Adventures with Blood

I fear this is only my first post of many about blood.

Check out this sequence of pictures for a hint of Elliott's exploring nature:

Here is his sweet smile to me after pulling this infant bouncy seat next to the window.



And here he is in action. He was bouncing all over the place while he climbed up but it didn't slow him down at all.


And within seconds he was standing on the bouncy seat with his feet not touching solid ground at all. He was quite delighted with his accomplishment.




This adventure ended without incident. However, a few days ago, we had an incident.

There was blood. Lots of blood.

He was standing holding onto a metal futon style chair. I was sitting right next to him just in case. Well, my just-in-case position wasn't good enough. Jason walked in and Elliott flung himself in pure excitement and hit his chin on the metal chair. At least that's what we think he hit. All we saw was mouthfuls of blood pouring out. He was screaming and we couldn't see what was bleeding (a tooth? split gum? tongue?) so we jumped into our van to head to the walk in clinic.

The bleeding stopped along the way but we thought it would be wise to get him checked out anyway. We discovered he bit his tongue pretty hard. With the help of hydrogen peroxide, Tylenol and time, he has healed up very nicely. No stitches at all.

Lessons learned from this first adventure with blood:

1. Babies are unpredictable (you would've thought I would've learned this one already)

2. Metal chairs are hard.

3. Soak your clothes in cold water to remove blood stains.

4. Even if the bleeding has stopped, walk into the clinic or hospital holding the blood-soaked towel. This will help you get into triage right away.

Hopefully we won't have many more adventures with blood. But as my sister-in-law reminded me, we did name him Elliott Ray with the initials "ER". Oh well.

We stole a van

It's true. We stole a van yesterday. And I feel a little tiny bit bad about it, but not too much. I really love the van. Here I am in it:




Let me explain.

We have been in the market to buy a used van to accommodate the stuff we have to cart around with Elliott. During the last month, my sweet husband has spent countless hours scanning the used auto ads on craigslist. I have to admit that it crossed my mind a few times that he was just wasting time. But that is just not so.

His hard work and diligence paid off. Big time.

Yesterday, he noticed a 1996 Honda Odyssey with only 88,000 miles for $4300 go up on Craigslist. It is the top of the line model with all the bells & whistles and the guy was selling because Microsoft was transferring him overseas. The seller wanted to get rid of it quickly because he was leaving at the end of this week, and he knew he had priced it low. The ad showed us the Kelly Blue Book value at $5500 so this was quite a deal.

Jason got that gut feeling that this was "the one" that we had been waiting for. So he called around noon (within one hour of the original posting) and found out that someone else had already called and was planning on looking at the van at 2:00 pm.

So we jumped in our car and hurried to beat the other guy there.
First come, first serve, right?

We arrived at 1:10 and I knew immediately that we'd be buying it. It was in excellent condition and it is the smaller model (seats 6) so I found it easier to drive than the full sized mini vans. I hurried on the test drive because, after all, we had to close the deal before the other guy arrived. At 1:30 pm, after the test drive, we offered the asking price and the van was OURS!

The seller called the other guy and said that the van had already been sold. And then I felt a little bad, but like I said before, not that bad. Jason rationalized that it was probably a dealership anyway who noticed how underpriced the vehicle was and planned to resell it at a higher price.

So yes, we stole a van from someone else. You just gotta be quick to get the deals on Craigslist.

Our Baby is Back and Ready for Swimming

Our cheerful, active baby is back.

How do we know?

Well, last night he said dog, quacked and roared all in the space of a few minutes. (Notice an animal theme going on here?)

And, boy, are we relieved!

After a week of fevers and rashes, we are thrilled that Elliott is ready to take on the world again.

That's a good thing because he starts swimming lessons next week. Yep, big boy swimming lessons. (the class is really called "Tiny Tots" but I'm telling Elliott he is a Big Boy!)

He is already practicing his swimming skills. He is becoming more and more active in the bath tub and our bath tub is rather slick. Being the good parents we are, we bought a non-slip pad that is supposed to suction to the bottom of the tub to prevent slipping except that our tub has an odd finish on it that the little suction cups won't stick to. So the pad floats and creates a rather dangerous obstacle for a baby. Without the pad, all Elliott has to brace himself on is the slightly rough finish on the bottom of our tub. This strange, lightly bumpy finish looks like it is supposed to resemble a non-slip surface but it is completely ineffective for an exploring little boy.

During the last two days, Elliott has slipped a couple of times and his little face went into the water (we right there, even holding onto him, but he just slips around). Both times, he came up sputtering but okay. So I'm off to Fred Meyer to further baby-proof our tub for our adventurous guy. If anyone knows what works on that fake-non-slip tub surface, please let me know!

Stay tuned for details of swimming lessons!

On Our Way to Toddlerhood

It's official.

My baby is 11 months old. And that brings me to this blog.

A brand-new blog.

A chance to savor my baby before he isn't a baby anymore. I know he'll always be my baby no matter how old he is, but really, he is not going to let me treat him like a baby for very much longer. He is getting more and more independent everyday. He crawls everywhere, pulls to and standing all the time. He is talking a little, well, actually he roars and quacks on occasion. He prefers to eat solid chunks of food and recently he has started asserting his opinion very strongly!

Here he is:


See, he already knows to smile and pose for the camera. Babies don't know to do that, toddlers do!

Why start a blog now, you may ask? I know many families who start this when their babies are much younger.

Well, there are two reasons.

Reason #1:
He is turning 1 soon. And that seems so official. In the past I could fudge about his age. When people would ask me how old he was, I could say, "10 months" even though he was really 10 months old plus 30 days old, but not yet officially 11 months old.

Sneaky, I know. But they really do grow up fast and I was trying to slow it down.

So reason #1 is that I can't lie about his age anymore. 1 is 1. There is no way around it.


Reason #2:
I am bored out of my mind. Elliott has been sick all week and thus, I have been home everyday except Tuesday when Jason was able to take a day off work.

Normally, I don't mind being at home. Actually, I am really looking forward to being a stay-at-home-mom except for that stay-at-home part.

I really want to be a go-out-and-about-mom.

When Elliott is feeling well, we go to the baby story time at the library, visit his baby friend Jack, or go on outings with great-gramma.

But with him being sick all week, I've been trapped here. He has had a high fever which broke after 3 days and then turned into a mildly contagious rash (Roseola). Poor little baby. (Yes, he is still a baby for 29 more days. Or 3o more days depending on which day we decide is his birthday this year. As leap day baby, he won't actually celebrate February 29 until his 4th birthday).

So while his little body has been healing and sleeping a lot, I've been doing things around the house.

I've:
organized
cleaned
cooked
made a grocery list and menu for a month
done laundry
written emails to friends I haven't seen in a while
watched TV through our computer (we don't have a real TV)

And that brings me here to this blog.
I am out of ways to entertain myself with a sleepy baby who must stay-at-home today.

Now hopefully, I'll be able to keep this up for all those of you who are oh so interested in the daily happenings of our lives.

We'll see......