Jealous of animals

Charles-Winston loves animals, just looking at a puppy he'll start giggling and smiling. He loves to cuddle them, he talks and yells at them, he even likes to pet them, (but it looks more like he's groping their fur). When we put him in his highchair to eat, the dog stands underneath and eats up the drooled bits of bananas - but now that Charles-Winston knows she's down there, he'll only look down and talk to her; when we try to sit him upright, he gets so frazzled he doesn't know what to do with himself.

     Did I mention he growls? I don't think I've ever seen something less intimidating or cuter. He smiles while he growls, but only at the dogs. He doesn't growl at people (anymore). 

     He even likes my fish and though he doesn't talk to or growl at them, he does stare at them for long stretches of time and he seems to be fascinated by the fact that they appear to float.

     Charles-Winston has the funniest quirks and such a big personality already, I can't wait until he can talk because (even though I doubt he'll ever shut up) then he can tell me everything that he thinks about and why he does all the hilarious things he does. I wish I knew what was going on in his little mind all the time. He's probably a baby genius.

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.

Independence day is too far away

I was going to save a post like this for July 4th so that it would be funny and interesting, but independence day is too far away.

     Charles-Winston is becoming more independent and he likes his alone time, he likes to be put down sometimes. He's ready to start becoming more self-sufficient, but I'm not! In a skewed remembrance of the first few months, I liked that he needed me to hold him constantly and care for his every need. Now that he can sit up on his own he starts crying if I pick him up when he wants personal time. It just makes me so sad that he's becoming more autonomous because he thinks he doesn't need me as much anymore, but I still need him a lot. We used to cuddle all the time and now he only wants to play.

     I wish there were more hours in the day because I want to cry when he goes to bed and I think about his accomplishments and how amazing he is, I fear I'll wake up one day and wonder where all my time with him went.

3 people in a queen size bed?

I've known him for five months already, but should I sleep with him? 

     Co-sleeping is something I've considered in great depth, I'm a very light sleeper though and Charles-Winston is so noisy: always fluctuating his breathing patterns and rolling around in his sleep. On the other hand Benjamin is a heavy sleeper who won't notice any of the things that make it difficult for me to sleep with Charles-Winston, but Benjamin has rolled onto me before without noticing. With all these elements combined, co-sleeping is probably not for our family.

     We tried having Charles-Winston in our bed this morning from 5:30 on. It was fantastic; the boys cuddled and we all got to sleep in until 8:30! (Charles-Winston usually wakes up for the day at about 6:00.) Although he woke up a few times, Benjamin lulled him back to sleep. I'm nervous to try it out during the night, but the kid only sleeps from 10:00-6:00 and naps for maybe 3 hours a day, and we're all getting desperate for more sleep/personal time. 

     As much as I hate the idea of waking up a million times during the night at every sound he makes, along with my concern that Benjamin could unknowingly smush him, co-sleeping still sounds appealing because although he's just down the hall, I still miss him at night.

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. 

Parenting nightmares

My worst nightmare as a new parent is an overtired baby, ya hear? 

     We keep everything on a whiteboard (previously mentioned), when he eats, sleeps, poops, you get the point. Yet, Charles-Winston is more often than not extremely over tired by the time I get him to sleep. I've come to accept that squirming and flailing are a part of his sleep-time routine, the poor little guy will not stop until he's too tired to function, it may have something to do with his teething because it seems to have gotten even more difficult to get him to fall asleep this past week or so. 

     We're back to swaddling, if that tells you anything. He also gets frightened when he transitions from active sleep to deep sleep, so often times he'll wake up after napping for only about 20 minutes.

Clipping Charles-Winston's nails seems to be a recurring disaster. A few weeks ago, I was clipping his nails and accidentally took a chunk out of his thumb, he cried and cried and cried. It bled for two hours, then he finally fell asleep, when he woke up, he panicked and it bled for another two. This has happened twice now and I've only clipped his nails like 4 times in his life! (The rest of the time, Benjamin has bitten his nails). 

     It's so emotional for me to realize that my child is hurt because of something I did and I can't fix it. I've never felt as helpless as I did when I clipped his fingertip. I just really hope these feelings don't intensify as he gets older because as amazing as these parenting emotions can be, they're also quite debilitating when my child is injured. 

Why I won't become a doctor

I'm not quite sure anybody (who isn't one) understands the sacrifices that stay-at-home-moms make. We leave behind adult conversations for crying and we ditch college for learning how to make baby food. It's not difficult work, but it is mentally challenging at times and it's quite stressful. Each day I crave the company of a person who can speak, or respond in some way to the words I'm saying. I have hobbies, and other moms are fine, but it's the school or work atmosphere I find myself desiring. I want to talk to adults who I have something in common with, I'm sick of talking to other moms about my labor, or what weight class our babies are in. I want to have an intellectual conversation with somebody that I like.

     A lot of people also don't seem to understand HOW much work a baby can be, it's a full time job in the least, instead of an 8 hour day, I'm working 16-24 hours doing everything I can for someone who won't ever thank me for it. I do what's expected of me and much, much more, but I'll never get a raise, I'll never be promoted. To Charles-Winston (my boss), my dreams and aspirations don't matter, he couldn't care less about what my life was like before him, or what it would've been without him.

     I enjoy being a mom, don't get me wrong, it's my favorite thing in the world. And I would miss Charles-Winston horribly if I had to get a job. I understand that all the things I want in life cannot coexist. But these things need to be said. It's not all rainbows and butterflies, and intelligent women who could've changed the world are at home with their babies because of the unconditional love we feel.

     I wanted to be a doctor, I could've gone to college, I could've had a career and a fat paycheck with a nice car; instead I'm being puked on every few minutes and keeping track of someone else's pooping schedule. Which would've also happened if I were a doctor, so I suppose it isn't unfair.

     The problem with everything I previously mentioned, is that knowing what I know now and given the choice to go back in time to change it all, to not have a baby at 18 and marry a boy I'd met exactly one year perviously; now I know what I would've been missing. 

     My small family is filled with more love than I could've ever expected to feel otherwise, my amazing husband and I have now been married for 9 months, had a baby for 5 months and though they've been extremely difficult times, I can't imagine anyone I'd rather suffer alongside. Every second of my day is filled with unparalleled joy and excitement, I get to watch something I made conquer mountains and overcome handicaps that I can't imagine anyone my age doing. Charles-Winston is the most sincere, loving, funny (every other positive adjective) person I know.

     I know I left a life behind me, but I'm too relieved to grieve.

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.

Almost 5 months old

Almost five months ago on January 5, 2014 I had a darling baby boy, my husband and I didn't decide on a name until we saw him, but when we first set our eyes upon him we looked at each other and simultaneously said "Charles-Winston". For clarity, his first name is Charles-Winston, no middle name and his last name is Engel. 

     Now, he's almost 5 months old and the nightmare of a newborn is almost over. I've heard COUNTLESS women say that their children were amazing as babies, or that their kids were so easy to take care of from day one. I'm not quite sure how true that is, but for me it simply wasn't the case. Charles-Winston was probably an average baby in most ways, he certainly wasn't spectacular or outstanding in any way medically. He woke up every 2 for the first two weeks and my husband and I were having what we'd consider some of the worst nights of our lives. The only thing that kept us going was the glimmer of a hope that we might get an extra few minutes of sleep the coming night. 

     One of the things that made those first few weeks extra hard was his spit-up. Anyone who's met Charles-Winston has told Benjamin and I that they've never seen a baby spit up as much as he would. If I pumped 4oz, it'd be completely out of his stomach within the first 15 minutes of eating it. Breast feeding a baby who only actually ingested MAYBE 1oz per feeding was extremely exhausting physically and mentally, my husband didn't quite understand how excruciating it was to watch hours and hours of my body's hard labor disregarded without a second thought. So we switched to formula after two weeks because my body just couldn't keep up. 

     Switching to formula made no difference, if anything it made his puking worse, (by the way, this whole time we'd been using full sized towels/blankets as burp rags, so puking seems to be a more adequate description) eventually we switched him to special formula for babies with issues spitting up, not like that helped either. Finally we came up with a concoction that "worked" for our little man. 6oz of distilled water, 3 scoops of formula for spit up, and 3 scoops of single grain rice cereal.

     By 4 months he was displaying all the signs of being ready for "solid" food, THAT HAS MADE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE! He seems to spit-up less in general, and hardly ever spits up bananas (his favorite). 

     Enough about spitting up. The first 2-2.5 months of his life were boring and pretty much sucked. It was winter in Salt Lake City, that means snow, so that ruled out pretty much ever going outside with my newborn baby. Benjamin had work, so that just left me at home, alone, and caring for a baby. I didn't know anything about babies, I didn't know that they liked to be walked around, or that they liked to be held all day every day. Benjamin and I also didn't understand how babies sleeping worked. He wasn't on a schedule and neither were we, we'd stay up late some nights, or go to bed right after dinner other nights. Charles-Winston would wake up in the middle of the night and he'd be awake for hours, from like 3am until 7am, and we'd just hold each other and be severely exhausted together. 

     Now, he's almost 5 months old and he's only waking up one or two times a night and Benjamin and I know a lot more about babies in general. We have a whiteboard where we keep track of everything he does, when he sleeps, for how long, when he eats, how much, what sorts of activities he and I do throughout the day. It's proven to be very useful.

     At this stage in his life, I can't imagine how I could be more in love with a person, and yet every day I'm proven wrong as I fall more and more in love with him and his minute accomplishments.