Shots fired

Today my sweet baby boy had to get his immunizations. Just by that sentence, you already know it was a terrible day. 

     So of course, the whole day I'm dragging my feet and very anxious, then we get to the doctors and Charles-Winston had no idea what was coming, he's laughing and smiling at the doctor. Then came the shots. Weirdly enough he had one oral "shot", it was like the same thing as a regular immunization, but he just drank it, so that was cool. When the phlebotomist jabbed him the first time he did one long cry with a seemingly everlasting scream and then he gave me the ultimate look of betrayal. The woman causing all this pain and confusion was pretty speedy and efficient, but she just kept going at it, one after the other and my precious child was pinned down and screaming at the top of his lungs. Fortunately, this time I was brave enough not to leave him at this time of need (last time I had to leave the room, it was just too much for me). I held his hand and when she was done, I held him and he quickly forgot all about it.

     My theory about these kinds of things is that the baby is like totally fine 5 minutes later, but the mothers, they'll be scarred for life. Charles-Winston seems to be completely fine now, in fact at this moment, he's laughing in the other room with his dad, so it can't be that rough.

The most important thing

My family are moving to Utah. I've waited the past 7 years to be able to say that. "Why is this relevant?" you're probably thinking. It's relevant because this is a blog about Charles-Winston's life and me being a stay-at-home-mom. This is life-changing. Actually. 

     Now my mother and father get to be active grandparents and my siblings can be aunt and uncles. Charles-Winston will be eating Sunday dinner at their dining room table and swinging on their swing set. Over Christmas he'll help my mom bake cookies and we'll stuff his presents under the tree while he's passed out on the couch with my brothers. My dad will take him fishing and hunting and all the other things Benjamin disapproves of. We'll have family game night and watch movies together with the subtitles on because we all get headaches. 

      I can't possibly describe how terribly I've missed them and how delighted I am to have them back. 

     Family is the most important thing in the world to me, I'm glad that I don't have to preach that to Charles-Winston with mine being halfway across the country.

     Welcome home, Dad, Mom, Maysen, Drake and Case.

Homeopathic medicine

We traveled to St. George, Utah yesterday (the southern-most city in the state), to see my father-in-law over father's-day weekend.

     It was a terrible idea since Charles-Winston has an ear infection. All he did the whole ride down was cry and sleep. He'd cry himself to sleep and then wake up screaming and either Benjamin or I would have to climb into the back seat to calm him down. We maxed his dose on infant acetaminophen and homeopathic infant ear drops; he was still upset. He ate a great deal less, had a slight fever and didn't fall asleep until 11pm - although he did sleep through the night (until 5:45) so that was good and he seems to be doing significantly better today than he was yesterday. It's a much needed improvement.

     I can testify that the homeopathic ear drops worked very well, he seems to be pain free after using them for two full days and only bothers his ear every once in a while instead of incessantly. I'm glad we didn't take him to the doctor and get prescribed antibiotics since it seems to be clearing up on it's own. Now that his ear is better, our only problem is teething. He's a happy baby now and back to his normal self.

A cabin in the woods

My sweet baby and I left the busy valley of Salt Lake City and came up to Challis Idaho, population 1,081. The cabin we're staying in is far out of city limits, there's almost no traffic except for the occasional fisherman. Since we've been here, Charles-Winston has been pooping more regularly, spitting-up less, not so fussy in general, more alert during the day, deeper asleep in the night, he's been more playful, smiling more, just everything is better!
     If Charles-Winston is so much healthier overall out here, then what are all these other city-goers along with myself doing to ourselves and our families? My anxiety has decreased dramatically along with my quality of breathing. I love it out here and the air is fresher, there's no buildings in sight, it's so relaxing.
     Charles-Winston cannot get enough of it! He loves it here so much and so do I, I wish we never had to leave. But we miss his daddy and we can't live hours away from civilization. I just wish we could live like this all the time, I wish there was a happy medium. 

Rolling maniac / Big personality

Lately Charles-Winston has been rolling all over the place, he's an unstoppable force of nature. Earlier this morning Benjamin left him in the middle of the couch while he ran to go get some wipes and Charles-Winston ended up 3 feet away and 90 degrees different than when Benjamin had left him a few seconds earlier. (Of course if I'd been around, he would've been on the floor not the couch, but men...)

     If we leave him in his car seat unbuckled, he'll roll all the way around until he's on his belly if we let him. Same with anything else, in his crib, in his bumbo, rocker, swing, everything. He rolls over no matter where he is or what form of seat he's in. 

     This kid is hilarious, I swear it's because he knows we don't want him to roll around, he gives this little diabolical grin every time he successfully gets into a position we have to pull him out of. Looks something like this:

In other news, he's extremely chatty. He's one of the most talkative people I've ever met and he can't even form words! All he does is make noise and more noise and then if he feels like we're ignoring him, he starts to yell at the top of his lungs and he gets frustrated and starts huffing and breathing heavily. Charles-Winston has more personality than most adults I know; he's so shy when you first meet him, he'll hide his face in my hair, but after a few minutes he's talking and smiling and laughing at you, he might even be yelling or screaming at you. 

     He's so hilarious and it's the little quirks like this that make me wonder how I could've ever lived without him. The small things like hearing him laugh, or seeing his "evil" grin when he thinks he's won make every sleepless night, and every outfit change and every week without showering, he makes it all worth it.

Homemade baby food

Every week or so we go grocery shopping and make a bunch of baby food and juice. The reason is: the first (and only) jar of baby food I bought had 11 grams of sugar in it, it's only like 3oz and it had 11 grams?! That seemed ridiculous to me; the more research I did about store-bought baby food, the angrier I became. I wanted to know exactly what was going into Charles-Winston's belly and how could I feed him sugar when I won't even eat it?

     Conveniently, we already had a puree blender, so I started making my own baby food, and same thing with juice, I wasn't satisfied with the amount of added sugar, so we bought a juicer. Now, it's a fun Sunday activity that the whole family participates in and we all love it. Mainly Benjamin and I drink the juice and (of course) only Charles-Winston eats the baby food. It gives us all time to be together as a family and eat healthy and have fun while doing it. 

     Charles-Winston LOVES his baby food especially bananas, and I was told that giving him real food, I needed to supplement liquids for every bottle I missed, he hates drinking plain water, so we make juice for him. He doesn't seem to really love juice, but he'll drink it from a sippy cup. So today we juiced 2.5 lbs of apples with 5 kiwis and it made almost a half-gallon of juice we also pureed 10 bananas and it made about 1.5 lbs of baby food.