Foooood

Today is one of those rare days that I get to stay home with Nate, and not because either of us are sick.

Daycare is closed for one of their teacher in service days.  What in service a teacher to the infant crowd needs, I'll never know.  But, I had to take the day off of work, because apparently a 5 month old is too young to leave home alone.

We as a family are all recovered from poo-a-palooza.  Nate has gone back to sleeping 10-12 hours, which means Jason and I are now getting 6-8 hours THANK GOD.  So now that we aren't at the beck and call of our young son's tushy I've put my efforts into baking.

I'm on this random baking rampage.  I cannot make enough.  As soon as one batch of cookies is done, I want to make a coffee cake.  As soon as that's done I want to make brownies.  It's DANGEROUS.  We're going through so much butter in this house that I fear we won't survive.

Jason's getting the cooking bug too.  He made dinner on Saturday night.  The main dish was this amazingly flavorful and moist meatloaf.  It was IN-CRED-ABLE.  He accompanied it with salt potatoes - a recipe we saw on TV.  Basically, boil small red potatoes in a cup and a half of salt until they're tender and then smother them in butter.  And there were also vegetables.

I'm hoping the family can survive this culinary trend without diabetes or a heart attack.  If you don't see a new post for a few weeks, mourn for us, but know we died with a full belly.

I'm not dead

I'm just exhausted.

Nate's been getting up 5-7 times a night, needing a diaper change each time.  Of course any time we touch his butt he'd scream.

So, since last Thursday, Jason and I have gotten a combined total of about 15 hours of sleep.

Things are healing - he now has a new layer of skin over most of the affected area, it's just still sensitive.  Hopefully once this all heals the three of us can take a nice long nap together.

Holy Poop Batman!

I'm wrapping up the worst night Nate has ever had.

Monday afternoon I left work a bit early not feeling well.  Guess who got yet another 24 hour stomach virus?  So, Monday night was a sleepless night for me, because it's really hard to sleep on a bathroom floor while you're waiting to toss your cookies.  We sent Nate to daycare on Tuesday so that I could stay home, sleep and recover.  Nate must have gotten at least a part of the virus I had because the acid poo started sometime on Tuesday and has continued.

Acid poo is a very unique variety of poo in that it's not super stinky, it doesn't come out in large amounts, but it has this horrifying ability to eat through Nate's skin.

His poor butt is red, with a few sores that have opened and are bleeding a little.

Yes - I have a doctors appointment, it's just not until 11.

So, starting around 10 p.m. he started waking up about every half an hour, screaming, screaming in pain.  He managed to get a 53 minute stretch in around 2 a.m. but that's when it all ended.

So far, in the last 7 hours, I have changed five diapers. each diaper change comes with at least ten minutes of screaming, with no way to comfort him.  I'm doing everything I know to make it better and none of it seems to help.  He's exhausted, I'm exhausted, Jason's exhausted because you really can't sleep through the screams coming out of Nate.

So, wish us luck.  Hopefully the doctor has an idea/cream/drug that can take away Nate's pain.  

Pork Butt

The good news is finally out in the world.  My big sister is expecting her third baby on October 14th!  Yay!  Nate's newest cousin will be almost exactly a year younger then he is!

And now that everyone knows and I don't need to worry about letting something slip, I can start talking to the rest of my family again.  Which is good because no one has seen Nate since I went back to work a month ago (!).  So, tomorrow we're having the whole family over to our tiny tiny house for dinner.

One of the great things about my maternity leave was I was able to get back into the kitchen and starting cooking again.  I pretty much had given up all cooking while pregnant, and by the end of the pregnancy there was little I was able to eat because of the gestational diabetes, so I made it my mission to make Jason so fat that no one would love him but me.

I got a new set of cookbooks and started watching old episodes of America's Test Kitchen.  One week they made this pork butt that had me drooling.  It calls for a 6-8 lbs hunk of meat so I haven't been able to try out the recipe, but with six adults and three children coming over, it's on!

The big problem I'll have to solve is where to put these six adults and three children.  Our "dining room" is really just a wide hallway with a table in it.  I'm sure we'll manage to make everyone fit, but it'll still be like solving a giant tetris puzzle.  I really cannot wait until things turn around with the housing market.  This house was perfect for two adults, we had plenty of space, but since we added Nate it's tight.  There's no storage and so there's just stuff everywhere.

I called a real estate agent a few months ago about comps in the neighborhood.  Interest rates were so low we figured we could upgrade and keep the same mortgage payment, but to sell now would mean barely getting enough to pay off the mortgage and not hing to cover closing or to roll into a new house, so here we stay.