Less of a bummer

My last post was pretty depressing. I'm going to try to lighten the mood a bit with a random hodge podge of topics. 

When I was pregnant with Elliott (which seems like it was about a year ago, not just 2 months ago) I had the greatest intentions on really keeping up with the blog.  I wasn't going to be one of these people that falls off the face of the blogging earth for months at a time.  Then reality, and sleeplessness, hit.  And I find myself not having enough time to eat during the day, let alone blog.

I'm also finding it hard to come up with topics to blog about.  Based on recommendations from our pediatrician, Elliott is banned from going anywhere because 1) he is a preemie to begin with so he is more susceptible to getting sick and 2) his body took a real hit with the sepsis and we can't risk him getting sick again.  We have to be particularly careful to keep him away from other children.  They are the real sickness spreaders.  So until the end of April (the end of cold/flu/RSV season) he is on house arrest.  That means I am mostly on house arrest.  I've been trying to get out 2-3 times a week with just Spencer, but I get about 1-2 hours and then have to be back to nurse.  Staying home all the time = no fun stories.

I'll try to do my best with some fun snippets.

I was up with Elliott around 5 am last week.  Ginger wasn't in our room.  Guess where I found her?  On Spencer's bed.  Spencer used to always sleep with his door closed.  When my mom was his primary care giver she started leaving his door open and he insisted we do the same once we were back from the hospital.  This gives Ginger access to him.  I secretly love that she wants to sleep with her boy, but it's no bueno for his allergies.  Do you see Spencer buried under his pillows?  He refuses blankets but pillows seem to be OK.  Crazy kid.

Michael leaves for work around 6:20 am.  Elliott is usually up  2 or 3 times a night to eat.  The nicest thing about him (compared to Spencer) is that he will nurse and fall back asleep easily during the night.  Spencer used to take hours to get to sleep and sometimes he just never would sleep all night long.  Anyway, Spencer usually comes in between 7:30 and 8:00 and we all sleep together until around 9:00.  It is my favorite part of the day.  Spencer and Ginger get into some funky positions.

Spencer and I went to a birthday party on Saturday.  He had fun. I was anxious and panicky the whole time.  I was really looking forward to feeling less anxiety with Elliott.  No such luck.  There is way more, and I was pretty darn anxious with Spencer given his 4 months of non-stop crying.

Elliott and Michael stayed home during the party and took a nap.  Last week we were a little worried that Elliott was developing colic too.  He was spending a lot more time crying.  Then we realized that 1) he is just fussier in the evening.  Normal fussy though.  And 2) he is no longer just nodding off all day.  Sometimes we have to really force him to sleep.  Then his mood is improved.

 My new goal is to actually eat breakfast at breakfast time.  I'm so wrapped up in feeding Spencer, nursing Elliott and medicating both of them in the morning that I have been eating breakfast around 11:00.  My other goals are to take more walks and drink more water.  Baby steps.  We'll work up to a real work-out later.

It was kind of chilly for our walk yesterday.  I put Elliott in a hoodie.

He hated it.

Spencer turned 4 years 5 months on Monday

I was trying to take a cute picture of Elliott to put on facebook this morning.  I like this one even though it's not very good.

He's a karate chopping ninja here.

I was trying to take this picture to tell people that we were headed back to the hospital for another EEG.  We are hoping and praying that all the seizure activity is gone so we can stop the phenobarbital.  Dr. Miloh wants him off that incase it is messing with his liver tests.  We'll know the results on Monday.

We were very nervous about the EEG because the instructions said that Elliott had to be asleep for part of the test.  During the day he is not the easiest to get to sleep.  But as luck would have it he woke up freakishly early this morning (like 5:00) and never went back to sleep.  By 11:00 he was pretty tired.  He threw a huge fit when the tech started marking and scrubbing his scalp and after 5 minutes of heavy duty crying he passed out and slept through the whole thing.  Huge sigh of relief.

Afterwards I nursed him in the car while Michael went to get us lunch in the cafeteria.  Side note: the cafeteria at Banner Desert Hospital has the best onion rings I've ever had.  Just a little tid bit we picked up from our 10 day stay.

And finally: the beagle from the title of the blog.  She is very much enjoying the grass we planted for her.