No wonder he was such a monster this weekend!

I don't know what possessed me to check this morning, but for some reason, I stuck my finger in Jesse's mouth and felt that tell-tale sharpness....yup, Jesse has his FIRST tooth! But leave it to my child to be different! His first tooth is his TOP left incisor. Most babies get their bottom incisors first. There won't be any pictures of this for a while....he's still being a bit of a monster at the moment!

Addicted to cloth

So, considering I'm a complete cloth diapering addict these days, I thought I'd post about it. It all started when I just found out I was pregnant with Jesse. I met a chick named Sara, and she and I became fast friends. And I found out she used cloth dipes on her little guy. I never even knew people still cloth diapered. But I saw the cute pics of her son, and learned about it from her. My obsession sort of took off from there. I started off with a stash of small Fuzzi Bunz. And that's primarily what I used on Jesse for the first few month. The, before I knew it, they were getting really small on him. I expected to be able to get about 6 months out of them, but Jesse is such a long baby, that he was getting plumber's crack by the time he was 4 months old. So, I needed a new stash. I know a lot of people who use cloth now, and I've seen some really cute dipes and heard what works for other people, so I decided to branch out. I have some Bum Genius 3.0 one size dipes. They're fabulous for overnights. I never get a leak! I also LOVE Blueberry diapers. They're so nice and trim! Baby Kangas are also fabulous. They're a one size dipe as well, and very trim. They also come in some great colours. I've also gotten into fitteds and pre-folds and covers, including wool. I started out on this cloth diapering business to save money, but that's out the window now. But I've since learned a lot about the health and environmental benefits of cloth diapering, and I'm so glad that I'm doing it! It's so much easier than people realize. And they're so freaking cute! I'll post some pics of Jesse's fluffy bum later as proof!

My baby boy is growing up!

Jesse's growing up. I have to face facts. There's nothing I can do to stop it! So I might as well go with it, right? ***pout***

So yesterday my baby boy started crawling! Like, bona fide crawling! Forward crawling! He's been doing the backing up thing for a while now, but hadn't started the forward thing. He'd always look like he was going to. He'd do a bit of that humping-like action, but never actually moved his hands or knees forward. He crawled a little bit yesterday, but today we actually got it on video.




Oh, and Jesse's started solids! He's tried banana twice, but the second time had massive vomiting, and that's a sign of an allergy, so we'll be avoiding banana and anything related to bananas for quite a while (maybe until he can be allergy tested). So last Saturday we tried sweet potato. That didn't go over so well. He hated it! I tried it with him again another two times, and he gagged on it. So we'll be moving on to other foods. I pureed some nectarines yesterday, and tried those, and he liked it! I'll have to add some pics of those too. I think we'll be trying watermelon next.

Here's the sweet potato shots:








































And these are from the nectarines. See the difference?




























Anywho, I guess that's it for now. Must go finish the laundry...

Can we all please just be healthy for a while?

So the whole fam-damily has some medical issues on the go right now.

Steve had day surgery today to remove 2 golf ball sized lipomas (fat tumors) from his back this morning. It was done under local anesethetic. Poor guy. I would have at least scammed some valium out of it had it been me. And they sent him home and told him to take tylenol and/or ibuprofen. What do people have against good ol' narcotics these days?

Jesse has had a rough month. First it was 2 solid weeks of diarrhea....foul, watery green, burnt rubber tire smelling diarrhea. He wasn't "sick" though. No other signs or symptoms. He stopped peeing as much, but with 4-7 diarrhea poops a day, that would be expected. We took him to the Janeway ER, and the ER doc pretty well laughed at us since the kid is the picture of health. He had no idea what was causing the diarrhea....didn't think it was a bug because Jesse was otherwise healthy. Jesse had a vax appointment with our family doc a few days later and she delayed the vax because of it. Had it not gone away on its own a few days later she was going to have us come in to culture it. We had a return appointment this past Tuesday for his vax, but the doc noticed Jesse's tonsils were red while examining him. So she took a throat swab and lo-and-behold, it grew some Group B Strep. Not a big problem. It's usually not even treated unless it's causing problems. But she wanted to be cautious and prescribed amoxil anyways. So we have to wait another 2 weeks and then try again for that vax.

As for me....I've got some weird joint issues going on. About a month after Jesse's birth, I started noticing a lot of joint pain in my knees, hips, shoulders, wrists, etc...I figured it was just the relaxin hormone leaving my system and causing some temporary stiffness in my joints. My doc gave me a req to go get some bloodwork done to rule out any freaky medical conditions, but I never did go get it done. I would have had to find someone to watch Jesse for me, and that's a bit difficult. Plus, I never really tried that hard. Anywho, the joint pain seemed to disappear on its own around 3 month post-partum, confirming (so I thought) my hypothesis that it was the declining relaxin levels. Fast-forward to last weekend, and I woke up one morning with a very sore right hand (this had been going on for about a month). I took a good looks at my fingers and noticed my ring finger on my right hand was different. The proximal joint is rather swollen on the sides....very much like the arthritic hands of an 80 year old granny. And the other joints hurt badly too. So my doc ordered some x-rays of my hands. I got those done last Thursday. I also went for bloodwork on Monday. I still don't have the results back yet, but I have an appointment this coming Tuesday to find out what's up. I'm hoping it'll show something (to explain the pain and swelling) that's easily treated. I would really rather NOT going on any medication right now that would necessitate me having to give up breastfeeding. It's just not an option for me.

I have a lot of catching up to do!

OK, so I'm starting this blog, like, 10 years too late. I think that can be forgiven considering I've only known what a blog is for about a year. So I have a lot of catching up to do. I want to share a little bit about our (mine and Steve's) lives up til now. It'll take a while, since we've been married for eons (well, more like 6 years), and I'm a huge procrastinator, but I'll get there. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to post current stuff as it comes up and post the catching up stuff as I get the chance? Sound good?

Good. Now I have a plan...