Here kitty kitty

The dairy train made a stop at the allergist last Friday.

For those playing along at home, let me refresh your memory. When Jack was around three months old, I had to stop drinking milk and eating ice cream because it would make him horribly fussy. Then Jack started with eczema around six months, coincidentally, the same time he started eating yogurt.

We stopped the yogurt after a few weeks, the eczema cleared up. We re-introduced it, it came back. Coincidence? Hard to believe. So we stopped all dairy in his diet and I only ate cheese, which seemed to work.

Fast forward to the weaning process, when we started him on bottles of whole milk and he did fine. But then the diapers started getting looser and he developed diarrhea. We had to switch to soy milk. Well after two days, the soy milk gave him the same symptoms. What to do?

The pediatrician said to switch to rice milk for two weeks and see how that worked. And for the last two weeks, he has had no symptoms. He's been great. Of course there was the one day we tried to give him yogurt and he broke out in a rash, but other than that, A-OK.

But as an aside, I also was giving him about 28 ounces of whole or soy milk a day at that point. I slowly realized, “Hey, there was no way he was getting that much from me when he was nursing.” So I cut him down to 20 ounces a day of rice milk, and the diapers firmed right up. Perhaps it was also a factor of him having too much liquid in his diet all of a sudden.

But we decided to take him to see an allergist to find out if this was an actual allergy, or just an intolerance. After getting some family history -- Josh could not tolerate dairy or soy formula and drank goat's milk for the first two years of his life -- the doctor said it sounded like an intolerance, but let's test to be sure.

She tested for dairy, soy, almond and cat. We requested the almond test so we could feed him almond butter without worrying that he would have a nut allergy. With him drinking rice milk, we need as much fat in his diet as possible and do you know how hard it is to get fat from non-dairy sources? Hella hard.

And with the cat, well gee, since we had cats in the house, the doctor figured we might as well test him, just to rule it out.

(Do you like that foreshadowing there? I should write screenplays with this talent.)

Of the four scratch areas, she said any that looked like a mosquito bite after the 15 minutes were up would be allergies. Within a minute of her leaving the room, Jack had a mosquito-bite looking thing on his back. The scratch test itself must not have hurt because he didn't even flinch and continued trying to eat the paper on the exam table without missing a beat.

Of course, we couldn't remember which of the four areas was which once the doctor left. She told us, but we have the attention span of fruit flies, apparently, and we forgot.

She came back in and announced the only allergy was to cats.

I think Josh blanched for a moment. Max has been with him since college, Lucy was my Christmas present to him three years ago. Jack adores the cats. They tolerate him. We just couldn't believe it.

All the recent studies have shown having pets in the house before the age of 1 is supposed to reduce your chances of developing allergies. He doesn't really show any signs, well outside of the dark circles under his eyes and runny nose -- but that could be from a cold, too. Hard to tell.

The allergist told us it would probably be best to remove the cats from the house. The jury is still out on that. I don't know what to think; Josh is against it. For now, they are staying at Grandma's house, but she doesn't want to keep them because she is afraid Jack will have allergies when he comes to visit there. Josh's sister could take them, but her fiancee doesn't like the shedding.

So we're stewing on what to do.

But the good news is he doesn't have an allergy to dairy or soy and he will surely grow out of it by the time he is 2.

For now, the allergist said to wait three months, ideally, to reintroduce dairy or soy. If we can't do that long, the minimum we should wait is six weeks. Then it's just trial and error to see what he can tolerate.

She said he'll likely have a reaction to goat's milk, since 80% of people with a cow's milk sensitivity have the same sensitivity to goat's milk. But she didn't rule out trying it. We're also looking into buffalo milk and sheep's milk products, both of which can be found at our neighborhood Whole Foods. You know, for a small fortune. Goat’s milk is only sold there in smallish bottles for like $4. A kid Jack’s age would probably go through two of those a day. You do the math.

But until we figure something out, poor Jack is drinking rice milk, which he seems fine with. I think it tastes like watery cardboard, but my palate is perhaps a bit more refined than his.

Google this

Jack has officially become his mother and father's child. He did his first Google search today.

Strangely, it was not "Britney Spears has lost her damn mind" or "How to be a contestant on American Idol" or the ever-popular "How to drive my parents insane with milk and soy allergies."

Instead, it was "'gq1fcyt2'5."

We are so proud.

Who's at the door?

The best part about going away for a few days -- outside, of course, from the chance to sleep in as late as we want -- is coming home to see Jack.

From the time the plane wheels hit the ground, I get impatient. The plane can't taxi fast enough, the 27 rows in front of me take forever to get their asses off the plane, the baggage takes forever and a day to come off the conveyer, the taxi picks the slowest lane on the freeway.

By the time I am walking up the stairs, I am so excited to see him I practically pull the handle off the door.

Sunday when Josh and I returned from our mini-vacation in Seattle and Whistler, Jack was standing just inside the door when we opened it. We barged in and had huge smiles on our faces and said "Hi Buddy!"

He looked at me, blinked as if to say, "Are my eyes deceiving me?" and then kept looking from me to Josh back to me and back to Josh. Finally he broke into a huge grin and lunged toward us.

For once, though, it wasn't Mommy who got the first hug. He wanted Daddy. Daddy got the first hugs and the first pats and only when he was satisfied with that, did he reach for Mommy.

And that's fine. It's nice for Daddy to get some props too. And then he attached himself to my body all day on Monday and I knew we were all good.

What was not all good was my vacation experience.

It started off with me arriving three hours late in Seattle. On Valentine's Day. But that was fine. I was on vaca -- I was going with the flow.

Then, the next morning, I spent four hours of my vacation working. Which is always good times. But again, wasn't letting it cramp my style. We still left for Whistler on time.

Friday, we finally get up on the mountain after boot issues and binding issues and whatnot on my part. On my second run, my board stopped on a turn and my ankle didn't.

For those of you keeping score at home...

Canadian mountain: 1
Amy: 0
Ankle sprains: 1
Number of hours spent snowboarding before injury: 2
Pair of crutches in service: 1
Number of dollars spent in Canadian health care system: 675

Not one of my finer moments. But trying to look on the bright side, because I had to see a doctor, we were able to get our money back for both days of lift tickets. And we got to sleep in instead of getting up early to hit the slopes. And we hung out in our plush suite a little longer. And we missed driving back in the snow in traffic.

So, at least there were some redeeming qualities in our trip. And in the end, we got to come home to a smiling Jack. And that's what I was looking forward to.

I can fly!

Random thoughts from 37,000 feet...

* Why do people insist on reclining their seatbacks in coach? Seriously. The chick in front of me is causing me to type this with the laptop inside my abdominal cavity while my legs are contorted into some kind of bizarre circus pose. And I am short. There should be rules. Either everyone in the whole plane reclines, or no one does. Can we make this one of the Miller Light man laws for God's sake?

* Why is it always the days when I have to make a flight that work starts getting crazy and requiring my attention now, now, NOW? There are stretches of weeks where I can take all day to finish something and then wham, the one day I need to leave the house for something on time, I get 27 requests for things on a tight deadline.

* I swear, I could leave the house four hours before a flight and I would still miss it. I don't know when I became that person -- you know, the one who sprints through the airport -- but I can't for the life of me time it right anymore. Today I left two hours before my flight and would have missed it. EXCEPT IT WAS DELAYED THREE HOURS. So no, no chance to miss it with that.

* In keeping with the above, can someone please tell me why United Airlines bothers having web updates for their flights if they are just going to lie to you? Two hours before my flight: on time. Arrival off the El: on time. Printing boarding pass at kiosk: delayed! delayed! delayed! Then they delayed it twice more in the time I sat on the floor with my laptop and tried to pretend I was happy with the opportunity to work a little more while I waited.

* Airport security people are little bitches. Sorry for the sweeping generalizations, but come on. Today we quibbled over the size of my plastic Ziplock bag. I had taken this bag on four flights, no one ever said a word. Today, a chick wearing blue latex gloves was combing through my grooming items and sighing. She confiscated my mini shampoo because it was a half-ounce too big. I asked her if she was seriously going to make me leave it there, seeing as it was 4 ounces instead of 3.5 ounces. She replied, "Ma'am, it's the law." It's also the law for me to give you dirty looks. Oh she did tell me I could get out of line and mail the item to myself. I am not kidding.

* Remember when I was all smug about not having any engorgement from the weaning process? Smugness bites ya in the ass every time. This morning I awoke and realized how it felt to get a bad boob job. Except the rock-hard implants weren't implants. That was fun times.

* Guess who forgot passports and birth certificates? Guess who is driving into Candada tomorrow? Guess who is sending their mothers to their respective city halls to pick up copies to be faxed in the hopes a copy will indeed be acceptable to the nice border agent? Nothing says vacation like being unprepared. Seriously, who are we? Why have we lost all ability to remember important things? I think Mommy brain is overtaking us both.

* Happy Valentine's Day!

And then there was none

After 369 days, my boobs are now my own again. The boy subleasing them for the last year is weaned. And I think I am OK with it.

My goal was to breastfeed him for a year. And I accomplished that. I am not really interested in popping a toddler on the boob and this seemed like a good time to wean him. He wasn't overly attached to it, more of a "Oh, a boob, well sure, if you're offering, I'll have some" attitude. He has always happily taken a bottle with breastmilk in it, and he was drinking whole milk like a champ.

I am going away with Josh this weekend (Yes, another vacation, seriously. We are free travel whores. He had training in Seattle all week and I am going out there to meet him for a long weekend and we're driving up to Whistler for some snowboarding.) so I decided to gradually cut him down from the four feedings we had been doing for a few months.

First, I shut down the all-night milk bar about a month ago. It closed at bedtime and didn't open again until morning. Then I replaced the mid-morning nursing session with a cup of whole milk. A week later, I started giving him milk after his afternoon nap. Last Friday he started a bottle of whole milk in a bottle before bed and today he got milk when he woke up too.

Of course, he also developed horrible diarrhea today, which SURPRISE, is from the damn dairy intolerance. The diapers were getting looser and looser as we gave him more and more milk. he also has had a runny nose since we introduced the milk and his eczema, while not nearly as bad as it had been in the past, is still somewhat hanging around. So here I am, with no more supply, and a kid who clearly needs to still breastfeed. A call to the pediatrician resulted in a switch to soy milk for a two-week trial. But that is a whole other post.

Anyway.

Because Jack used to wake up early, I would bring him in bed with us in the mornings, where he would nurse and sleep a little longer. So our little mini co-sleeping time also came to an end today. I will really miss that. Every morning, Jack would pop up to a sitting position, let out a loud, "AHHHHHHHH" and then wave at us and laugh. It was a great start to the morning, even when I was butt-tired. How can you not smile when that's your wakeup call?

We can still bring him in bed, I know, and still have that fun time, but it will be different now.

I thought I would be very emotional about the weaning. I imagined a teary farewell nursing session, some sort of demarcation line, I guess. But it wasn't like that. Yesterday morning I nursed him, today I didn't. Pretty anti-climactic.

Jack couldn't care less. He didn't act like he wanted to nurse, didn't complain when I came in to get him from his crib and changed him and got him up instead of coming back to bed, didn't throw up my shirt in search of a nipple. He just sucked down some milk from a sippy cup and that was that.

Now if I could just figure out a way to keep burning that 500 calories a day...

Twelve Months

Dear Jack,

Jackson, my dear, sweet, talking, walking, toy-shaking, laughing, cuddling little man -- today you turned 1.



When I look back at the past year, there is so much I know I am forgetting. It really did go by in the blink of an eye. I swear I was just bringing you home from the hospital. And moving you to your crib in your own room. And feeding you solids for the first time. Watching you crawl. Helping you take your first steps. Rocking you to sleep. Watching your chest rise and fall as you slept in the middle of the night.

You burst onto the scene at 10:25 p.m. a year ago today and my life will never be the same. I remember saying as you popped out, "Oh my Gosh! He's here!" That first glimpse of you is burned into my memory, all wet and puffy, lying on the table, scrunching your little face up and waving your arms.



In that moment, I became your Mommy. I kind of ceased to be Amy. Well, I shouldn't say that. I became a different Amy. One that is more patient and laid-back. One that puts your needs before her own (and that was certainly never the case before you came along). One that needs less sleep and knows the secrets to things like how to kiss an owie.

The last year has been amazing, but the last month has been just as incredible.You got two more teeth -- both on the top -- for a grand total of four. You look adorable when you smile, with your two tiny teeth on the bottom of your grin. Your Daddy said just last night how he thinks this is such a cute look and how he'll miss it. He'll probably miss it even more when the bill for your orthodontia comes in a few years. Your two teeth are slightly crooked, so I suspect you will be looking at braces like your Mommy and Daddy both had.

Your vocabulary is starting to expand now too. Just this week you started saying "baby" and "kitty," which brings your grand total to five words, along with "Mama," "Dada," and "Ney-Ney," which means "No, no."

"Baby" comes out loud and clear, but "kitty" is so cute I laugh every time you say it. You get the hard "K" sound and then sort of hiss an "s" sound, so it sounds like "Cah-sssi."

Your eating has also improved. You are almost totally off baby food, which we still feed you here and there because we have to get rid of it and, well, sometimes you refuse to eat vegetables off your tray and we know if we give them to you pureed in a jar, you will probably eat them. But you are eating more and more “people food” and we’re thrilled about that. You’ve had everything from pickles to cake to pasta this month and you’re found many new favorites. But let’s be clear, your allegiance is still to Veggie Booty, chicken noodle soup and carbs of any sort.



You went from walking a few steps here and there at the beginning of the month to walking full-time by the end. You crawl a few inches and then pop yourself up and away you go. You learned how to stand yourself up about two weeks ago and now it's like you've been doing it for years.

It's hysterical to watch you after your bath at night. Daddy dries you off and lets you run around naked for a few minutes. From the back, you are one skinny man. You are pretty much a straight line from shoulders to toes -- hips? What are those? But then you turn to the side and the Belly That Ate Chicago commands the eye. Your tummy is HUGE. It looks like your legs poke right out of it and you toddle around, laughing and not looking where you are going with your arms held high in the air, usually clutching some toy or article of clothing off the floor. Likely culprits include your socks, Daddy's socks or a rogue shoe. You have an absurd obsession with socks and shoes, and grab them whenever you can and take off as fast as you can, while shoving the item into your mouth.



I look around the house at the end of the day and it's like a tornado has hit it. There are toys everywhere. Trains and cars and trucks and dinosaurs and wagons and basketball hoops and blocks. You have the attention span of a gnat, but you like to make the rounds of your toys, so you end up playing with everything a few times in a day.

And by the end of the day, I am usually so tired that I don't feel like picking up toys. But after you go to bed and I am putting everything away, I remember something funny you did with a block or how you like to walk around with your penguin in your mouth and I always smile and tell Daddy a little story about some funny thing you did.



Your sleeping is so improved from the past six months, I barely remember how bad it was. Notice I said "barely" because trust me, some of the memories of you waking six and seven times a night will never fade. And someday, when you are 16 and I crawl in your bed at 3 a.m. and cry and yell and ask you to please get me a glass of milk to drink, and then a glass every hour on the hour for the rest of the night, you will understand what it means to sleep fitfully. But for now, you are sleeping 12 hours overnight and taking two one-hour naps during the day.

Speaking of milk, we decided about two weeks ago that we should probably figure out once and for all if you had a dairy intolerance. Your skin had really cleared up in the last two months and we were hoping you might have outgrown your problems. But the only way to figure it out was to give you some milk. So one day, we gave you a little whole milk in a sippy cup. The ground did not open and swallow us whole. You seemed to like it and your eczema was really no worse the next few days.

So we started slowly giving you more each day. You are now up to two 5-7 ounce sippies of whole milk a day. Tomorrow you see your pediatrician and if he gives us the go ahead, we will wean you completely by next week. You couldn't seem to care less where the milk comes from. You've always been happy to take your milk from a bottle or a boob, just as long as you were getting yours.

Which is making me feel a little sad about weaning you. For the last year, you and I shared that special time each day. Some days, we shared A LOT of special time when you were going through a growth spurt or not feeling well. I had said from the beginning that I wanted to nurse you for a year and that I didn't want to give you any formula. I achieved both of those goals. You never had a drop of formula and I feel really good about the whole nursing experience. Sure, things were tough in the beginning, but we really hit our stride.



I will really miss nursing you to sleep at night. I will probably miss nursing you in bed in the mornings even more, because that's how we convince you to sleep past 6 a.m. I told your Daddy tonight that you won't need me anymore. Next thing you know, you'll be staying out until 1 a.m. and making out with girls and I AM SO NOT READY FOR THAT. But the time has come to close the breastaurant. But I'll always remember what a great experience it was for both of us.

Buddy, I just can't believe that you aren't my little baby anymore. You're a toddler now. Every day you do something new or say something different and grow up a little more. I try to remember the little things: the way you stand on your tiptoes to look out the window, the way you scream in delight when you see the cats, the way the light hits your face when you sit in front of the patio door in the morning, the way your smile takes over your whole face when Daddy opens the door when he gets home from work. Those are the moments that make up a childhood. Sure, everyone remembers first steps and first words, but I want to remember how you lean in and get very quiet when you want to give me a kiss.

This last year has been such an amazing experience. I try to put it into words, but I really can't do it justice. It's nothing like I thought it would be. It's easier, it's harder. It's faster, it's slower. You are nothing like I thought you'd be. You are so much fun. You love to love to laugh. You love to learn. You love to move.



I see so much of myself in you. And I see so much of your Daddy, too. But I don't want to project on you. I want you to be your own person, to see the world in your own way, to make your own fun and experience your own joys and triumphs.

You Daddy and I want you to know how much we love you. How much more we love each other because you are in our lives. How we look forward to not only your second year, but your 102nd year. You are the light of our lives. We are blessed to have you and thankful to experience the world through your eyes each day.

Love,
Mommy

PS I am hoping that y'all, even the lurkers out there, might leave a comment for Jack. I'd like to print them all out and save them in his baby book. Thanks!

You must be kidding

A pipe burst in the laundry room of the rental property we own.

A tenant called to report "water gushing out of the pipe" and pooling on the floor.

A plumber has been called.

I am flipping the bird at the universe right now.

Luck be a lady tonight

The streak of bad luck continues.

After last week's car debacle, one might think things could only get better.

Not so much.

Sunday, we woke to frozen pipes in the kitchen. We had this problem last year, and smug homeowners that we are, we knew to leave the water dripping in the kitchen sink overnight when it's this cold. (How cold is it, you might ask? MOFO cold. Below-zero cold. Wear-your-fur-coat-over-sweatpants-to-the-grocery-store cold.)

Except Josh accidentally shut the drip off after getting a glass of water before bed.

So there was much running around and heating of the pipes with blow dryers. Which worked too well. As soon as the pipe un-froze, it started to hiss and leak. Josh shut the valve off and called his dad to come over and help fix it.

Six hours, one trip to Home Depot and two new flashlight batteries later, the leak was fixed. And just in time for the Super Bowl kickoff.

We all know how that ended.

Moving on.

After the game, Josh was going to head to Bloomington and I was going to bring Jack the next day. Since we had the two cars in Chicago, seemed like a great plan.

Except when he went outside to transfer the carseat to my car, he noticed the front tire was flat.

Seriously.

Of course, it's the coldest night of the last 10 years. We have AAA, but they were estimating the wait at 3-4 hours. Since it was already 10:30 p.m., we decided to head to Bloomington together in the morning and leave the car to deal with next weekend.

As we were about to head out, I went to run the dishwasher and found a puddle of water underneath the sink, AGAIN.

After banging my head against the wall, I alerted Josh. He shut the water off, blah blah blah and we figured out it was the disposal leaking. He turned the faucet to the other side of the sink, stuck bowls under both drainpipes and we left.

As we were leaving, a black cat jumped in front of the car and we ran over a mirror. I figured we might as well get it all out of the way now. There's no way things can get any worse.

The key to the kingdom

If it's not one thing, it's another around here.

Last night, while I was out running an errand, the car would not start in the store parking lot. It was eleventy-hundred degrees below zero and there I am with a car that would not start. The key wouldn't turn. I kept trying it, but nothing. Nada. I seriously looked around inside the car at one point to make sure it was actually, you know, not someone else's SUV. But there was my carseat and a set of links, so unless there's some Bizarro Amy out there with Bizarro Jack and Josh and a weird little parallel universe, it was indeed my vee-hick-co.

After calling my husband FIFTEEN times before he finally realized, "Wow, Amy has been gone a really long time. Maybe I should go get my phone from upstairs and see where she is," he was able to drop Jack off with our neighbor and come and rescue me. Of course he tried to start the car while I stood there rolling my eyes. Like he had the magic touch. Please.

The roadside assitance people were nice enough to walk me through a few things and then announced we would have to have the car towed. The nearest Acura dealership was 200 miles away. No, really. So we had them tow the car. Nearly 200 miles. That driver must have been making some fat cash for that little errand.

Of course this delayed us leaving Bloomington by two hours. Jack finally got to sleep at 9 p.m. -- two hours after his normal bedtime. Super! Cranky babies are my favorite in a crisis.

Once we got home to Chicago, I realized we would have to go out to the dealership, a mere hour away from our house, to pick up a loaner car or our own car if it was fixed. So I sent a note to my boss that I would have to be out Friday. I got shit for that today. Whatever. You know, not blogging about work really cuts into my material, because let me tell you, I could fill a novel with things that go on. But we all know Thou Shalt Not Blog About Work.

Where was I?

Ahh yes. This was NOT a good time for the car to be out of commission. Jack's birthday party is tomorrow and we had a million errands to run in preparation. It's also the coldest damn weekend of the last 10 years in Chicago. Not that that has anything to do with the car being on the fritz, but I thought it merited mention.

So we're running hither and yon, party prepping, SUV-less. Have you ever gone party shopping with a two-door car and a carseat that covers the acreage of the United States in your backseat? I mean I know we somehow survived with our little car before, but I have no recollection of how it happened. I feel like Fred Flinstone in this thing now -- cut me some holes in the floor and I can just power us by running.

Tomorrow, roughly 40 of Jack's nearest and dearest will celebrate his first birthday here at our home. He'll taste his first cake. And ice cream. He'll probably get way too much stuff and hopefully he will have the time of his life.

I will probably spend the two hours rocking back and forth in the corner, wailing, "My baaaaaaabbbbbeeeeeeee is 1!" At least I still have a few more days until his actual birthday to get used to this fact.

Oh, and the car? Yeah it wasn't broken at all. The security system disabled my key. If I had only turned the wheel while turning the key it would have worked. HELLO ACURA MAN AT THE ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE CENTER. Why did you not tell me that? I mean clearly, asking me if I could turn the wheel, and me saying, "Yes, a little. It's not locked or anything," didn't make him think to TELL me this little trick.

Argh.