor baby.

Something different

Can you tell what's different?

Natalie didn't have school today, so we decided to play around. She has never let me do this before, but today she agreed to let me straighten her hair. After seeing her for the last 5 1/2 years with nothing but curly hair, it was definitely different! She thought it was pretty fun too.

Protected

So, if anyone tries to break into our house at night, Kelton's got it covered.


This kid is so funny. Without his sister around all the time, he is turning into more of a boy.

And while we are talking about Kelton, here are some funny things he said to me yesterday. I was putting on my shoes and Kelton came up to me and said, "whatcha doin' dude?" It cracked me up. I don't think any of us use the word "dude" so I don't even know where that came from. Then later when we were coming home from being out, I was putting the stoller in the car and I told Kelton to sit down. He had an incredibly stinky diaper so I said, "sit down stinky pants." He then looked at me and said, "What are you talking about?!" You need the little Kelton voice and emphasis to get the full effect. It was just funny because I felt like I was talking to a teenager all day.

Playgroup

In the year before Natalie started school, I did a pre-school co-op with a bunch of other moms in my ward. For the past few months I've been doing something similar with Kelton. There are a bunch of kids his age at church and a couple of us moms got together to do a playgroup. It's been great! We only do it once a week, from 8:30-10:30 with just four kids. There are a ton of other 2 1/2 year olds that we know, but our sanity had to limit the group to four. So every four weeks I gain 3 extra 2 1/2 year olds (which makes me so glad I don't have multiples). When it's not my turn, I go and volunteer in Natalie's kindergarten class. That way I only have to take Damon with me. But today was my turn for the playgroup. We had a really good day today. The kids were all really good and we made snickerdoodles. I took this picture because I thought it was really cute. I gave them their cookies to eat while they were playing outside. Notice how they are all scrunched up in the tiny little spot of shade on the porch. They did that all by themselves. Even at 10:00 in the morning, it was sooo hot outside.

And here's my Damon update. One night at 10:30 I couldn't get him consoled, so I decided that was the night. He was going to cry it out. He cried a total of about 4 hours (3 1/2 continuously). The next night was about 2 hours. Next night, about the same. Five days later, still crying for long periods of time at night. I don't get it. We weren't going in at all. So night #6, last night, we'd had it. He slept until 3:00. I then went in and rolled him back onto his tummy and gave him his pacifier (which is usually what he wants) and he went back to sleep. Then woke up 3 more times before we finally just got him up at 6:20. So now I'm at a complete loss... I'm now reading yet another book. I'll let you know...

This is a picture of how I found Damon in the morning after the first night of "crying it out." I went in to see if he was still alive after his night of screaming and no sleep and found him hanging half way out of the crib. You know it had to be cute for me to risk waking him up with the flash.

Desperate cry for help!

Okay, I've been able to admit it for a while, but now I'm finally asking. Help! Please, anyone. Example: last night I (stupidly) went to bed at midnight. My day then started shortly before 6:00 am. In between that time, Damon, who is 5 months old, woke up 4 times. And it wasn't just "get up and give him a pacifier," or "needs to just be rolled back over," woke up. It was "crying and won't calm down," woke up. FOUR TIMES. In about five hours. Now, babies have bad nights. I know that. And last night was unusually bad. But not entirely uncommon. It's been a long time since I've even had a stretch of about 5 or more hours of sleep.

SO...I'm calling on all the motherly experience out there. Help me out. What have you read that you swear by? Or what has worked for your baby (ies)? I can't take it anymore. I need sleep.

Here's what I've been doing. Help me figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm willing to listen to any suggestions. It has been my goal from day one to get this baby to sleep through the night at an early age. I've tried to do everything right. I've been careful to try not to let him develop bad sleeping habits. He NEVER sleeps in our bed. I don't put him to sleep in my arms. I have insisted that he learn to put himself to sleep--which he can do most of the time. I put him in his bed, give him a pacifier, and he goes to sleep, for the most part. At night, I don't run in and pick him up when he cries. I pat his back or try to give him back his pacifier. When he would get too worked up, because said attempts failed entirely to calm him down, I would pick him up only until he calmed back down and then I put him back in his crib, still awake. If he cried, I would give him a few minutes of patting on the back before repeating the process. Lately, I've stopped picking him up. I just pull a chair over to the crib and pat his back until he cries long enough that he will take his pacifier and fall asleep. Then it is not uncommon for him to only sleep for an hour before doing it all again. I feed him once during the night, usually at 3:00 am or after. I only give him 2 ounces. I've been trying to eliminate nighttime feedings altogether because a baby his age does not need to eat during the night. At least they can be taught not to. And he isn't starving in the morning.

He has a set bedtime--7:00 or shortly thereafter. He set this time. Not me. I can't keep him up later. He won't let me. He usually always sleeps until around midnight. But really, he has no middle-of-the-night routine. It's always random. The only thing consistent is that he won't sleep for a long time. He's sleeping worse than a newborn. From what I can tell, I am not giving him any reason to wake up at night. I don't hold him, I don't feed him. I do give him a pacifier, but usually he won't take it, so that's not what he's waking up for.

Help me out. Short of giving in to the "easy fixes" that create bad sleeping habits, what would you do? (In all honesty, the easy fixes don't even work. I've given him extra bottles at times, and he still only sleeps for an hour or two. And he always cries even if we hold him, which is actually why I've stopped picking him up.)

It had the potential to be a grand disaster

Yesterday I was cutting out some fabric my mom gave me to make school kit bags for the Church's humanitarian efforts. It's a service project we are doing in our Relief Society. Anyway, I got completely distracted when I realized that some of the fabric would make a really cute skirt for Natalie. It's tan and up close it has a bit of the same grain look as denim. Then I realized that it is her school uniform colors and that she would be able to wear a skirt made of this to school. So I decided to give it a try. I had no pattern. In fact, I've only made like 2 articles of clothing with a sewing machine even with a pattern. I had no sample skirt to look at. All I had was an idea in my head. I really don't know what I was thinking. I grabbed a pair of Natalie's shorts to use as a size guide and started cutting. The whole time I kept thinking, "what are you doing? You have no idea how to make a skirt! This is going to just be a big waste of time and end up in the trash and then you're just going to be upset." But I guess I listened to the part of me that kept saying, "it's just fabric sewn into a tube shape. How hard could it be?" Now, we won't discuss how long it took or the fact that I also had to pretend that I know how to alter because I initially made it over and inch too big, and lets just say I won't be posting any "how-to" tutorials, but here it is...
It has pockets in the front and back, contrasting white stitching, and a belt tie. I have no idea how to do a zipper and I didn't want the look of an elastisized waistband all the way around, so I figured out how to make an adjustable waistband just for the back side. That way the front hangs flat and isn't puckered at all. I was pretty impressed with myself at this point, especially because I was still pretty afraid that my cute little skirt might be headed for the trash.

Natalie was super excited about her new skirt. She really wanted to wear it today. It looks so cute on--the picture doesn't quite do it justice, mostly because the pockets kind of blend in. Do you like how she already had the perfect shoes to match? And the best thing about this is that I didn't have to buy a single thing.

He also looks like...

So Damon may look like his daddy did as a baby, but he also looks like someone else. Today I was moving a bunch of files onto our external hard drive and I came across this picture.

This is Natalie at 5 months old. Same age as Damon is now.

Feeling Better

Look who's feeling a little bit better...
It's so nice to see him smiling again. He's pretty much back to our normal baby. Except for one thing. He's not sleeping at night. Like seriously, not sleeping. He wants to, but just cries instead. About the time we go to bed, Damon will start waking up and won't really sleep for longer than 1 1/2 hours. There are stretches where he will only go for 20 minutes. We had a solid 2 hours the other night where he woke up every 15-20 minutes. I was starting to go a bit crazy, when I figured it out. I think. My guess is that the antibiotic is upsetting his stomach or otherwise making him uncomfortable. He will scream and scrunch up into a ball, and then inevitably roll over on his back--which he hates when he's trying to sleep. So I guess the good news is that hopefully this is temporary. The bad news is that we've had about a week of nights like this and still have at least three more. We are exhausted! It's a good thing he's so cute.

(Just a funny note on this picture. Because we opened our windows last night, it was a freezing (haha) 73 degrees in our house this morning. So Nate grabbed Natalie's blanket to put over his legs. The funny thing is that we both know that doing this results in us getting in trouble. NO ONE is allowed to use Natalie's blanket. Not even dad. Not even mom. No one. It's hers and you get yelled at for using it. And its the first thing she notices when she walks into the room. This morning was no exception. Nate didn't have that blanket for long.)


Damon has also been doing this thing where when he's falling asleep, he wants to grab the pacifier out of his mouth. Problem is, he wants it in his mouth too. I'd been standing there trying to hold my hand between the plug and his hand until he fell asleep. He's strong and it didn't always work that great. Then I had a brilliant idea--go get another pacifier. One for his mouth and one for his hand! It worked great and was so cute I had to take a picture. It's kind of funny that I am so proud of myself for outsmarting a not-quite-five month old.

(Hopefully this picture isn't shocking too many of you with its multiple SIDS violations.)

Good news, Bad news

So we have good news and bad news. Usually when Nate tells me this and asks which I want first, I say, "bad news first." But, I am going to start with the good because it happened first.

Good News: Nate has a job! He is working as a law clerk for a firm in town. I would tell you the name, but it consists of like a million lawyers' names (not really, there's like 5 or 6) and I can rarely remember all of them. One of the lawyers is a retired Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. The firm is a very successful one and this will be a great job. If he were ever able to go from a clerk to an associate there, it would be awesome! But, even if not, just the fact that he worked there should be a really good reference for getting another job. The downside is that his position is technically only part time--20 hours a week. However, he is allowed to work up to 40 hours a week if the attorneys have enough work they need him to do. And they told him that he is welcome to leave whenever he wants to if he finds a full time job elsewhere. So, we will see how the hours work out. Hopefully he will get closer to 40 hours.

Bad News: We have one sick little baby at our house. Damon had a temperature of anywhere from 101 to closer to 103 for three days in a row. On the second day, I took him to the doctor and they couldn't find what was causing the fever. The doctor said that if his fever didn't go back down, we should take him to the hospital so they could figure out what was causing it. It didn't go down, so I took him to the children's ER at about 3:00. And FYI, and because I'm still a bit mad about it, I didn't get home until after midnight! Maybe all the nurses in my family could give me the other side of the argument, but after being in the waiting room for about 30 minutes (very reasonable), we were put in a room and waited well over 2 hours (not reasonable AT ALL)before a doctor, no, a nurse practitioner came in to see us. He got all the same info from us that we gave the other nurses and then didn't really even tell us what his plan of action was before he left the room. So I tracked down a nurse and explained and she said she would go find out what was going on. Here's what I've noticed about emergency rooms; the communication time between the doctors and nurses is delayed by about an hour. Anyway, I will stop my ranting about how much I do not like the inefficiencies of the ER (we've just spent way too much time there in recent months and years). So, it turns out Damon has a urinary tract infection. Poor little baby. And after poking the needle around to get the IV in his hand to work, they didn't get it taped down before he moved his hand and pulled it out. Attempt number two failed in his other hand. So after three needle sticks and a lot of wiggling, they got the IV in his foot. He's doing a little bit better today, but you can tell he still doesn't feel good. Now we get to set up an appointment with a urologist because it's not normal for a four month old to be getting UTI's. Poor little boy.

We just got the mail, so I actually do get to end with good news. There are two parts to the bar exam--a multiple choice portion and and essay portion. He just got his scores back for the multiple choice part and he did really well. Way above the median and actually closer to the top scores received. This gives him a little more room for error with his essay scores. The letter also said that we will find out if he passed the bar on October 8th. Only one more month!

Daddy's Boy

A few days ago my visiting teachers were here and one of them asked, "Does Damon just look exactly like Nate did as a baby?" A lot of people say that Damon looks like Nate, but I had looked at baby pictures of Nate a few months ago and thought they looked nothing like Damon. So I got out my book of pictures of Nate as a baby to show her that they look nothing alike. This is what I found.

Nate

Damon

Now, I'm not saying they look like twins or anything...

Nate

Damon

(isn't he just the cutest thing? His mom thinks so.)

But the resemblence is hard to overlook. Let's just say, he doesn't belong to the milkman.

I felt a little stupid after pulling out that book to prove that Damon doesn't look like his daddy.

Zonked out

I was looking through my August folder of pictures on the computer and I started to notice a trend. I thought it was kind of funny...

Here is Natalie. She is actually asleep for the night--in our bed because we can't put her to sleep in her room because Kelton is in there and they just play. (I'm sure that NO ONE reading this post has ANY idea of what I'm talking about.) Anyway, I thought each arm wrapped around a doll was too cute not to take a picture.
Then we have Kelton. That's him under the towel. Poor kid. Didn't get a bath until lunchtime, then no one dressed him (I'm sure at his insistence--is that even a word?), then he just couldn't make it through lunch.

Now Damon. He really only falls asleep in his crib, or sometimes in your arms if you are trying really hard to get him to sleep. The other night we were trying to make him last until bedtime, and he just didn't make it. All of a sudden, he was just gone. It was funny because he just never does this.

This picture was not my idea. I think I look strange. But yesterday Kelton was refusing to take a nap--which is also a rarity. Usually we have no problems with naptime. (Bedtime is another story...) Natalie was at school and Damon was sleeping. Nate and I were very tired so we both layed down on the couch to take a nap. When Kelton saw this, he got very upset. I guess he figured it was kind of pointless to be the only one awake. So he crawled up with me and went right to sleep.

Now there are no sleeping pictures of Nate, but I can guarantee you, they would be plentiful if I wanted them to be. Also, don't have any picture of this one, but Natalie has fallen asleep on the bus ride home twice (that I know of) this past week. So, do you think maybe none of us are getting enough sleep at night? I sure think so.